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Manipur | One Year Later — Lede

- Eyes wide shut: How the state turns away from Manipur’s realities

SPOTLIGHT

Eyes wide shut: How the state turns away from Manipur’s realities

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 16 MINS READ

Greeshma Kuthar

Members of the UNAU tribal women’s forum at a protest against the ethnic violence in Manipur, in New Delhi on May 4. | Photo Credit: MANVENDER VASHIST LAV/PTI

The government’s demonisation of the Kuki-Zo and support for radical Meitei groups has driven a permanent wedge between the two communities.

A year after ethnic violence erupted in Manipur, a charge sheet filed by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) at a Guwahati court on May 14 alleged that the NSCN (IM) has been helping the cadre of banned Meitei insurgent outfits Kanglei Yaol Kanba Lup (KYKL) and the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur (PLA) enter the country “in order to exploit the current ethnic unrest in Manipur” and “with intent to carry out violent terror attacks targeting the rival Kuki-Zo community with prohibited arms and ammunition”. During this ‘current ethnic unrest’, videos and photos of unprecedented, brutal violence has surfaced from Manipur, most of which find presence of armed men, who are still being referred to as ‘armed miscreants.

Over a year after the conflict began, the State government has been downplaying the role of banned outfits even when Central forces posted in Manipur have reported their presence. Since May 3, 2023, the ethnic violence between the dominant Meitei community and the tribal Kuki-Zos has claimed over 220 lives and uprooted over 60,000 people who now live in camps across the State, or have sought refuge outside Manipur.

The Guwahati charge sheet was filed against five persons arrested during the thick of the violence in September last year. At the time of their arrest they were dressed in camouflage attire resembling uniforms worn by security personnel. By then, there had been multiple incidents where Meitei men wearing such uniforms had either killed or participated in violence targeting Kuki-Zo villages.

In one such incident reported by The Caravan on September 8, more than 30 such men were given safe passage by the Manipur Police on the directions of local politicians, even after it was established that they had orchestrated violence leading to arson, two deaths, and the displacement of more than 1,000 people.

Also Read | Arambai Tenggol: How a Meitei ‘sociocultural organisation’ became an armed-to-the-teeth militia

The weapons and ammunition recovered from the five were from the lot that was looted from police armouries, according to the charge sheet. (In multiple incidents across the year, more than 6,500 firearms and ammunition running into lakhs of rounds were looted.)

Role of Meira Paibis

Interestingly, the arrest of these five was met with widespread protests at the time, most visibly by the Meira Paibis, who demanded their release claiming that they were merely village volunteers. (Protest against or resistance to arrests of armed Meitei people had become commonplace by then, with the Meira Paibis being especially instrumental in securing the release of any such men who would be apprehended by armed forces.)

The Meira Paibis declared a 48-hour bandh in the valley districts. They thronged police stations, clashing with the police and the Rapid Action Force (RAF), giving a call to fill jails, and even vandalising the residence of the officer-in-charge.

The ruckus ended with a special NIA court actually granting bail to all five, amidst celebrations, even though the five were arrested under the stringent UAPA. Such bail orders are almost unprecedented, as seen in many cases across the country.

At a memorial wall of remembrance in Manipur’s Churachandpur on April 8. The wall contains photographs of Kukis believed to have died in the ethnic violence. | Photo Credit: FRANCIS MASCARENHAS/REUTERS

The arrest of the five was one of the first such instances on the Meitei side since the violence began on May 3.

The Meira Paibis are referred to as “women activists” by armed forces, but in this conflict they have been active enablers of the violence, aiding and assisting armed Meitei groups.

One of the five men, Anand Singh, was eventually arrested again by the NIA. Singh had courted many such arrests in the past and was known as a PLA leader. In the charge sheet, the NIA alleged that Singh “mobilised local youth” for armed training to escalate the ethnic strife. It added that in July 2023, he “participated in a weapons training camp organised in Selloi Langamai Ecological Park near Keikhu by PLA cadres, where around 80-90 young men received training in handling firearms. Singh assisted in imparting training on battle drills and jungle warfare to the participating youth.”

Highlights

- Since May 3, 2023, the violence between Meitei and the Kuki-Zos has claimed over 220 lives and uprooted over 60,000 people.

- The Meira Paibis have been active enablers of the violence, aiding and assisting armed Meitei groups. Apart from the Arambai Tenggol, banned insurgent groups have seen a resurgence.

- Chief Minister Biren Singh has not spoken against armed Meitei groups, but has gone out of his way to position “Kuki militants” as aggressors.

NIA findings

The findings of the NIA are crucial to understanding the response of the State government in retrospect, especially Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, who has been blamed for fuelling the violence and for refusing to step down even in the face of his failure to control the violence.

The failure of a state, though, does not lie just in its actions but also in the disinformation that is shared at its behest. This disinformation can either be a refusal to acknowledge what has happened and claim accountability for it, or it can be an imagined counter-reality, blared out by the heads of states themselves.

Throughout the violence, Biren Singh, from time to time, blamed “Kuki militants” for the situation, while staying completely silent on the lead-up to the violence or the armed groups in the valley and their role in the violence. The only time he did speak about them was when he brokered a peace deal with one such group, the United National Liberation Front (UNLF).

The group has since been involved in violence at buffer zones and is also actively recruiting young people in the valley, even offering them stipends. In particular, Biren Singh’s silence about the activities of the Arambai Tenggol needs to be called to question, as this group has been charged with many counts of atrocities by various groups and organisations, including Naga groups, who have otherwise remained aloof from the conflict.

At a relief camp for internally displaced Meitei, in Imphal on April 27. The ethnic violence in Manipur has forced large numbers of both communities to seek shelter in government-run camps. | Photo Credit: RITESH SHUKLA/GETTY IMAGES

Biren Singh has not once spoken about any of these armed Meitei groups antagonistically, but has gone out of his way to position “Kuki militants” as aggressors right from the beginning, accusing them of attempting to “break Manipur’s territorial integrity”—almost to the extent that the word near-synonymous with Kuki-Zo in Meitei districts now is “militant”. Or “poppy cultivators”. Or “illegal immigrants”. The latter two labels see their root in the words of the Chief Minister himself.

State narrative and dismissal of reality

Manipur is a textbook example that helps us understand a state-manufactured narrative, where a State engulfed in ethnic violence is casually dismissed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, who said on April 8 that owing to the “timely intervention of the Government of India and efforts made by the Government of Manipur, there has been a marked improvement in the situation of the State”.

Days after this statement, videos of two Kuki-Zo men being chopped up limb-by-limb went viral in the State. Similar messaging of a parallel reality of calm is regularly dished out by the Chief Minister as well, denying the scale or extent to which Manipur remains riddled in violence.

The only outcome of this form of structured disinformation and denial of reality is that the BJP successfully managed to drive a wedge between two communities that will be hard to undo. Especially when the experience of the Kuki-Zo, who can no longer access the capital of the State they belong to, has been reduced to nothing.

Civil war-like situation

The situation in Manipur can now be defined as a full-blown civil war, which began from protests organised by the All-Tribal Students’ Union Manipur (ATSUM) on May 3, 2023. These rallies were opposed to a court order that suggested granting Scheduled Tribe (ST) status to the dominant Meitei.

The predominantly Hindu Meitei are concentrated in the valley area around Imphal, the State capital. They enjoy political dominance; Chief Minister Biren Singh himself is a Meitei as are 40 legislators in the 60-member State Assembly. On the other hand, the minority Kuki-Zo tribe, along with the Naga, are predominantly Christian and form about 40 per cent of the State’s population. They mostly live in the hills around the valley and have ST status.

Also Read | Singing in the dark: How artists from Manipur are reacting to the conflict

The root of the violence lies in an order issued in March 2023 by Justice Muralidharan of the Manipur High Court recommending that ST status be extended to the Meitei too.

This problematic portion of the order was eventually removed by the same court in February 2024 after a pushback from the Supreme Court, where a Bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud said: “The order was not only factually incorrect but also against the principles laid down by the Constitution Benches of the Court on the classification of communities in the SC/ST list.”

Kuki children play inside a relief camp for internally displaced people, in Litan village on April 27. RITESH SHUKLA/GETTY IMAGES | Photo Credit: RITESH SHUKLA/GETTY IMAGES

But the damage had been done. The High Court order led to widespread resistance from the Kuki-Zo and Naga tribes, who believed that constitutionally anointing the Meitei as a tribe would be an injustice to the already under-represented tribes of Manipur. Many protests and rallies were organised in opposition.

When protest rallies were announced across the hill districts on May 3, Meitei organisations such as the Meitei Leepun and Arambai Tenggol announced counter-blockades, which were in place from the night of May 2. The rallies ended peacefully in all the hill districts, except Churachandpur, where the Kuki-Zo found a portion of their centenary gate set on fire. This led to fights between the two sets of protesters, escalating to arson and violence.

Attack on Meitei Christians

In no time, this spread to the other districts, but the worst was marked out for Imphal and its peripheries. Mob lynching, gang-rape, and the burning down of churches of the Meitei Christians figure in the FIRs as having occurred in the first week alone.

As the rest of the country had its eyes on the Karnataka Assembly election and its outcome, Manipur burned for days, with barely any mainstream media coverage of the extent of violence. Data reviewed by Reuters showed that in the first week of May alone, 77 Kuki and 10 Meitei were killed.

An investigation by New Lines Magazine found that almost all churches of Meitei Christians in Imphal were burnt down in the first week, including accompanying threats to many to convert to Sanamahism. By the second week, almost all the Meitei from the hill districts had to be relocated to the valley and the Kuki-Zo from the valley to the hills. This was done under the supervision of the armed forces.

“Manipur is a textbook example that helps us understand a state-manufactured narrative, where a State engulfed in ethnic violence is casually dismissed by the Prime Minister himself.”

On the very first day of the conflict, a total Internet shutdown was put in place, restricting any form of information from leaving Manipur, barring what journalistic organisations could put out. This shutdown was in place for months.

A perusal of the reports of Imphal-based media outlets from May onwards shows that most of them were just using the narratives set by State authorities. These media organisations, almost all dominated by Meitei, only relayed the Chief Minister’s messages. They failed to report on the forms and types of violence orchestrated in the State, and did not once critique the failure of the Biren Singh government in bringing the violence under control.

Further, the reality of what went on in Imphal and its peripheries did not make it into national news until much later.

The only information in national reports were statements of the Chief Minister, made through press conferences from Imphal. What one could gather from this was that the information blockade served as a tool for the state to establish its version as the only version available.

Chief Minister’s agenda

Biren Singh, in the initial weeks of the violence, maintained that “there was no fight between communities, it is purely with government. When government tries to do something, then resistance or acceptance is always there all over the world”.

This stance changed towards the end of May, when he started blaming outbreaks of violence on “Kuki militants”, calling them terrorists and alleging that they were attacking villages. He made multiple such references to them. The same was copied by media agencies, to the extent that even when Kuki-Zo villages were attacked, the perpetrators, according to the media, were “Kuki militants”.

The silence of the State government, the Chief Minister, and the local media about the biggest player in the violence, the Arambai Tenggol, is one that needs a closer look. The Arambai Tenggol, an organisation birthed by BJP politicians in Manipur, especially MP Leishemba Sanajaoba and Biren Singh, has proclaimed itself the saviour of the Meitei in Manipur.

Its members orchestrated a takeover on January 24 in Imphal, thronging the streets in armed vehicles and finally administering an oath to Meitei legislators, even beating up those who questioned them. Through social media posts, its members call for unity, often couched in degrading anti-Kuki language. This was happening even before the war, where the Arambai Tenggol would mimic similar vitriolic statements of the Chief Minister.

BJP support for Arambai Tenggol

The Arambai Tenggol enjoys the patronage of BJP leaders even though its name has come up in several FIRs since the onset of the violence, including an “attempt to kill” the additional SP on February 27.

This was the first time the Manipur Police itself issued a press statement against the group, saying it was “engaged in many anti-social activities such as assaulting civilians, and snatching vehicles from the public and government officials”. The group was blamed for booth capturing and violence during the election as well, but no member of the Arambai Tenggol was arrested.

Apart from the Arambai Tenggol, banned insurgent groups have seen a resurgence, and yet there have been no efforts to bring them under control in spite of indicting evidence against them. Their activities are not just in the buffer zones; a major chunk of complaints that have surfaced against them are from Imphal valley, ranging from extortions to physical assault.

Unfortunately, most of these cases go unreported, following the trend that seems to have been set since May 3.

How journalism was used to support the State’s narrative set the tone for how the conflict was perceived by the rest of the country. This continues till date: the Chief Minister still makes statements about how he is targeted because he has cleared acres of poppy fields and it is carried as news, word by word, with no background check. That a senior police officer zeroed in on the Chief Minister’s role in the drug mafia is no longer relevant. Many more questions remain answered.

The disparity in aid to the tribal-displaced and access to state institutions in the affected hill districts has been brought up many times by Kuki-Zo leaders and organisations, but remains unaddressed. Hundreds of students who had to flee from Imphal continue to face difficulties in accessing their institutions, even to procure a migration certificate to study elsewhere.

At a polling booth in Ukhrul district during the second phase of the election on April 26. | Photo Credit: RITESH SHUKLA/GETTY IMAGES

What has been starkly evident is that the state’s narrative leaves no place for redressal or justice. This is evident in the way the criminal justice system has failed victims. When photographs of two Meitei teenagers who had gone missing surfaced on the Internet, there were widespread student protests in the valley, with armed forces even raining pellets on the protesters. It was only after arrests were made swiftly the protests died down. But this has not been the case in the hill districts. In the viral video case, a few arrests were made but at least three persons who were named as accused are still to be apprehended.

Many more photographs and videos of brutality have surfaced since, including a beheading and bodies being desecrated, but none of these has led to arrests. Attacks on Meitei people critical of the government have also led to no action. In fact, even the abduction and attack of a senior police official by the Arambai Tenggol did not lead to arrests. Instead, Sanajaoba shared a post that urged the Arambai Tenggol and the Manipur Police to work together. The post was eventually deleted.

Perhaps the most troubling fact is how little has been done to indict the role of the bureaucracy in the violence. That lynchings and rapes were carried out by mobs running amok in Imphal, the seat of power not just of the Chief Minister but many high-ranking officials, has not come under as much scrutiny as it deserves. Why did orders under Section 144 of the IPC and orders seeking help from the Army come almost a day after the violence began remains unanswered.

