कल से ही आपने यह खबर ज़रूर पढ़ी होगी कि पिछले 21 सालों से एग्ज़िट पोल में बीजेपी ही जीतती आई है। इन आंकड़ों के सामने आने के बाद यह सवाल उठने लगा है कि क्या एग्ज़िट पोल पर विश्वास किया जाना चाहिए?

अगर एग्ज़िट पोल में लगातार बीजेपी के जीतने की खबर से आप वाकिफ नहीं होंगे तो ऊपर के आंकड़ों को देख सकते हैं, जिसमें अलग-अलग चुनावों के एग्ज़िट पोल दिखाए गए हैं।

अब आते हैं इस साल के एग्ज़िट पोल पर, तो इस बार भी स्थिति जस-के-तस है। एग्ज़िट पोल ने वह परंपरा वापस से निभाई है। इस बार भी अमूमन एजेंसियों के एग्ज़िट पोल में NDA की ही बढ़त दिखाई दे रही है, मतलब इस हिसाब से वापस से बीजेपी ही सरकार बनाने वाली है।

लेकिन जब वापस ऊपर के आंकड़ों पर आते हैं तो इस  बार के एग्ज़िट पोल पर एक बार सवाल ज़रूर खड़ा होता है कि यह कितना विश्वसनीय है और कितना नहीं। क्योंकि इन एग्ज़िट पोल्स ने उस वक्त भी बीजेपी को जिताया है जिस वक्त वास्तविक रिज़ल्ट में बीजेपी सरकार बनाने में नाकामयाब रही है।

अब सवाल उठता है कि इस तरह की स्थिति क्यों है? क्या एग्ज़िट पोल पर विश्वास किया जाना चाहिए या नहीं? हम यह तो बिलकुल भी नहीं कह सकते हैं कि एग्ज़िट पोल पर पूरी तरह से विश्वास नहीं किया जा सकता लेकिन कुछ प्वाइंट्स हैं जो इनकी विश्वसनीयता पर सवाल उठाते  ज़रूर हैं।

सबसे पहले क्या है एग्ज़िट पोल-

• एग्ज़िट पोल चुनाव के दौरान मतदाताओं के रुख का आंकलन है। जो अलग-अलग संस्थानों द्वारा अलग-अलग तरीकों के आधार पर किया जाता है।
• एक प्रश्नावली के आधार पर अलग-अलग वोटर्स से सवाल करके उनकी राय जानी जाती है। यह किसी रूप में भी हो सकता है, फेस-टू-फेस भी और फोन पर भी।
• इलेक्शन कमनीशन के अनुसार, कोई भी एजेंसी, चैनल या वेबसाइट फाइनल फेज़ के बाद ही एग्ज़िट पोल टेलिकास्ट कर सकती है।

इसकी प्रक्रिया, जो उठाती है इसकी विश्वसनीयता पर सवाल-

1. सैंपल साइज़

एग्ज़िट पोल के सैंपल साइज़ की बात करें तो 1996 लोकसभा चुनाव में इसका सैंपल साइज़ 17,604 था। जो 2004 के चुनाव के समय से थोड़ा बढ़ा है। इस चुनाव (2019) में दावा है कि कई एजेंसियों के सैंपल साइज़ लाख के करीब भी थे।

अब यहां दो बातें निकलकर आती हैं-

1. छोटे सैंपल साइज़ से एक बड़े वर्ग की राय को नज़रअंदाज़ किया जाना।
2. बड़े सैंपल साइज़ में कई बार होती है धांधली

छोटा सैंपल साइज़- 

छोटे सैंपल साइज़ में कई बार बड़े वर्ग की राय को नज़रअंदाज़ कर दिया जाता है। कुछ लोगों के बीच सर्वे करके एक अनुमानित परिणाम निकाल दिए जाते हैं, जो सही रुझान नहीं बता पाते हैं।

बड़ा सैंपल साइज़-

बड़ा सैंपल साइज़ एक अच्छी पहल है, इसमें एक बड़े वर्ग की राय शामिल की जाती है, जिससे तुलनात्मक रूप में बेहतर परिणाम देखने को मिल सकते हैं। समस्या यहां यह आती है कि बड़े सैंपल साइज़ में धांधली की गुंजाइश काफी हद तक होती है। न्यूज़ चैनल्स और वेबसाइट्स के प्रेशर की वजह से अगर एजेंसियां बड़ा सैंपल साइज़ सेलेक्ट करती हैं तो वर्क लोड भी ज़्यादा होता है। ऐसे में कई बार सर्वे फर्ज़ी दिखा दिए जाने की संभावना होती है।

झारखंड के एक पत्रकार के अनुसार,

स्टूडेंट लाइफ में एक एजेंसी के लिए ओपिनियन पोल के आंकड़े जुटाने का काम मैंने भी किया था। यह बात सही है कि उस दौरान कुछ फॉर्म ज़मीन पर सर्वे करके भरे थे और बाकी को उसी ट्रेंड के हिसाब से घर में भर लिया था।

 2. पोलिंग बूथ के बाहर एग्ज़िट पोल-

कई बार पोलिंग बूथ के बाहर किया गया एग्ज़िट पोल का सर्वे गलत परिणाम दिखाता है। वजह, कई लोग पोलिंग बूथ के बाहर अपने मत का खुलासा नहीं करना चाहते। इसके साथ ही कई बार उनसे अचानक सवाल किए जाने पर वे जल्दबाज़ी में सही जवाब नहीं दे पाते हैं।

3. गुप्त मतदान

कई बार जो सैंपल साइज़ निर्धारित की जाती, उसमें कई ऐसे लोग निकल आते हैं जो अपना मतदान गुप्त रखने में विश्वास रखते हैं। वह किसी भी रूप में यह बताना पसंद नहीं करते कि वह किसे वोट देंगे। इससे होता यह है कि उस सैंपल साइज़ में कई जवाब नहीं मिलते और अगर वह व्यक्ति A पार्टी को मत देता है तो उस पार्टी की वह संख्या एग्ज़िट पोल के परिणाम में शामिल नहीं हो पाती है।

4. क्षेत्रीय दबंगई की राजनीति

हमारे यहां कई क्षेत्रों में किसी खास पार्टी का दबदबा होता है और वहां उस पार्टी के किसी खास नेता की गुंडई चलती है। ऐसे में मान लीजिए कि किसी इलाके में B पार्टी का दबदबा है और B पार्टी के किसी नेता का वहां वर्चस्व चलता है। अब कोई व्यक्ति अगर उस B पार्टी को वोट ना देकर A पार्टी को वोट देने वाला है लेकिन वह यह बात खुलकर कभी नहीं बताएगा क्योंकि उसे पता है कि ऐसे में उसके साथ गुंडागर्दी भी हो सकती है या उसे जबरन B पार्टी में वोट दिलवाया जा सकता है। ऐसे में वह भले ही A पार्टी को वोट देने वाला है मगर वह एग्ज़िट पोल के सर्वे में B पार्टी का ही नाम लेगा।

बहरहाल, 23 को फाइनल रिज़ल्ट आने ही वाला है, फिर साफ हो जाएगा कि इस बार का एग्ज़िट पोल कितना विश्वसनीय है और कितना नहीं।

The post Explained: कितना विश्वसनीय होता है एग्ज़िट पोल appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Hindutva Blues In Bengal

It appears that Hindutva has always maintained an underground presence in parts of Bengal, funded and supported by Marwari businessmen and migrant Hindu labourers from eastern UP and Bihar. Even if they don’t have an organisation, they have money. Their cause has been helped by a section of conservative middle-class Hindu Bengalis (of the bhodrolok stock) who resent and fear Muslims they themselves helped ghettoize – by refusing to sell them land in Hindu majority areas, by refusing them accommodation in cities, by denying them even lower-end jobs, by discriminating against Muslim children in public schools etc.

Their bigotry (instead of their wealth) trickled down to Hindus lower down the socioeconomic ladder, managing to weaken whatever interreligious class-based solidarity there was. Mamata Banerjee’s policies of applying cosmetic changes to widespread structural violence against Muslims instead of bringing about substantial changes in the system (say the education and housing sectors), backfired as the “Muslim appeasement” narrative got a boost. Ironic, because such limp policies were probably meant more to appease conservative Hindu bigots than Muslims. But what I do know is that our freedoms as Indians are under attack. The Constitution, which gives us those freedoms, might come under attack. The minorities, the marginalized, the vulnerable, have always been under attack; those attacks have just been amped up in the last few years.

Hindutva, in India, has never been relegated to the fringes. Rather it has always been allowed to float around in the corridors of power, in one form or another. “Sardar” Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first Home Minister was a virulent Islamophobe, which is one reason why the Hindu far-right has always tried to claim his legacy to burnish its respectability. Rajendra Prasad, India’s first President, stewarded the effort of conservative Hindus in the Constituent Assembly to impose a ban on cow slaughter, leading to the formulation of Article 48 – a constitutional provision enjoining the Indian state to prevent cow slaughter that has opened a Pandora’s box and has given violent Hindutva a backdoor entry into the mainstream.

GB Pant, first CM of Uttar Pradesh, provided protection to MS Golwalkar, the RSS chief, even as he was conspiring to carry out a pogrom against Muslims in the State. All these were straight up abuses of power. And yet hagiographies dominate public discourse around these men. This historical tiptoeing around ignoble abuses of political power by “great” men in independent India set the course for the pernicious and unchecked growth of the Hindu far-right, led by the RSS, which has now become a veritable empire, and is only becoming more influential. With Hindutva finally tasting the power of the kind it did in 2014, it has allowed dubious personalities to be sanitized and presented to us as saints. Thus began the age of gaslighting and fake news in “New” India. Then the virtual institutionalization of attacks against differing opinions and ways of life. Continued vicious efforts to break “other” spirits, hearts, minds, people, cultures….. The rest of the story is well known. We might soon have to deal with alleged terrorists making laws for us.

So I felt it last Tuesday. The sense of debilitating, thought-impeding fear at militant chants of Jai Shri Ram ringing in my ears, something that seemed to have temporarily hacked into my system and engulfed my entire being. So let me address the elephant in the room that gets bigger every minute it is ignored. I am not scared of the chant because I am a gutless atheist trembling at the sudden expression of righteousness by the devout, but because of how the self-righteousness of the profane – masquerading as aggressive religious devotion – is manifested in it. An aggressive mob screaming Jai Shri Ram, wielding swords, tridents and machetes – for those who remember Gujarat 2002, for the survivors, and for those who care about and love other human beings, evokes a sense of terror. It was never meant to be. No right-thinking Hindu thinks that Ram (critiques of which mythological character deserves separate space) should be a metaphor for fascism or horrific violence against Muslims, just as no decent Muslim thinks that Allah ought to be invoked by suicide bombers in the name of ‘jihad’.

No morally upright Jew thinks that the virulently Zionist Israeli state represents the interests of all Jews by colonizing West Bank and Gaza Strip, and by systematically violating the rights of Palestinians. One needs humans to have faith. Even an atheist like me has faith in humanity because I know it exists. Once certain articles of faith are weaponized, once hate politics wears the deceptive garb of faith, once the symbol becomes more important than the substance, faith loses its humanity, even as humanity struggles to retain its faith in itself. The deliberate play-act of Hindu victimhood, liberal use of the “Muslim appeasement” lie, dangerously and mendaciously criminalizing Muslim-majority areas and enclaves in Bengal, falsely claiming that chanting Jai Shri Ram is banned in the State – all this was used as a ruse by Hindutva elements to then “allow” themselves to chant the same aggressively, no doubt meant to recall the terror of Gujarat 2002. Model Code of Conduct? What’s that?!

Violence is a desperate attempt to establish the dominance of one’s own rules and order, therefore it doesn’t play by rules others might recognize. When masters of violence capture the idiom of democracy, of peace, of order, their objective is to pathologize and disintegrate them, or otherwise sequester violence to a convenient underbelly using a narrow ideological outlook. Violence is like that sore itch which once scratched, itches some more. No amount of violence is ever enough. It escalates like a nuclear chain reaction. It destroys and recreates itself.  It’s a human sin at once fatal and fractal.  In time, violence comes to be consecrated in society’s unjust order. It unleashes a slew of ironies upon us. Injustice becomes justice. Lies and distortions become knowledge. Gaslighting becomes education. Massive socioeconomic disparities become the “norm”. When people start protesting and asking questions of the unjust order, it becomes paranoid. Reason threatens the comfortable reign of violence. Reactionary violence is therefore used as a political tool to suppress reason. Violence is again needed to “restore order”. It is meant to force compliance with the unjust rules of an innately violent society through fear or misplaced awe. Reactionary violence is a manifestation of the paranoia and insecurity of the beneficiaries of an unjust social order. Dissent and truth, thus, become “anti-national”; dissenters and truth-tellers fair game for violent attacks.

Vidyasagar stood for reason, for resistance, for change, however limited or imperfect. These had come to define politics and culture in colonial Bengal and established its link with India’s freedom movement. These were never things Hindutva ever stood for. Lest we forget amid all the petty political squabbling that the Kolkata incident inevitably generated in an election season, the need of the hour is to restore the famously capacious skull of Vidyasagar that the thick skull of anti-intellectual Hindutva decapitated with a headbutt. And it will take a lot more than a mythical cosmetic surgery to do that.

The post The Recent Violence In Bengal Is A Terrorising Reminder Of What Hindutva Stands For appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

This article is with reference to the notification about ‘Reconstitution of Internal Complaints Committee (Sexual Harassment).’

The setting up of an internal complaints committee (ICC) is the result of the implementation of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act of 2013, under which the employers are obliged to constitute a committee to deal with issues of sexual harassment against women, as dictated by this press release.

This article aims at sensitizing the crowd in campuses with the provisions covered under this act and to inform students of the workings of this committee. The information provided in this piece relies on both the facts available in the official list of regulations released by the University Grants Commission, in 2016 (henceforth stated as ‘the regulations’) and on information collected from college administrations.

What Is The Use Of The Internal Complaints Committee And What Are Its Roles?

The first question that comes up is the need for a committee like this when there is an abundant supply of legal apparatus available. The answer to this query lies in the taboo and victim-shaming associated with the survivors of sexual harassment or assault. A committee like this is better equipped to handle cases pertaining to the acts covered under its purview and could work as a framework to provide the survivors with a complete moral support system.

The work of the Internal Complaints Committee is to inquire into the matter, gather the required information, prepare a detailed report and send their recommendations for the actions needed to be taken in each case individually. Adding to this, as stated in the regulations under section 5, the committee is also strongly responsible for protecting the survivor(s) of the incident from possible retaliation and adverse actions against them.

It is responsible for protecting the safety of the complainant and to prevent the discrimination that is popularly prevalent in cases like these. Moreover, as stated under section 8(8), the committee is bound to keep the names of the complainant, the witnesses, and the accused secret, especially during the process of an enquiry.

Who Makes Up This Committee And How Are These Members Selected?

As stated in the regulations under section 4(1), the committee includes a female presiding officer, two faculty members and two non-teaching employees, and three student representatives for cases which involve the student body and an external member.

Section 4(1)-(a) requires the selection of the student representatives by a transparent democratic procedure.

What Is The Procedure To Lodge A Complaint Under This Committee?

The procedure to lodge a complaint, as stated under section 7 of the regulations, includes for the aggrieved individual to submit a written complaint to the ICC within three months from the date of the last incident. As per the notification released, a complainant may lodge a complaint by contacting the members of the committee and the latter must support the individual in coming forward and getting through the due process.

Is The Committee Responsible For Dealing With Cases Of Only Women Being Harassed?

Although the regulations as stated by the UGC do not explicitly state the role of the ICC in curbing cases of women being harassed only, they do point out the administration’s duty to “act decisively against all gender violence perpetrated against employees and students of all sexes.” In section 3(1)-(d), the regulations also point out the vulnerability of “women employees and students and some male students and students of the third gender.”

As a result, cases of gender violence against male students and students from the transgender community may be dealt with appropriate measures and not be considered under the purview of the ICC.

What Counts As ‘Sexual Harassment’ According To The Committee?

As the regulations point out in section 2(k), the guidelines equate sexual harassment with actions ranging from unwelcome physical, verbal and non-verbal conduct of sexual nature, to demands for sexual favours, and to unwelcome physical contact and advances. Other than this, the definition also includes the execution of any behaviour that has explicit or implied sexual undertones.

What Kind Of Punishment And Correction Would The Committee Reward The Guilty With?

The regulations, under section 10, point out that in case the offender is an employee, they shall be punished in accordance with the institute’s service rules. As far as the cases with student offenders are concerned, the institute, on recommendations of the ICC, may act in various ways. These ways would depend on the extent of the offence and the seriousness of the incident, as investigated by the ICC.

