Fmota News

Dear Sandip Babu,

Thanks for your message and the article written by Ramachandra Guha.

According to my observation and understanding, both Karunanidhi and Binayak Sen are enemies of the Society and People. As far as Sen is concerned, there are many better ways to serve the Society and people than maintaining nexus with criminals and anti-nationals.

As a small correction, it may please be noted that Hindu Marriage Law/ Personal Law are not applicable for those not declaring themselves as Hindus. Karunanidhi is one of them.

J.N.Mahanty

Dear Friends: Here is a thought provoking & excellent article by Ramchandra Guha on current situation in India and the direction it is going. Anyone one who is concerned about development of India needs to read this. He lays bare the basic issues and does it well. He has spoken to the PM, the then Home Minister & National Security Advisor and tells us how aghast he was with their answers to his questions and comments on his observations.

It tells us why Dr. Binayak Sen, who gave his all is sitting in jail, while Karunanidhi, who stole all that is available for him and his 3 wives & progeny is in CM chair. One for coming between a rampaging Govt 36 garh Govt and innocent Adivasis, who are accidentally are seating on the potential iron and/or bauxite mines. And the other bilking thousands of crores while en-cashing his position of trust for family benefits. One who has three official wives while having more than one wife is illegal, per Hindu code bill. And he is the head of the Govt. One son and a daughter are cabinet ministers in Union Govt. Another son from another wife is Deputy Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Corrupt to the core these persons are not charged with sedition or treason – for cheating on people and betraying their trust, but Dr. Sen is. I am both amazed and shocked. I however believe that the new way like the old, is that of Gandhi – once followed by Martin Luther King & now getting rejuvenated due Tunisia, Egypt and …more to come.

Best wishes, Sandip

INDIFFERENCE OF BIG MEN- Justice is less important than holding on to power

POLITICS AND PLAY: Ramachandra Guha

Endless sufferings I am presently embarked on an exercise that is both utterly exhausting as well as truly educative — the reading, line by line, of every volume of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi. After several weeks of dogged work I have completed Volume XII; a mere 88 remain. I shall now take a (possibly extended) break, since Gandhi has now just left South Africa for good, and I need to distil all that I have read (and learnt) before moving with my subject to another country, another continent. In a previous column I reported an early fruit of my research — an article speaking with admiration of the mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, whose disregard for monumental temples and mosques Gandhi shared, in a non- institutional spiritual ecumenism that might possibly show a way to resolve the destructive dispute in Ayodhya. Let me offer another illustration of the continuing relevance of Gandhi’s writings. In the late summer of 1909 he was in London, lobbying for the rights of Indians in South Africa. The lawyer-activist met with British journalists, members of parliament, senior officials, and cabinet ministers, urging them to press the governments of Natal and Transvaal to allow Indians the freedom to trade, the freedom of movement, and protection against laws and practices that discriminated against them on account of their race. After a month of running around in London, Gandhi wrote in exasperation that, “The more experience I have of meeting so-called big men or even men who are really great, the more disgusted I feel after every such meeting. All such efforts are no better than pounding chaff. Everyone appears preoccupied with his own affairs. Those who occupy positions of power show little inclination to do justice. Their only concern is to hold on to their positions. We have to spend a whole day in arranging for an interview with one or two persons. Write a letter to the person concerned, wait for his reply, acknowledge it and then go to his place. One may be living in the north and another in the south [of London]. Even after all this fuss, one cannot be very hopeful about this outcome. If considerations of justice had any appeal, we would have got [what we wanted] long before now. The only possibility is that some concessions may be gained through fear. It can give no pleasure to a satyagrahi to have to work in such conditions.” I knew exactly what Gandhi felt —and meant. Ninety-seven years after his fruitless exertions in London, I spent several weeks in New Delhi, seeking appointments with the most powerful men in the land. I was not alone — with me, indeed leading me, were the senior journalist, B.G. Verghese, and the brilliant anthropologist, Nandini Sundar. We had been part of a team of independent citizens who had recently returned from a trip through the district of Dantewada, in Chhattisgarh, where a bloody conflict raged between Maoist revolutionaries and a vigilante group promoted by the state government. Dozens of villages had been burnt, hundreds of people had been killed, and tens of thousands had been rendered homeless. The Maoists are accountable to nobody, but we felt that the depredations of the vigilantes (who called themselves Salwa Judum, which roughly translated as ‘Peace Hunt’) had to be stopped by the state. When we found that the Chhattisgarh administration was complicit in these crimes, we decided to bring the matter to the attention of the Central government. After many phone calls, we were able to secure appointments with the then home minister, Shivraj Patil, and the then national security adviser, M.K. Narayanan. We acquainted them with what we had found — that is to say, with displaced tribal people living in pathetic camps along the road, their homes damaged or destroyed, their women violated by the vigilantes, all part of a general atmosphere of terror and intimidation that pervaded the district. The NSA met our presentation of this firsthand evidence with indifference, the home minister with irritation. The NSA said condescendingly that as a former policemen he did not need lessons on how to deal with Naxalism. The home minister went a step further, accusing Nandini Sundar and the present writer of being Naxalite sympathizers ourselves. Later, I was able to secure a one-on-one meeting with the prime minister, Manmohan Singh. He pleaded helplessness. To my recounting of the crimes of the vigilantes he replied that “they say that these methods are necessary”, without specifying whether “they” were his own advisers, or the Chhattisgarh state government. Almost five years have passed since our meetings with these three big men. I did not write about them at the time, since these were private discussions, and I hoped that the advice of experienced and independent-minded Indian democrats would effect some slight changes in state policy. If I recall these meetings now, it is for two reasons: first, because I now find that the greatest of all Indians had a similar experience (albeit with firangi, rather than desi, big men), and second, because the sufferings of the tribal people in Dantewada still persist, in good part because of the unwillingness or inability of the Central government to hold the state government and its functionaries to account for their gross (and sometimes barbaric) violations of the law of the land. Earlier this month, while hearing a petition filed in the public interest, the Supreme Court instructed the Chhattisgarh state government to disband Salwa Judum camps, restore villagers to their homes, and provide proper compensation for victims of violence. It also asked that schools and ashrams be vacated by security forces. In previous hearings, the Supreme Court has criticized the state government for distributing arms to untrained and frequently under-age men. Its strictures are wholly merited, but as things stand, the court has no powers to supervise matters on the ground. Its instructions have been ignored in the past by the state government, and it is unlikely that the Chhattisgarh government will work overtime to honour them now. There are only two ways to tackle the menace of Naxalism: prompt and efficient policing by trained personnel, and sustained efforts to provide education, health, security of livelihood and mechanisms of self-governance to tribal communities. Instead, the Chhattisgarh government has promoted vigilantism on the one hand, and, on the other, shut down schools and clinics and handed over tribal land to mines and factories. As a consequence, the influence of Naxalism has actually increased, leading to an escalating spiral of violence and counter-violence, with the adivasis caught in the crossfire. If the Central government had acted in 2006, on the basis of the massive evidence presented before it, the situation might yet have been retrieved and remedied. Reflecting on its inaction five years later, it seems to be that it stemmed from several causes. There was the fear that the Bharatiya Janata Party would charge it with being soft on extremism, and the further fear that since law and order was a state subject the Centre should be cautious in intervening. But the main reason, pace Gandhi, was the general indifference to the claims of justice of men in high places, whose “only concern”, in India now as in England a hundred years ago, was and is “to hold on to their positions” of power. ramachandraguha@yahoo.in