Political intervention

A State government official who did not want to be named, claimed that bullying and political interventions were part and parcel of working in Manipur. While the functioning of officers in a State riddled by insurgency has always been complicated, from facing threats to even staying functional, matters seemed to get better from the mid-2000s, as the Manipur government cracked down on insurgent outfits.

But with the rise of Biren Singh, a reversal was initiated. He and those close to him are said to control every posting, and anything considered antagonistic usually leads to transfers. The Chief Secretary at the time of the violence, Rajesh Kumar, was to retire more than a year ago, but his tenure was extended twice, even when other eligible officers were available for deputation.

Also Read | Editor’s Note: The deafening silence on Manipur

When questionable orders were made at the Chief Minister’s behest, including declaring villages in the hill districts illegal without following due process, there seems to have been complete compliance by the bureaucracy.

Insiders said that nothing could be done because of political compulsions, the weight of which was especially felt in Biren Singh’s regime. Among the officers, a clear distinction can be made between those who are vocal about the discrepancies and those who are not. Most of those belonging to the former category no longer serve in Manipur, barring a few exceptions.

While the Inquiry Commission that has been constituted to investigate the violence said it would be looking at the failure of officers to address the violence on time, there is barely any precedent in the recent past where such accountability has been pinned on erring officers.

There are fears among the people of Manipur across districts that matters might only get worse after the declaration of the Lok Sabha election results on June 4. But “worse” is only a relative term now, as there has not been even a sliver of change in the attitude of the Centre or the State government in dealing with the issue. Furthermore, the need for justice and reparations to begin the process of conciliation seems to be totally lost on all those who are in power.

Greeshma Kuthar is an independent lawyer and journalist from Tamil Nadu. Her primary focus is investigating the evolving methods of the far right, their use of cultural nationalism regionally, and their attempts to assimilate caste identities into the RSS fold.

Manipur | One Year Later

- Editor’s Note: The deafening silence on Manipur

- Arambai Tenggol: How a Meitei ‘sociocultural organisation’ became an armed-to-the-teeth militia

- Singing in the dark: How artists from Manipur are reacting to the conflict

SPOTLIGHT

Editor’s Note: The deafening silence on Manipur

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 3 MINS READ

Vaishna Roy

A member of UNAU Tribal Women’s Forum during a protest over the ethnic violence in Manipur, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, on May 4, 2024. | Photo Credit: Manvender Vashist Lav/PTI

As PM Modi floods the airwaves with bizarre edicts, the silence around Manipur’s tragedy lays bare the state’s unequal treatment of human suffering.

We are caught between two extremes. If on the one hand there is what John Berger in his novel A Painter of Our Time described as “an accumulated absence of sound” around issues such as Manipur or other topics of national importance such as China’s incursions, there is on the other hand “an accumulated presence of sound”, if I may paraphrase Berger. A Prime Minister who has otherwise steadily refused to address a press conference or give a meaningful interview has now suddenly flooded the airwaves with 40-odd scripted interactions in a month. The tone of these talkathons (interview would be a misleading term) has ranged from the banal to the bizarre, the most extreme example of the latter being Modi’s declaration that he was “convinced” he was not born biologically but was “sent to earth by god”.

To call it merely wacky would be to underestimate the real purport of Modi’s statement, coming as it did on the heels of Sambit Patra’s ostensible slip of the tongue when he called the very god of Puri, Jagannath, a devotee of Modi; and just months after images were distributed of Modi holding an infant Ram’s hand and leading him into the new temple in Ayodhya. The frequent references by doting TV anchors to Modi’s infinite energy, his shining skin, his manic work hours, and his mind-boggling childhood have all been leading up to this moment, this revelation: that Modi is no mere mortal but the very messenger of god. It is, after all, the knockout punch, from which no opposition party can hope to recover, because when it has been declared that there is nobody to measure up to Modi the Supreme Leader, where does one find someone to oppose Modi the Demi-God?

“In ignoring a State and a people devastated by violence, Prime Minister Modi’s intention is not only to deny the violence but also to deny any knowledge of the state’s complicity in it.”

Modi’s avatar card, however, appears to have come a little late in the game. Across north India, where swathes of the population have been brainwashed by the BJP’s politics of religion, there is now a visible ennui. Reporters from across the Hindi belt are bringing news of more and more people simply fatigued with the subject of religion, people more worried about food prices, jobs, and homes, people openly mocking mandir-masjid politics. Are these voices part of the same 62 per cent of the population that did not vote for Modi and the BJP in 2019? Or are they from the 37 per cent that did? We will not know until June 4, but the voices can be heard. That Modi, too, hears them is clear from the glut of interviews, the relentless “noise” being generated.

Where there is complete silence is on the subject of Manipur, where it is now one year since the terrible violence that resulted in the death of hundreds (the official number is 221) and the displacement of tens of thousands (official number: 60,000), and where there is absolutely no government initiative towards a mediated and just solution.

This is the silence of impunity, the silence of forgetting, where the withdrawal of attention from an event works to erase the event itself. In ignoring a State and a people devastated by violence, Prime Minister Modi’s intention is not only to deny the violence but also to deny any knowledge of the state’s complicity in it. The Indian state has long practised what Oishik Sircar in his book Violent Modernities calls the “hierarchized calibration of suffering”, where attention is measured by religion, class, and caste. We are now seeing it play out in Manipur, where victimhood and indignation are luxuries extended to some and denied to others.

In this issue, Frontline revisits Manipur if only to break the silence that reigns in the midst of the overwhelming noise of democracy all around us.

Arambai Tenggol: How a Meitei ‘sociocultural organisation’ became an armed-to-the-teeth militia

The Manipur conflict has many moving parts, but Arambai Tenggol has emerged as a key driving force that continues to shape and fuel it.

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 14 MINS READ

Angshuman Choudhury

Members of Arambai Tenggol wave the “Salai Taret” flag as they gather to take oath in front of Ibudhou Pakhangba temple at Kangla Fort in Imphal on September 30, 2023. | Photo Credit: AFP

On March 30, weeks before Manipur went to the polls, an unusual press release surfaced in local media circles. Directing all party candidates to refrain from extravagant public campaigning, it imposed a moratorium on feasts, loudspeakers, flag-raising, and door-to-door visits.

The letterhead had the words “Arambai Tenggol” printed alongside the logo of a charging cavalry trooper set against the Salai Taret, the ancient Meitei kingdom’s flag. The statement—or diktat, some would say—was signed by one Laishram Robason, who was identified as the outfit’s “Control Room Operator”.

To a lay observer, the statement would probably read like a routine pre-election directive issued by a competent government authority. But, neither is the document routine, nor is the issuing authority competent. The extralegal directive captures everything that has gone horribly wrong in Manipur since May 3, 2023, when the north-eastern State slipped into an ethnic conflagration that has taken more than 221 lives, injured thousands, and displaced many more.

Among the many entities at the centre of this tragic convulsion is Arambai Tenggol. The conflict has many moving parts, but Arambai has emerged as a key driving force that continues to shape and fuel it. More than that, the Meitei militia has become an apt metaphor for India’s deep-seated pathologies of governance that have, time and again, allowed civil conflicts to fester for longer than they should.

Also Read | Eyes wide shut: How the state turns away from Manipur’s realities

It is, therefore, crucial to understanding Arambai as an organisation as well as what the state’s response to it means in the dual context of the Manipur conflict and ethnonationalist majoritarianism in India today.

A social creature

At the outset, Arambai Tenggol looks like a political force. But, it is, first and foremost, a social phenomenon. The name itself—Arambai Tenggol, the much-feted and feared cavalry force of the ancient Meitei kingdom, Kangleipak, whose weapon of choice was a unique poison-dart called “Arambai”—evokes a sense of Meitei cultural pride and historical nostalgia. By leaning on the crutch of an imperialist past, the outfit, which was a non-entity until the conflict began in May 2023, was able to appropriate the legacy of Meitei nationalism and gain wide acceptance in Meitei society.

In fact, Arambai Tenggol was born from the modern vestiges of Meitei royalty. Reportedly, it was floated by “Maharaja” Leishemba Sanajaoba, the titular king of Manipur and current Rajya Sabha member from the State. In September 2022, the outfit organised an “oath-taking ceremony” at his Imphal residence. In attendance was Sanajouba himself, alongside Korounganba Khuman (pseudonym for Tyson Ngangbam), the outfit’s chief. Dozens of cadres wearing their signature black tees with the cavalry-cum-Salai Taret logo emblazoned on the breast pockets were also present.

Simultaneously, Arambai scaled up its social media presence, especially on Facebook. This was a strategic move made at a time when smartphones and the Internet had penetrated Manipur, especially among the younger generation. Using social media, the outfit began to comment on a number of social and political issues. It had a particular obsession with history, reaffirming, sometimes reimagining, Meitei history while denying Kuki-Zo history. For instance, on December 24, 2022, it re-shared a news article in Meitei on Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh dismissing the Anglo-Kuki War of 1917-19.

Beyond these commentaries, Arambai members have used the online space to project a more “edgy” and “cool” image of the outfit, by uploading their pictures in advanced military gear and using AI to post funny morphed images of themselves. This was meant to appeal to the young Meitei, particularly men. The outfit gave them an acceptable and modern platform to perform their masochism and channel their social angst towards what they perceived to be a righteous armed revolution in defence of their community.

Notably, Arambai has undertaken social service among displaced Meitei people, such as distribution of relief material. By doing so, it has attempted to project itself as a constructive social force and first responder in and around the strife-torn Imphal Valley. Along with its military action in defence of the Meitei community in the ongoing conflict, this has created, among ordinary Meiteis, an image of the outfit being a viable alternative to an ineffective and inaccessible state.

Cultural repertoires

Arambai has also engaged in cultural policing as part of its social outreach programme. This includes urging the Meitei to shun foreign brands and embrace traditional attire. By doing so, it has tried to project itself as a vanguardist social force that is here to fix the ills of modernisation and globalisation. But its revivalism goes beyond material culture. Arambai has also used religion to push a new imagination of Meitei indigeneity.

One of Arambai’s key social pivots is Sanamahism, the traditional Meitei religion that was gradually replaced by Vaishnavite Hinduism by the 18th century. The outfit has used the Sanamahi revivalist movement, which has gained traction in recent decades, as an instrument for Meitei mobilisation. A month before the conflict began in May 2023, Arambai members demonstrated their fealty to Sanamahism by storming the house of Takhellambam Ramananda, a Meitei Christian pastor, in Imphal for his allegedly blasphemous remarks against the Meitei religion.

Meitei women at a rally organised by the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), in Imphal on July 29, 2023. | Photo Credit: RITU RAJ KONWAR

The outfit often invokes the names of Sanamahi deities in its social media rhetoric. For instance, in a Facebook post on February 18, 2023, it allegorically places the top Sanamahi pantheon into the outfit’s senior leadership, projecting Lainingthou Sanamahi, the Supreme God, as the president. Given the centrality of Sanamahism in early Meitei kingdom repertoires, Arambai’s adoption of Sanamahi revivalism dovetails comfortably with its nationalist-imperialist reimagination of Meitei society. In fact, the September 2022 oath-taking ceremony at Sanajaoba’s residence was done in the name of Sanamahism. Iterations in praise of Lainingthou Sanamahi are often accompanied with praise for Sanajaoba.

However, Arambai’s social and cultural agendas do not define it as an organisation. They are mere pathways to political power and military dominance for an organisation that relies on brute force and elite connections for survival. No outfit, after all, can transform itself from a social collective into a popular militia by merely ranting about Meitei history and culture on Facebook. There is more to it.

Highlights

- Arambai Tenggol was reportedly floated by “Maharaja” Leishemba Sanajaoba, the titular king of Manipur and current Rajya Sabha member. In September 2022, the group held an “oath-taking ceremony” at his Imphal residence.

- It has a particular obsession with history, reaffirming, sometimes reimagining, Meitei history while denying Kuki-Zo history. Arambai has engaged in cultural policing, urging the Meitei to shun foreign brands and embrace traditional attire.

- Manipur today has become a militia state, with Arambai at the centre of it all. No other non-state armed entity in Manipur today enjoys the kind of political protection, firepower, and strategic legroom that Arambai does. Imphal and New Delhi need to show political will to contain it.

A political force?

It is hardly a secret that Arambai has been close to the Imphal-based Meitei political elite since its inception. In addition to Sanajaoba, the outfit enjoys, as recent reportage by Greeshma Kuthar in The Caravan suggests, the “personal patronage” of Biren Singh. In June 2022, Khuman had shared an all-smiles photograph on Facebook of himself and his cadres meeting Singh at his official residence. Since then, the outfit has routinely endorsed the Chief Minister on social media. A former paramilitary officer told The Telegraph in July 2023 that the outfit “had been raised with the blessings of the Chief Minister”.

At a joint UNAU Delhi Tribal Student’s Forum protest where the Kuki people demanded a separate administration in Manipur, at New Delhi on September 21, 2023. | Photo Credit: SHASHI SHEKHAR KASHYAP

When the conflict broke out, the State government looked away as Arambai armed itself by looting police armouries and attacked Kuki-Zo villages. This gave the outfit a sense of impunity and invincibility that it has since used to impose its writ in the Valley and along the foothills. Meanwhile, Arambai has been aggressively pushing the same political rhetoric as the Singh government through its online channels. This includes creating a National Register of Citizens for Manipur to identify “illegal immigrants” and fencing the India-Myanmar border to stop “narco-terrorists”, both of which are not-so-veiled pejorative references to the Kuki-Zo community.

While Arambai continues to bank on the Singh government’s patronage for survival and expansion, it has also taken on a life of its own, representing popular Meitei aspirations and projecting them onto a fiercely contested political-military public space. It is precisely for this reason that the outfit is today able to issue pre-election orders that violate the Manipur government’s law enforcement mandate, order re-polling at booths, and administer “oaths” to lawmakers at Imphal’s Kangla Fort, almost like a state-in-waiting or a quasi-statutory authority.

Also Read | Editor’s Note: The deafening silence on Manipur

According to reports from the ground, Singh appears to be using the outfit to assert his political influence and ability to dominate the battlefield. In turn, Arambai is able to position itself as a local kingmaker. According to an intelligence officer interviewed by a magazine, Singh “orchestrated” the Arambai-led Kangla Fort event on January 24 to “show the Centre that he can’t be rendered inconsequential” and that, if need be, he can “run his own parallel government in Manipur”. In a recent interview to Karan Thapar, Paolienlal Haokip, the BJP MLA from Manipur, made a similar assertion, claiming that Arambai was created to “preserve the Chief Minister’s position for Biren Singh”.