In case of minor offences, the institute may resort to either warnings or as the regulations state, withholding various student privileges or awarding reformative punishments to the offenders. If the extent of the conduct amounts to a specific offence under the Indian Penal Code or any other law, a complaint will be made to the appropriate authority for action, in accordance with the law.

In conclusion, the fight against sexual harassment on campuses and in academia relies on the continuous usage of the ICC. More than the act of providing justice to the survivor, the administration and the institute must continue to sensitize its occupants about the concept of consent and the effects that incidents of sexual harassment have on survivors. This may be done by conduction of workshops (as stated under section 3(1)) and by a continuous attitude of awareness among the residents of the institute so as to bring a collective change in the prevalent mentality.

Featured image for representative purpose only.
Featured image source: RobinHiggins/Pixabay.

The post Explained: Everything Your College’s Internal Complaints Committee Is Supposed To Do appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The mark of the indelible ink on my left forefinger is slowly fading, as Mr. Modi seeks to be re-elected as the Prime Minister of the country. This mark gives me the pride of being a participant in the process of the grand choice, in the most sacred festival of democracy, while the entire nation awaits the 23rd of May. I shall continue to be a proud Indian Muslim, whoever forms the next government!

“Wait For Election Results In Fear”

The other day, I stumbled upon a tweet by Rana Ayyub, the author of the book “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a cover up.” It was a link to her article “You know India’s democracy is broken when millions wait for election results in fear,” in The Washington Post.

She remarks, “In the past five years, Muslims like me, who had placed our faith in this secular democracy, are unable to recognize India.” She is nastily trolled on Twitter with all kind of people full of ‘nationalistic’ bravado, palpably blended with masculine sexism, getting horny on the sadistic pleasure they derive from the fears of a Muslim woman.

However, that is quite an expected response from the vigilante, against a person like Rana who boldly speaks out her mind, and also considering that fact that she is a woman and a Muslim. But the questions running in my mind are, is the future really that bleak for Muslims in India as she presumes it would be if the Modi government returned with a full majority in this election? Had Muslims been safer during earlier governments? Whether Muslims are indeed that scared? Moreover, whether the present election campaigning by the lotus party succeeded in increasing the communal divide among the masses, and if yes, will they be interested in carrying it further during their five-year rule, assuming that they come to power again?

Origins Of The Hindu-Muslim Divide

I was reading through the newspaper archives, of the days just before the independence, when heated debates for and against the two-nation theory were going on, and I saw this interesting report in the Indian Express Madras (Chennai) edition of Jan 1, 1946.  Sir C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar, an avowed supporter of united India, speaking on “1945 and After” under the auspices of the Lakshmipuram Young Men’s Association, in no unclear words blamed the “rulers” (the British) of fomenting the division. He said, “Even now if they were to go to the villages in the north, they would find that in dress, in their manners, in almost everything the Hindus and Muslims lived side by side with mutual tolerance.” He added that “The people of the Indian National Army were prepared and were able to live and work together. It is only under the British leadership that we were unable to come together.”

Moreover, finally, he rightly said that “The energies of every Indian should be harnessed to the solution of the one problem – The eradication of poverty…”

The rulers, the British did it under a conscious design after the 1857 war of independence, so that both the communities should look at each other as enemies, and each separately upon the British as benefactors and protectors. The two-nation theory was injected into the minds of takers at both sides, Muslim League, at one end and the Hindu Mahasabha-RSS combined, on the other who looked upon the Muslim population as ‘Others,’ ‘Aliens’ and ‘Foreigners’ to be driven out of India.

Facing them both were the real nationalists who firmly believed that Indians were one nation, across the religious denominations. The fact is that religion-based nationality theory soon crashed when the Pakistani army unleashed one of the worst pogroms on people, their co-religionists, in its Eastern part and ultimately Bangladesh was born.

The partition of India no doubt was the worst crime, that the Indian people were ever subjected to and left deep scars on the minds of the ordinary population.

There is only one ultimate solution to this artificial divide; the partition must be undone. The country must be un-partitioned now, better late than never. Staunch supporters of a United One Nation India, you may call it the United States of India, if you wish, must rise in each of the political fragments – India,  present-day Pakistan and Bangladesh –  and vote governments in each segment to power who promise to reunite the motherland, much in the same way the East and West Germany were united. I hope the younger generation will be able to work in that direction, someday, successfully.

Pampering Priests Both Sides And Neglecting Ordinary People

It is a fact which we must accept that the secular India, has not remained secular in the real sense. The successive governments have remained busy in striking a balance in appeasing religious bigotry at each side, through pampered priests in the name of “respect to each religion.”

We may quote, for example, government’s capitulation to the Muslims in the Shah Bano case, and as if in an attempt to correct one wrong by doing another in letting the Ayodhya dispute, which was peacefully being tried in a court of law, to be brought to the streets. Somehow those in power supposed that the masses were represented by the priesthoods.

All India Muslim Personal Board was venerated as if they represented the Muslims in India. All parties did that. Even this time during his pre-poll visit to his constituency Lucknow, Mr. Rajnath Singh of BJP made it a point to visit the Hindu, Sunni and Shia godmen, perhaps in the hope that they would be able to fetch votes for him from their respective communities. Alternatively, maybe, he thought he was playing the “good cop” role in his party’s “good cop, bad cop” tactics.

He could have done much better, had he himself done a random survey of the shanty dwellings of say the artisans of Lucknow and tried to listen to their fears, concerns, hopes, nightmares, and dreams, and what they wanted and how could they be developed into an asset of ever-increasing value for the nation.

Failure To Prevent Mass Murder Of Innocent People Is Not Exclusive To Mr. Modi’s Rule

All parties use communal hatred, not for the sake of religion but as a cover for the so-called economic “reform,” which is slowly and surely making the economy more and more malleable for the big corporates, and the lives of the ordinary people more and more difficult. No doubt Mr. Modi’s Gujarat government miserably failed in preventing the Godhra carnage, in quickly punishing the real culprits, and in curbing the dreadful pogrom, while taking revenge from innocent men, women and children who had no role in that “original sin” –  but such barbaric acts were in not way invented during his rule. Many similar incidents took place during other so-called secular governments too; Moradabad, Nellie, Hashimpura,  Bhagalpur, Mumbai,  and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 are just a few.

Global Terrorism Has Aggravated The Problem

Resorting to terrorism by the subscribers of a particular radical group among Muslims has stoked Islamophobia the world over and a resulting in the aggravation of communalisation and mistrust in India. It is difficult to deny that the heinous terrorist attack at Pulwama followed by the terror attacks in Sri Lanka only benefitted those seeking vote cashing on the phobia, sweeping the economic issues under the carpet. The doctrine of terror, supposed by its preachers to protect the Muslims, is doing the worst harm to them, and the poor people of the world in general. Every sane citizen, and Muslims especially, therefore, must at all cost do everything possible to crush the terror mentality, in all its forms.

This Time Polarisation Is Not Hindu-Muslim, It Is Communal Forces Vs. Reasonable Citizens

As I have always been writing, the actual polarisation is between “haves” and “have-nots.” Unfortunately, this time also they succeeded in suppressing the actual dichotomy and diverting the talks to communal issues, so much so that even I have been compelled to write these lines. However, fortunately, they failed utterly this time in making this a Hindu-Muslim divide. The divide now is between those who want a Hindu Rashtra and those who want a modern secular state. So, that is a great victory of progress over retrogression. It is also not true that hatred has increased in the psyche of the general public. If I am not wrong, they had succeeded in inculcating the highest level of communal hatred during the last few years of 1980s and at the beginning of 1990s. Even at that time, they did not entirely succeed. I had some of my Hindu friends then and have them now, who have been to me more than what a sibling could have been.

The Future Of Muslims In India

At least, I do not know any Muslim contemplating plans to relocate to friendlier countries or sending their children away to foreign universities if Modi is reelected as Rana wrote. Is there any country more friendly than India? I cannot imagine living, for example, in a country where people are beheaded because they spoke or wrote something, which did not suit the rulers. Here, in India, I am so freely writing whatever is coming out of my heart while Mr. Modi is still the Prime Minister, and stands at least a 50-50 chance of coming back to power. I am sure the forces of progress here, will never let India degenerate into a country in which people are executed for expressing their views.

BJP needed a communal divide to get votes; how much they succeeded is something we will know only on the 23rd. But, once they form the next government, if they do, they will not need it anymore for, at least, the next five years. They cannot afford to start mass chaos by, say,  throwing “termites” in the Bay of Bengal either,  as it might disturb the business, investment, and foreign policy environment in the country. (M) issteps within will have an outsized impact abroad, which the corporates will never like.

That is just another jumla. Don’t fear. Heaven is not going to fall.

The post I Shall Continue To Be A Proud Indian Muslim, Even In A ‘Modified’ India appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The world is going through a radical shift as a result of hyperglobalization. One dramatic occurrence that may be noted on the world stage is the rise of populism. The foreign policy positions of the populist parties on the right reflect their nativist worldview. This leads to anti-immigration policies, disregard for the plight of refugees, aversion to a multicultural and multi-ethnic society, and a focus on hyper nationalist discourse. Populist parties on the left, on the other hand, oppose the neoliberal world order and open markets. However, the line between left and right populism has become increasingly blurred in recent times.

Issues vilified by those either side of the aisle are no longer leftist or rightist stance, but instead become populist stances that do not oblige to which side of the political spectrum to fall on. For instance, while neoliberalism is accused by leftists primarily in political discourse, right-wing populists do not hesitate to point a finger at it either. A proper understanding of what this loaded term “populism” means thus becomes necessary for the field of International Relations. Not only have populist parties and leaders had a significant impact on a their respective country’s foreign policy, but also on the flows of globalization in the wider sense. It is not sufficient to accuse populism of being anti-toleration or anti-liberty. The world is in dire need of a understanding the deeper reasons behind the symptoms of populism so as to “guide political and policy choices and to identify alternatives to the nationalist and anti-multilateral course advocated by populism” (Balfour, 2017, p. 57).

Populism And Its Causes

“Populism” is a thin ideology (“-ism”), i.e. it focuses on a very small part of the political agenda. While populism is quick to make calls for getting rid of the current political system, it does not offer an alternative world order that will replace the current system. Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde (2004) calls it a thin-centred ideology because the particular ideas under its command are of limited scope, complexity and ambition when compared to full ideologies. This thinness of the populist ideology allows it to transcend the left-right political spectrum. The dominant theoretical paradigm originating in Mudde’s work (2017) defines populism as an idea that focuses on the antagonism between two conflicting groups within a society. On one side lie the people i.e. the “pure people”, and on the side lie the elites i.e. “corrupt elite” against the backdrop of popular sovereignty.

The populists that seem to be emerging in today’s political climate often fall on the right of the political spectrum. Mudde has accused them of being dividers rather than uniters i.e they find an agenda that infuriates the broader public and use the public anger and discontent in their own favour. They do so by first positioning themselves as the voice of the “pure people”. The presupposition here is that they too are a part of this gathering of the “pure people”, even if this claim may not be objectively true. They achieve an entry into the world of the commoners by claiming fraternity.

Modi’s tea seller story may be seen as an example of the same – an “I am just like you” anecdote (their is a reason behind the recent TIME cover calling him the “divider in chief”). Trump, on the other hand, cannot do the same by virtue of being a billionaire heir. His approach is distinctly different – he positioned himself as an aggressive outsider during his election campaign. By doing so, he claimed to be the tribune of white populist rage. He promised to meet the demands of blue collar workers, whose grievances he claimed to empathize with. It should be noted that despite the populists claiming to talk in the name of people, once they assume power, the discourse often flips. They are motivated by strong anti-democratic impulses. Upon securing power, they create oppressive regimes that are not motivated by the prospect of meeting demands of the common people (Muller, 2016).

One must wonder how populism became so popular so rapidly. Cox (2017) provides three narratives in an attempt to answer this question. The first narrative assumes populism to not be an ideology at all. Instead it is deemed a cheap strategy used by powerful people all over the world to become more powerful, and to hold on to this power. Populism is “invariably divisive, thrives on conspiracy, finds enemies where they do not exist, criminalises all opposition to it, plays up external threats, and more often than not insists that its critics at home are merely working for foreign governments” (p. 14).

The second narrative focuses on populism emerging as an opposition to globalization. Given the sudden rise in technology and social media (and social media-propagated movements), the new world emerging seems anarchic and a threat to traditional values to many persons all over the world. While this threat has been felt by everyone to an extent, it seems to be a much bigger threat to the older white generation who crave for the past. They want to be surrounded by people who share the same “values” as them. This perhaps explains why today most populist leaders use anti-immigration rhetoric.

The third way of understanding populism argues it to be a result of hyperglobalization i.e. the rapid rise in trade integration (Subramanian and Kessler, 2013). While for emerging economies like India and China, this proved incredibly beneficial, the exact situation was not replicated for the West. Wealth became more concentrated in the hands of a few than before globalization, unemployment rose, and jobs were outsourced to populous nations with cheap labour. Further, talented immigrants began flocking in to these first-world nations in search of a better livelihood. Thus competition rose for both, white-collar, and blue-collar workers.

Neoliberalism As A Cause Of Populism

Monteir and Pilkington (2017) argue that populism has been a result of the warped priorities depicted by the neoliberal economic and world order, which became increasingly popular as the viable form of economic organisation post-1970s globally. It should furthermore be noted that the disintegration of the Soviet Union led to not solely a shift in the balance of powers, but also in the favour of one ideology over the other. Liberal capitalism triumphed over communism, which due to the failure of the USSR, began to be seen as an erroneous ideology. This thus implied that the system of neoliberalism of the West was the only viable alternative.

It becomes imperative to understand what modern liberalism and neoliberalism connote in order to understand what this means. Modern liberalism strongly believes liberal democracies to be the foundation stones for a peaceful and prosperous world. It is essentially a pragmatic ideology, embracing free markets, democracies and international institutions. Similarly, the Liberal International Economic Order (LIEO) argues that in contemporary IR is based around certain guiding principles.

According to Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry (1999), there exist three interlocking factors that allow for the manifestation of a liberal world order. These are:

i) international organisation such as the United Nations put into place international agreements and laws that must be met by sovereign actors within the international community i.e. individual states,

ii) the existence of an open and market-based international economic system that helps spread free trade. The premise behind this is that peaceful relations between states become incentivized and war becomes a less likely outcome and

iii) international norms are set in place by the liberal international order, and violating these norms leads to some form of cost on the part of the violating party.

Neoliberalism, or neoliberal institutionalism, arose in the 1970s and is of the belief that international organisations foster cooperation amongst state actors. Seen as the overwhelmingly righteous world order by the liberals, Montier and Pilkington (2017) instead choose to call it “a broken system of economic stagnation”. They believe this neoliberal economic order to have led to populism by looking at its four broad pillars, of which globalization is only one of them. These are: replacing goal of full employment as the primary goal with that of inflation targeting, a rise in globalisation and flows of trade, capital and people across borders, shifting focus from growth to shareholder value maximisation, and promoting flexible labour markets while at the same time disrupting trade unions.

These four significant economic policies, they believe, have led to a skewed balance towards capital and away from labour. It has instead backfired and led not only lower level of inflation, but also to lower growth rates, investments, productivity growth and job security. Further the income and wealth disparity has only worsened. All of the aforementioned only accelerated following the 2008 global financial crisis. They conclude their arguments by stating that the only aspect of populism that should come as a surprise is that it did not happen earlier.

Liberalism and democracy have often been hailed as virtues of the modern world, and though not necessarily, are cited as going together hand-in-hand. Thus far the paper has provided proof for the neoliberal world to have been a key contributor to the rise of populism. However the rise of one must wonder if and how democracy has a contributing role to play. Instead of balancing extremist views, democracy seems to have led to the victory of extremism itself in many of the cases all over the world today. Many scholars, academics and politicians have argued that issues as dangerous as whether a nation should remain or leave the EU should not be matters left to the whims of the public.

Political leaders must not make issues matters of public referendum in order to secure political powers themselves. However common (contemporary) wisdom asserts democracy to be a virtue. While there is some amount of agreement on democracy not been a perfect system, it has been argued that this is the closest the world has come to a synthesis till date. To put in other words: if not democracy, then what? There does not exist a perfect answer to this question as of now. For the purpose of this essay, my quip is not with democracy itself but with a specific kind of democracy that seems to be fast gaining momentum in the West.

