Pic: The Bronze Horseman. Courtesy WIkipedia
Prologue
Again I have returned to this country
Where a minaret has been entombed.
Someone soaks the wicks of clay lamps
in mustard oil, each night climbs its steps
to read messages scratched on planets.
His fingerprints cancel blank stamps
in that archive for letters with doomed
addresses, each house buried or empty.
Empty? Because so many fled, ran away.
And became refugees there, in the plains,
where they must now will a final dewfall
to turn the mountains to glass. They’ll see
us through them—see us frantically bury
houses to save them from fire that, like a wall,
caves in. The soldiers light it, hone the flames,
burn our world to sudden papier-mâché
inlaid with gold, then ash. When the muezzin
died, the city was robbed of every Call.
The houses were swept about like leaves
For burning. Now every night we bury
Our houses—and theirs, the ones left empty.
We are faithful. On their doors we hang wreaths.
More faithful each night fire again is a wall
And we look for the dark as it caves in.
(An excerpt from Agha Shahid Ali: The Country Without a Post Office)
Vinay Hameed
I
n the aftermath of the sudden abrogation of Article 370, what was unconstitutional and undemocratic has now, perniciously begun to acquire the veneer of legitimacy. Young Congress Party leaders proved they were no Young Turks when it comes to Kashmir; they voiced support for the move normalizing it as an act willed by the people. Jyotiraditya Scindia, R.P.N. Singh, Avinash Pande and some others told the Congress Working Committee soon after the abrogation that the public mood was on the government’s side. Which public were they thinking about? Kashmiris? Or did their idea of the public include Hindus and the Pandits of Jammu, people like Dr. Karan Singh who also doffed his hat to a coup against the Constitution? Did these worthies not realise that they had played into the hands of a government that had just conducted a ‘surgical strike’ against a section of its own people?
And what will the followers of Mayawati think as she sacked Danish Ali as her party’s leader in the Lok Sabha because he opposed triple talaq and the abrogation of Article 370? Will they have applauded their leader’s action as a fitting rebuttal of the pampered Kashmiris little realizing that as marginals themselves—at least in the eyes of the Hindutvas—they are just as much of pariahs as Kashmiris have been made with this imperial display of power unbridled by democratic norms? If Mayawati or sections of the BSP assume that an endorsement of the abrogation, out of their undeniable but misplaced sense of grievance at being shafted will get them a place at the high table of what is becoming an upper caste feast, they should think again. In January this year the Modi government proposed and the Union cabinet approved, 10 per cent reservation for the “economically weaker”sections. That ought to be considered a curtain raiser for yet another attack on Constitutionally guaranteed privileges for the socially oppressed sections. Be not surprised if in the days to come, the government does launches yet another ‘reform’ to remove those Reservtions for Scheduled Castes and Tribes that the BJP has always considered anathema. The attack on the Constitution will be dressed up as an attempt to level the playing field, an argument that most liberals will buy as a step forward towards the goal of a market driven society where merit rules, a crass neo-liberal fig leaf for the advancement of systemic inequalities hat will, in the context of our society entrench historically given fissures and prejudices against the lower castes.
And as for the minorities, Muslims, Christians, what else should they expect than the juggernaut of a ‘secular’ mission to create a uniform civil code?
Expect the homogenization of Indian society to proceed apace,to assume the character of a new ascendant normality. There will an increasing number of public figures, talking heads, “useful idiots” who will propogate Ram Madhav’s view of the abrogation as a pathway to the emotional unity of the people of the Kashmir valley with the Indian Union (Indian Express August 6) or, that pop policy wonk C. Raja Mohan’s take that pulled the abrogation and the bifurcation and the crackdown on basic civil liberties into the stratosphere of ‘frontier management’, a geo-political exercise undertaken by this government to extend |effective territorial sovereignty “over lands it has claimed.” (Indian Express August 13) Who can complain? Frontier management is a game about “cleaning out ambiguities” on frontiers: ask China! This move has nothing to do with the people; or conversely it is in their interest because now they can be certain, thanks to this frontier management exercise of belonging to the Indian Republic!
Between Ram Madhav’s defense of the action as a step towards the emotional unification of Kashmiris with majoritarian India and C. Raja Mohan’s fantasies about high stakes territorial claims you can spell out one word—majoritarian nationalism. Both visions bespeak the normality of an aggressive nationalist agenda and no prizes for guessing that we are talking of a masculine Hindutva nationalism. More than a century ago, Nandy warned about the “idolatry of Nation” that leads to violence on humanity. For him nationalism was “a great menace”
https://www.thebeacon.in/2018/08/15/idolatry-of-nation-is-violence-on-humanity-between-the-lines/
It is here, upon us and we Hindus love it. About time, we say; look at Pakistan, Israel.
When C. Raja Mohan talks of territorial claims he endorses a nationalism that will brook no ground level agency; it echoes the imperialist/colonial discourse that lays claim to know what is best for people who are best left to their humdrum lives or drumbeat for the empire/nation-state. Under the circumstances how much space is left for the subjects of subjugation, ‘territorial claims’to wonder why no one asked them to spell out their own destinies. Shouldn’t both Madhav and Mohan be read as discourses of annexation?