The Centre has done little to fix this, for reasons best known to the BJP-led political dispensations in New Delhi and Imphal. Recently, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed a charge sheet against Meitei insurgents belonging to the Valley Based Insurgent Groups (VBIGs), such as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL), for fomenting violence in Manipur. But there was no mention of Arambai.

This shows that the Centre does not want to project the outfit as a major terrorist group with international linkages. The Central forces also find themselves unable to restrain the Arambai because of lack of directions from New Delhi and the absence of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in the Valley.

Any government move against Arambai runs the risk of alienating Singh and large sections of Meitei society who back the outfit. The BJP cannot afford that, especially in light of the general election. Moreover, exogenous sectarian interests might also be shaping the Modi government’s inaction to the outfit.

Last year, Kim Gangte, former Member of Parliament from the Outer Manipur constituency, told NewsClick that “people believe” the Arambai is an “RSS creation”. Thanks to these elite networks of patronage, Arambai has been able to dig its feet deeper into the Valley’s mainstream political space. It has even dislodged another radical Meitei vigilante organisation, Meitei Leepun, which rose to prominence during the conflict. Arambai displayed greater organisational finesse and social appeal than Leepun, while also securing privileged support from the Meitei political elite.

Emerging cleavages

But, Singh’s ostensible support for the outfit is a double-edged sword. By patronising a militia that only does his bidding, the Chief Minister risks alienating other Meitei leaders, the BJP high command, and even sections of the Meitei public who might be growing weary of Arambai’s partisan vigilantism. During the recent election in Imphal, several Meitei voters expressed frustration at the outfit’s alleged disruption of the voting process and indulging in proxy voting. One exasperated Meitei voter told a digital news platform that people who looked like Arambai cadres cast votes on behalf of her entire family.

Yumnam Shanta, a Congress polling agent, claimed that Arambai members had attacked his house on April 19. Shanta’s sister told the media that she had asked her son, who is apparently associated with Arambai, to leave the organisation. According to her, the outfit only wants to “safeguard the electoral interests of the BJP”, and not “defend Manipur” as it often claims. These simmering discontents in the Valley could soon boil over until a point where Arambai faces widespread rejection from the very community that it claims to defend and represent, as has happened with many ethnic insurgent groups in the north-eastern region in the past.

A split has also emerged between the Singh government and the Manipur Police over Arambai. In February, police commandos staged an “arms down” protest after a large group of Arambai members stormed the residence of an Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) in Imphal and abducted him. The protesting policemen alleged that their seniors had asked them to stand down even as the mob raided the ASP’s house. The police even released an official statement claiming that Arambai was involved in various “anti-social activities”. Then, on May 12, the police arrested two Arambai cadres after the outfit allegedly assaulted and abducted four police personnel in Kangpokpi district a day before.

Interestingly, Manipur police often refer to Arambai cadres as just “miscreants” in social media posts and public statements, while reserving the term “militants” for the older Meitei insurgent groups and Kuki armed groups. Yet, Arambai’s military dominance has dislodged the older, more established Meitei armed groups—officially called VBIGs—that are either confined to their strategic bases in Myanmar’s strife-torn Sagaing Region or are partially disarmed under ceasefire pacts with the government.

Riot police officers fire tear gas shells to disperse demonstrators protesting against the arrest of five people who police said were carrying weapons while wearing camouflage uniforms, in Imphal, on September 18, 2023. | Photo Credit: Reuters

While cadres from some of them, such as the PLA and KYKL, do operate in Manipur today, they have seen their influence wane as Arambai’s clout rises. This could trigger turf wars between both sides. Arambai, however, is reported to have drawn recruits from the Pambei faction of the United National Liberation Front (UNLF), which recently signed a ceasefire agreement with the government but has reportedly continued to engage in violence. On May 2, both groups even signed an “MoU” to work together.

Notably, a joint force of the Manipur Police, the NIA and the Central Reserve Police Force recently arrested two “important” members of the UNLF(Pambei). No such action has so far been taken against Arambai’s top leadership. On May 1, according to news reports, the army arrested 11 Arambai members but had to free them when a large crowd of Meitei women blocked and heckled the convoy transporting them. This shows how the outfit enjoys a high degree of social protection in the Valley, where it is seen by many as the rightful defenders of the Meitei against Kuki-Zo aggression.

Two paths

Arambai has been able to reinvent the wheel of Meitei nationalism in a way that departs from the socialist-nationalist strand of political self-determination represented by legacy Meitei armed groups. Set against a deeply fractured and turbulent landscape of inter-ethnic sparring, this is a potent formula for a group that has both the political connections and the firepower to convert thought into action.

Also Read | Singing in the dark: How artists from Manipur are reacting to the conflict

But, from here, the Arambai story could go two ways.

One, if the State government allows the outfit to prosper, it could become a separate political entity capable of usurping the state apparatus. In fact, the Kangla Fort “oath-taking ceremony”, which saw Arambai administer a pointwise political pledge to elected lawmakers, was the outfit’s attempt to position itself as a serious political force whose mandate goes far beyond military action. The fact that it draws recruits from the lay folk, lacks a storied past, and is not led by gentrified elites makes it particularly appealing to the average Meitei individual. Such a profile also helps the group rise above legacy politics, even while maintaining direct ties with the Meitei political establishment.

Two, once the violence abates, Arambai could quickly fade into oblivion like a shooting star. The militia in its current form, after all, is a product of the ethnic conflict. So, despite all its sociopolitical clout and military prowess, it would struggle to survive outside the active Meitei-versus-Kuki-Zo fault line. Not only would it then quickly lose social appeal, the Meitei political elite might no longer deem it useful. There is also the possibility of New Delhi losing patience and cracking down on the outfit using the AFSPA, paramilitary forces, and the Indian Army.

It is a fact that Manipur today has become a militia state, with Arambai at the centre of it all. Many have tried to dismiss it as just one of the many armed groups wreaking havoc across the State, but no other non-state armed entity in Manipur today enjoys the kind of political protection, firepower, and strategic legroom that Arambai does. The logical conclusion of this story looks dystopian, but it can be changed if both Imphal and New Delhi show political will and moral integrity.

In Manipur today, the search for the “end game” is mired in the Rashomon effect—it really depends on whom you ask. But the growth of entities like Arambai shows one thing: that there is an organised endeavour to subvert the Kuki-Zo tribal claim over their ancestral land and affirmative rights using a lingering threat of force.

Angshuman Choudhury is Associate Fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

Singing in the dark: How artists from Manipur are reacting to the conflict

Despite economic hardships and threats, artists in Manipur are creating works to raise awareness, provide solace, and advocate for peace.

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 10 MINS READ

Angana Chakrabarti

There is grief at being displaced by the conflict in the song, “Igam hilou ham?” (Is it not our land?), performed by Kuki-Zo singers. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

All my life I’ve been waiting for,

I’ve been prayin’ for, for the people to say

That we don’t wanna fight no more

There’ll be no more wars and our children will play.

In March 2024, six singers from the Kuki-Zo community in Manipur released the cover of a song titled “One Day”. The music video interspersed footage of the singers—Chichin Haokip, Lawmkim Khongsai, Neijavah Kipgen, Tingminnei Kipgen, Phalnu Kipgen, and Vahneichoi Kipgen—singing atop a hill with moving visuals from relief camps and protests from the ongoing conflict in Manipur.

Just two days after the release of “One Day”, 20 children uprooted by the conflict recorded a song inside a relief camp in the Meitei-dominated Imphal West district. Reportedly, this was the first time that these children were singing into a microphone. The song goes:

Often visited in my dreams

My little hut by the hillside

Although burnt down to ashes

My cherished village by the hillside.

Also Read | Eyes wide shut: How the state turns away from Manipur’s realities

Created by the famous folk-rock band, Imphal Talkies, in collaboration with other musicians in an initiative called A Native Tongue Called Peace, the song, “Chingya-gee Khangpokshang” (Song from a Relief Camp), talks about the lost innocence of childhood. It was released on May 3 to mark a year of the ongoing violence in Manipur. “The artist should be the voice of the people in relief camps, who are sidelined,” said Akhu Chingangbam, frontman of Imphal Talkies.

Screengrab from the song, “Chingya-gee Khangpokshang” (Song from a Relief Camp). | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Unwittingly, the two songs, “One Day” and “Chingya-gee Khangpokshang”, seem to converse with each other from across the buffer zone between the two communities. This is exactly what artists from across Manipur are trying to provoke through their artworks, songs, interviews, and social media posts. While the majority of them are appealing for peace, artists from individual communities are also conveying ethnonationalist pride or highlighting the suffering and grievances of their people. And they have not been deterred in their endeavours by the economic challenges triggered by the conflict.

Undeterred by economic hardships

Manipur’s art and music scene was recovering well in 2023 after decades of insurgency-related strife and, more recently, the COVID-19 lockdown. Concerts, dance dramas, and art exhibitions were being planned with seasoned artists and musicians from across Manipur, India, and the world as well as with fresh talents. Then the conflict started, and a slew of festivals—including the ShiRock festival, the Northeast Autumn Festival, the Where Have All the Flowers Gone fest, and the Sangai Festival—were cancelled. Music and dancing during traditional festivals like Cheiraoba (a Meitei festival where people form circles and dance) were restricted. The predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo community also had a muted Christmas and Easter.

Traditional Manipuri dancer Babina Chabungbam at a performance of Embodied, which explored themes of death and suffering, at Little Stint Festival in Delhi. | Photo Credit: Monis Khan

“Whether there is a conflict or not, there are very few programmes with contemporary artists and dancers in Manipur as it is. Even those stopped for months at the start of the conflict, resuming slowly in October and November,” said Babina Chabungbam (31), a traditional Manipuri dancer.

For musicians like the Churachandpur-based Lalparzo Sanate, the conflict posed an insurmountable challenge. “I haven’t been able to perform since the conflict began. It has knocked down my income and affected my career,” said Sanate, who has recorded 300 songs in various languages in a career spanning 19 years. She added: “I had to go to Mizoram because of a heart ailment: I was too weak to bear the chaos.”

The Churachandpur-based photographer Lalchhanchhuaha (30) was also forced to move for jobs. “Because of the conflict, no projects were happening. But I had to pay my bills. So, I shifted to Aizawl; it wasn’t easy. And then I moved to Delhi, where I worked as a photo editor,” he said.

Akhu Chingangbam, frontman of Imphal Talkies, collaborates with children for the inititative titled A Native Tongue Called Peace. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

In December 2023, when a few photography assignments started coming his way, Lalchhanchhuaha returned to Churachandpur. “But things haven’t gone back to the way they were. I might have to move again,” he said. Akhu Chingangbam echoed his distress. “Some musicians are being forced to sell their instruments to support their families,” he said.

Art as solace

But despite the hardships, artists, musicians, and photographers are relentlessly documenting the conflict so that the larger world becomes aware of the dire situation in Manipur, and also to provide essential psychosocial support to the internally displaced people in the relief camps.

Nicky Chandam, a theatre practitioner from Manipur and creator of Octave Foundation, an organisation aimed at “connecting people through stories”, started an initiative centred on music and storytelling in the relief camps. “We [Octave Foundation] began working at relief camps from May 7, 2023, by crowdsourcing clothes for displaced people…. In the first nine months, we could provide around 8,745 people with basic requirements. In June/July, I started using music and theatre games [along with the folk music artist Khumanthem Nganthoi Leima] to connect with the children. It was a therapeutic process: most of the children had undergone a lot of trauma and I wanted to start a conversation through which they could feel that it was alright to smile,” she said.

Octave Foundation, founded by Nicky Chandam, is trying to creating a safe space for children at relief camps. | Photo Credit: Octave Foundation’s Facebook page

Later Chandam organised storytelling sessions combining visual arts for the children. This mental health initiative called Hope through Sharing, which concluded in January 2024, reached over 1,000 children living across 16 relief camps in the valley (the Meiteis dominate the valley, while tribal groups including the Kuki-Zos live in the surrounding hill areas). “The response has been good. This initiative came as a relief not just for the children but also for the adults,” Chandam said. Octave Foundation conducts various livelihood projects, mainly for women living in the relief camps. Other initiatives like Resilient Roots and Healing Hearts, founded by the singer-songwriter Chaoba Thiyam, are similarly aimed at healing young adults and children displaced by the conflict through music.

Also Read | Editor’s Note: The deafening silence on Manipur

The photographer Jehovah Mangkhankhual, aka Jehos Dymz (28), from Churachandpur, usually covered wedding and birthday celebrations. The conflict took him to the front lines and relief camps. In August 2023, Mangkhankhual put up a video titled “100 days of unabated Meitei atrocity”, on a rally held in Churachandpur to mark 100 days of the conflict. “My people have been subjugated by the majority, and the current government is complicit in this. I am trying to bring the unheard cries of our people to the world so that everybody can hear,” Mangkhankhual told Frontline.

Recently, a photo essay published in a news website featured Mangkhankhual’s images of special polling stations in Churachandpur, which had been set up for “specified” voters from the relief camps, during the first phase of the general election. “I felt overwhelmed on seeing the dead and the injured at the front lines. Visits to relief camps were equally distressing because I could see how people were suffering,” he said.

Babina Chabungbam expressed this anguish through the medium of dance at a recent performance in Delhi. “I performed a piece called Embodied, which examines what it means to embody pain and what dancing means to a body faced with death, loss, and fear,” she said.

Highlights

- In March and May 2024, artists from Manipur, including singers from the Kuki-Zo community and the band Imphal Talkies, released powerful songs calling for peace amidst ongoing conflict, capturing the hope and pain of their communities.

- Despite economic hardships and displacement, musicians, dancers, and photographers continue to create and share their work, using art as a form of documentation, therapy, and resistance against the violence in their State.

- While facing threats and limited freedom of expression, these artists remain committed to their cause, urging the government to act decisively to bring peace and reconciliation to Manipur.

Art as a site of conflict

Expectedly, in this situation, art has become a site of conflict too. In July 2023, an FIR was lodged against the popular Meitei singer Jayenta Loukrakpam, who goes by the stage name Tapta, for his song which said: “Meiteis will never have peace until every Kuki is killed.” In the face of the controversy, he was quoted as saying: “Where have I written this song from? I am writing it from a war zone. This is not a song written during a state of peace. What will be the lyrics be?”