Illiberal Democracies And Brexit

An article by Fareed Zakaria (1997) written over twenty years ago warned the world about the rise of what he called “illiberal democracies”. According to him, this breed of democracy is an “elected regime often re-elected or reinforced by referendums that ignore the constitutional limits of their power and deprive their citizens of basic rights and liberties” (p.22). It is perhaps safe to say that the rise of illiberal democracies may be one of the biggest political challenges of our century. It is becoming increasingly clear in today’s political climate that “inconsequential” voices, that may have earlier been shunned away from intellectual circles and from serious discourse on politics, have today led to dire consequences.

The rise of hyper nationalism in the United States with the advent of Donald Trump, Brexit, Modi’s (ultra)nationalist policies in India, the rise of the far-right in nations such as Germany, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden are all examples of a decline in the popularity of the liberal democracy. This is antithetical to the views of liberal democracy that have been propagated by many scholars, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Francis Fukuyama (1992) went so far as to say that liberal democracy has “vanquished” all other (rival) ideologies. The question was not about whether a country will turn liberal-democratic, but when.

Illiberal democracy goes against virtues preached by the Western liberal model that rose following the end of the second World War. One of the biggest examples of an illiberal democratic regime at work may be seen in the politics of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban argues that European Christian democracy has been led astray by liberalism. He aspires to place Hungary under an authoritarian regime similar to one in Russia today. Further, while he does claim protection of minorities to come under the purview of the European Christian values he deems virtuous, he unabashedly rejects multiculturalism – whether it be ethnic, cultural or religious. He has no reservations about showing hostility towards immigrants – a trend fast gaining momentum in the Western world. Trump’s fear mongering attitude towards hispanics and Muslims, rise of neo Nazism in Germany by the PEGIDA and AfD and the Visegrad Four’s policies towards refugees are a few of a vast number of examples of rising xenophobic sentiments.

Zakaria asserts that the Western world is not becoming less democratic; instead it is becoming less liberal. The explosive rise of populism is a testament to this forecast. Let us take the case of Brexit to better understand this. A portmanteau of the words “Britain” and “exit”, Brexit is a term that refers to Britain’s divorce from the European Union (EU). In 2013, then Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, promised a national referendum on the issue of European Union membership. He wanted the question to be settled once and for all. He was convinced that of the two options – Remain or Leave – the former would win by a landslide. However, following the referendum in June 2016, Leave won.

Over thirty million Britons voted on the issue, and the verdict was Leave (51.9% votes), as opposed to Remain (48.1% votes). While the reasons for Britons wanting to leave or remain with the EU are many and varied, two of the common themes that often emerge for those who voted to leave were: a) a call for greater independence of the UK, and b) the issue of immigration. According to Lord Ashcroft Polls (2016), 49% of the Leave voters believed that “The principle decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK”. This first major reason is tied in with Euroscepticism. Perhaps it would be wrong to label it as an overarching ideology (“-ism”), given how it is found in different political backgrounds. It may instead be seen as some form of opposition to the principle of European integration. One-third of the Leave voters believed that “voting to leave the EU offered the best chance for the UK to regain control over immigration and its own borders”. The results by the British Election Study, which categorized the reasons into fifty-four major categories, were also similar. The most common reason cited to Leave was “Sovereignty/EU bureaucracy”. This was closely followed by “Immigration”.

The Leave campaign was fought under the banner “Take Back Control”. This suggests that people can control their lives only as national citizens of a sovereign state. Such a political ideology may be termed “Faragism” after Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP). This ideology have three major components:

i) control is conditional to full national sovereignty of a nation-state;

ii) control over immigration is of the essence, and may be seen as the most important form of control, and

iii) the European Union must be disbanded so as to ensure sovereignty of European nation-states (Morgan 2016).

Faragism may be seen as an ideology that combines and propagates populism, conservatism and Euroscepticism. One may perhaps go so far as to say that this ideology depicts antipathy towards ideas of liberal democracy itself (Mounck, 2016).

Concluding Remarks

Populists tend to perceive and analyze foreign policy issues through the lens of the “elite-underdog opposition” (Chryssogelos, 2017). Brexit and Trump are testament to the overwhelming worry felt by members of the Western world to not only globalization, but also towards emerging economies. They feel threatened by developing nations, such as say BRICS member states (Cox, 2017). The power shift can be seen as leading to slogans such as “Make America Great Again” in the US or the victory of the pro-Leave faction in the UK. They believe their position as global leaders and players to be fast becoming compromised in the face of these rising nation states.

Populism, then, in the West, becomes morphed in the voice of reason, or as the “will of the people”. The Rousseauian notion of general will asks individuals what would be good for everybody and not just for themselves. Compare this with the stance taken by Trump supporters and Brexiters. These factions paper over normal pluralities and present them as the true unitary voice for the people. Freeden (2017) comments on the same: “No wonder that sovereignty shares top billing with anti-immigration on the list of the political demands surrounding Brexit” (p. 8). The case is a curious one indeed. What is posited as the “voice of the people” is instead a singular voice emerging out of majoritarianism. The political fiction of the “one and indivisible” ironically rejects pluralism and globalized interests.

Therefore international bodies and domestic political parties must examine the underlying reasons behind the strengthening of this “us” versus “them” binary – whether it be us pure people opposing the corrupt elites, or us white Christians versus those brown Muslims, or us Europeans versus those Middle Easterns. It is becoming more imperative than ever to question whether globalization needs to have the outcomes of wealth inequality that are becoming its unquestionable consequences. One must question: are our liberal democracies “in tune with technological and societal changes?” (Balfour, 2017, p. 60). The next step would be democratize foreign policy given how globalization is a phenomena that impacts all and not just governmental bodies or elite citizens of a nation. The answer then is not whether the liberal world order and democracy is hazardous. Instead it is to wonder how  democracy can be strengthened such that all voices becomes equally heard, addressed and if and when necessary, challenged.

What separates majoritarianism from populism, despite both claiming to voice the will of the common people, has to do with the latter’s claim of their demands been irreplaceable truths. Populist leaders and supporters are people who have felt themselves losing in the fast-paced world of globalisation and have instead of making peace with the same or trying to find some sort of compromise have decided to go insular. There exists amongst populists a strong distaste for toleration. The world of populism is a xenophobic and scared world. Populism is not a purpose-driven movement – it does not look for growth of society. It chooses to focus instead on fear mongering and suspicion. The populist ideology is not one built around culture, social rights or citizenship. Instead it is built around a fear of the “other”, who are deemed aliens as opposed to people coming from different culture or religion or region.

References:

Ashcroft, L. (2016). How the United Kingdom voted on Thursday… and why – Lord Ashcroft Polls. [online] Lordashcroftpolls.com. Available at: http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why  [Accessed 20 April 2019].

Balfour, R. (2017). The (Resistable) Rise of Populism in Europe and its Impact on European and International Cooperation. IEMed, Mediterranean Yearbook 2017. 56-60. Retreived from: https://www.iemed.org/observatori/arees-danalisi/arxius-adjunts/anuari/med.2017/IEMed_MedYearbook2017_rise_populism_europe_Balfour.pdf/

Cox, M. (2017). The rise of populism and the crisis of globalisation: Brexit, Trump and beyond. Irish Studies in International Affairs, 28. 9-17. Retrieved from: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/86880/7/Cox_Rise%20of%20populism%20published_2018.pdf

Chryssogelos, A. (2017). Populism in Foreign Policy. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Oxford University Press: Oxford. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.467

Deudney, D., & Ikenberry, G. (1999). The Nature and Sources of Liberal International Order. Review of International Studies, 25(2), 179-196. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/20097589

Freeden, M. (2017). After the Brexit referendum: revisiting populism as an ideology. Journal of Political Ideologies. 22(1). 1-11. Doi: 10.1080/13569317.2016.1260813

Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. New York: Free Press.

Montier, J. and Pilkington, P. (2017). The Deep Causes of Secular Stagnation and the Rise of Populism. GMO White Paper. Retrieved from: https://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/2017/03/27/the-deep-causes-of-secular-stagnation-and-the-rise-of-populism

Morgan, G. (2016). Liberalism, nationalist and post-Brexit Europe. Biblioteca della libertà, 1(215), 7-25. Retrieved from: https://www.centroeinaudi.it/images/abook_file/BDL_215_Morgan.pdf

Mounck, Y. (2016, Aug 14). The Week Democracy Died. Slate. Retrieved from: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/cover_story/2016/08/the_week_democracy_died_how_brexit_nice_turkey_and_trump_are_all_connected.html

Mudde, C. (2004). The Populist Zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541-563.  

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1477-7053.2004.00135.x

Muller, J. (2016). What is Populism?. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Subramanian, A. and Kessler, M. (2013). The Hyperglobalization of Trade and its Future. Peterson Institute for International Economics. 1-66. Retrieved from: https://piie.com/publications/wp/wp13-6.pdf

Zakaria, F. (1997). The Rise of Illiberal Democracy. Foreign Affairs, 76(6), 22-43. doi:10.2307/20048274

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Rajiv Gandhi’s Memorial Day is also marked as anti-terrorism day whose purpose is to spread the message of global peace and non-violence and stop youngsters from following cult practices and being misguided, I chose to revisit the past and decipher what hate has done to us collectively as a society and why it is important for us to remember our loved ones for what they truly stood for in life and let all the other unwanted noises drain out. I intended to do that by also commemorating a person I truly loved, my grandfather.

The Dark Day

I was only past three years of age when the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Yet somehow, muzzy reflections from that day still wearily trace the corridors of my mind.

It was the day after the assassination, the morning of May 22, 1991. It was a bright sunny day. Thinly lit rays splattered across the floor of the drawing room, where I played. My mother and I were at my paternal grandfather’s place with the rest of the family while my father stayed put in a different city on the pretext of work. There was this calmness all around my tiny self hadn’t felt before, something in the air that was making even me, a toddler, aware of the unusuality of the day.  It was eerily quiet. No one talked. No one said anything. Everyone seemed upset and grief stuck around while the little me gawked in nescience.

What followed was the most distinct and the only tiny fragment of memory I had of the day: my mom walking up to pick up the green colored land line phone perched on the shelf hooked to the wall, which was my favorite thing to play with in the house. Later one day, my dad had to give in and bring me an exact replica of the phone to play with so that I let the people in the house actually use it for its intended purpose.

As I sat there staring at the eventuality, she picked up the phone to talk to my dad on the other end. Her voice, choking and sad, told my dad “Rajiv Gandhi is no more.”

That day was her birthday. The sorrow was palpable and the sadness hefty among all the members of my family.

This perhaps was the mark of a human being who in his lifetime could spur emotions of kindness and love in people. So different in juxtaposition to today’s vitriolic atmosphere laden heavily with whacking amounts of hate, disgruntlement and lack of compassion we find ourselves engulfed in. People are not fondly commemorated, even posthumously.

The most significant of things that we as a nation stand lacking today is perhaps this sense of compassion, sensitivity, tenderness, solicitude and humanity that seem to be lost on an entire generation of millennials. As time progresses, I sense this perplexing lack of empathy towards people’s suffering and sorrow, creeping through the societies, and even governments and establishments across the world.

The Story Of My Grandpa

My family back in the day has never had any hardcore political leanings. And these thoughts, therefore, have led me to draw parallels with the journey of someone very close to my own life, my paternal grandfather. Born in 1912, he was fostered by an English couple of the British colonies in India who provided him with care and education in his early years while the rest of his family migrated to Myanmar, fleeing the distressing circumstances of the war, never to return.

When his foster parents left for England, he declined to go with them and spent the rest of his life here in India working hard to earn an education, all on his own. He later became a public servant and spent years of his life in the civil services, earning the approbation of being an honest, upright and distinguished officer, especially during his tenure as the municipal commissioner.

A Letter To Me

He was my favorite person and I can safely say I was his too. Before he passed away, he left with my parents a letter he had written for me, asking them to hand it down to me when I finished school. In his letter, he paraphrased the importance of critical thinking and wrote me down a list of ‘must read autobiographies in life.’

While I feel super guilty about the fact that I’m yet to finish his assignment, as the gravity of his words only struck me much later in life, the wisdom and thoughts that he chose to leave me with will forever be my greatest treasures.

A Letter To Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

My grandfather was an ardent thinker, philosopher, voracious reader, writer and someone with a prolific understanding of world history and politics (the last bit has also been inherited by my father). I often shy away from having discussions with him on these topics because I feel inadequate. Old heavy books I could never understand and dusty Reader’s Digests locked away in the almirahs were the most common sight at my grandpa’s house.

My grandfather was a contemporary of Ms Indira Gandhi which perhaps allowed him to see, observe and peruse her life and politics in thorough profundity. I grew up listening to the grand fable of a letter of commendation my grandfather received in reply, from Ms Gandhi when he wrote to her sharing his views and engraving policy suggestions of the time as a common citizen. A document touted, treasured and misplaced even before I was born. Yet, politics were seldom discussed in a house of six siblings, that was caught in its own quagmire of day to day survival.

The Dark Day

He passed away on March 11, 1998, at the age of 86. I was all of ten, heartbroken and wished I had more time with him. Before we bid goodbye, I saw many strangers weeping and visiting to pay their last respects. I wondered who these people were. My mother told me that she didn’t know them either and it was tough to know because he was loved by many. She told me he lived his life helping people in need and educating them in any way that he could. My mother entered the house as a young twenty-year-old bride in love with my father. She still tells me how every little thing she learned in her life is through him. She never gets tired of reminiscing the evenings they had together in the verandah where he imparted his life lessons to her.

With very little exposure that she had to the outside world prior to beginning her marital life, it warms my heart when my mother tells me, he was her guide to getting to know the world and the society. She said he taught her the importance of benevolence and the ability to let go. He taught her not to waste time in triviality. He was the father-in-law who loved her and taught her like she was his own. She misses him more than anyone else.

Hate Versus Love

As I sit back and ponder on this day, I’m afraid we are letting go of that love which is the most innate quality a human being could possibly ever possess. The ability to be kind, gentle, nurturing, to have patience and humility while dealing with adverse people and circumstances seems a virtue that has grossly disappeared into oblivion. While hate has sprung up in a thousand different manifestations, love seems to have chosen to diffuse itself. The linguistics of hate is taking over as the language of love dissipates.

I firmly believe that celebrating lives and people’s memories instead of fostering prejudices is what we need today. And to be able to do this, in an enhanced atmosphere of hate, we should be able to learn, unlearn and relearn, to be able to dismantle the barriers of contempt and a certain idea or a predisposition towards someone. We as a society need to celebrate people for what they stood for, their lives and their experiences. Their triumphs, troubles, strengths and percipience.

The Order Of The Day And The Fallen Political Discourse

What instead has become of this society is not just shocking but sad. The world today is increasingly becoming an apoplectic place.  And unfortunately, the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy is leading by example. The person who occupies the highest chair in this country at this hour feels no contempt in calling his much-revered predecessor, who lost his life-fighting division and violence, “Bhrashtachari Number 1.”

What was more problematic was how it was not just an insinuation of the Bofors scandal for which Rajiv Gandhi was given a clean chit by the court, it was rather the way in which such harsh words were contrived to ascribe the nightmarish and premature ending of a young life with an accusation that was just a part of it. And he had no qualms, whatsoever, in throwing such a low diatribe at the dead man’s child who witnessed losses none in this world would be willing to trade for those supposed privileges they accuse him of enjoying.

My own grandfather towards the fag end of his career, with just an annum to retire, was punitively dismissed from his service under false charges of corruption when he took on a political bigwig for running liquor bars around school premises, revoking their licenses and shutting their businesses down. The court later found the allegations to be frivolous and exonerated my grandfather of all the charges thereby, restoring the sanctity of a man who stood by staunch principles of discipline, justice and anti-social malice all his life.

He was against the practice of dowry and managed to stick to his principle through the weddings of all his children, both sons and daughters, back in the day. He never let a penny seep into his pockets through bribery and thereby had very little to make ends meet post-retirement as opposed to his contemporaries. And I thank God, for some hate-filled man never walked up to me to tell me, “your grandfather ended his life as Bhrashtachari Number 1.”

The manifestations of hate are aplenty. But they lead us nowhere. While the world is increasingly becoming a hate-filled place from the internet to the real world, the fallen political discourse is only the latest example. It also does not help that the Prime Minister of a mighty nation that has concocted the ideals of love and non-violence through the annals of her illustrious past, is increasingly acting as a symbol of hate, violence and aggression.

It’s perhaps easy to hate and much more difficult to love. But hate is consuming and tiresome. It’s arsenic and it’s only a matter of time before it subsumes its host. Love heals, love helps and above all, love harms no one.

Let Us Remember Rajiv Gandhi For Who He Truly Was

So today, on the 28th death anniversary of India’s much-adored Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, let us remember this gentleman whose tranquil demeanor is dearly missed today more than ever before. His legacy is built on the vision he had for the 21st century India, the bedrock of whose development he believed lay in the basic pillars of education, social justice, equity for the weaker sections and women empowerment.