Abrogation of special status, bifurcation of the state, lock downs, curfews, arrests of political leaders are markers of conquest; to call for unity under the blessings and aegis of a State that engages in these acts of subjugation is not so much hypocrisy as a deliberate exercise in the violence of a nationalism that considers humiliation of a people a marker of its virility. That unity can be forced on a people by the stomp of a boot on the human face, to misquote good old Orwell is not to engage in forms of political hypocrisy but in a political hegemonic strategy of humiliating the face under the boot.
The boot on the human face. That haunted the author of 1984 as a vision of the future. But the people of the Valley, that “Country without a post office” feel it, hear it, on their face, in their hearts. It is an aspect of the whole abrogation of 370 and its accompanying armoury that has not been highlighted enough as not just an unconstitutional act but an exercise in humiliation .It was Pratap Bhanu Mehta who pointed out (Indian Express August 6) to what was hidden in plain sight, that the bifurcation of the state, its downgrade to a Union Territory was “designed to humiliate an already subjugated population. “How can a Muslim dominated state exist in India? Kashmir can now not even be trusted to a state.” For Mehta the “optics of this measure is not integration; it is humiliation of a piece with subtle and unsubtle reminders to minorities of their place in India.”
Humiltion is no an exercise in optics; it is a strategic weapon in the arsenal of hegemony, subjugation by a Nation-State of peoples perceived to be threats, destabilisers, quirks, elements that dare to defy the homogenizing machinations of state and majoritarian power.
In the case of the Kashmiris the humiliation is double-edged; not only are the citizens, especially the stone pelters defying State power they are Muslims to boot! For the majoritarian state and swathes of civil society the abrogation/bifurcation and lockdown address a perceived historical humiliation by Muslim rulers, by the pampered Kashmiris, whose special status is seen as a humiliation to Hindus. The past has to be undone. The humiliation felt by majoritarian Hindus, with their self-inflicted wounds of loss of masculinity in an age of hyper-masculine terrorism, calls for a strong leader to rectify perceived historical wrongs, fantastical and illusory though they may be. All talk of discussions with the people of Kashmir, (Muslims! Stone pelters! Jihadists!!!) is meaningless before the need to humiliate them, to infantaliize a whole population as incapable of coping with a federal set up, fit only to be ruled by the iron fist and the boot of majoritarian State power.
As Mehta pointed out in his essay soon after the abrogation, the humiliation of the Kashmiris is of a apiece with a host of humilations of minorities in India. We can now expect an emboldened state power to continue its humilations of minorities in India, of people that resist the homogenization of cherished diversities and cultures and autonomous political spaces. The methods have ben tried and tested in the most volatile of geographies whose history has been marked by a fierce resistance to the iron fist. Constitutionally guaranteed privilges for Dalits could be next; the signs are already upon us. Humiliation of the Other(read as minorities) has become apolitical statement and will increasingly manifest itself as state policy. The lynch mob is no longer necessary to humiliate the minority even though it will continue to haunt the countryside responding to dog-whistles; Kashmir’s humiliation will inspire other unconstitutional ways to bring Dalits into line,back into a historically given caste system without the privileges of Reservation that, at least in law and spirit, guaranteed a way out of caste oppression. Disgruntled Opposition-ruled states, refusing central fiats will face the prospects of de-limitation.
All those in civil society that nod their approval of Operation Kashmir, and sadly this includes Dalit leaders like Mayawati, will have to think through that endorsement as the reality of their own lives begins to bite. The economy is not in any shape to offer jobs to the youth. Raj Thackeray of the MNS hit the nail on the head when in response to PM Modi’s homiletic assurance that the abrogation of Article 370 would lead to jobs he wondered why the PM had not been ablto create jobs in states where Article 370 did not exist.
In her column, (Indian Express August 4) Tavleen Singh lamented that Modi’s aura was shrinking. And why? Instead of relying on Big Business to help him reach for the stars, he had messed them up with tax raids, threats of jail term over CSR shortfalls, hinting darkly at the emergnce of oligarchs. She has a point about the oligarchy business and it would be interesting to watch how this move towards a system of capitalism so favoured in Russia and the USA plays out here.
But she ought to have spared a thought for the poor and the minorities; and if that is too much to expect, perhaps a thought for the middle class youth scurrying down college halls towards a degree that will get them nothing more than the paper they will hold for the family photograph, or, as is more likely, a selfie. And as they wave the flag of an empty majoritarian nationalism and clap as Kshmiris, Dalits and other minority communities are humiliated, they would do well to move behind the screen of masculine-aggressive fantasies for a good look at the broken lights of their own dismal existence. Perhaps they will then realize and feel that they too belong to the humiliated.