Screengrab from the video of “Lingjel khaba Meiteini” (Meiteis are tough when united), by several Meitei artists and musicians. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Then there was the song “Lingjel khaba Meiteini” (Meiteis are tough when united), by several Meitei artists and musicians, produced as “a tribute to all front-line warriors & Meira Paibis of Manipur who sacrificed their lives for our ancestral land”. Having premiered on YouTube in September 2023, the music video has garnered more than 1.6 million views. It goes:

Shameless scrounger, Meitei are valiant

Let the light of knowledge be the rope of togetherness

The moment comes to root out these parasites

Arise your compatriots, you never spared your foes

We could upheaval the whole creations [sic]

Also Read | Arambai Tenggol: How a Meitei ‘sociocultural organisation’ became an armed-to-the-teeth militia

In contrast to the polarisation evident in this song, there is grief at being displaced by the conflict in a song like “Igam hilou ham?” (Is it not our land?), performed by a Kuki-Zo ensemble. Sanate, one of the singers, said: “The first two lines of the song say, ‘Isn’t this our land where we stay, where we have our home? Why are these [Meitei] people trying to put us away, like refugees? Is your feeling not hurt, being put away like this?’ The song seeks to unite different tribes of Manipur. The artists of our community are working hard to let peace prevail.”

Threatened but not defeated

Artists have faced threats because of their efforts. In December 2023, Akhu Chingangbam was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen and later released, 20 kilometres from his home. “When I started my career in Delhi, I faced a lot of attacks online. In Manipur at present, it is difficult to express what I think. Everyone is reluctant or scared to speak. Even if you express your opinion through music, you have to be careful because you don’t know what the consequences will be,” he said. Chandam also expressed discontent, saying: “Where is my freedom? I can work in relief camps, but beyond that, if I talk about anything difficult, I will be scrutinised.”

James Riamei, frontman of the rock band, GMP. | Photo Credit: Instagram

James Riamei, 37, a Rongmei Naga who leads the rock band GMP, said: “Every community claims to be righteous. The habit of ethical reasoning has faded. Once-flourishing Manipur is now in a state of distress.” In April 2024, GMP released a song called “Gaga city”, which speaks about the anxieties and uncertainties that the future might bring if the crisis is not ended at the earliest. But he is hopeful. “The intense hatred seems to be calming down, bit by bit. More and more people are expressing harmony,” he said.

However, artists are also sceptical of the difference they can make if the government does not work towards resolving the crisis. For instance, the singers of “One Day” said: “Artists and musicians can be the harbingers of societal peace and harmony. However, if the people who have the actual power to change the course of events choose to remain silent and indecisive, what can artists do? They can only express their desires and dreams. It is only the government that can bring about peace and reconciliation now.”

Angana Chakrabarti is a Guwahati-based independent multimedia journalist. She primarily covers the north-eastern region.

From the Sidelines

- 400? 272? 210?

400? 272? 210?

Three scenarios for Lok Sabha election 2024, depending on how many seats the BJP wins, and its impact on government formation and party leadership.

Published : May 25, 2024 17:36 IST - 7 MINS READ

Saba NaqviSaba Naqvi is a Delhi based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.

Arun Vernekar from Karwar in Karnataka accidentally cut his finger while trying to collect blood to offer Goddess Kali. Here, he is praying for a third term for Modi.  | Photo Credit: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

On June 4, we will know whether Narendra Modi will win a third term as Prime Minister or not. His party gets a simple majority in the Lok Sabha if the BJP wins 272 of the 543 seats. As we wait with bated breath for the results, instead of engaging with the inevitably frenetic number-crunching of probable losses or gains in each State, this column examines what could happen in the event of different outcomes, ranging from 310 to 210 seats, for the BJP.

Scenario 1: 272 to 310 seats for the BJP. Some pollsters have been suggesting that the BJP could repeat its 2019 result and get 303 seats. Should the BJP even drop 30 seats and make it to the bare minimum simple majority, it would still be a comfortable win. Modi will pose and make speeches about, well, Modi and how he will take India to great heights. The loyal broadcast media will applaud and amplify the moment and gloss over the losses.

It is possible that this could be achieved even if the vote share drops in the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system. In 2014, a single party won a simple majority in Parliament after three decades: the BJP got 282 seats with 31 per cent of the vote share. The Modi-powered BJP actually registered only a 12 per cent increase in vote share from the 2009 Lok Sabha election (18.8 per cent).

That is the FPTP conundrum. The BJP under Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah has a good grip on the organisational and technical aspects of the election, on the need to cross a certain threshold, and on how to keep the opposition divided. It did very well on this front in 2014 when a party like the Bahujan Samaj Party, led by Mayawati, got 20 per cent of the vote share in Uttar Pradesh but zero seats. The BJP’s domination continued in 2019 when it got 37.36 per cent of the national vote share and 303 seats.

Originally, the pitch for the 2024 election was that the BJP would cross 400 seats, but that has been toned down somewhat and in the last lap the talk is of 300-plus seats. The consequences for the country in Scenario 1 are that the tilt towards authoritarianism will not be checked. Given the rhetoric of the campaign, we must also presume that hostility towards minorities could escalate.

The opposition parties, whom the BJP treats as enemies with incarcerations and fund seizures, will again be in for a rough ride. The AAP and Arvind Kejriwal are special targets, but we must presume that leaders of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, the Congress, the Trinamool Congress, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal could all face further action by state agencies. It will all be calibrated on the basis of the BJP’s ambitions/blueprints in specific States.

Also Read | Is 2024 really a done deal for Modi and BJP?

There are questions about the BJP’s inner dynamics as well. Should Modi look omnipotent, then certainly the position of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will become intriguing, given that he is an outlier in the cult of obedient State leaders in the Modi-era BJP. If Uttar Pradesh sees a dip in the number of seats for the BJP but Modi still manages a majority, then Adityanath will likely be blamed for the losses. Should the BJP sweep the State, then it would place Modi comfortably in the chair and again Adityanath could be dispensed with. The best case scenario for the Uttar Pradesh leader is a precarious majority that would discourage the national BJP leadership from rocking the boat.

Scenario 2: The BJP gets between 240 and 260 seats, but with its National Democratic Alliance allies, it makes the halfway mark. If even the NDA falls short, Modi’s managers are likely to work on parties that have cases against them, such as those in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and that sit on the fence, as in Odisha. The BJP would begin “Operation Lotus” across the country as it has done several times in the past five years and broken other parties.

The government that comes to power in Scenario 2 would be less dictatorial if Modi does not have numbers on his own. It would be a psychologically interesting process to see Modi at the mercy of others who have their own politics: imagine a Nitish Kumar or an Eknath Shinde with a few MPs calling the shots. Would it work and if so for how long?

Highlights

- Should the BJP even drop 30 seats and make it to the bare minimum simple majority, it would still be a comfortable win.

- If even the NDA falls short, Modi’s managers are likely to work on parties that have cases against them, such as those in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and that sit on the fence, as in Odisha.

- If the BJP wins 210 to 230 seats and is still the single largest party, there is a probability that it will be invited to form a coalition government.

Even to reduce the BJP to this figure would imply that there is a certain coalition of the poor that has been forged against the blatant cronyism of the Modi regime. It would be hard for a personality such as Modi to accept that he has lost any ground, but he is also a ruthless politician and would, along with Amit Shah, use every method to remain in office and protect his backers such as Adani Group.

The final tally in each State would need to be carefully examined to see the implications for crucial State elections, such as in Maharashtra and Haryana in October this year and in Bihar in 2025. People’s protests could also erupt over issues such as reservation, minimum support price, the Agniveer scheme, privatisation of healthcare and education, and more.

Scenario 3: What if the BJP wins 210 to 230 seats and is still the single largest party? There is a probability that it will be invited to form a coalition government. The first coalition in India’s history to complete its term was led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee from 1999 to 2004, and in that era the BJP had just 182 seats.

But Modi is singularly incapable of the give-and-take that Vajpayee managed in those years. The RSS has had to watch Modi implement its ideological agenda even as he has pushed it to the sidelines, bringing in several corruption-accused members from other parties. This writer saw the lack of enthusiasm among RSS cadre while travelling in Fatehpur Sikri, Aligarh, and Meerut, seats in Uttar Pradesh that the BJP won by large margins in 2019.

Also Read | Modi ramps up rhetoric in Hindi heartland as BJP struggles to regain its sparkle

Scenario 3 also sees the possibility of the RSS again getting the upper hand and forcing a change of leadership. The name of Nitin Gadkari is most frequently mentioned in such a situation, but there is also Rajnath Singh, and both have been RSS-selected BJP presidents in the past. Big capitalists based in Maharashtra would play a role in such a situation ,and if it takes off, the possibility of some INDIA bloc members choosing a non-Modi-led BJP front over a Congress-led front cannot be ruled out. We must also not forget that the Prime Minister in the course of his campaign suddenly attacked Ambani and Adani.

If Modi is actually pushed out of the picture, then anything can happen in coalition formation. The possibility of the Congress leading an alternative government involves first the BJP losing a chunk of seats and the Congress ideally adding 50 seats and going from 52 to somewhere around 100. Stable coalitions have involved national parties at the Centre, first led by the BJP under Vajpayee and then the Congress for two terms from 2004 to 2014 under Manmohan Singh. In 2004, the Congress got 145 seats, just 7 more than the 138 the BJP recorded. Vajpayee accepted the mandate. The Modi-Shah duo run a different operation, and it has been “my way or the highway” so far. Will numbers force them to change or vacate power or will they sail through and still manage a simple majority?

The most perplexing thing about coalitions is that until the exact numbers come, one cannot predict a formula. It is with the numbers that the hard bargaining begins.

Saba Naqvi is a Delhi based journalist and author of four books who writes on politics and identity issues.

Election 2024

- As jobs and development take centre stage, caste loyalties trump communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh

As jobs and development take centre stage, caste loyalties trump communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh

This could give more seats to Congress-SP opposition but is unlikely to demolish the dominance of the BJP alliance in the heartland State.

Published : May 28, 2024 14:29 IST - 17 MINS READ

Smita Gupta

BJP supporters leave a rally addressed by Narendra Modi, in Allahabad on May 21. | Photo Credit: RITESH SHUKLA/Getty Images

As I travelled through Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous State, touching 16 of its 80 parliamentary constituencies, spanning the distance from Muzaffarnagar in the west to Mau in the east, what was immediately apparent was an absence of billboards, bunting, or even party flags, part of the landscape of any election.

There was no sign of a wave, much less the excited anticipation that should precede a change of government—or an endorsement of the previous dispensation.

“Voter chup hain [the voter is silent)]” was the refrain everywhere.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decade in power has been marked by demonetisation (2016), the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax Act (2017), the COVID pandemic (2020-23), and two farmers’ agitations (2020-21 and 2024), a result of the crisis in the sector—in Uttar Pradesh, 59.3 per cent of the population is engaged in agriculture. Together, these have not just destroyed jobs but also the hope of a better life. The promised “Modi ki guarantee”, even the BJP’s top brass has realised, is not resonating with the people as much as it should. There is a change in the tone, tenor, and content of their speeches, from a listing of the government’s achievements to harangues dominated by divisive issues.

Also Read | How the BJP is failing the OBC test

The gleaming expressways, emblems of the “Shining India” that Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s generation of the BJP had dreamt up, have grown, linking the furthest corners of Uttar Pradesh. But a vast majority of the villages still do not have decent roads: in many cases, they cannot even boast of a kharanja (brick pathway) or drains.

The labharthi (beneficiary)—a class of people created by the BJP to be the recipient of free rations, the Kisan Samman Nidhi, free homes, toilets, gas connections, and water at the doorstep—is no longer as grateful. Corruption and poor administration at the local level is at an all-time high. Take the free rations: in many cases, the recipients get less than they should, with the kotedar siphoning off as much as 2 kg out of the promised 5 kg a person; toilets depend not just on the availability of materials to build them but the munificence of the village pradhan; as for water at the doorstep, pipes have been laid but nothing gushes through them yet in many cases even though several months have rolled by. The gas cylinders came free, but the cost of refilling them is prohibitive.

Jobs, inflation: the real issues

In Jaraud, a large and prosperous village in Muzaffarnagar, set amidst sugarcane fields, Madan Pal, a wealthy Jat farmer tells me he spent Rs.1 lakh to buy a new transformer to drive the tube wells, as the old one had been lying unrepaired for several months, thanks to an indifferent administration. “I know they won’t repay me,” Pal says, “but without the transformer, what would have happened to our crop?”

In a sleepy village in Lalganj, a retired Brahmin jawan points to a pipe peeping out through a mound of mud in front of his home: “It is more than six months since the government laid that pipe but there is no water yet.” In Johrasharqi, a village in Rae Bareli, a Vishwakarma couple say that the pradhan favours only privileged castes and so they are yet to get a toilet. As for police stations, Bharat Singh, a young Rajput in Indara village in Mau, says: “Go to a police station as an ‘unknown’”—he uses the English word “unknown” to denote a lack of connections—and “koi sunwai nahin hogi [no one will give you a hearing]”.

In 2022, the last Assembly election, I heard very few people say that they would prefer jobs to free rations. This time, I hear it in every village I visit: the older members want their children to be employed fruitfully; the young, simply, aspire to a better life. Most people would prefer a government job, but they are also aware that these are scarce and want to know why the government cannot help create more jobs in the private sector.

“What prevents the government from giving incentives to the MSMEs [micro, small, and medium Enterprises] to open units in the rural areas or in cities close to the villages?” a young government schoolteacher in Sitapur asks, adding, “People here would be able to commute to work and return to their villages in the evening. They would be close to their families; they would save the money they spend on renting a room in the city.”

Indeed, as more people get educated, the lack of commensurate employment opportunities, compounded by rising prices, is creating a social crisis. Many educated young men, frustrated at a lack of prospects, spend their time getting drunk or, worse, joining the rank and file of militias run by local strongmen. Some help on the family land or take up menial tasks; some leave their homes for distant destinations like Nashik, Surat, Bengaluru, or Mumbai in search of more substantial employment. Many live in appalling conditions in those cities, but they all send home money.

And it is not just the men who want jobs; Manju, a young married woman who lives in Ramnagar, a village in Jaunpur, and has passed her Intermediate examinations, asks me: “Is my life going to be limited to looking after the kids, cooking, and helping on the farm?” What would she do, if she had an option? “I have been to a tailoring school, so if there was a tailoring unit here, I could work there and contribute to the family,” she answers.