Ascended to the highest responsibility way before his time at age 40, he was India’s youngest Prime Minister who left a deep imprint on world politics. He is the father of India’s Telecom Revolution, he expanded the National Policy Of Education, established the Indira Gandhi National Open University, brought in Anti-Defection and heralded a new era of international relations (beginning with improving friendly ties with the United States), resolving coups in the Maldives, intervening with the LTTE in the Sri Lankan civil war, which ultimately cost him his life.

No leader has ever managed to walk through the alleys of history untainted, neither has Rajiv Gandhi. But on this day, let us just remember him for his goodness, as a charming leader with a kind persona, a devoted son, a loving husband, a doting father, a Bharat Ratna and India’s beloved prime minister.

Here are two quotes by him, that I love:

“Women are the social conscience of a country. They hold our societies together.”

“Development is not about factories, dams and roads. Development is about people. The goal is material, cultural and spiritual fulfillment for the people. The human factor is of supreme value in development.”

Featured image for representative purpose only.

The post Remembering Rajiv Gandhi’s Commitment To Peace Is Crucial In Today’s Hate-Spewing Politics appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that nationalist governments clamp down on women’s rights. Nationalists and sexists tend to share a common core belief that certain groups of people are inherently superior to others, by virtue of identities they are born with. History is witness that as soon as authoritarian governments make it to power, rights of women and those in minority are the first to go. Women in Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy all slid down from relative freedom to forced domesticity, once those leaders came to power.

You are counted as a nationalist leader, Mr Modi. But, I have also heard from your supporters that you aren’t cut from the same cloth. And even though your record on women’s issues while you were the Chief Minister of Gujarat was mixed at best, in Parliament and press conferences, you have repeatedly emphasized that your government has done more for women than your predecessors.

Now, I am not sure if women were meant to be the intended beneficiaries for most of this work, or that they happened to benefit from it, but I really appreciate the fact that you put your weight behind it.

Mr Modi, you will now begin your second term as the Prime Minister. I don’t doubt your nationalism or your commitment to this nation. You may be a Hindu nationalist, but you also call yourself a man of progress and development. And I am counting on it and holding you up to doing right by millions of India’s women who voted for you, by making these much-needed interventions once you get sworn to power a second time:

Give Us Political Power

Mr. Prime Minister, in your first term, you appointed six women Cabinet Ministers – the first government after independence to do so. And while I think that’s commendable (if it wasn’t a lucky coincidence!), may I suggest that in your second term, you take up the cause of finally passing the women’s reservation bill in Parliament so that more Indian women can have a level playing field in Indian politics?

After all, why should politics remain a largely male-dominated, dynastic bastion? And why shouldn’t more women belonging to humble backgrounds like yours, get an equal shot at it?

In the first term, your government didn’t pass the bill, despite having a majority in Parliament. In your second term, will you finally take it up, so that we know that when you talk about ‘Sabka Saath’ and ‘Sabka Vikaas’, you are also thinking about the women of this country?

Rally Behind Women’s Economic Freedom

When you came to power the first time around, Mr PM, you made India’s economic growth a priority. You know a demographic whose contribution could seriously boost India’s GDP? Millions of Indian women who are looking for economic freedom and an enabling environment to work!

Equal opportunities for women could add as much as $770 billion to the country’s GDP, yet most Indian women continue to be burdened by traditional gender roles. Our female labor force participation rate, in fact, is among the lowest in the south Asian region!

In your first year, you rallied behind the cause of educating the girl child through the ‘Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao’ andolan. Popular opinion would have us believe authoritarian, nationalist governments would do anything to curb women’s freedom and choice, and we all know how big a role economics plays in it. But, you are also a statesman, a man of development – can we expect you rally behind women for this one?

Help Us Feel Safe Again

I know many women who voted for you because they see you as a strong and decisive leader, someone who can address difficult problems and keep our borders safe. Indian women, though, are crying out to feel safe and secure in their own country.

We are currently perceived as the world’s most dangerous place for women, and over the course of recent years, we have seen a rise in all categories of crimes with thousands of cases of dowry harassment, assault, kidnapping, and rape registered every year.

To be clear, I am not asking for unnecessary curbs on women’s right to mobility and choice, hooliganism or running anti-Romeo squads. My recommendation would be to not only make it a political and institutional issue, but also a cultural one, which brings me to my last point.

Fight The Patriarchy With Us!

Over the course of the last few decades, a lot has changed in India, but one thing has mostly remained a constant in Indian homes – the traditional status of women as secondary to men, that feeds into the mentality of Indian women’s labor counting as unpaid, and robbing us of our economic independence. So, it is the woman who is expected to take care of the home, and the woman who is expected to quit her job after marriage to look after the baby.

Now, I know that patriarchy is a beast inherently meant to benefit structures power structures. And I also know that it’s not patriarchy is not a problem one leader can fix, or one fix can make go away. But, I also know that a large part of India listens to you, and believes in you and what you stand for.

Which is why I think this is going to be the litmus test of your leadership when it comes to Indian women. Are you willing to stand for our interests, Mr Modi? Are you willing to ask India to fight patriarchy with its women?

This time around, will you be the Prime Minister of millions of Indian women too?

The post Modi Ji, This Time Around Will You Be PM For India’s Women Too? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

With the Bharatiya Janata Party securing a clear majority in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, one thing has become abundantly clear– ‘Hindutva‘ is now mainstream in India. The fact that the Indian public chose to actively reward divisive Hindu ideologues, who openly espoused hate, voting for them in huge numbers, only proves this point.

Nowhere was this more clear than in Bhopal, where BJP candidate Pragya Thakur secured a sweeping victory by defeating Congress candidate Digvijay Singh by over three lakh votes. The 49-year-old Pragya Singh Thakur, who uses the prefix Sadhvi, is the first person accused of terrorism to be fielded by a major political group in India, and will now become the first terror accused to join Parliament.

Sadhvi had also openly stated that she was one of the leaders who had helped demolish the Babri Masjid in 1992 and was proud of it. In one of her speeches, she had said, “I have no prior political experience, it’s true… But I am here because this election is a religious war. This election, you will choose between nationalism and terrorism. This election, if you vote for the BJP, nationalism wins, Hindus win.”

Now, let’s give the lady some credit. Throughout her political rallies, Thakur was honest about who she was and what she believed in. She didn’t lie or hide behind a pseudo-fake agenda. She openly informed the public that she neither had the political experience nor the credentials to run for office. Heck, she didn’t even have a development agenda to boot. The joke here may as well be on the Indian people who, knowing this (or despite knowing this), voted for her.

Thakur’s election campaign was simple–to invoke her identity as a saffron-clad Sadhvi or holy woman who sacrificed her worldly life for the sake of Hindutva and the brand of politics that our Prime Minister endorses.

Contrast Thakur’s phenomenal victory to the massive defeat faced by another woman candidate whose politics differed strikingly from hers – AAP’s Atishi (who lost by a margin of 3.8 lakhs to BJP’s Gautam Gambhir), and it’s plain to see where the public sensibilities swung.

An Oxford graduate, Atishi joined Aam Aadmi Party and led large-scale education reforms in Delhi’s government schools with stunning results. Here is a woman who had the insight, expertise and a clear cut plan, devoid of hate or rhetoric. And so here was also a woman who was booted out – penalised if you will – for her excellence. The joke, again, is on the Indian public.

To be clear, comparing just these two women leaders could seem unfair to some. After all, both contested from two very different parts of India, and local conditions and factors would have had a role to play.

Some things, however, cannot be ignored- both of them represented two very different brands of politics. Atishi asked to be voted in the name of her credentials, experience, and vision; Thakur asked for the votes in the name of Hindutva, hate and of course ‘Modi’. In choosing one over another, Indian people equivocally expressed the politics that they backed.

If looked at another way, it is also a verdict about the kind of politics that people rejected: of Nyay(justice), of Samaanta (equality), of Vikaas (progress).

By choosing leaders like Thakur, the Indian public has finally exposed its bias. The mask of secularism that it was hiding behind is finally off.

Like it or not, hate runs through our system now, and has found a seat in our Parliament.

The joke, once more, is on the people.

The post By Choosing Pragya Thakur, The Indian Public Has Finally Exposed Its Bias appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The results of the much awaited 2019 polls are finally out. We are assured of five more years of ‘Modi Sarkaar’. To say that the last five years in Indian politics were chaotic would be an understatement. Everything that we knew and assumed about Indian politics has been overturned. Congress is no longer India’s default (as one of its leaders had remarked) and BJP is no longer limited to 4–5 states in the Hindi heartland. Amidst all this, the blame games have begun, sadly India’s opposition and a section of its liberal class have refused to even attempt to understand the happenings.

Oversimplifications are often frowned upon and for good reason. Rarely is it that one variable has the power to explain and predict everything. Within months of losing three key Hindi heartland states, the BJP seems to have won a landslide in these very states. On the other hand, much of the love-hate relationship of the Shiv Sena and BJP turning foes to friends then again foes and to friends seems to be inexplicable. Add to that the steady decline of India’s Grand Old Party, the obituary of Indian Left Wing politics and all the way to TDP’s breaking up with the NDA.

But what if, there is one trend which can not only explain every election result since 2014 (maybe few elections even before that) but also help us predict accurately what awaits us in the future. This powerful realisation not only helps us understand the mind of the Indian voter and the rationale behind the results but also see the idea behind the seemingly bizarre moves and actions of our leaders. In fact, this idea is not new amd has been talked and written about in detail by commentators such as Morgan Stanley’s Head of Emerging Markets & Chief Global Strategist Ruchir Sharma. Mr Sharma has written about this in great detail in his book- ‘The Rise and Fall of Nations’. This is the trend of the world turning ‘anti-establishment’.

This anti-establishment wave in India was first visible in the ‘India-Against-Corruption’ movement led to Anna Hazare, when the entire nation virtually stood together against its leaders who had amassed huge amounts of wealth while conditions of ordinary people got worse. Inflation, a slump in economic growth, stagnation in key sectors of the economy, agrarian crisis, a falling rupee leading to woes of traders and lastly rising interest rates. The scene was set, people began loathing the ‘establishment’, which in this case was the Congress. It had all perks of the stereotypical Indian neta who is part of the status quo. The government had grown complacent, showed a lack of sensitivity towards the public, and lastly, decided to keep silent while one scam after another was unearthed. It dodged every question regarding its performance.

On the other hand, we saw an ambitious Narendra Modi grab this opportunity and project himself as the complete antithesis of the ‘establishment’. He boasted about economic growth and conditions under his watch in Gujarat, attacked Pakistan for border skirmishes even before he was anywhere near the PM’s chair, attacked the ‘first family’ of Indian politics, whose conditions and power had remained the same despite the woes of the citizens.

He went further with slogans like ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’. The neo-middle class which owes its standard of living to liberalisation and globalisation took this slogan as a change in the Nehruvian socialistic attitudes of the past. The chest thumping about public infrastructure in Gujarat vis-a-vis the poor governance record in much of the country and the personal Midas touch of his humble roots, made people look towards him as a leader who had emerged from their own ranks and thus understood their woes.

The result was clear, BJP swept one state after another in the run-up to the polls. In the general elections for the first time in 30 years, a party won a majority on its own. In the subsequent polls in long-standing Congress bastions such as Haryana and Maharashtra, the incumbents had to bite the dust. The only places where this juggernaut failed were Delhi and Punjab. In Delhi, it got beaten in its own game by ‘a more anti-establishment’ AAP. In Punjab, BJP was seen as part of establishment due to its proximity and alliance with the SAD(Shiromani Akali Dal). 

In fact, every anti-establishment candidate tasted success in the few years to come. KCR in Telangana, Chandrababu Naidu in Andhra, the Left Front in Kerala. In Bengal, the perpetual anti-establishment voice- Mamata Banerjee returned with a more astounding victory while the CPI(M) having ruled for 34 long years, sunk to the third position. The North-East which had shied away from the BJP became its bastion as people voted out the old guard. Lenin’s fall in Tripura was a symbolic representation of the change in guard.

A question that pops up every now and then is that- if Modi government has really worked, why does the BJP need to return to its Hindutva politics? Why does the PM return to attacking Congress veterans and figures every now and then? The answer is simple. The BJP and PM Modi wish to keep its anti-establishment image even after being the part of the establishment.

The PM has directly echoed this theme on several occasions, reiterating that he’s not part of the ‘Lutyens’ or the ‘Khan Market’ gang. PM Modi realises that in the minds of the voters, the image of these figures and issues such as ‘minority appeasement’ still remain entrenched as part and parcel of the ‘insensitive establishment’. Moreover, decisions like demonetisation, surgical strikes, and policies such as Ujjwal Bharat, GST, Jan Dhan Yojana whether good or bad, stand out as being ‘unprecedented’, thus chiselling his image as the ‘outsider’ who takes on the ‘establishment’

However, as it happens, one cannot keep this image for too long. In states such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the response of the Central government to issues regarding federalism, NEET, response to natural calamities, etc made BJP the establishment in their eyes. On the other hand, DMK leading the charge against a dysfunctional and rattled ADMK, and the Left front not changing its ways and sticking to the old attitudes, inaccessible polit-bureau approach caused its sorry demise across India except in Kerala where it fought against the incumbent Congress.

Karnataka’s former CM Siddaramaiah realised this wave in the last year of his term. He tried weaving the image of an ‘anti-establishment’ crusader against BJP’s alleged disrespect to ‘Kannada ethos’. Instead, the people saw Mr Siddaramaiah as the establishment. In a similar pursuit, Andhra’s TDP realising a formidable challenge from YSRC due to its poor track record in government decided to break away from the NDA.

It made an effort to divert the anti-establishment image towards the ‘unsympathetic BJP government’ at the Centre. Too bad, Mr Naidu didn’t realise that while attempting to sow seeds of anti-incumbency against the BJP, he had joined hands with very people in place of whom he had been voted to power. The Shiv Sena which itself got hit during Maharashtra polls, decided to keep options open. Should anti-incumbency have shown up against the BJP, it too would’ve jumped the ship.

In the state elections that followed in the three key states- Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh. Congress returned to power with a much-needed boost before 2019. However, one had to be careful while understanding the results. In these states, the three incumbent CMs were seen as part of the establishment. With plenty of anti-incumbency and an image of their government as inaccessible, people choose Congress. Congress could’ve better its record by placing newer faces as CM.

Also read: 5 Reasons Why The Opposition Should Be Blamed For Its Own Failure

Instead, the old guard, the same old ‘establishment’ candidates such as Kamal Nath and Ashok Gehlot were made CM. In states like Bengal, leaders like Mamata too began becoming ‘monotonous’ in their approach. When anarchy and street politics become an everyday affair, it too begins to be seen as part of ‘the establishment’. Coupled by governance issues, lack of law and order, lack of trust in police and state institutions, and the much infamous corruption scandals and falling bridges, BJP became the second largest party during panchayat polls. So it wasn’t surprising when India-Today’s Axis MyPoll survey indicated a whopping 19–23 seats for the BJP.

If one reads between the lines, it’s not surprising to why the final tally in 2019 turned out to be the way it is. On one hand, you had the anti-establishment image of Modi, while the opposition led by the Congress though tried its best, couldn’t rid itself of the baggage it carries.

The post The ‘Secret’ to Modern Indian Elections appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The road towards the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters near ITO was flooded with supporters wearing saffron outfits, chanting “Jai Shri Ram” and dancing to the beats of drums. This was largely what the whole country looked like on May 23, 2019, after the Lok Sabha election results were out.

“After a fevered campaign, months of opposition negotiations and seven phases of polling, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance has won the 17th Lok Sabha elections comfortably. It is currently leading in 351 seats. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance is leading in 89 seats.” noted an article published on The Wire.

This victory of the BJP-led NDA created history. There should not be any doubt that the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ground level work done by the BJP chief Amit Shah made this victory possible for the party. Meanwhile, the opposition throughout the last tenure tried to attack the regime of Modi-Shah by attacking mostly the Prime Minister. The issues which the opposition raised were also directly connected to Modi.

A number of people protested and questioned in their own way through articles, books, satire, songs and also took the streets from time to time. But, in the end, it became evident that none of these protests worked much. Moreover, the penetration of the BJP in West Bengal (and getting 19 seats out of 42) showed that there were some issues in front of all of us but we overlooked them. Here are three major reasons:

1) Lack Of A Counter Narrative

Starting from the opposition political parties to the liberals one of the major problems was the lack of counter-narrative. Narendra Modi is not a parachute politician but he is a kind of politician who was made by the RSS to achieve the goal of making India a Hindu Rashtra. From the early 90s, before the demolition of Babri Masjid took place, the RSS launched Modi as a key organiser of the Ram Padyatra by LK Advani.