Then perhaps Nandy might prove prophetic:“Some forms of humiliation—such as the crawling order enforced in the Punjab in the wake of the Jalianwallah Bagh massacre in 1919—degrade and silence the victims, but may also help consolidate new political formations.” (Regimes of…p 149)
*****
Prologue
After reading Padma Challakere’s essay on Julian Assange in frozen silence on a hot humid rainy day, Vinay Hameed, an infrequent reader of the digital press, keen chronicler of helpless selfless dispossessed subjects trampled upon by State Boots, sent us this report in an epistle crackling with white fury that we, as cultivated editors of a very respectable journal have excised in the interests of public safety and peace and reproduced the UN Report that itself bristles with righteous outrage.
It is clear from Nils Melzer’s report on his visit to Assange in the UK prison in May this year and his diplomatic correspondence with various governments involved in Assange’s case outlined in the link to La Republica’s report on the subject that Assange has been subjected to torture by a “ganging up” of western powers that include the US, UK, Sweden (Sweden!!) and Ecuador and that the media, most of it at any rate, has been silent or as is clear from the report below that has been public since May when the UN released it, complicit observers.
Padmaja Challakere outlined the role that the media has played in damning Assange and consigning him into the bin of irrelevance and infamy as a vainglorious egotist. The UN Special Rapporteur frames that indifference within the rubric of a “collective persecution” of Julian Assange. It’s call for an end to that “ganging up” may have come too late; soon after the UN report was released Assange was reportedly hospitalized yet Sweden refused the request by Assange’s Swedish lawyer to postpone a scheduled hearing regarding Assange’s detention in absentia for a preliminary investigation of rape allegations.
GENEVA (31 May 2019) ‑ A UN expert who visited Julian Assange in a London prison says he fears his human rights could be seriously violated if he is extradited to the United States and condemned the deliberate and concerted abuse inflicted for years on the Wikileaks co-founder.
“My most urgent concern is that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” said Nils Melzer, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture.
“I am particularly alarmed at the recent announcement by the US Department of Justice of 17 new charges against Mr. Assange under the Espionage Act, which currently carry up to 175 years in prison. This may well result in a life sentence without parole, or possibly even the death penalty, if further charges were to be added in the future,” said Melzer, who was also following up on earlier concerns for Assange’s health.
Although Assange is not held in solitary confinement, the Special Rapporteur said he is gravely concerned that the limited frequency and duration of lawyers’ visits and his lack of access to case files and documents make it impossible for him to adequately prepare his defence in any of the complex legal proceedings piling up against him.
“Since 2010, when Wikileaks started publishing evidence of war crimes and torture committed by US forces, we have seen a sustained and concerted effort by several States towards getting Mr. Assange extradited to the United States for prosecution, raising serious concern over the criminalisation of investigative journalism in violation of both the US Constitution and international human rights law,” Melzer said.
“Since then, there has been a relentless and unrestrained campaign of public mobbing, intimidation and defamation against Mr. Assange, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom, Sweden and, more recently, Ecuador.” According to the expert, this included an endless stream of humiliating, debasing and threatening statements in the press and on social media, but also by senior political figures, and even by judicial magistrates involved in proceedings against Assange.
“In the course of the past nine years, Mr. Assange has been exposed to persistent, progressively severe abuse ranging from systematic judicial persecution and arbitrary confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, to his oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance inside the embassy, and from deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation, to open instigation of violence and even repeated calls for his assassination.”
Melzer was accompanied during his prison visit on 9 May by two medical experts specialised in examining potential victims of torture and other ill-treatment.
The team were able to speak with Assange in confidence and to conduct a thorough medical assessment.
“It was obvious that Mr. Assange’s health has been seriously affected by the extremely hostile and arbitrary environment he has been exposed to for many years,” the expert said. “Most importantly, in addition to physical ailments, Mr. Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.
“The evidence is overwhelming and clear,” the expert said. “Mr. Assange has been deliberately exposed, for a period of several years, to progressively severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture.
“I condemn, in the strongest terms, the deliberate, concerted and sustained nature of the abuse inflicted on Mr. Assange and seriously deplore the consistent failure of all involved governments to take measures for the protection of his most fundamental human rights and dignity,” the expert said. “By displaying an attitude of complacency at best, and of complicity at worst, these governments have created an atmosphere of impunity encouraging Mr. Assange’s uninhibited vilification and abuse.”
In official letters sent earlier this week, Melzer urged the four involved governments to refrain from further disseminating, instigating or tolerating statements or other activities prejudicial to Assange’s human rights and dignity and to take measures to provide him with appropriate redress and rehabilitation for past harm. He further appealed to the British Government not to extradite Assange to the United States or to any other State failing to provide reliable guarantees against his onward transfer to the United States. He also reminded the United Kingdom of its obligation to ensure Assange’s unimpeded access to legal counsel, documentation and adequate preparation commensurate with the complexity of the pending proceedings.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”
Mr Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; is part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.
Courtesy: United Nations Human Rights. Office of the High Commissioner..
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24665&LangID=E
Also read:
Notes Agha Shahid Ali excerpt from his collection, The Country Without a Post Office pp 36-37. Penguin Random House India Pvt. Limited New Delhi 2013 Ashis Nandy: Regimes of Narcissism, Regimes of Despair. Oxford University Press. New Delhi 2013
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