In Johrasharqi, an 18-year-old Yadav boy, whose parents could not afford to educate him beyond class IX, has returned from Surat to cast his vote. He has been working in a dyeing unit in that city for a year, thanks to his brother-in-law being the supervisor there. In Varanasi, Modi’s constituency, famous for its silk saris—part of every north Indian bride’s trousseau—and carpets, some of the traders and weavers, especially among Muslims, have begun to shift base to Benguluru and Surat.

The Union government’s Agnipath scheme comes in for universal criticism, especially from those usually described as the martial castes, such as Jats and Rajputs. “It lasts only for four years and there is no guarantee of a job after that. What will happen then?” asks a Jat farmer in Jarauda, adding, “Many young men, trained in the use of arms, will be disgorged into society—with no hope of a decent job; they will all become goondas.” Dayanand Dubey, a retired jawan who lives near Phaphamau, on the outskirts of Prayagraj, and who saw action in Kargil, also criticises the scheme.

At Fatehpur in Aligarh district, Kapil Baliyan, who is idling in a friend’s grocery shop, is also against the scheme. “My forefathers were all in the army, but now I can’t get in. This Agnipath is useless. I am thinking of voting NOTA,” he says. He is 18, has just passed his Class XII examination but is forced to work at the family-owned eatery, “Chowdhury Hotel”, that stands at the entrance to the village. His brothers Yogesh and Sonu are “Inter-pass”: one minds the buffaloes and other animals on their farm; the other the crops.

For every villager content with government handouts, there is another who says that they would be happier if the government took measures to create jobs and stopped handing out rations. Many even say that they did not like being called labharthis; it hurts their pride.

The sceptical villager

Among Dalits and sections of the lower OBCs, there is fear that if the BJP really gets 400-plus seats, a number on which the party’s leadership has set its sights, then it will amend the Constitution and end reservation. Indeed, the word has spread so far that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat was forced recently to say that the RSS had always supported reservation as guaranteed and sanctioned under the Constitution. Union Home Minister Amit Shah, addressing a press conference on April 30 in Guwahati, was also compelled to say: “I want to make one thing clear: BJP supports reservation for SCs, STs, and OBCs and will always play its role as its protector.”

At an election rally attended by Narendra Modi in Prayagraj on May 21. | Photo Credit: NIHARIKA KULKARNI/AFP

Given that all these issues figure in the INDIA bloc’s campaign, the opposition clearly has had some success in making them into talking points at the village level, acknowledges Anupam Mishra, editor of Prayagraj Times, in Allahabad.

And yet, despite the litany of complaints, there is a belief that it is difficult to oust the BJP, and it is not only because people have little faith in the opposition putting up an effective fight against the BJP. Across Uttar Pradesh—and without any question from this reporter—a subject that came up constantly was that of “button ki jeet”, scepticism about the reliability of EVMs: “Jab tak EVM machines hain, tab tak Modi hain. Ballot paper vapas lao [As long as there are EVM machines, Modi will return to power. Bring back the ballot paper]”; that was a near universal refrain. (Even as I write this, news comes from Lakhimpur Kheri, whose residents cast their votes in the third round, that voters here have alleged rigging during the election, claiming that despite pressing the cycle [Samajwadi Party (SP) symbol] button, the EVM showed a lotus [BJP symbol]. People accused the presiding officer, Prashant Kumar, of tampering with the voting process.)

Interestingly, this lack of trust in the sanctity of the voting process came from across the caste spectrum and the gender and age divide, and this is even though the Supreme Court has upheld the present system. Asked why they had not taken to the streets if they felt so strongly, the answer was always the same: “And risk being thrown into jail?” There is a clear belief that the era of peaceful protests is over.

This, however, has not stopped Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s caste fellows, the Rajputs, traditional BJP supporters, from staging a series of well-attended caste panchayats in western Uttar Pradesh in Saharanpur, Ghaziabad (Dhalauna), Meerut (Sardhana), and Aligarh (Umari) and denouncing the party for fielding only one Thakur candidate in the region, in Moradabad.

Rajput anger

They were hoping to see their caste fellows named in Ghaziabad, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Meerut, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Kairana, and Bijnor. As the third largest community in western Uttar Pradesh after Jatavs (an SC community that owes allegiance to Bahujan Samaj Party [BSP] leader Mayawati) and Muslims, their anger could adversely affect election results for the BJP in this part of the State.

In their speeches, community leaders denounced the party’s top brass for not selecting enough Rajput candidates and urged their caste fellows not to vote the BJP. This sense of “neglect” had other triggers too: Parshottam Rupala, Union Agriculture Minister, had said in a public speech that the Rajputs had a roti-beti relationship with the British (breaking bread and entering into marital relations), and former Union Minister Mahesh Sharma had, according to them, openly supported “history distortion” by opening a museum dedicated to Samrat Mihir Bhoj and describing him as belonging to the Gujjar community. (According to Rajputs, all kings are Rajputs.)

What is interesting is that while Modi, Amit Shah, and even Adityanath visited the area to calm down the agitating Rajputs, none of it worked. The Election Commission, too, took no notice of these caste gatherings forbidden during the election period.

The word in the villages, at mofussil tea shops and district courts is that Modi and Shah have plans to replace Adityanath with an OBC Chief Minister after the election. Many Rajputs explained to me that the community therefore wishes to keep the numbers down so that Modi will not be able to make any change and will have to depend on Adityanath for a while longer.

Highlights

- Prime Minister Modi’s decade in power has been marked by demonetisation and the GST Act, which destroyed jobs and the hope of a better life. The promised “Modi ki guarantee” is not resonating with the people in the election.

- Rajputs, traditional BJP supporters, are angry with the party for fielding only one Thakur candidate. The community fears its power is diminishing because of the BJP wooing the OBCs. The Brahmins also fear that the backward castes will gradually dominate State politics.

- Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra has made a positive impact, but the party leadership has failed to present a united opposition front. In a situation where anti-Muslim sentiments are rampant, the Muslim community prefers the SP-Congress candidate.

Caste, therefore, has made a comeback, with the Rajput community up in arms, both because it fears that its power in the community is diminishing, thanks to the BJP leadership’s steady wooing of the OBCs, witnessed this time in the party’s allies, as well as statements made by senior BJP leaders that it finds offensive.

The Brahmins, too, while well represented in government, fear that the backward castes, whom Modi and the BJP have been espousing, will gradually dominate State politics: whether this will translate into a shrinking of votes for the party was, however, not clear.

The question, therefore, is, given the list of complaints against the government, and the growing disquiet among the privileged castes, will the BJP’s numbers shrink? Especially as there is no overt Hindu-Muslim tension in Uttar Pradesh, and it is caste, seemingly, that has the upper hand.

Let us look at the last election to answer that. In 2019, the BJP, in an alliance with the Apna Dal-Soneylal, or AD(S), secured 49.98 per cent of the votes and won 62 seats, while the AD(S) with 1.21 per cent, managed 2. The SP fought in alliance with the BSP and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), and the Mahagathbandhan won 15 seats; the BSP managed 10 (19.43 per cent vote share), the SP 5 (18.11 per cent), and the RLD none (1.69 per cent). The Congress, with 6.36 per cent of the votes, won just one seat.

This time, the BJP’s allies include not just the AD(S), but also the RLD, the Suheldev Bharatiya Samaj Party, and the NISHAD (Nirbal Indian Shoshit Hamara Aam Dal) Party, representing a range of OBCs. So it begins with a broader base. The SP and the Congress have joined hands, while the BSP is contesting on its own, which means it is a much weaker configuration than the opposition alliance of 2019.

People were quick to list their complaints against the BJP, but did that mean the party and its allies would lose many seats? Their cryptic reply was: “There is no real opposition, it is very weak.” The Yadav-dominated SP still suffers from an image problem: the non-Yadavs have successfully demonised it as a party of hoodlums. The SP has sought to compensate for this and for its lost allies by making fewer of its core supporters—Yadavs and Muslims—candidates and reserving the biggest chunk of nominations for the other OBCs and SCs.

Also Read | Dalits rally behind Mayawati in Uttar Pradesh, but will she garner Muslim votes?

The BSP, thanks to the fear about proposed changes to the Constitution, may get more votes this time, but it is contesting alone. Party sources say it is being “blackmailed” by the BJP: in Jaunpur, when the BSP fielded local Robin Hood Dhananjay Singh’s wife, people told this correspondent that she was sure to win for two reasons: one, Dhananjay was very popular, and there was anger that he had been jailed (he has been released since), and two, since the BJP candidate, Kripa Shankar Singh—though originally from Jaunpur—had spent his entire political career until recently in the Congress in Maharashtra, people did not regard him with favour. The BJP has since “compelled” the BSP to change its candidate, and Kripa Shankar Singh is now seen as the front runner. A similar story has emerged from the Basti parliamentary constituency.

Failure to project a united opposition

As for the Congress, Rahul Gandhi’s Nyay Yatra that passed through the State recently made a positive impact. The party’s manifesto is being echoed in villages, and the fact that Rahul is contesting from Rae Bareli are all seen as pluses. But the party leadership has failed to lead from the front and present a united opposition front countrywide.

If these factors point to the difficulties faced by the opposition, another is the state of Hindu-Muslim relations. In western Uttar Pradesh, the fires of the Muzaffarnagar riots may have died out, and people may not be very excited at the consecration of the Ram temple. As you move eastwards, the temple gets more traction but not necessarily universal traction among all Hindus. But one question elicits an answer that tells you that anti-Muslim sentiments are well and truly embedded. Among non-Muslims, across caste lines, there is widespread approbation for Adityanath’s bulldozer politics, which is shorthand for the custodial deaths of Atiq Ahmed and Mukthar Ansari, the two dons of eastern Uttar Pradesh, and the bulldozing of Muslim homes.

Forget the villages, even at the Allahabad High Court, and later at the Azamgarh district court, privileged-caste lawyers are gleeful about the use of bulldozers to “teach the Muslims a lesson, to show them their place”. When I point out that surely as people who believe in the rule of law, they cannot approve of it, they say: “Cases keep piling up in court. They take years to dispose of. This was the only way to show Muslims their place.” Indeed, the construction of the Ram temple gets less traction than bulldozer politics.

In Varanasi, meanwhile, Hindu idols have suddenly found their way into a cellar at the Gyanvapi Mosque, where once logs of wood were stored. People here are awaiting its demolition. A lawyer at the Allahabad High Court tells me: “The Babri Masjid was pulled down by the people. The Gyanvapi Mosque will be pulled down through a court order.” When I tell him that there is a law that says that barring the Babri Masjid/Ram temple, all other places of worship are to remain the way they were in 1947, he shrugs his shoulders. “Who cares about that?”

Indeed, the Varanasi Commissioner, Kaushal Raj Sharma, an IAS officer, along with his young son, have attended prayers in the cellar, giving an “official” stamp of approval to something that is patently unlawful but now has the sanction of the courts.

Akhilesh Yadav, Samajwadi Party president, and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi at a campaign rally in Phulpur on May 19. | Photo Credit: PTI

Indeed, if there is one community that has the greatest stakes in this election, it is the Muslim community—for them, it is a do-or-die situation. Across the State, their first preference is the SP-Congress; in places where the BSP candidate is stronger, they may vote for the party.

So, what are the Muslims doing? The Mufti of Banaras, Abdul Bateen, says that the word to the community is to keep their heads down and vote intelligently. In the well-known Shibli College in Azamgarh, the Principal, Dr Afsar Ali, tells me that 65 per cent of his students are girls and that many of the boys—after completing their degree—are opting for professional courses, such as in management, rather than doing their MA: “When the BJP came to power in 2014, young Muslims were terrified and indecisive about what to do. After a few years of indecision, they are now studying in increased numbers.”

When he says that, I recall what Neeraj Sharma, a Brahmin in Muzaffarnagar’s Jaraud, told me while summing up the election this time: “In the last couple of elections, we voted as Hindus; now that communal frenzy has died down and caste is the most important factor. My community, originally with the Congress, shifted to the BJP, but this time their votes will be split between the BJP and the gathbandhan [Congress-SP] candidate.”

Then he laments, “Once upon a time, Muslims were kattar [hardliners]. Yesterday, I was looking at the UPSC results and saw that many Muslims have got into the civil service. Now, Hindus have become hardliners, like Muslims of the past. If farming collapses, and the government does not create jobs, what will happen to our children?”

Smita Gupta, a former Reuters Fellow, is a prize-winning journalist who writes on politics, Parliament, and identity issues.

ELECTION 2024

- BJP faces uphill battle in Himachal Pradesh as local issues eclipse national sentiments

- Contrarian Punjab may throw up a surprise again

- Can Trinamool’s welfare schemes counter Sandeshkhali scandal impact in West Bengal?

- The Kunbi twist in Maharashtra could hurt the BJP

BJP faces uphill battle in Himachal Pradesh as local issues eclipse national sentiments

Issues such as flood relief, Agnipath scheme, and challenges faced by apple growers make BJP’s prospects of repeating its 2019 sweep appear bleak.

Published : May 25, 2024 19:57 IST - 8 MINS READ

T.K. Rajalakshmi

An elderly voter casts his vote through the postal ballot under the “voting from home” facility in Mandi on May 22. | Photo Credit: RAJIV GUPTA/ANI

The BJP does not appear poised to repeat its 2019 performance in Himachal Pradesh, where it had mopped up all four parliamentary seats of Hamirpur, Kangra, Mandi, and Shimla. That victory came on the back of the Pulwama terror attack and the Balakot strikes that followed. This time, issues that touch lives and livelihoods are more likely to matter in a State with remarkable levels of literacy and general awareness.

All four constituencies will vote in the last phase on June 1. It is practically a bipolar contest between the Congress and the BJP, although the Bahujan Samaj Party is contesting all four seats.

The BJP is trying to rake up emotive issues such as the Ram temple, alleged minority appeasement by the Congress, and the abrogation of Article 370. The sense one got after talking to a cross section of voters is that it could be a fifty-fifty result, with Shimla and Mandi going to the Congress. The BJP government at the Centre was perceived as not doing enough in terms of flood relief and financial support. Besides, the Centre declined to declare the disaster a national calamity.

On the other hand, Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu’s Congress government won appreciation, especially for its rehabilitation measures following the 2023 floods that claimed 700 lives and for the implementation of the Old Pension Scheme.

The Lok Sabha election activity appears subdued, but there is unease over the perceived attempts to topple the State government and over the arrest of two Chief Ministers in the country ahead of the election. In Ghanahati, rural Shimla, the shopkeeper Leeladutt says the candidates are “barabar” (of equal strength) but adds that the BJP should not have given the party ticket to Congress rebels. “People don’t like these things in Himachal, toppling governments and the like,” he said.