Modi was cultured and cultivated to become a leader with a 56-inch chest who can rule India with an absolute majority. He proved himself successful by ruling Gujarat as a chief minister from the year 2001. Despite the Godhra riots during his tenure as Chief Minister, he managed to retain his position and returned with an absolute majority. To combat a narrative which was planned and made for nearly 30 years, the opposition could not make any narrative.

The opposition only found the faults of Modi and tried to project those as the counter-narrative, which made Modi his own counter-narrative. In a developing country like India where idol worship is common, such a narrative only made Modi stronger. The people of India connected themselves with the Modi narrative, the talks of national security, Hindutva and strong leadership – these gave people a sense of security.

On the other hand, people did not believe the opposition’s counter-narrative of negative effects of the GST, demonetization, unemployment, farmer crisis, intolerance and Rafale. The opposition and liberals raised the issues as a counter but could not empathize with these issues.

For example, as an effect of demonetization, it is true people suffered at the time but now everything is normal. Neither ATMs have long queues nor do the people have time to remember the problems they faced for 2-3 months. Therefore, the impact of this issue was not such which can make people insecure about Modi.

Whereas in the BJP, from the top to the bottom everyone believed in the narrative and empathize with the causes. This narrative provided them with a sense of security which was so deep-rooted that nothing else mattered much.

2) Absence Of A Mass Movement

From the days after Modi came to power in 2014, the discussions on violence against religious minorities and caste minorities commenced. Such cases were inscribed from various parts of India. Liberals, writers, filmmakers took the streets to protest against the government. The opposition parties also backed the protests but these demonstrations remained exclusively urban affairs. People also raised their voices against Modi through social media but this failed to gather momentum for a mass movement.

When India as a nation rose against the Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi, major mass-agitations took place across the country. Noted freedom fighter Jaiprakash Narayan, labour leader George Fernandes and others led the protests. The anti-emergency protests drew many ideologies together which incorporated socialists, communists, the RSS and many other regional political outfits.

In the regime of Modi, despite the talks of violence against minorities, no major mass-agitation took place. Neither the Muslims nor the Dalits of India took the streets in a huge number which could shake governance. The last time India witnessed such a movement was the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare.

In West Bengal, the movement against land acquisition led by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee could also be considered as a mass movement which demolished the 35-year long Left regime in Bengal. In the Modi regime, only farmer protests came across as a mass agitation. But, to be very honest, the opposition could not capitalise on the agitations because historically, none of the political parties in India have really worked for the farmers. The left which led the agitation, failed to transform it to a narrative as they’re suffering from the loss of a political narrative.

Lastly, the majority of Indians also rejected the idea of Rahul Gandhi projecting the Congress as a secular party because people never envisioned the Congress as a secular force. Historically, the Congress party was an amalgamation of various political philosophies, which involved socialists, upper-caste Hindus, leftists, Dalit leaders and many others.

India is a diverse country but very religious in nature. However, the meaning of religious never meant the rule of the majoritarian religion. Modi recognised that religion is the only political narrative which has been avoided by the Congress from its commencement. Hence, gift-wrapped in national security and development, he sold the narrative of Hindutva which became acceptable exactly the way he sold it. Neither religious nor caste minorities really felt the need to take the streets against this new political idea because the oppositions failed to describe the danger.

Only the civil society and liberals discussed the issue in their own restricted areas with the dream of defeating Modi in 2019 which was a utopian notion. In world forums, civil society talked about the danger of a Hindu Rashtra but nobody took that concern to the ground.

3) Failure In Combating A Presidential Style Election

One of the essential reasons why India witnessed the TsuNamo is because of the failure of the opposition to resist Modi in a presidential style election. While the BJP stayed all about Modi, the Congress never spoke openly about their prime ministerial candidate. While the BJP fought the poll in a presidential manner, the opposition kept faith in the primitive idea of making a prime minister based on the post-poll coalition.

This idea also failed miserably because on the ground, people believed in the face of Modi. The opposition ignored the fact that in recent times, wherever there’s been a swiping victory of any political party, there was a “face-factor,” be it the revolutionary image of Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi, or Mamata Banerjee’s victory in West Bengal or Shivraj Singh Chauhan in Madhya Pradesh.

In all these poll there was a face, either people voted for it or voted against it. The days after the victory, the opposition started talking about how India voted for a terror accused Sadhvi Pragya and not an educationalist Atishi. The point is, such discussions have no value on the ground.

Democracy is all about grassroot management, grassroot politics and understanding of the grassroot narrative. The more we blame the conscience of people the more we will be lost and that is the trap of Modi’s political narrative.

Featured image for representative purpose only.
Featured image source: Narendra Modi/Facebook.

The post Explained: How And Why Narendra Modi Secured A Second Term In Secular India appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

India Is Choking On Its Very Strength- Diversity, Here’s Why:

BJP played one of its saffronest card by fielding Ajay Singh Bisht (Yogi Adityanath) as the CM of the most politically volatile state of India, Uttar Pradesh. UP accounts for 20.42 crore, which is almost 15% of the total population. Ajay has made his name as a radical Hindu nationalist who has vowed to make India a Hindu state (Rashtra), his hatred for the Muslim community is hard to ignore, his hate speeches against the community has pushed millions of Indian Muslims in a state of fear. Recently, men accused of lynching a Muslim ironsmith, attended his rally while sitting in the front row.

Ajay’s promotion from being a head priest at Gorakhpur math to being the CM of UP has launched a thick saffron cloud which is waiting to choke our country, which used to breathe on a secular ideology. It was clearly warming us up to a point where candidature of a radical Hindu sadhavi, who is facing serious terror charges becomes the new normal. Communalism was never the dominant voice in our country until 1992 when Babri Masjid was demolished. After that leaders like LK Advani launched our country into serious communalism which is waiting to suffocate the so-called “infiltrators” out of the country.

India is being thrusted into a black and white game of ideology. We have two groups in our country who have a completely different vision for our future, one wants India to be a radical and probably a theocratic Hindu state and the other wants to hold up our constitution for a secular state. BJP, who came in power in 2014 has a clear underlying agenda to form a Hindu state. Narendra Modi, our prime minister himself argues in favour of the candidature of Pragya Singh Thakur.  He argues that Pragya’s candidature is a fight against the idea of Hindu terrorism, which through his glass of perspective doesn’t exist at all!

Pragya has issued many ‘controversial’ and ‘offensive’ statements, two of them being very important, the statement against a national hero, Hemant Karkare and one where she calls the terrorist Nathuram Godse to be a national hero. Both these statements created a tsunami of reactions. But these reactions, if observed carefully, would reflect some of the very frightening and absurd conclusions. A remark on Karkare enraged a lot of people, Pragya had to apologize for the same, but that apology was clearly insincere and was issued just because of political loyalty. Narendra Modi seemed to have no reaction on the statement, nor there was any serious bashing towards Pragya from senior party leaders. Maybe our country was in a way saffronised enough to take that statement in.

The second statement where Pragya said that Nathuram Godse is a national hero again enraged a lot of anger and this time, Narendra Modi came out to bash and to express serious discontentment towards that awful remark. But the question that arises in my mind it was this so-called ‘discontentment’ against Pragya’s statement sincere or was it because our country is not yet ready to hear something ill against Mahatma Gandhi?

The idea of having Pragya in the parliament as a BJP MP is very strong, that’s why they fielded her from Bhopal, which is a BJP stronghold and has been for decades. So why this hypocrisy? Shouldn’t she be evicted from the Bhartiya Janta Party, for making ‘anti-national’ comments? A party which seems to have monopolized the idea of nationalism finds it completely okay to have a candidate who is facing terror charges.

The bigger picture from the perspective of BJP seems pretty clear, a Hindu state with MPs like Ajay Singh Bisht and Pragya Thakur sitting in the temple of democracy if we continue to remain so. Sakshi Maharaj’s claim to declare 2019 as the last election seems to point the other way. Iran, Afghanistan, here we come, a radical ‘Hindu’ state where terrorism and communalism is the new normal.

The post Communalism Was Never The Dominant Voice In Our Country. Why Now? appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I grew up in a township named Duliajan in upper Assam, which is a cradle of natural resources. This meant I grew up privileged. I grew up exclusively among engineers, doctors, geologists, chemists and scientists! This, in turn, meant a great deal of competition among future citizens!

As this place is influential, it is lucky enough to have reputed CBSE affiliated public schools, which otherwise, were mostly available in Guwahati which is 500 km away or else in the nearby other districts which have petroleum, oil, and natural gas resources. I am very proud to call myself a product of DPS! As a school going girl, I was extremely active in quizzing and literary activities and it was always a dream to connect with other fellow DPSites from across India!

My dream had come true. I made friends from across Delhi, Ranchi, Nagaland and Himachal Pradesh to name a few. It was because of this passion that my teachers were extremely supportive and encouraging, and helped me balance my studies quite well along with all the extra-curricular activities. Eventually, in my last year at school, I was appointed as the ‘Activity Captain’ for the year 2010-11. It surely was a proud moment for me and I am extremely thankful to everyone till date who thought I was capable enough to lead.

My school, every year, produces impeccable results. Many students end up going to IIT, IIM, LSR, LSE, Purdue and other elite schools across the globe and many who have been really successful. It has also produced upcoming Bollywood actors! In fact, my school was so particular about results, that it wouldn’t compromise with it and happily detain students, or at times, bar them from taking their board exams. Reason- they couldn’t perform up to the mark in their pre-boards and this made the teachers and also the parents believe that they would automatically fail their boards! All those people who were detained, are successful today, and most importantly happy! The results of class X and XII boards were announced recently. My school has performed tremendously well yet again. Few of them have scored a perfect 100 across a range of subjects! How beautiful, isn’t it? A couple of days earlier I saw some of my teachers sharing images of the toppers, advertised in the school notice board, on Facebook. It surely was a proud moment as it involved the hard work of so many people!

I graduated from class XII in 2011 with 81.2% in the Science stream. During the same time, my brother was in class VI. He had a very difficult childhood where he was constantly bullied by his fellow classmates. He was always made a soft target, so much so that it affected his personality quite adversely! This further reduced his socializing skills. He was made to sit alone in one corner of the classroom.

Oh, wait! Actually, he was made to sit near the teachers’ podium as it would be easier to have an eye on him! Worried, my parents would consult his teachers as they failed to understand why such sort of behaviour was meted out against him? His teachers would reply- “that is what the fellow students’ parents wanted!” They wanted their children to be away from my brother as he was under-confident, as he would stammer, as he was a slow learner! Some teachers were so concerned about my brother that they would often remark- “Why are you like this Junaid? Try to be like your sister! Don’t you feel ashamed in front of her”? To which he would reply- “Yes I do. But I am very proud of my sister!”

He was in class IX when the school decided he shouldn’t get promoted to Class X. He had performed poorly in one paper. He was allowed to take a retest and he performed badly again. When we asked for his mark sheet to be shown, the school outrightly refused as it was against their ‘policy’. We had requested several times to the head of the school to not detain him as he already had learning difficulties and failing him would demotivate him to the core! Our requests were denied over and over again despite knowing the fact that he was the only student in the entire class who needed the greatest motivation! These were the exact words of the head, “Sorry we cannot promote him to class X as our results would get compromised next year and our reputation would go down. You make him repeat class IX again and then we will see!”

My mother felt terrible that day. She said, “I have been a teacher for more than 20 years now. I have ensured that students in my school pass with flying colours. I give scholarships to the needy who come from poor backgrounds and who make it to IIT. Why am I facing so much difficulty to make my own son clear a class?” Her words were filled with utter sorrow. During the same time, my father was posted in Venezuela and he was away from all of this, almost on the other side of the globe and would remain extremely disturbed!

We decided to change his school and that was the best decision we had ever taken. We shifted him to Kendriya Vidyalaya, Duliajan, which is equally known for its impeccable results every year and surely is one of the best KVs in the whole of NE in particular and India in general. There was a great shift. From uniform to teachers to language. My brother took time to cope up as he was battling depression and anxiety and a fear of what if he fails again?

Oh, I forgot to mention, my ex-school took great pride in promoting the English language and if anyone was found speaking in a vernacular language they would get called to the Principal’s office or would happily see their names on the defaulters’ list! But the most important shift that we witnessed was the ‘class’ shift. There were many students in his classroom who came from a humble background, some were Dalits and most importantly, many of them could not afford the education offered by private schools! All this was happening in front of my eyes but I was never able to see it. The best part was, he was now slowly able to mingle with people who came from diverse backgrounds cutting across caste, region, religion, language, etc which was earlier missing out in our ex-school.

Ironically, my ex-school was appreciated a lot for opening Shiksha Kendras which were mostly afternoon or evening classes for the poor. We would happily donate our school uniforms to the Shiksha Kendra students. In fact, the school would raise money for these kids during Children’s Day through the much awaited Carnival of the year! But never did I see an effort by the school to promote one bright student from these Shiksha Kendras to come and study with the privileged! I will be happy to get corrected if I am wrong here. At least, that never happened during our time.

During the same time when I was studying, I had bright students from my batch who were equally privileged and chose KV over DPS. One of them cleared UPSC last year and has joined the Indian Police Service (IPS). When I had congratulated her last year over the phone, we talked for long hours and obviously the talks centred around school, college, studies etc. She told me something very disturbing that day. She would often get mocked around by our fellow friends from my ex-school who said, “Toi tu Nani-maali r baccha r lagot porho.” (You study with the kids of our nanny and gardner). Back then we were naive and we would often choose to ignore. But not anymore! These comments are extremely insensitive and send out a very wrong message. Such statements are a testimony that caste and class discrimination is everywhere! Sometimes, it’s right in front of our eyes. But I fail to understand what exactly happens in the process that we get so blinded to this division? Most importantly my ex-school had utterly failed when it came to being inclusive! Be it in terms of class, caste or even in terms of different mental health issues.

My brother cleared class XII this year with flying colours because his new school (KV Duliajan) was inclusive! He scored an excellent 67.2% with English, Hindi, History, Geography, Political Science and Painting! Today, he is more confident, more patient, tries being a part of discussions, questions things with logic. Most importantly he is happy! A few days earlier, a Facebook post by a mother had gone viral who was extremely happy about her son’s 60 % in class X boards and it inspired me to pen this down. A particular newspaper ended up reporting that the northeast region of India is the ‘lowest’ performer of Class XII boards this year. This headline inspired me to write this article. Most importantly I waited for four years to pen this article down because I had full faith in my brother while my school didn’t!

The post My School Was Good For Me But It Was Equally Bad For My Brother appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

1) पूजा

पूजा एक दलित परिवार की 10वीं कक्षा की छात्रा है और अपने ग्राम पंचायत के किशोरी मंच की फुटबॉल कोच भी। अब पूजा के कठिन सफर के बारे में बताती हूं और बताती हूं कि पूजा ने अपनी पहचान कैसे बनाई?