Also Read | The murky political goings-on in Himachal Pradesh

Byelections to six Assembly seats—Lahaul and Spiti, Dharamsala, Sujanpur, Barsar, Gagret, and Kutlehar—are also scheduled on June 1. The Congress legislators in these six seats were disqualified for defying the party whip during a vote on a cut motion on the Budget. In February, their cross-voting resulted in the defeat of the Congress nominee in the election to the Rajya Sabha. The six are now contesting as BJP candidates from the same seats. They may find the going tough.

Online retail poses a challenge to shopkeepers like Leeladutt, many of whom are yet to recover from losses incurred during the pandemic. Suresh Sharma, another shopkeeper, rued that the “market was finished”, disposable incomes had dwindled, and spending was down.

The Agnipath factor

The Agnipath scheme for recruitment of jawans into the armed forces is a burning election issue in lower or New Himachal (Kullu, Lahaul and Spiti, Kangra, Hamirpur, and Una districts) with its high levels of migration for work. The Congress manifesto has promised to scrap the scheme if it comes to power. Kangra (where the BJP won by a record margin in 2019) and Hamirpur are home to a large number of people serving in the Army. If this helped the BJP in 2019, this time it may work against it.

Another burning issue in New Himachal is displacement and compensation, as Joginder Walia, convenor of the Bhumi Adhigrahan Prabhavit Manch, explained. Walia, who is based in Mandi district, said that in last year’s unprecedented rainfall Mandi and Kullu districts suffered the most damage. “The Beas got flooded with silt, and the gates of the dam had to be opened. There is resentment that the Centre did not help the State as much as it did in Uttarakhand after the Joshimath disaster,” he said.

He claimed that people were not compensated either for land acquired for an airport and for constructing four-lane roads. “There is resentment on this front as well,” Walia said.

He explained why the BJP’s plan to mobilise voters on the issue of Sanatana Dharma would not work: “Here, every village has its own deity, and people consider that to be most important. It is not easy to rake up communal passions in Himachal. We don’t have a significant minority population either.”

Artists perform during a Congress rally in Shimla on May 13. | Photo Credit: PTI

The reserved seat of Shimla will see a tight contest, according to the Atwal brothers Gaurav and Saurav, who are Dalit Sikh migrants from Hoshiarpur in Punjab and run a tea kiosk near the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. But the Congress candidate is likely to win because of the good work done by Raja Saheb (as the six-time Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh is called), they said. Their father, Ramkaran Atwal, a Class IV government employee, is worried about how everything from health to education is getting privatised. “Government jobs have been converted to contract jobs. It is not a good situation at all. Both parties are responsible for the state of affairs. Privatisation should stop,” he said.

Anger in the apple orchards

Such worries apart, the State’s apple growers are a disenchanted lot. Around 2.45 lakh families (some 10 lakh people) involved in apple farming have been affected by the decline in production and productivity. Sanjay Chauhan, former Mayor of Shimla, and himself an apple grower and State convenor of the Seb Utpadak Sangh (Apple Growers’ Association), recalled that in 2014 Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to double import duties on apples, but his government lowered them instead. This hit growers hard at a time when input costs had risen steeply and climate change imhad pacted productivity.

Among other grouses is the drastic decline in the funding for research and development in horticulture. The block-level extension offices of the horticulture department are not adequately staffed. “If I have any problem in my apple orchard, there is no one to guide me. All research is being done by private fungicide and fertilizer manufacturers. Their only objective is to sell their products. We got highly subsidised fertilizer earlier from the extension centres. Not any more,” Chauhan said. He believes the issue is bound to resonate in both Mandi and Shimla.

Chauhan is also critical of what he sees as the Central government’s cavalier approach to the Market Intervention Scheme for cash crops. The State and Centre were to share the losses in equal proportion, but the Centre, he said, “finished off” the scheme in 2023-24 by drastically reducing the budget for it from Rs.1,500 crore in 2022-23 to Rs.1 lakh.

Government employees are expected to play a crucial role in the election. “If the Congress feels it won [the Assembly election] because of its abilities, it is mistaken. Employees played a big role,” said a government employee, requesting anonymity.

Highlights

- Local issues like flood relief issues, Agnipath scheme, and apple growers’ challenges are overshadowing the BJP’s nationalistic campaign themes in Himachal Pradesh.

- The Lok Sabha election is primarily a bipolar contest between the BJP and Congress, with voter dissatisfaction potentially favoring the Congress in key constituencies.

- The BJP’s prospects of repeating its 2019 clean sweep appear bleak due to perceived inadequate disaster response and economic concerns among the electorate.

BJP banking on Modi

The BJP seems to be banking entirely on Narendra Modi in this election. “People may not like the BJP candidate but feel that India needs Modi. The issues on which people vote in the Vidhan Sabha and Lok Sabha are different,” said Karan Nanda, the BJP’s chief media coordinator, in a conversation at the BJP office in Shimla. “There is a leftist design in the Congress manifesto. We are going to raise all those issues. The most effective issues for us are Ram Mandir, attacks on Sanatana Dharma, and the abrogation of Article 370,” he said. He claimed that none of the INDIA bloc leaders were campaigning outside their States. The BJP has a well-oiled organisational structure down to the booth level, he said. “We have WhatsApp pramukhs [incharge], Mann ki Baat pramukhs, women and youth pramukhs, and panna pramukhs. But the opposition does not have karyakartas [party workers] on the ground.”

There was, however, no evidence of a Modi wave among the people. But the people that Frontline spoke to thought that the last few rounds of campaigning might make all the difference. That the opposition does not have a prime ministerial face does not seem to be an important issue here, but the Congress’ lack of organisational strength is of concern. Still, parties of the INDIA bloc are campaigning jointly and drawing decent crowds.

Also Read | ‘I don’t get rattled easily’: Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu

The BJP has renominated two of its sitting MPs, Anurag Thakur in Hamirpur and Suresh Kashyap in Shimla, and fielded two newcomers in Kangra and Mandi. The Kangra nominee is Rajesh Bharadwaj, who is known for his proximity to former Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal. Its candidate in Mandi is the actor Kangana Ranaut.

Incidentally, the Congress won back Mandi in 2021 in a byelection necessitated by the demise of BJP MP Ram Swaroop Sharma. Pratibha Singh, wife of Virbhadra Singh, won it for the party. Her son and State PWD Minister Vikramaditya Singh is the nominee in this election.

In Kangra, the Congress has fielded former Rajya Sabha MP Anand Sharma. Sitting MLA Vinod Sultanpuri is contesting in Shimla and former MLA Satpal Raizada in Hamirpur. The hill State seems evenly poised at this point.

Contrarian Punjab may throw up a surprise again

The border State, where agrarian and drug crises are major issues, has always baffled pollsters by bucking national trends.

Published : May 27, 2024 18:14 IST - 8 MINS READ

Gautam Dheer

Dharamvir Gandhi, the Congress candidate in Patiala, with supporters during a roadshow on May 18. | Photo Credit: HARMEET SODHI/ANI

Punjab has often resisted popular mainstream trends and manifested a rather contrarian streak when it comes to electoral politics. This is one border State that the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi found difficult to make inroads into even when the voter euphoria for Modi swept the nation twice. In both 2014 and 2019, the party could win only two seats.

The BJP’s Hindutva push has so far found limited resonance in Punjab. In 2022, the State catapulted the AAP to power with an astonishing verdict the likes of which Punjab had not seen until then. The voters even booted out the 100-year-old Akali Dal that claims support on the basis of its Sikh Panthic credentials. Veteran political leaders such as Capt. Amarinder Singh and the influential Badal family and several others who once ruled the roost were also shown the door by voters.

Changed landscape

In this Lok Sabha election, the political landscape has changed completely. It is now marked by broken alliances and numerous turncoats, while radical sentiment is spurring new support for hardliners. The youth are still in the grip of the drug menace. All these, along with a protracted and belligerent agitation by farmers, have made Punjab an intriguing battleground.

Also Read | Narrative of AAP running Punjab from Delhi unlikely to bode well

The electoral contest is no longer a bipolar one between the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal), or SAD (B). The AAP, a political greenhorn until a few years ago, now has a sizeable footprint, while the BJP, a former ally of the SAD, is keen to grow wings of its own for the first time in nearly three decades.

In 2019, the saffron party won only two seats with a 9.6 per cent vote share. It played second fiddle to the SAD, with urban constituents forming its core voter base. The first agitation against the now-repealed farm laws (in 2019) led to the SAD (B) and the BJP breaking their alliance of three decades.

Although there are challenges galore for the BJP after the break-up, the party also sees it as an opportunity to expand its footprint, which is why it rejected an offer by the SAD (B) to revive ties ahead of the election.

In the past, the BJP would contest in only three Lok Sabha constituencies as part of the seat-sharing agreement with the SAD, which took the lion’s share of 10 seats. This time, the BJP has put up candidates in all 13 seats. BJP insiders said the party may not be expecting to win many seats, but it hopes to increase its vote share.

Hope and despair

Maqbolpura on the outskirts of Amritsar is looking at everything with a mix of hope and despair. Dozens of motorcades of various political parties pass through the narrow lanes of this village, carefully manoeuvring past small houses on either side. Maqbolpura is notorious for drug use and deaths from drug overdose. Every family in the village has a story to narrate. This village hopes that some political party will show the resolve to save its future generations.

Farmers raising slogans after they were stopped from marching to protest at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election rally, in Gurdaspur on May 24. | Photo Credit: RAMINDER PAL SINGH/ANI

The BJP’s candidate for the Amritsar seat is Taranjit Singh Sandhu, a former Ambassador to the US. He is sometimes referred to as “Samundri” to evoke the legacy of his grandfather Teja Singh Samundri, a founding member of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee who fought against the British and died in Lahore jail in 1926.

“Our focus is on holistic development. The BJP’s flagship schemes and other schemes have percolated to the last mile. But issues like drugs must be addressed on priority,” Sandhu said.

The BJP last won the Amritsar seat in 2009. Top leaders, including Arun Jaitley and Hardeep Singh Puri, had to bite the dust.

Protests against BJP

As if the challenges of a broken alliance and the quest for new candidates for all the seats were not enough, the BJP is at the receiving end of brickbats in the wake of the ongoing farmer protests in Punjab and Haryana. Farmers are putting up every possible resistance, showing black flags and hurling abuse at BJP candidates, to block the entry of the BJP into Punjab’s villages.

“These protests have been orchestrated by the AAP, which has colluded with the Congress. We have brought the matter to the notice of the Chief Electoral Officer. The BJP’s right to campaign in an election is being hampered,” State BJP chief Sunil Jakhar told Frontline.

Many see the BJP in Punjab as the old Congress. Many former Congress leaders, such as Amarinder Singh, Preneet Kaur, Sunil Jakhar, Ravneet Bittu, and Rana Gurjit, switched loyalties to join the saffron fold.

While Amarinder Singh and Sunil Jakhar are not contesting, Preneet Kaur, Amarinder’s wife, is the BJP candidate in Patiala. A tough battle is on the cards here as she is pitted against the Congress’ Dr Dharamvir Gandhi, a cardiologist, who was once with the AAP. “Our right to campaign is being denied by farm unions. Despite this, we are reaching out to the people with the BJP’s and Prime Minister Modi’s development agenda,” Preneet Kaur told Frontline.

No takers for Hindutva

Interestingly, the rhetoric surrounding the Ram Mandir seems subdued in Punjab, with BJP candidates focussing their campaign chiefly on the “Modi development” narrative.

Despite Modi’s amplified hyper-nationalism and national security pitch, and his focus on the country’s purported growing influence in the global order, the echo of these topics has remained faint in Punjab. Issues surrounding the agrarian crisis, minimum support price for crops, the drug menace, social security, and the reach of beneficiary schemes remain quintessential to the people and the polity.

The performance of the AAP will be keenly watched. Its popularity is seen as another example of Punjab’s contrarian tendency: 10 years ago the State gave the AAP its only four Lok Sabha MPs; today AAP does not have any MPs. The Sangrur seat that Bhagwant Mann vacated to become Chief Minister after the 2022 Assembly election, was wrested by Simranjit Singh Mann of the SAD (Amritsar), a former IPS officer and Khalistan ideologue.

AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal’s interim bail has come as a shot in the arm for the party. A good show in Punjab will bolster the AAP’s position in the INDIA bloc. But the party’s prospects are marred by many failed promises, such as Rs.1,000 for every woman in Punjab, and its inability to check the unbridled drug menace.

Pawan Kumar Tinu of the AAP at a roadshow before filing his nomination papers for the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat on May 13. | Photo Credit: SUNNY SEHGAL/ANI

AAP advantage

At the ground level, the Aam Aadmi clinics and free electricity up to 300 units to each consumer have buoyed the AAP’s prospects. Mann and Kejriwal extol the presence of nearly 830 such clinics in Punjab’s 22 districts across the three regions of Malwa, Majha, and Doaba. The benefits of free treatment, free medicines, and free diagnoses have reached even remote villages.

The Congress, unlike in Delhi and Chandigarh, did not agree on an alliance with the AAP in Punjab. In fact, the two parties are in direct contest. In 2019, the Congress won eight seats with a near 41 per cent vote share. But that was a different Congress then. Its face is not the same any more in Punjab, with the party having lost credibility with the exit of several stalwarts.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s experiment to effect a leadership change—replacing Amarinder Singh as Chief Minister with Charanjit Channi, a Dalit leader—a few months before the 2022 Assembly election failed.

Also Read | Farmers’ protest 2.0: On the difficult road to MSP

In fact, it proved counterproductive. The Dalit card was ineffective, again a pointer to Punjab’s contrarian streak. Although the State has the highest per capita population of Scheduled Castes in the country, at about 32 per cent, voters in 2022 discounted this factor and booted the Congress out.

The border State is also seeing a surge in radical sentiments in this election. Amritpal Singh, head of Waris Punjab De, currently lodged in Dibrugarh jail in Assam under the National Security Act, is contesting as an independent in Khadoor Sahib. He has been outspoken about his radical mindset, even claiming that he does not recognise the Constitution. In fact, there are at least six Khalistan ideologues, including Simranjit Singh Mann, in the fray this time, more than in 2019.

Meanwhile, the SAD(B), an ethno-religious party, ploughs a lonely furrow. A tough fight is brewing in Bathinda where the party has a lot at stake. Harsimrat Kaur, former Minister in Modi’s cabinet and wife of SAD(B) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal, is seeking a fourth consecutive term. She faces spirited rivals of the AAP and the Congress in the constituency. The SAD(B) has been on a swift downward trajectory in Punjab. Whether it can stall the decline after breaking off from the BJP remains to be seen.

In many ways, Punjab has yet again redefined the matrix in this election. And the results will set the tone for the 2027 Assembly election.

Gautam Dheer has been covering policy and politics in Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh for over two decades.

Can Trinamool’s welfare schemes counter Sandeshkhali scandal impact in West Bengal?

In the final phase, the Trinamool’s strongholds in West Bengal’s deep south could feel the impact of the Sandeshkhali controversy.

Published : May 27, 2024 15:47 IST - 8 MINS READ

Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay

Rekha Patra, the BJP nominee for Basirhat, posing for selfies with supporters on the campaign trail. | Photo Credit: JAYANTA SHAW

Sabita Mandal of Majherpara village in the Basirhat Lok Sabha constituency was one of the many women who rushed out of her house in the mid-afternoon heat to greet Rekha Patra, one of the women who spearheaded the Sandeshkhali movement against local Trinamool leaders who are accused of atrocities against the women of Sandeshkhali island, which is part of the constituency. Patra is the BJP candidate in Basirhat.

The simple rural homemaker finds herself catapulted to the epicentre of a political storm that has raged in West Bengal since February. Crowds of women and young girls join her in campaigning, bringing her sweets and requesting selfies. “I really like her,” said Sabita. “She’s one of us.”

In nearby Aturia, 55-year-old Anima Sarkar believes that change is coming. “What happened at Sandeshkhali has affected us deeply. We were all once Didi’s [Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee] supporters, but now we are not so sure,” she said.

Also Read | In a first, corruption becomes a key election issue in West Bengal

Incidentally, all the women who came out to greet Patra acknowledged that they had received the government’s enhanced Lakshmir Bhandar allowance for poor women: from Rs.500 to Rs.1,000 for the general category and Rs.1,200 for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The move, announced in the State Budget, was expected to neutralise the negative impact of the Sandeshkhali movement and counter the corruption charges against the State government. But, according to Subrata Sarkar, a farmer in rural Basirhat, people are “fed up” with corruption. “Earlier, 70 per cent of the villagers were with the Trinamool; now it is the reverse,” he told Frontline.

Sandeshkhali effect

In 2019, the Trinamool’s Nusrat Jahan won Basirhat by 3,50,369 votes against the BJP’s Sayantan Basu. In 2021, the party won all seven Assembly segments in Basirhat. But the upheaval in Sandeshkhali has done considerable damage to the party’s image in its stronghold.

Compounding the controversy, several videos surfaced recently in which two women claimed that they were coerced into making false allegations of rape against Trinamool leaders. In another video, a BJP mandal president was heard saying that many complaints had been filed on the instructions of the BJP.

While the BJP claimed that this was part of the Trinamool’s “conspiracy” to undermine the movement, the Trinamool alleged that the BJP orchestrated the entire Sandeshkhali episode for political gains.

Moreover, in communally sensitive Basirhat, the Trinamool’s decision to replace Jahan with Haji Nurul Islam, the MLA from Haroa who was an accused in the Deganga riots of 2010, has further polarised voters along religious lines. With the Left-Congress combine fielding veteran CPI(M) member Nirapada Sardar and the Indian Secular Front (ISF) also fielding a candidate, the Trinamool may not find the going easy.

As the election rolls on phase-wise from the north to the south, one enters deeper into the Trinamool strongholds. In 2019, the Trinamool held on to all nine seats that will be voting in the seventh and final phase of the election: Basirhat, Barasat, Dum Dum, Kolkata Uttar, Kolkata Dakshin, Jadavpur, Diamond Harbour, Jaynagar, and Mathurapur. It also won 62 of the 63 Assembly seats that fall under these Lok Sabha constituencies.

However, among the issues that have become central points in the election and hit the ruling party the hardest are Sandeshkhali, the School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam, and, most recently, the Calcutta High Court verdict on OBC status. On May 22, the Calcutta High Court cancelled all OBC certificates issued in West Bengal since 2010 and struck down several portions of a 2012 Act that enabled reservation for several communities. Mamata lashed out at the order, calling it a “BJP verdict”. “How dare they! The court cannot be divisive,” she said. She also pointed out two recent instances of retired High Court judges voicing their affiliation with the Sangh Parivar.

Setback for Trinamool

The Trinamool received another setback in October last year when the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested Jyoti Priya Mallick, Cabinet Minister and one of the most influential leaders of North 24 Parganas district, in the multi-crore ration scam. Basirhat, Barasat, and Dum Dum are situated in North 24 Parganas. The BJP has its own problems in the region. In Barasat, where the Trinamool’s Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar is working for a fourth straight win, the BJP is a party divided. In March, a section of the party in Barasat wrote to the Election Commission against its own candidate, Swapan Majumdar, and raised “concerns about his suitability as the candidate”. A BJP source said the party could have made use of the strong anti-incumbency in the constituency if it had a better candidate in place.

Mallick is not the only leader whose absence is likely to be felt by the ruling party. In March, Tapas Roy, former Cabinet Minister and influential Trinamool MLA, joined the BJP and is the party nominee for the prestigious Kolkata Uttar seat, which Sudip Bandopadhyay, five-time Lok Sabha MP and Leader of the Trinamool in the Lok Sabha, has won since 2009. The Trinamool cannot afford to be complacent about winning this seat any more, with the two heavyweights in the fray.

Roy, a five-time MLA (four times with the Trinamool and once with the Congress), is known to have enough political and social clout in the Kolkata Uttar constituency to pose problems for his former colleague. Roy also has some influence in the Dum Dum constituency; he has been an MLA from the Baranagar Assembly segment in the constituency since 2011.

Also Read | ‘BJP’s politics is about hurting people’: Sujata Mondal

Dum Dum will witness a triangular contest, with the Trinamool’s veteran parliamentarian Saugata Roy taking on Sujan Chakraborty, former CPI(M) MP, and Shilbhadra Dutta of the BJP, who was formerly a Trinamool MLA.

In Kolkata Dakshin and Diamond Harbour, two of the Trinamool’s impregnable fortresses, no breach is likely to happen. Kolkata Dakshin has been in the party’s control for more than 25 years now. Mamata won this seat from 1991 to 2011. This time, too, outgoing MP Mala Roy is likely to retain it. In Diamond Harbour, Abhishek Banerjee, Trinamool general secretary and Mamata’s nephew, is all set to prevail in a seat he has held since 2014.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee at a public meeting in support of the Trinamool’s Dum Dum candidate Saugata Roy, in North 24 Parganas on May 22. | Photo Credit: PTI

In the three remaining constituencies in South 24 Parganas district, namely Jadavpur, Jaynagar, and Mathurapur, the advantage seems to lie with the ruling party. However, the issue of corruption, particularly the SSC recruitment scam, is likely to have an impact, particularly in Jadavpur, which will see an interesting contest between three high-profile candidates: the CPI(M)’s young turk Srijan Bhattacharyya, the actor turned politician Saayoni Ghosh of the Trinamool, and the senior BJP leader Anirban Ganguly. The ISF, with its strong support base in the Bhangar Assembly segment of the constituency, is also likely to be a deciding factor.

Voter polarisation

The BJP’s constant attempt to give the Sandeshkhali movement a communal colour has further polarised a section of voters. In the highly charged atmosphere, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself appeared to be stoking communal flames in his speeches, the Chief Minister added fuel to the fire by accusing the Ramakrishna Mission, the Bharat Sevashram Sangha (BSS), and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness of working for the BJP.

After Modi pounced on the issue by alleging that her statements were aimed at “appeasing her vote bank”, Mamata toned down her attack by saying that she was not against institutions such as the Ramakrishna Mission and the BSS, but she maintained that some of their religious leaders were working for the saffron party. She even accused the well-known BSS leader Kartik Maharaj, also known as Swami Pradiptananda Maharaj, of playing a role in a communal flare-up in Murshidabad during the Ram Navami celebrations. The BSS leader reacted by sending Mamata a legal notice. On May 24, thousands of monks, including Kartik Maharaj, took to the streets in protest against the Chief Minister’s comments.

According to Biswanath Chakraborty, a psephologist, Mamata’s attacks on such socioreligious institutions “betrayed a fear that the increasing religious polarisation may be going against her interest”. He added: “She believes that there are now other forces outside the BJP that are working against her. This is part of Mamata’s strategy of creating a conspiracy theory around her. This sounds like she feels she is in trouble.” The Lok Sabha election in the State has been a singular one this time. There has been no perceptible wave in favour of any party or leader; there were hardly any national issues that were raised during campaigns and in messages; there was barely any impact of the Ram temple consecration in Ayodhya, but religious polarisation in the electorate was apparent.

Most interestingly, the silence of the vast majority of the electorate, who were reluctant to voice their opinion, did not allow political observers to feel any “pulse”. Although the Trinamool did provide enough ammunition for the opposition to destroy it, it protected itself with populist measures and promises. And although the opposition’s organisational strength left much to be desired, the ground-level anger in many parts of the State against the ruling party more than compensated for their weakness. In short, it has been a national election with an overwhelming regional bias.

The Kunbi twist in Maharashtra could hurt the BJP

Maratha community’s demand for OBC reservation has sharpened caste politics in Maharashtra and changed the sociopolitical landscape of rural areas.

Published : May 25, 2024 17:09 IST - 13 MINS READ

Amey Tirodkar

Activists of the Sakal Maratha Samaj wearing Manoj Jarange-Patil masks participate in a hunger strike to press for Maratha reservation, in Solapur, on October 30, 2023. | Photo Credit: Karad-Raju Sanadi

A group of Maratha youths was returning to Pathardi (Ahmednagar district) from Ashti (Beed district) after attending a rally of Chhatrapati Udayanraje Bhosle, a BJP Rajya Sabha member and the 13th descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji. Udayanraje had come to Ashti to address a rally in support of Pankaja Munde, the BJP’s candidate in Beed. The young people had travelled about 60 km from Ahmednagar just to listen to their “Maharaj” even though it was held in a place where they did not have a vote. So, would they vote for the person or party that Udayanraje asked them to?

Vaibhav Ghogale, one of the youths, replied with an emphatic “No”—“This time, Marathas are not voting for the BJP.” When Frontline pointed out that the BJP candidate in South Ahmednagar, Sujay Vikhe-Patil, was from the Maratha community, Vaibhav reiterated that the “common Maratha won’t vote for Pankaja or Sujay”, adding: “They are there only for power.” So, while they respect Udayanraje, the youth are not swayed by his appeal to vote for the BJP. This is the new reality of caste in this Lok Sabha election in Maharashtra, which promises to be unlike any that the State has seen to date.

The Jalna protest

To understand how this situation came about, one has to go back about 10 months, to Antarwali Sarati, a nondescript village in Jalna district of Marathwada. It was here that Manoj Jarange-Patil, of Shivaba Pratishthan, an organisation working for the rights of Marathas, was on a fast demanding the grant of the Kunbi certificate to the Marathas of Marathwada region so that they could become eligible for reservation in jobs and education.

The Kunbis are OBCs engaged in farming. Jarange-Patil’s argument was simple: The Marathas of Bidar in Karnataka and in parts of Telangana had been given the Kunbi status on the basis of documents they produced from the period when the Nizam ruled the princely state of Hyderabad, of which these areas and Marathwada were a part. Therefore the Marathas in Marathwada should also be categorised as OBC Kunbis.

Also Read | Maratha reservation issue takes a troubling turn

On September 1, 2023, the police broke up Jarange-Patil’s fast with a lathicharge on him and his supporters and later claimed that it was the protesters who resorted to violence first. But videos of police action against the protesters, especially women, went viral and came as a shock to the community. Such an incident had not happened since the community first began protests for reservation in the late 1990s. It has organised peaceful marches of millions of supporters over the years. The lathicharge led to the hardening of the Marathas’ stance on OBC status for the community and contributed to shaping the politics around caste in the State.

Fearing a Maratha backlash, Chief Minister Eknath Shinde accepted Jarange-Patil’s demand and announced the formation of a committee to verify and grant Kunbi certificates to Marathas from the Marathwada region. Jarange-Patil set a deadline of October 24, which the government did not meet. The Marathas then returned to the path of protest, and for the first time it turned violent.

On October 30, 2023, a mob set fire to the houses of two MLAs of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP): Prakash Solanke of Majalgaon, Beed, who is with Ajit Pawar, and Sandeep Kshirsagar of Beed city, who is with the Sharad Pawar faction. Also, private and government properties were vandalised in Beed and the adjoining Jalna district. A curfew was announced in Beed and Jalna for eight days, and Internet services were shut down.

The government announced a special investigation team to probe the violence in Beed. By then, the protests, under the leadership of Jarange-Patil, had spread to all parts of the State. Jarange-Patil started a tour of the State, and people came in huge numbers to listen to him. Be it in western Maharashtra, Marathwada, north Maharashtra, parts of Vidarbha, or in Mumbai, his meetings drew large crowds from the Maratha community. By the end of November, an emboldened Jarange-Patil demanded Kunbi OBC status for all Marathas in the State.

This put the government in a difficult situation. The Kunbi community is spread across the State and is dominant in the Vidarbha and Konkan regions. In Vidarbha, Kunbis have been the backbone of the BJP for the past 20 years. Expanding the community to include Marathas is unacceptable to Kunbis, who fear that this will cut into their reservation quota.

The State government, therefore, tried to find a middle path. It announced that those Marathas who could produce documents of their ancestors that mention they are Kunbi would be able to get the Kunbi certificate from the District Collector. But this only made both the Kunbis and other OBCs furious, with several OBC leaders organising public meetings against classifying Marathas as Kunbi.

Caste calculus

Maharashtra implemented OBC reservation in 1992.

According to the 1931 caste census, Marathas constitute about 32 per cent of the population. The OBCs make up around 50 per cent of the population. Maharashtra implemented OBC reservation in 1992. (The Centre implemented the Mandal Commission report in 1990) At that time, 27 per cent reservation was given to all castes and subcastes as well as nomadic tribes in the OBC category (see Table).

This table shows the division of the 27 per cent quota within OBCs in Maharashtra. Communities such as Kunbi and sub-castes such as Mali (gardener) and Nabhik (barber) and many other smaller groups are included in the 346 castes that get 19 per cent reservation in jobs, education, and local body elections. Chhagan Bhujbal is from the Mali community. Pankaja Munde is from the Vanjari community. It is claimed that Vanjari is the biggest OBC caste, making up 12 per cent of OBCs; the Mali community makes up 11 per cent; and the Teli community is the third largest OBC caste in Maharashtra with 9 per cent.