उस वक्त पूजा छठी क्लास में पढ़ती थी और 11 साल की थी। एक दिन पूजा को उसके चाचा ने लड़कों के साथ खेलते देख लिया, जो उन्हें पसंद नहीं आया। उसके चाचा पूजा को पकड़कर घर ले गए और उसे खूब डांट लगाई।

पूजा बहुत ही खुश दिल लड़की है और उसे खेलना, पढ़ना, घूमना बहुत पसंद है। उस दिन डांट लगने की वजह से पूजा बहुत दुखी हुई और पूजा के मन में बहुत प्रश्न घर कर गए। इन प्रश्नों का जवाब उसे ढूंढने पर भी नहीं मिलता था।

एक दिन “गौरव ग्रामीण महिला विकास मंच” (स्वंयसेवी संस्था) के एक सदस्य ने पूजा के स्कूल में एक कार्यक्रम किया, जिसमें पूजा ने उनसे कुछ प्रश्न पूछा और उनके जवाब से संतुष्ट भी हुई। उस दिन से पूजा उनसे अपने मन की बातें करने लगी।

पूजा उनकी सहायता से अपने गॉंव में एक किशोरी मंच बनाती है, जहां से उसकी एक नई सफर की शुरुआत होती है। किशोरी मंच में फुटबॉल के माध्यम से किशोरियों को यौन एवं प्रजनन स्वास्थ्य अधिकार, जीवन कौशल तथा नेतृत्व क्षमता का प्रशिक्षण दिया जाता है, जिसमें पूजा टीम लीडर और फुटबॉल की कोच भी बन गई।

हालांकि इस बीच पूजा को बहुत मुश्किलों का सामना करना पड़ा। घर से डांट सुनने के साथ-साथ गाँव के लोगों की गालियां भी खानी पड़ी लेकिन गाँव के बदलाव को देखकर पूजा बहुत खुश है। हाल ही में पूजा अपने काम के लिए 2 पुरस्कार भी जीत चुकी है।

2) खुशबू कुमारी

खुशबू खाड़ियां गॉंव गुलाब किशोरी समूह की लीडर है। खुशबू बताती है कि जब वह पहली बार फुटबॉल खेलने के लिए लड़कियों को घर-घर जाकर बुलाने जाती थी, तब उसे सबसे बहुत कुछ सुनना पड़ता था। लड़कियों की माँ बहुत गुस्से से बोलती थी कि तुम खुद तो बिगड़ी हुई हो, बाकि सभी लड़कियों को भी बिगाड़ दोगी।

खुशबू बताती है कि इस उम्र में कई बार लड़कियां गलत लड़कों के चक्कर में पड़कर अपना भविष्य बर्बाद कर लेती हैं और अपना आगे का लक्ष्य भूल जाती हैं। वे जो सपने देखती हैं उसे पूरा नहीं कर पाती हैं, इसलिए यह ज़रूरी है कि वे लड़कियां किशोरावस्था के बारे में जाने।

खुशबू ने लड़कियों के बीच यह पहल की, अब लड़कियां पीरियड्स के बारे में बात करने में शर्माती नहीं हैं। इसके लिए ना सिर्फ लड़कियों को बल्कि उनकी मॉं की भी ट्रेनिंग होती है। माता मीटिंग से माताओं पर भी प्रभाव पड़ा है। अब माँ भी साथ देती हैं और बोलती हैं कि जाओ दीदी आ गई है, जाकर खेलो। माँ भी हमारे खेल के मैदान में हमें खेलते हुए देखती हैं और खुश भी हो जाती हैं। बिना समाज की परवाह किए अब हम सभी बेझिझक खेलते हैं।

3) रितू कुमारी

रितु बताती है, “मेरा मन बहुत पहले से ही फुटबॉल खेलने को करता था पर फुटबॉल खरीदने को पैसे नहीं होते थे और लड़कियों की टीम भी नहीं थी, क्योंकि समाज में सिर्फ लड़के ही बाहर जाकर खेल सकते थे। जब स्नेहा खुशबू दीदी खेलाने आईं तो मैं बहुत खुश हो गई और दिल्ली के शक्ति भईया और स्नेहा दीदी से बहुत बढ़िया से खेलना सिख गये हम सब”।

रितु आगे बताती है कि इसके पहले हमारे गाँव के लोग तो लड़कियों को बाहर नहीं निकलने देते थे पर खुशी होती है कि संस्था (गौरव ग्रामीण महिला विकास मंच) के प्रयास से आज गाँव वाले अपनी लड़कियों को खेलने और पढ़ने की इजाज़त देते हैं। साथ ही कपड़े पहनने की रोक-टोक भी कम हुई है। शुरू-शुरू में हम सब दुपट्टा ओढ़कर खेलते थे पर आज हाफ पैंट और टीशर्ट पहनकर खेलते हैं। हमारे गाँव के लोग ही हमें देखते हैं। इस कार्यक्रम ने (माई बॉडी कार्यक्रम) हम लड़कियों की ज़िन्दगी बदल दी है”।

4) खुशबू कुमारी

खुशबू की माँ आंगनबाड़ी की सेविका हैं। खुशबू अपनी माँ से यौन एवं प्रजनन अधिकार के बारे में बात करने से शर्माती थी। खुशबू की माँ माधुरी जी खुद से खुशबू को फुटबॉल खेलने के लिए भेजने लगी, ताकि खुशबू अपनी झिझक तोड़कर बातें करे और जानकारी ले सके।

खुशबू को खेलने के लिए उसकी माँ कहती हैं कि हम साथ हैं, तुम खेलो समाज से डरना नहीं, क्योंकि कल तुमसे ही समाज बदलेगा।

इस कार्यक्रम से खुशबू अपने अधिकारों के बारे में जानकर अपनी माँ को भी प्रेरित करती है कि लड़कियों की क्या ज़रूरते हैं? माधुरी जी खुद से भी लड़कियों को आयरन की गोलियों के बारे में बताती हैं और PHC से लाकर देती हैं।

खुशबू से कई लड़कियां अपनी कई निजी बातें शेयर करती हैं, जैसे-एक लड़की को 3 महीने से माहवारी नहीं आई थी, तो उसने डरकर खुशबू को बताया और उसकी माँ से जांच किट मंगवाकर जांच भी कराया। दो लड़कियों ने जो इस समूह से नहीं भी जुड़ी थी, उसने भी अपनी बहुत निजी बातें बताई, खुशबू ने सभी का विश्वास जीत लिया है।

The post बिहार की ये दलित लड़कियांं फुटबॉल खेलकर तोड़ रही हैं स्टीरियोटाइप्स appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Menstrual cups are the new up-and-coming trend among environment-friendly menstrual products, and it’s easy for anyone who’ve used them to understand why. I started using menstrual cups about 6 years ago, when they weren’t exactly common, and it has been the best decision for my periods ever. However, I want to talk about the impact using menstrual cups has had on me, and some of my friends, beyond that on our periods.

Considering that even in schools, teachers tend to leave the chapter on reproductive systems up for self-study, it should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that people, in general, tend not to know much about how our bodies work, especially the reproductive parts of it. Women especially are actively encouraged to not explore their bodies, or even talk about it. We’re socialised extremely young to consider various body parts as “private” (read: not to be touched or talked about).

Though my teacher did teach us the reproductive system chapter, I was still one who didn’t really understand my own body and was somewhat hesitant to explore my groin and vaginal area. Without ever clearly remembering being told that touching myself in those parts was wrong, I was always keenly aware of the forbidden nature of it, and hence, when I did, it must be kept a secret. Add in puberty, and there’s a completely new aspect added to why our vaginas are secretive and some version of impure: periods.

Using pads and tampons, the grossness which I (and almost everyone else) have been socialised to feel about menstrual blood, would kind of get reinforced. From the black bags in which we were given our products, to the whispers in which we were expected to ask for menstrual products in public…it is all oriented around the idea that menstrual blood is not just impure, and hence makes the person impure, but also that it’s inherently shameful. That shame, that grossness could be retained with pads and tampons because I didn’t have to touch the blood, I could easily wrap up the products super quickly and avoid even looking at it.

Using a menstrual cup changed all of that. Firstly, to use the cup, you have to get comfortable with entering your fingers inside the vagina. I’ve met many women who are not only uncomfortable with the idea of fingering themselves, but are acutely uncomfortable with the idea of anything but a penis penetrating them. When I started using the cup, I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable with fingering myself, but there was also a societal shame which I felt. Initially, the cup was a good excuse to have to put my fingers up my vagina; I had a reason not to feel the shame. The more I used it, the less it became an excuse, and I became more comfortable. It did the same for the other women I know.

Not only do we have to get comfortable with putting our fingers up our vaginas, but also feel around in there, feel where the cervix is. I only learnt what the cervix actually is, what it feels like, after I started using the cup. Because I was the only one I knew who was using the cup at the time, I didn’t have anyone to ask questions to, so I spent a lot of time watching videos online and reading what other people had written, and through them what the purpose of the cervix is, how to identify it and so much more.

The interesting thing about feeling inside your vagina to figure out where your cervix is, to see if the cup is fully opened, and all that… you may also get an idea of what some erogenous areas of your vagina are. Many women feel hornier and have higher sensation in their vaginas during periods. It’s a great time to feel around in there to see what gives you pleasure, what’s just so-so, and what you may just not like.

Using the cup also helped me overcome that ‘socialised’ grossness about menstrual blood. While taking the cup out, it is quite inevitable that you’ll get some blood on your hand, and often, it won’t just be a little drop. It’s amazing how comfortable I have gotten with having blood on my hands and feeling absolutely no weirdness or grossness about it. For a country where there are many families where the women aren’t even allowed to enter their own kitchens or bedrooms during menstruation, having that blood on your hands is a big way of understanding how absolutely natural it is, and how convoluted it is that we’ve been made to feel so gross about our own body functions.

Using menstrual cups didn’t just make my periods so so much easier to deal with (which it totally did), or just make me lessen the damage I was doing to the environment (again, a big plus for menstrual cups)…it also helped me get to know my body better.

The post How Using Menstrual Cups Helped Me Explore My Body Better appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

As the curtain draws on 2019’s general election in India and the incumbent NDA government comes to power for their second term with a sweeping majority, the country settles in for another five years of Modi Sarkar. The phrase itself summarizes the spirit with which this great nation went ahead to cast its vote.

The level of euphoria of the electorate surrounding one person is almost unprecedented in the country’s political history, only closely matched by the euphoria surrounding another Prime Minister of yesteryear: Ms Indira Gandhi. Both Prime Ministers are regarded as ‘strong, decisive leaders who apparently propagated India to the global map as a strength to reckon with.

One cannot help but notice the uncanny similarities between the paths on which both the regimes embarked on. In both cases, the leaders strived to invoke nationalist pride by positioning themselves as the savior of the country, the only leader strong enough to be capable of defending the country’s pride.

Indira Gandhi is best remembered till date by the common people as the Prime Minister who won us the 1971 war against Pakistan. It is quite appalling that one of the most autocratic leaders that India has ever had in the recent history is eulogized as one of the strongest Prime Ministers of the country. With economic policy failures, unconstitutionality of the national emergency, attempts to change basic tenets of the constitution, which would have been the final nail in the coffin for the democracy and a complete collapse of the structure of meritocracy within the Indian National Congress, her tenure in power is marred with corruption and ill-governance. What is unfortunate is that, despite the terrible political track record, all that she is eulogized for, is the 1971 victory of India over Pakistan.

That essentially summarizes the nearsightedness and the political acumen of the Indian population. We, as a country, like our leaders to exhibit a show of strength, however hollow the basis for it may be. We essentially look to a leader with a ‘strong’ image, with an ‘iron hand’ who can put the ‘bad boys’ (read Pakistan) in their place. Our desire to be perceived as a super power on the global platform is very shallow in its vision. We tend to associate national pride with frivolous showmanship. This is the fertile ground where right wing ideology can thrive and prosper; Mr Narendra Modi has got the pulse of the country right.

He based his entire election campaign on the impeccably timed Balakot surgical strike. He used the credibility of the Indian Armed Forces to garner brownie points for himself, he launched a vicious attack against his adversaries and he made full utilization of the nationalistic sentiments that these incidents invoked in the people. It was an election where issues like the concerns of growth slowing down, rising unemployment rates, suppression of crucial economic data, farmer distress or destruction of the social fabric did not matter. The election was won primarily on two issues: Hindutva and nationalism.

It is astonishing to see how an entire population’s psyche has been manipulated to believe that they are vulnerable in a country where they are actually a resounding majority. It is a long cherished dream of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which is going to be realized now. The people of this country stand completely polarized and divided. The electorate has chosen fundamentalism to power with a sweeping mandate. The BJP no longer needed the mask that it had worn for 2014’s general election. Having achieved its agenda of polarizing the country on the basis of religion, claws were finally out when it openly provided candidature to a terror-accused Hindu fundamentalist.

What makes the mandate infinitely more dangerous is the total breakdown of oppositional strength and the lack of any credible alternative in the near future. What a responsible citizen of India needs to understand, before rejoicing for NDA’s sweeping majority, is that a presence of a strong credible opposition is absolutely essential for survival of a democracy. A government is just an elected representative of people trusted with the governance of the country, but which also has affiliation towards a certain political party with its own ideology and agenda. Therefore, it is important to have necessary checks and balances in the form of opposition, for the democracy to function in the best interest of the country.

It is quite possible for an elected representative of the people to act in an irresponsible manner and there is enough evidence of this in Indian political history. A country vesting its massive mandate on just one person is not democracy, it is a sweeping mandate for dictatorship.

Let us all take a step back to realize what the current mandate means for us as a country and what it may have it store for us. It has been a steady endeavor of the NDA to get an absolute majority in both houses of parliament, in which it has already been successful to a large extent.

Having achieved close to two-third majority in Lok Sabha already, it can be assumed that they will soon be out to grab the majority in Rajya Sabha as well. With three major states scheduled for assembly elections this year, along with a very disappointing performance of the Indian National Congress and with very few regional parties to put a strong resistance, one can imagine that the BJP will leave no stone unturned for nailing this campaign.

We are yet to see if defection happens on a mass scale from opposition parties after the dismal performances of the opposition in the Lok Sabha election. If that happens, that may unilaterally alter the dynamics within the Rajya Sabha itself. Once the governing party achieves two-third majority in both the houses, provisions under the Indian constitutions grants this government almost a free hand to alter the constitution of this country.

As citizens of India, we need to understand what it means for our country’s future. Hindu Rashtra? Yes, for sure. For the current situation of polarized India it does not seem to be much of a concern for anyone other than the minorities at risk. But one needs to understand, once we have chosen fundamentalism to power, we have created a Frankenstein for ourselves.

We need to take a cue from Islamic countries worldwide. The uprising of the ultra-conservative Wahhabism movement, which started from the 1970s with Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s patronization, has reached an explosive growth rate in the current world. An ultra-conservative fundamentalist doctrine, it is growing stronger by the day. It is spreading like an octopus on million legs, threatening to pull down Islamic countries into anarchy and slowly taking them back to the Middle Ages. A similar fate may await us too, once we have chosen the right wing religious extremists as our representatives across all federal levels.

We may also look forward to a future where we all are going back to the ages of the Manusmriti. It does not seem all that unrealistic, if we look back at history and compare countries like Afghanistan or Syria of today versus what they were like in the 1960s. Once the agenda of polarization against Muslims or other minorities have been completed and the Hindu Rashtra achieved, the agenda of polarization may turn inwards within Hinduism itself.

Once the people of this country are drawn onto the slippery path of sectarianism, the boundary will become increasingly smaller and more exclusive. The Hindu religion, already plagued with the centuries old caste hierarchy, can be further polarized basis the divergences between upper caste vs. lower caste, Brahmins vs. non-Brahmins, cow-belt Hindus vs. non-cow-belt Hindus, liberal Hindus vs. conservative Hindus, Hindus with different sectoral interests, and many more. Next there may be a demand for a Brahmin Rashtra or a Thakur Rashtra or may be a Kayastha Rashtra.

Most importantly, this strategy of alienation of minorities is bound to give rise to reactionary forces on the other side as well, making it a fertile breeding ground for what may be a fundamentalist Muslim uprising. There could also be other political parties who, being desperate to gain mileage from identity politics, may start indulging in politics of appeasement directed towards non-majority fractions. This is a path where there can be no redemption, only a free fall to extinction.

There are two significant areas where this government has still not made inroads, namely the judiciary and central-state relations. The next most logical step for the government could be to attempt to reduce the judiciary’s power by making it subordinate to the executive, the process of which can be kickstarted by gradually influencing higher level judiciary appointments. The significance of this move, if it goes through, will be momentous because under current provisions of the Indian constitution, the judiciary is vested with the power to exercise judicial review of executive and legislative actions. The independence of the judiciary is fundamental to democracy because they are the only authority vested with the power to determine constitutionality.

Another significant area is the federal structure of the union i.e. the division of power between states and the centre. That can also be unilaterally altered by constitutional amendments if the BJP achieves required majority in both houses of Parliament and State Legislatures.

All of these mean a slow and painful death for our democracy. With centralization of power, breakdown of federal structure and breakdown of judiciary, we will also observe an erosion of our democratic and fundamental rights. The attack on fundamental rights has already started with incessant bullying of liberals, retorting to any dissenting voice with an accusation of anti-nationalism, right wing ideologies being forced into young minds, the suppression of free press, the threat to strengthen what is already a draconian sedition law, loss of independence of systematically important institutions, suppression of freedom of expression by instilling fear and in more extreme cases, assassinations or prolonged incarcerations.

An India that was Gandhi’s idea has long changed. We, the people of India, have ushered in a new India, with a very different heart and soul. Now, only time will tell, if we go down in the history as the people who were responsible for the destruction of their own democracy.

Featured image for representative purpose only.
Featured image source: Narendra Modi/Facebook.

The post The Indian Democracy After Modi: One Future, Many Prospects appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

On February 14, 2019, in Pulwama, India saw one of the most horrible attacks on Paramilitary forces in the world, and one of the worst terrorist attacks in Kashmir in the last 30 years. An SUV with explosives rammed into a van carrying CRPF jawans. The van was part of a caravan of CRPF vehicles. It resulted in the death of more than 40 CRPF jawans. The attack was claimed by a Pakistan-based terrorist group, the Jaish-e- Mohammad, and was executed by the 22-year-old Kashmiri named Adil Ahmad Dar. The whole country was stunned and dismayed following the cowardly attack.

With events like these, the media has the vital job of giving out accurate information to the people; however, not surprisingly, the Indian media did precisely what they are infamous for. It was merely a piece of breaking news for them! The newsrooms were full of Pakistan bashing, riding on the sentiment of ordinary people; the cry for vengeance. And it wasn’t even against the terrorist group responsible. It was against Pakistan.

It’s no secret that Pakistan is home to major terrorist groups, and it’s high time that the Pakistan government took some stringent action against them. Amidst all the chaos of a seemingly-approaching ‘war’, India undertook many harsh diplomatic options, such as removing Pakistan from its position as ‘Most Favored Nation’ and taking the case to the United Nations. The entire world was in support of India.

There are several questions in the minds of the common folk, yet the government isn’t being questioned. How can an assault of this magnitude take place in one of India’s most volatile military areas? How did our Intelligence agencies fail? Why were so many soldiers travelling at once? Why is Kashmir’s situation deteriorating day by day? The citizens of India were overwhelmed by emotions and sentiments, but no one dared to ask questions about their government. Moreover, the paid-media did an excellent job diverting the average person’s mind towards despising Pakistan and seeking retribution through war plan.

The Balakot Air Strikes

On February 26, after the Pulwama attack, the Indian Air Force conducted an air-strike at terrorist base camps in Pakistan. The whole of India woke up to this news, and everyone was celebrating. Pakistan grumbled that India violated their air space. Journalists affirmed that this was Pakistan’s defeat when our government had made a clear statement that it was a non-military attack on the terrorist camps they had identified, not on the Pakistani army. The newsrooms turned into war rooms, war strategies were discussed, and the population was fueled with pro-war sentiments.

Retaliation By Pakistan

The Pakistan army retaliated by violating the cease-fire near the border. The Indian Army replied to the retaliation with heavy firing. The following morning, Pakistan fighter planes violated Indian air space. The Indian Air Force responded sent fighter jets, and one of them was shot down, after taking down two Pakistan counterparts. Indian Wing Commander Abhinandan, while chasing the Pakistani fighter jet, ended up in their territory, and was then held captive. The Pakistan army had violated the Geneva Convention, and even then released a video of Wing Commander Abhinandan. Due to this, the building tension between India and Pakistan escalated. India demanded the release of Wing Commander Abhinandan. The entire world suggested that both India and Pakistan act with patience and not resort to a full-fledged war. In the end, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan announced in Parliament that they would release Abhinandan as a peace gesture.

The Response By The Indian Media

The Indian media reported Imran Khan’s decision as a win ensured by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which was just outright incorrect. They even declared this act by Imran Khan as an act of surrender. One can easily see the level to which the media stooped to praise the Prime Minister, to show him as a legend, even at the cost of making the situation worse. The news reports were provocative and could have led to unwanted action from Pakistan. Thankfully, Wing Commander Abhinandan returned home safely, and things calmed down. However, his return was politicized by the ruling party, and the media helped them by acting as their spokesperson. Not just this incident, but every episode from the Pulwama attack to the Balakot air strikes, and even the escalation of the war-like situation on the border was thoroughly politicised.

The Slow Death of Democracy

Politicians unapologetically exploited public sentiment after the Pulwama attack and diverted their attention from critical questions. In fact, with the help of the media, they incited war-like feelings among an already hostile and emotional population. All the blame was put on Pakistan, and the government took no responsibility. The people who dared to ask such question were severely criticized for politicizing the attacks and, as always, were termed as ‘anti-national’.

Similarly, when the tensions rose to an all-time high, the media was up in arms, figurative guns blazing, yelling for war. So-called defence experts were invited to the newsrooms, and they made as little sense as the news anchors. It was all reckless shouting, just like the young boys I saw on the road, riding their bikes with no helmet, tripling, flag in hand, shouting “Hindustan Zindabad’ and “Pakistan Murdabad”. Both these groups were baring their hyper-aggressive nationalism.

How difficult is it to understand the cost of the tragedy that war brings? Why can’t we realize that inciting this rage and hatred within ourselves, as armchair activists in the comfort of our bedrooms and air-conditioned newsrooms, would lead to the sacrifices of OUR Army men!

A very famous and controversial comedian once said that if the Indo-Pak issue is resolved, then the government will have no option but to answer the crucial questions on relevant socio-political and economic problems — they will not have any diversions for the public.

In the last five years, there have been several questions that the government should have answered. But no one bats an eyelid as long as we are fighting against our ‘arch-nemesis’. The person who dares to raise questions, I am afraid, is either termed as ‘anti-national’ or an ‘agent of Pakistan’ or opposition and in some cases, even put to death, just like our democracy has been. The government is taking away our power to ask questions and our power to dissent. This is being done systematically, with the help of our news channels. We are made to consume fake news, which is based on propaganda. It is simple: today, either you support the sitting government unthinkingly or you are part of the anti-national group.

The core of any democracy lies in dissent, but the whole system of criticism is now being demolished. This is the slow death of democracy.

Featured Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

The post Balakot Was Not A Win For India, It Was A Catalyst For The Slow Death Of Democracy appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The first time I came across a commercial on sanitary pads, I was around 7, and I wondered what they were for. I could vaguely grasp that they were meant for women, and also that they were supposed to soak up moisture and ‘prevent stains’, but I had no idea why women needed these exclusively. I asked my mom, and even at that age,I could tell she was pretending not to have heard. That was a signal to me that I wasn’t meant to ask, and not just because I was a boy, or because I was 7. The first time I realized mom used pads too was when I was around 11 when a pack of pads had accidentally popped out of her shopping bag. Without betraying any sense of alarm, she delivered it a neat sweep with her right hand, out of my field of vision – it was almost a perfect magic trick. This time I didn’t ask. After all, the product was named Whisper. Sanitary pads, it seemed, were meant to be coy, as were those using them.

I guess mom was confident I would learn at school when I had become “old enough”, that the story of birds and the bees also involved a bloody affair. At 14, one fateful afternoon I was introduced to the human reproductive system by a biology teacher who described a penis as a “somewhat cylindrical, somewhat triangular organ found in the male pubic region” when one of the more inquisitive girls in class had demanded to know more about it. By then, thanks to the grapevine, I had already learned that girls weren’t using pads to absorb sweat in their crotches. The grapevine had an impish name for menstrual blood too – Bloody Mary.

So this biology teacher described “Bloody Mary” as something along the lines of “monthly shedding of endometrial lining along with blood from the vagina in post-pubertal females”. Some of us boys stared blankly at him, some of us nodded to hide our befuddlement. I didn’t ask any questions, because by then all the questions on my mind had chemically reacted with each other, and thereby become indistinguishable from one another. I wearily looked at The Girl Who Asked, and she didn’t seem keen on repeating her feat – she had heard boys chuckling (I wasn’t one of them, trust me). By the time the lecture ended, the only thing I personally got wiser about was that sanitary pads were meant to absorb menstrual flow, and were an important part of female hygiene. I was left deeply unsatisfied. I read the biology textbook and it made a reference to menstrual cramps but didn’t enlighten the reader further. I was scared to look on the internet. After all, I wasn’t supposed to ask questions about this stuff.

Why Are We So Embarrassed To Talk About Menstruation?

Nearly two decades after I had first asked my mom, a friend told me one day about her dreaded ‘monthly visitor’ and how she was stressed about its impending visit. By then I had managed to learn that menstruation was just a function of humans being sexually reproducing primates, that there were complex religious and social dimensions to it, and also that it could cause serious cramps and mood swings in some women which could affect their productivity. In other words, I was theoretically prepared to have a conversation with her about it. But still, her sudden candour left me dumbfounded. Clearly, she wanted to have a conversation with me about her periods. But I had never had a conversation with anyone on the subject and so, I was unsure what to say or do because I didn’t know what the appropriate response would be.

My “response” in the end was to look away from her into the void and purse my lips in an effort to show that I understood her anxiety. I have no way of knowing what she thought of my performance, and she has never talked to me about her ‘monthly visitor’ again. I haven’t asked her either.

I realized that this was unfortunate because if educated people like my friend and me don’t talk to each other about Bloody Mary, we will never be able to talk about pressing sociopolitical issues that torment those who menstruate. If despite being a friend, I come across as insensitive to a woman’s concerns about her menses, I am failing to provide her with the kind of visible support that she might need. I might sign a petition on Change.org to make sanitary pads tax free, or donate to help provide underprivileged girls with free pads, or even write an essay on YKA to show my support, but all that’s more about satisfying oneself that one is “doing good”, and less about making an effort to bring about systemic changes that are crucially necessary if Indian society at large is to change the way it thinks about menstruation.

The biggest problem with society’s attitude towards menstruation lies in its deliberate and oppressive silence on the topic. A lot of hush-hush around menstruation in India has to do with how it is viewed as impure and polluting. The irony is that a lot of scared young girls and women, especially the underprivileged ones, tend to “pollute” themselves by using unsanitary stuff like grass, dirty cloth, soil, ash etc to clean up their monthly mess. Folk “wisdom” on menstruation is passed down less through conversation, and more through silence. The silence can be attributed to ignorance and superstition, but also broadly to a patriarchal society’s attitude towards women. Higher up the socioeconomic ladder, while women might not be resource-deprived, they are not infrequently left emotionally deprived because Bloody Mary is dismissed as a niche or a women’s issue – by men who have no experience of it. Women are pressured not to make a big deal out of “just blood and cramps”, again probably because men tend to treat cramps as an occupational hazard, while for many women it’s a part of their life till menopause. Pain isn’t any sweeter just because it’s expected. Ask those who get their teeth extracted, even better to ask those who have given birth (this writer hopes not to have either experience, ever – although the probability of the latter is quite low).

But the brunt of this kind of cultural oppression is borne by underprivileged women, who are the majority – poor working women in cities and rural areas, homeless women, Adivasi women, Dalit women, women in sex work and their children. Most of these women have no access to any kind of knowledge or support network that is available to their privileged counterparts. Since they experience the worst of hardcore patriarchy, they are dehumanized and their experiences are not even given an audience. They have no knowledge of their rights, and even if they do, they don’t know how to enforce them. They have little counselling or mental healthcare resources available. Insensitivity towards teen and preteen girls, who don’t yet fully understand their menses and have no access to sanitary pads or support, forces many of them to miss school or drop out altogether. In extreme cases, driven by depression due to gratuitous shaming and teasing in addition to the anxiety and pain of menstruating, some of them commit suicide. Clearly, it’s way more than “just blood and cramps”.

Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder

Let’s see how. Some (not all) women may suffer from premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), symptoms of which include extreme irritability, anxiety, difficulty concentrating, fatigue and muscle and joint pain. The generic painkiller is not necessarily enough to subdue pain due to dysmenorrhea, or menstrual cramps. Different women might need different interventions. For example, some women might find that using menstrual cups (I highly recommend reading this very well-written and informative piece) eases the pain.

Dealing with all this every damn month seems quite tough. Most importantly, it’s the mental stress takes a heavy toll on a menstruating woman. Recent research shows that during menstrual phases, women are at 26% greater risk of suicide deaths, 17% greater risk of suicide attempts, and 20% greater risk of psychiatric admissions at menstruation. Also, during the premenstrual phase, women are at a 13% greater risk of psychiatric admissions. It has also been found that women with irregular cycles are less than half as likely to have a current anxiety disorder as those that report regular cycles.

Additionally, “women with shorter cycles (≤28 days) have one and one-half times to two times greater risk of current affective disorder, lifetime affective disorder, lifetime anxiety disorder, lifetime substance use or dependence disorder and lifetime drug abuse or dependence”. Older research at AIIMS, Delhi found that a much greater percentage of women were likelier to commit suicide during their menstrual phases than when they were not menstruating (25% vs 4.5%). Although the researchers themselves warn against drawing definitive conclusions from the data and advise further research, they acknowledge the “need to understand the impact within a larger psychological, social, and cultural frame”, since it’s difficult to ignore such a significant association. What we understand from all this is that some women (again, not all) might be prone to serious mental health problems during menstruation, and such women need support. A culture of silence and sexism prevents such women from speaking to others for the support that they desperately need.

How Can Men Help?

Before anything else, we need to educate ourselves. We don’t need to have a PhD on the subject, but it’s possible to understand the basics. Numero uno on the to-do list is to stop mansplaining “women’s issues” to women, step down from the high horse of male chauvinism and acknowledge that we don’t and won’t ever have it in us to take a Bloody Mary, and therefore we are not in a position to judge menstruating women or dismiss their concerns.

Next, not only must we listen to women – reading what women write on the subject of menstruation is a great way of doing it, it’s active listening; that’s not to say that men can’t write well on the subject – we should also actively encourage women to speak or write about their experiences with menstruation. We must understand that periods are not a disease, nor meant to spread any. It’s just a regular, basic biological process like peeing or sleeping, just potentially more stressful than either. Once we start looking at it this way, there would be fewer incentives to crack jokes about it. “You got a sleep issue? See a doctor. You got a problem with your periods? Have you seen your ob-gyn?” It’s not that difficult. Also frame it in terms of equal and equitable treatment. Why should there be a sweeping ban on menstruating women from entering the Sabarimala if there is none on masturbating men? The latter should be more “impure” than the former, given how much emphasis some Hindu philosophies lay on “conserving” semen (for what it’s worth, there is no benefit to “conserving” semen, and masturbation might actually have some benefits). Menstrual leaves are not “unfair” (my personal opinion, just as an example) because some women might need leave when they are on their periods, just like everyone does when they are facing some temporary debilitation. Next, we must be vocal with our support. It could be something small, like trying to educate and sensitize male colleagues who like to crack ignorant and sexist jokes about menstruating women. It doesn’t have to be confrontational. You could be that one guy on your WhatsApp group who fact-checks memes about menstruation wherever necessary. Or you could try your hand at something bigger, like volunteering in a drive to educate people about menstruation and menstrual hygiene, especially those who are most vulnerable, and those who are in direct control of their fate, mostly men. It’s very important for us to let people know what we think, so we can be sought out for support when it’s needed. It’s also important to continue educating ourselves on the topic so we don’t become complacent or smug – we can never really know too much.

But at the end of the day, it is a women’s issue, isn’t it? Isn’t it okay if men just stop mocking women, both cis and trans, for menstruating, be more sensitive and let women be? Why do men need to intervene? Well, one big reason is that society is unfortunately still extremely patriarchal, and in most pockets, men exclusively control the resources. That tends to make women entirely dependent on men for everything. Their interests become secondary, or even irrelevant. What matters in such arrangements is what men want from women – and in most cases, it’s just food, babies and a shut mouth. Inability or refusal to provide any of the three elicits primaeval violence.

If you didn’t like that spoilt brat in seventh grade who thought the desk you shared with him belonged exclusively to him, you should abhor this kind of male sense of entitlement. Menstruation is one of the unique issues women have that they don’t share with men. Apart from a very small percentage of women – the resplendent tip of a humongous iceberg – women, half the population (in India, not really, but let’s just stretch our imagination), have almost no control over how they regulate their monthly bleeding, and on top of that they have to deal with all the stigma attached to what is a basic healthcare and hygiene issue. If educated men like us can do no better than jeer menstruating women for their cramps, what use is our education? Neither our ability to learn about something outside of our own experiential universe (no matter how much we quote Baldwin or Toni Morrison or Garcia Marquez), nor the violence of mocking people signal to others (or really, to ourselves, if we think about it) that we are educated; it merely shows that we have not checked our privilege.

I have vowed to make myself more visible with my support for the rights of those who menstruate. I want to contribute towards normalising dialogue around menstruation, and also towards making homes, schools, colleges, public places, houses of worship, public transport and workplaces friendlier for menstruating women, in whatever way I can. I also want to keep my eyes and ears open, so I am listening to women for something my male privilege wouldn’t otherwise allow me to realize about menstruation. So next time someone like my friend wants to open up to me, or men like me, about menstruation, they will know I am game to talk about it; that I am not a bag of Whisper anymore.

The post A Male Perspective On How Men Can Break The Taboo Around Menstruation appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

जब हम लोग कॉलेज जाते हैं तो ऐसे कई लोग मिलते हैं, जो सरकारी नौकरी की ख्वाहिश रखते हैं। ऐसे स्टूडेंट्स हर समुदाय से आते हैं, वे दलित समुदाय से भी होते हैं, आदिवासी समुदाय से भी होते हैं और सामान्य या सर्वण समुदाय वर्ग से भी होते हैं।

सभी मेहनत करते हैं और 10-10 घंटे तक पढ़ाई भी करते हैं लेकिन जहां बात किसी पिछड़े समुदाय की आती है, तो सामान्य या जनरल वर्ग के लोगों की छठी इंद्री जागती है और उनके अनुसार दलित और आदिवासी समुदाय के लोगों को मेहनत करने की ज़रूरत ही क्या है?

भाई वे बस एग्ज़ाम में बैठ जाए तो उन्हें नौकरी मिल जायेगी। क्यों? क्योंकि इन्हें हमारे यानी जनरल वालों का हक मारकर आरक्षण दिया गया है। आरक्षण के आधार पर ये लोग नौकरी करनी शुरू कर देंगे लेकिन इन्हें काम करना थोड़े ही आएगा। जब कॉलेज में भी दाखिले की बारी आती है तो सामान्यत: यही बात बोली जाती है कि फलां तो दलित है ना, उसे तो दाखिला मिल जाएगा।

हम मानने को तैयार नहीं होते कि कोई दलित-आदिवासी एक बेहतर इंजीनियर या डॉक्टर हो सकता है

हमारे मन में दलित-आदिवासी समुदाय को लेकर एक ज़बरदस्त सामंतवादी सोच और पूर्वाग्रह बैठा दिया गया है। हम यह मानने को तैयार ही नहीं होते हैं कि कोई दलित-आदिवासी एक बेहतर इंजीनियर या डॉक्टर हो सकता है। हमलोग यह बात हमेशा बोलते हैं कि वह तो आरक्षण वाला डॉक्टर है, क्या ही इलाज करेगा या जब भी कहीं पुल गिरता है, तो लोग यही बोलते हैं कि पक्का कोई आरक्षण वाला ही बनाया होगा।

लेकिन अगर हम अपनी शिक्षा व्यवस्था और दिमाग दोनों का विश्लेषण करें तो पता चलेगा कि दोनों में जंग लग चुका है। एक समृद्ध घर से आने वाला स्टूडेंट डोनेशन देकर इंजीनियर या डॉक्टर बन जाता है और हमें उसकी काबिलियत पर भरोसा भी होता है। जबकि उसने अपने दाखिले के लिए किसी एग्ज़ाम को क्वालीफाई नहीं किया है, बल्कि सिर्फ पैसे के दम पर इंजीनियर या डॉक्टर बन गया है।

वही जिसने एक एग्ज़ाम पास किया लेकिन उसे आरक्षण मिला, हमें उसकी काबिलियत पर हमेशा संदेह रहता है। डिग्री को पूरा करने के लिए जो सेमेस्टर एग्ज़ाम होते हैं, उसमें सभी स्टूडेंट्स को मार्क्स उनके आंसर के आधार पर मिलते हैं ना कि किसी आरक्षण के आधार पर।

रोहित वेमुला तो याद ही होंगे आपको

आपने रोहित वेमुला का नाम तो ज़रूर सुना होगा। यह वह छात्र था, जिसकी काबिलियत पर शक किया गया, क्योंकि वह दलित था। उसे राजनैतिक रूप से प्रताड़ित किया गया, उसकी स्कॉलरशिप भी बंद कर दी गयी। इन सबसे परेशान होकर उसने आत्महत्या की या फिर यूं कहें कि संस्थागत हत्या की गयी।

रोहित वेमुला के सन्दर्भ में भी यह बात कही गयी कि वह दलित भी नहीं था और उसने सिर्फ फ्रस्टेशन में आत्महत्या की। आज अचानक हम लोग रोहित वेमुला पर चर्चा क्यों कर रहे हैं? क्योंकि इस बार फिर से हमने एक स्टूडेंट की जान ली है। इस बार यह स्टूडेंट डॉक्टर थी और मुंबई से अपनी एम.एस. की पढ़ाई कर रही थी।

इस बार डॉक्टर पायल को निशाना बनाया गया

नाम डॉक्टर पायल, जो एक आदिवासी समुदाय भील से आती थी, वह अपने समुदाय की पहली लड़की थी, जो पोस्ट ग्रेजुएशन की पढ़ाई कर रही थी। वह अपने परिवार की पहली डॉक्टर होती। डॉ. पायल की साथी डॉक्टर्स ने उनके आदिवासी होने का  लगातार मज़ाक उड़ाया, उन्हें मानसिक रूप से प्रताड़ित किया।

डॉ. पायल ने इसकी शिकायत अपनी हेड ऑफ डिपार्टमेंट से भी की लेकिन कोई कार्रवाई नहीं हुई। डॉ. पायल ने आत्महत्या कर ली।

कुछ दिन हम लोग पायल के नाम के नारे लगाएंगे, कैंडिल मार्च भी निकालेंगे लेकिन उससे क्या? हमने तो एक बेहतरीन डॉक्टर की मिलकर हत्या कर ही दी। जिन साथी डॉक्टरों ने डॉ. पायल के आदिवासी होने का मज़ाक बनाया, वे हमारे समाज से ही आती हैं, जो शिक्षा हमने बतौर समाज उन्हें दिया उन्होंने वही किया।

हमारे समाज ने हमेशा हमें यही सिखाया है कि दलित-आदिवासी हमारे गुलाम हैं। अगर दलित पढ़ाई करने लगेंगे तो नाली की सफाई कौन करेगा? हमारी इस मानसिकता ने ही डॉ. पायल को मारा है।

हम एक ऐसे देश में रहते हैं, जहां हमारे प्रधानमंत्री उर्फ प्रधानसेवक अपनी पुस्तक कर्मयोग में मैनुअल स्कैवेंजिंग को एक आध्यातिक कार्य बताते हैं, वहां पर हम अपने समाज से और क्या ही उम्मीद कर सकते हैं? लेकिन डॉ. पायल अकेली नहीं थी, जो अपनी पहचान की वजह से ताने सुनती थी। इस देश के हर शहर के हर कॉलेज में हर दलित-अल्पसंख्यक-आदिवासी स्टूडेंट्स को रोज़ ऐसे ही ताने सुनने को मिलते हैं।

बहरहाल, चीज़ें एक दिन में तो सुधरेंगी नहीं लेकिन हम अपने अन्दर यह बदलाव ला सकते हैं कि हम मज़ाक में भी इस तरह की टिप्पणी ना करें।

The post “दलित-आदिवासी तो गुलाम हैं, इसी मानसिकता ने डॉ. पायल को मारा है” appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

In 2014, India voted against corruption, voted for development and jobs; in short, in search of “Ache Din” (Good days) and “Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas” (collective efforts, inclusive growth). A pursuit that continued till 2019.

Riding on a wave, a nationwide agitation, backed by a huge anti-corruption movement by Anna Hazare, Indians spoke loud and clear, and gave an unprecedented mandate to Mr Narendra Damodardas Modi after 30 years, a clear majority for a strong government.

Many flagship programs were launched to substantiate the same, “Make in India”, “Skill India”, “Standup India”  to name a few. As fancy as they make look on paper, all these schemes failed, doomed, dusted and died their own death due to lack of any support or real work to make them a reality.

In 2019, there was no mention of these popular schemes, and Mr Modi avoided the subject of these schemes in his own fashion. The hyped “black money” and demonetisation lost popularity very quickly and most of the banned currency is back in the system. Indians realized that the pursuit of “Ache Din” was a far cry. India saw the highest unemployment rate in four and a half decades and a rise in farmer suicides. Fuel prices were making a bigger hole than before in the pockets of the common man, and the Indian rupee remained in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in more critical condition than ever before along with the added factor of nationwide incidents of mob lynchings; this became the norm in the ‘New India’.

By April 2019, when the next general election was held and the people of India were given a chance to change their judgement, there was a feeling that Mr Modi wouldn’t win again.

On 23^rd May 2019, when the results were announced, it was not just a wave, but an earthquake for sure, BJP emerged victorious in the territories impossible for the party in the past, and uprooted giant politicians in their strong home ground. BJP won 300+ seats, the highest it has ever won on its own; this came as a surprise to their own people.

The Writing On The Wall Was Clear, The Nation Chose Modi

Many asked how people gave such a strong mandate to Mr Modi irrespective of his many failures, incomplete promises, and divisive politics. What really went wrong for the Opposition? Where did Mr Modi go right?

If 2019 would have been just any general election the result also would have been as expected, but it wasn’t.

2019 was anything but another election. To me, it was a “cultural shift”, a“cultural evolution” and a“ cultural revolution”. The preparation for which began just after the swearing-in ceremony of Mr Modi on 26^th May 2014.

Liberals and those who play by the rules set before, criticized him for not having a single press conference during his tenure as PM but when he did, he made sure he didn’t speak. It wasn’t his inability to take direct questions in an open medium. If so, many things can be planned, planning a paid press conference for the richest party wasn’t a task, but it’s the shift Mr Modi wanted to make for the people.

There is always mute unrest between the elite “Indians” and the people far away from the limelight of the metros in the rural “Bharat”, this shift was challenging that elitism.  BJP has always been known as a party of Urban India and their vote bank is secured here, now was the time to lure the populace of Bharat and this worked well.

Modi Ji doesn’t need any mediators to speak to his followers, he is one among us, he has a connection with us and speaks directly to us. He speaks to the people, whom he considers most important.

‘Mann ki baat’ was just the beginning of it and explaining how he eats mangoes was another strategic layer to it. Here is a man sitting at the helm of power, yet so plainly talking about things as if he is in a remote village somewhere.

The narrative was so consistent and strong that in due course it SHIFTED the entire game. The first card Modi played from his deck is now well laid out, the new rules were set, and the country was ready to play by it; the general feeling was, where my leader connects directly with me, speaks with me without anyone else speaking on my behalf, I believe what he says, after all, he is one among us and speaking to us.

Now was the time for an evolution, a “cultural evolution”, the kind the country never had seen before.

Using Fear As A Marketing Tool

Mr Modi is an election machine. In five years he didn’t miss any legislative elections, there isn’t a state where he did not campaign and if one can recall among all his speeches there was more but one constant “Pakistan”. The relationship with our neighbouring nation has been soaring since its inception.

This is nothing but a classic case of marketing, I firmly believe and often quote among my peers “it’s the fear which sells, it’s the business of panic” and it always works.

To understand this, take an example of any of the product advertisements, the majority of them are warning you what will go wrong if you do not use the product.

“If not this toothpaste, your tooth is under threat”. If not this oil, your hair is in extreme danger”. “If not this soap, your utensils are always under the attack of germs”. “If not this cleaner, you are living on a floor, full of diseases”.

Fear sells. It’s an interesting, complex emotion. It makes your pulse race faster, heart beat wildly. More interestingly, fear brings humans together.

In this case, Pakistan is that germ we are always under the threat of and Mr Modi is that Lemon bar, always ready to fight hands-on and let our utensils be clean. To continue this narrative, it was important to keep reminding the people about the common enemy and the fear. Mr Modi outplayed his opposition in establishing this fear so much so that by 2019 he successfully established his Opposition as Pakistan sympathizer and he made it seem like he alone could keep India safe.

It was an evolution of Indians, before 2019, people used to vote for jobs, crime, inflation and other daily life issues. But now the narrative was set, people no longer asked questions on the unemployment rates, unplanned GST, draconic demonetisation, because a much bigger fear was generated.

“Desh Khatre me hai, desh ko bachana hai”, agar Modi hai to hi desh surakshit hathon me hai” (The country is in danger, we have to save the country. With Modi the country is in safe hands)

After a constant narrative of fear, it was time to sell the product. The statements like “Maine unko unke ghar me ghus ke mara” (I went into their homes and killed them)  towards the end of his tenure totally established the fact that the country was in some extreme danger and to save it, Modi was the last hope.

Half the battle was won, but to destroy the opponent, you need a revolution. This wasn’t played by Mr Modi on the front foot, but strategically by the entire team.

The revolution which was pending and yet to happen from the time India was not a democratic country.

From the time of Mughals till now, a majoritarian religion in India is living in danger. This was the narrative that was perpetuated by the BJP. They tried to spread the idea that people were under threat in their own homes and they were being denied equal rights but now under Modi’s rule, this will no longer be the case.

The idea was to create a furore among the majority of the population in India. A series of mob lynching across India yet a usually vocal Modi remained silent on this issue; it was the beginning of this revolution. Appointing a ‘yogi’ (religious guru) as a head of one of the biggest states in India was the assurance to the needed revolution. BJP’s president Mr Amit Shah set the tone on how this battle would be fought.

Giving a ticket to Sadhvi Pragya was the last nail in the coffins of the Opposition and reassurance to the people that, we are here to do justice. Pragya Thakur was not painted as a terror accused, but a “victim”, a victim from the same clan who have been victimized in their own country for decades.

The message was clear, here is a leader, who speaks directly to us, shares the same ethos as we do, keeps us safe from the common bigger enemy and above all, fights for our rights, which haven’t been served in the last 70 years. The idea of roti, (food) kapda (clothing) aur makkan (house) was replaced by suraksha (safety) aur pehchan (Identity) and the rest is history.

Many of the people I know who took part in the Anna Hazare Movement, which indirectly helped Mr Modi to climb the ladder, have voted against him in 2019 in search of “Bad old days” before 2014.

But, was it enough? I would say, it’s too little and too late.

Many ask, what next? My take is, it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning, Modi has just begun his game, it’s not over yet. His communication with the nation has just begun.

The Genie is out of the bottle, it will only grow bigger and bigger and bigger.

The post Modi Replaced The Idea Of Roti, Kapda Aur Makkan With Suraksha Aur Pehchan And The Rest Is History appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

It is a quiet Thursday afternoon on May 9th. I am sitting scrolling through my social media, deafened by a platoon of voices praising the head of our nation, Narendra Modi; from his undeterred courage to his impeccable technique of eating a mango. All the voices are of the same wavelength, preaching and conveying, directly or indirectly, what is in the best interest of the Prime Minister.

Time Magazine: From Divider in Chief To Unifier Of a Nation

Amidst this monotone, I come across Time magazine’s article that boldly questions, “Can the World’s Largest Democracy Endure Another Five Years of a Modi Government?” I am thrilled. As one of the leading journalistic platforms in the world, it is doing its job, criticizing what needs to be criticized. The magazine goes as far as placing a striking artwork of our charismatic leader on a red-bordered cover with the title, “India’s Divider in Chief” with an equally striking saffron scarf around his neck. The write up takes us through the five years of governance that has seen communal disarray and instigated polarisation of the masses for the benefit of fascism and outright bigotry.

It hits hard at the populism that can be so vividly seen in the BJP’s campaign. All the shortcomings of the government, from women safety to failure of any educational or agrarian reforms are openly put forward, supported by facts and figures. Among other things, what the article primarily retorts is the hate endorsed “wave” that Modi is riding on and hoping to place him into power for a successive term as the Prime Minister of India. It is a strong piece that comments on his politics as well as his reign, a notably contrasting perspective from what is mostly presented to us by the mainstream media of this country.

28th May 2019. Five days after the result of the Indian Lok Sabha elections have led the BJP led NDA into power, nineteen days after the “controversial” article that criticised the Modi government in every possible way, the Time magazine publishes another one. Staggering in its declarations, and harshly misleading, the title reads, “Modi Has United India Like No Prime Minister in Decades.” I am taken aback as I reread the title. India and United? I refresh the website hoping for an error that I can blame on my service provider. But there it is, brazen and unapologetic.

Not only does it fail to take into any consideration the enormous divide that Modi has cleaved between all kinds of groups, be it religious, caste-based or on the pretext of being a “Nationalist” or an “Anti-Nationalist”, but it also praises him for uniting India under one umbrella. The question of how Modi won may find answers in lofty speeches, exemplary advertisement and the blind, delirious support of his followers or even unbalanced elections, but never in unity. Reluctantly, I read the name of the writer of the article. Much to my surprise, the writer was Manoj Ladwa, who in 2014 led the Research Analysis and Messaging division of Modi’s campaign for the Prime Ministerial position. It is glaringly obvious, the intent and ambition of such a writer. My disappointment lies not at the article, the writer doing what he has been told to, since 2014 and possibly even further back, but it does at the magazine. The hypocrisy and the sudden change of perspective seem questionable, even hilarious at times (yes, I use my puns right).

My stance for the mainstream media had deterred for a moment, I felt the much-needed restoration of faith, in what is said to be the fourth pillar of democracy, the press. But it didn’t last long. I write to oppose this insincerity; of this shameless sugarcoating of truth; and using the existing framework to garner laud of the ones in power or worse still, to sell yourself to them at the price of democracy. Journalism is everything but that. I plead you to exercise your freedom of speech in the fairest of ways, lest you be silenced once and for all.

The post Time Magazine’s Sudden Change In Perspective Was As Hilarious As It Was Hypocritical appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.