These numbers have never been authenticated, but the politics of the State has evolved on the basis of these numbers. So, OBCs, mainly the Mali and Kunbi community leaders, oppose the inclusion of Marathas in the 27 per cent quota on the grounds that giving reservation to a caste that forms 32 per cent of the population would affect the chances of other groups who benefit from the 19 per cent reservation within the overall 27 per cent OBC quota.

Leading this group was Cabinet Minister Chhagan Bhujbal of the NCP (Ajit Pawar). Between Jarange-Patil’s rallies and Bhujbal’s counter-mobilisation, friction of a level never seen before was created between the OBCs and the Marathas. The formalisation of this divide is being played out in the Lok Sabha election.

On his part, Jarange-Patil first announced that his group would contest all 48 seats. When it was pointed out on social media that this would result in a division of the anti-BJP alliance votes, Jarange-Patil announced that his movement would not get into electoral politics. He also said, “Marathas know whom to defeat for their benefit.”

This announcement came on the heels of a meeting he had with Prakash Ambedkar of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi where the possibility of Jarange-Patil launching a political party and forming an alliance with the VBA to defeat the BJP was discussed. While that was not to be, the meeting helped firm up the objective, which was to defeat the BJP even if the Marathas and the Scheduled Castes fight separately. This meeting of minds could have an impact in more than 30 constituencies.

In Beed, Jalna, and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar districts, which were the epicentres of the Maratha protest in October-November 2023, the sociopolitical impact of Marathas and the SCs fighting on the same side, though separately, could be huge in electoral terms. The two communities had been at loggerheads since the controversy broke in the early 1990s over Marathwada University being renamed Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar University. When the then Congress government of Sharad Pawar decided to rename the university, the Marathwada region saw a major social uproar as the Maratha community rose in unison against it.

Riots broke out in parts of Marathwada. Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (then Aurangabad) witnessed mammoth rallies of both communities, and many incidents of atrocities were recorded across the eight districts of Marathwada. Finally, to placate both sides, the government decided to name it Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University. The “Namantar Andolan”, as the movement was called, created a rift between the two communities that only widened over the next two decades.

Highlights

- The demand by Maratha leader Manoj Jarange-Patil for Kunbi OBC status for Marathas across Maharashtra has created unprecedented friction between the OBC communities and Marathas, hardening their stances on reservations.

- This caste polarisation has led to Marathas, Muslims and Dalits positioning themselves against the BJP in this election, though fighting separately, reviving the old “MMD formula” that once helped Congress win elections..

- The rise of intense caste politics is seen as a counter-strategy to the BJP’s attempt at religious polarisation through issues like Ram Mandir, renaming cities etc., pushing the religious narrative to the backseat in this election..

This Lok Sabha election can be seen as a turning point where, after a long time, the youth of both communities have come together in much of Marathwada and the rest of Maharashtra. However, Jaydeo Dole, a political observer, hesitates to read too much into the alliance and calls it an adjustment between the communities. He explained: “The BJP regime at the Centre has taken enough steps to unsettle Dalit youth across the country. Maratha youth are against the BJP because of their unmet reservation demand. So, right now it seems that both communities have positioned themselves against the BJP. The political compulsion that has brought them together has the potential to go further and become an example of social harmony.”

The MMD formula

The other reason for Dalits moving closer to the opposition camp is the BJP’s election slogan: “Ab ki baar, 400 paar.” Statements of BJP leaders that the NDA needs the 400-plus seats to change the Constitution has had a negative impact on Dalit voters. Later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi tried to convince Dalit voters that as long as “he is alive, nobody will be able to change the Constitution”. This has had the effect of toning down the anti-BJP campaign among Dalits, especially Hindu Dalits, but the damage had been done in the first two phases when 13 constituencies voted.

The Marathas and Dalits were soon joined by Muslims in what is called the “MMD formula”. Back in the 1970s, the Congress used to win elections in the State with this formidable combination. Later, with the splintering of the Maratha votes and the rise of Hindu right-wing politics, the combination eventually collapsed.

Manoj Jarange Patil pays tribute to B.R. Ambedkar on his birth anniversary on April 14 in Mumbai. | Photo Credit: PTI

In the Namantar andolan, the Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray stood with the Marathas. In a show of gratitude, the Marathas of Marathwada shifted to the Shiv Sena in the 1995 Lok Sabha as well as Assembly elections. These were also the days of rath yatra politics. The NDA came to power in New Delhi and the Shiv Sena-BJP alliance won the Assembly election in Maharashtra. Marathwada, part of the erstwhile Hyderabad princely state, always had a sizeable Muslim population. So, the aggressive anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit rhetoric of Bal Thackeray made him popular in Marathwada. The demand to rename Aurangabad to Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and change the name of Osmanabad to Dharashiv was made for the first time during these days of the early 1990s. The Eknath Shinde-led government implemented the renaming, and their anticipation of a Hindu-Muslim polarisation as a result of this is up for the test.

One of the reactions to the formation of the MMD combine was a consolidation of the OBCs. In the 1980s when the BJP appeared on the scene in Maharashtra, its strategist, Vasantrao Bhagwat, came up with the “Ma Dha Va”, or Mali-Dhangar-Vanjari, formula. All three castes come under the OBC category. The BJP slowly expanded its base among other OBC communities as well. In 2014, BJP promised a caste census. That helped it in Vidarbha, where it won all 10 Lok Sabha seats. In the 2014 Assembly election, the BJP contested alone and won 44 of the 62 seats in the Vidarbha region owing to the polarisation of Kunbi votes in its favour.

This time, the government’s decision to accept the demand to include Marathas in the Kunbi category is bound to trigger an OBC backlash. In every rally, BJP leaders have repeatedly said that the “reservation of the OBCs will not be touched at any cost”. Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, the BJP’s number one leader in Maharashtra, even said in the rally in Wardha that “the DNA of the BJP is of the OBCs”.

As a result, anticipating the possibility of Kunbi polarisation in favour of the BJP in Vidarbha, the Congress has fielded Kunbi candidates in all the 7 seats it is contesting of the 10 in the region. Of these, four are open seats and two are reserved for SCs and one for STs. Its alliance partners, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Thackeray) and NCP (Sharad Pawar) are contesting two seats and one, respectively, and they too have nominated Kunbi candidates.

The strategy of the INDIA bloc in Vidarbha is simple. By putting up Kunbi candidates, it is hoping to get the community over to its side. Simultaneously, these parties are banking on the support of the SCs, the STs, and the minorities, all of whom are likely to vote against the BJP. Whichever strategy wins, the reason will be caste consolidation rather than religious polarisation, as has usually been the case.

Also Read | Maharashtra on edge as Maratha reservation protests turn violent

The Congress manifesto promises a caste census if the INDIA bloc wins, something its leaders emphasise in public meetings. However, Jarange-Patil is not impressed with the Congress’ assurance. He said: “They were in power for 60 years. Why didn’t they give us reservation that time. So, it is better to get from OBC quota instead of the long route of constitutional amendment.”

The rise of caste politics in Maharashtra is also being interpreted as a counterstrategy to the religious communalisation attempted by the BJP, whether it is via the Ram temple in Ayodhya or the renaming of cities: Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar (Aurangabad), Dharashiv (Osmanabad), and Ahilyanagar (Ahmednagar). In the past two-and-a-half years since the fall of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government, incidents of communal violence have increased in the State. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Maharashtra recorded 8,218 cases of riots in 2022. It ranked second after Uttar Pradesh. According to the data of India Hate Lab, Maharashtra witnessed the highest number of hate speeches in 2023 in the country.

Caste taking centrestage seems to have pushed the religious narrative to the back burner. The political scientist Suhas Palshikar agrees that caste is at the centre in this election narrative but is not sure about its impact on the outcome. He said: “It is true that caste has played a major role in building up the momentum for the 2024 election in Maharashtra. But will it have a decisive impact on the results? That we will have to wait for June 4.”

He added: “People identify a topic with a party. Like the Green Revolution or the liberalisation of the economy is associated with the Congress, similarly the Ram Mandir is attributed to the BJP. So, if they want to vote BJP because of that, it is not necessary that it will be the talking point of the election. Only if people are thinking otherwise will issues such as caste have a decisive impact.”

A parallel to the current situation could be drawn from the 2004 Lok Sabha election. In 2004, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), led by the Congress and the NCP, won 23 seats out of 48. The NDA won 25 seats. The UPA’s performance surprised many at the national level, but in the State it was attributed to three factors. The Marathas were strongly united against the “objectionable remarks” written in the controversial book on Shivaji authored by the American writer James Laine.

The second factor was the Gujarat riots of 2002. This consolidated Muslims behind the UPA. Dalits supported the UPA in large numbers over fears that the BJP would make changes to the Constitution. Ramdas Athawale, now Union Minister of State for Social Justice, was a candidate of the UPA. He had led the battle against the BJP back in 2004. After 20 years, Marathas and Dalits are back on the same side.

The MMD formula too has created a buzz again this time. Politics is not like a movie, where coincidences happen according to the director’s whims and wishes. But when 2024 matches with 2004 in the theatre of strategies and counterstrategies, will the results also match up?

INTERVIEW

- Mallikarjun Kharge: ‘Nobody in this country imagined we would have a Prime Minister who lies so much’

Mallikarjun Kharge: ‘Nobody in this country imagined we would have a Prime Minister who lies so much’

The senior leader says he is confident that the politics of development will win over the politics of communalism and divisiveness.

Published : May 23, 2024 19:36 IST - 12 MINS READ

Anand Mishra

Congress party president Mallikarjun Kharge addressing a public meeting in Yamuna Nagar, Haryana, on March 21. | Photo Credit: PTI

Mallikarjun Kharge, as Congress president, is leading the party in the 2024 Lok Sabha election after back-to-back debacles in 2014 and 2019 in which it got 44 and 52 respectively. Kharge is also the chairperson of the INDIA bloc. He first became an MLA 52 years back in 1972, was a Lok Sabha MP for three consecutive terms from 2009, and entered the Rajya Sabha in 2020.

In this exclusive interview to Frontline, he spoke about the possibilities for his party in this election, the INDIA bloc, and the criticisms about the Congress’ decline. Excerpts:

What does the 2024 election mean for the Congress and the country?

I definitely see a change in the government. The INDIA alliance will do well and we will get a majority to unseat the power-drunk BJP. We will get a mandate to safeguard the Constitution and democracy. This election is also about saving our independent institutions. You must have seen many BJP and RSS leaders talking about the need for 400 seats. Their MPs, MLAs, and candidates say that they want a two-thirds majority to change the Constitution. Their leaders in the past have spoken about reviewing reservations provisioned by the Constitution to SCs, STs, and OBCs. They want to take that away. That is why this election is important.

Why should people vote for the Congress? Do you have a road map for the growth of the Congress?

Our “Nyay Patra” [Congress manifesto] lays out the road map very clearly for the growth of the country. People have decided to vote for the Congress because the 2024 election is an issue-based election where people are openly expressing their disappointment against the 10 years of the Modi government. Unemployment, inflation, falling income are some of the most prominent issues they want resolved. Though they are speaking on the ground against the BJP and [its] allies, one cannot hear their voices because they don’t have a platform in our democracy anymore. With the majority of the media under the control of the ruling regime, they can’t show their anger anywhere. The Congress has been giving voice to this public anger.

Nobody in this country imagined that we would have a Prime Minister who lies so much. But I am confident that politics of development will win over politics of communalism and divisiveness.

Also Read | ‘Nyay Patra’ vs ‘Modi ki Guarantee’: Free citizens or wards of the state?

Why is the Congress in disarray? Desertions have become a routine affair.

The Congress is not in disarray. If a candidate is being threatened or bribed to withdraw his nomination, it shows that democracy is being slowly crushed by the BJP. For example, in Surat all proposers of the Congress candidate gave false affidavits, all independent candidates withdrew, and the BJP candidate was declared elected unanimously without even a single voter exercising his constitutional right. Prima facie, it looks like a case of electoral corruption. In Indore, on the last possible date, our candidate withdrew his nomination. Again, this should be investigated as an electoral malpractice.

Many people have also joined and many have come back. Having said that, the test is to spot early people who have low commitment to our ideology and not give them the ticket.

Why did Rahul Gandhi not contest from Amethi?

Both Rae Bareli and Amethi have the same emotional connection to the Congress party and to Soniaji and Rahulji. K.L. Sharma, our candidate in Amethi, has worked for more than 40 years in that region. He knows every lane, every village, and every voter. Priyanka Gandhi is campaigning for him personally. I have campaigned in Amethi. The Congress is going to win in Amethi.

Why did the majority of senior Congress leaders decline to contest? Are they worried about losing?

Digvijaya Singh, Adhir Ranjan Choudhary, Bhupesh Baghel, Anand Sharma...are these [leaders] junior or senior? It’s a mix of both young and old. Election strategy and ticket distribution happen after detailed discussions within the Central Election Committee. Many senior leaders are also needed to manage the election.

Sam Pitroda’s remarks on inheritance tax kicked up a political storm. Was it necessary? What prompted the Prime Minister to say that you want to snatch the mangalsutras of Hindu women?

Modi started weaving lies about our manifesto the moment he realised the voters are against him after Phase 1. I had written to him saying I will give him a copy of our manifesto, and we could have a debate about it. The Congress “Nyay Patra” does not talk about inheritance tax at all. We believe in the right to property. We brought the right to property. In the 1970s, the BJP-RSS, in their Jana sangh avatar, had done this fearmongering that the Congress will snatch your property. We have served for 55 years. We have had governments for decades together in many States. Modi should tell, have we ever snatched anyone’s property?

In Karnataka, a sexual assault case is making news. How is it electorally important? How will it affect the voting pattern?

We are all shocked at the revelations. I am surprised that the BJP leadership was appraised of the misdemeanour but still went ahead with the alliance. Even today, the government of India will know from his passport number which country this person [Hassan MP Prajwal Revanna] entered and where he is hiding. How did he, a white passport holder, run away from India, should be answered by the Modi government.

Do you not think that a BJP-JD(S) alliance in Karnataka could pose a strong challenge?

Sometimes in politics, what is math on paper, doesn’t translate into votes. You will see it in the election results. We should remember that both times, the BJP formed governments in Karnataka, they did it using money power to poach MLAs. They never got a majority on their own.

BJP leaders are attacking the Congress for declining the Ram Mandir invitation. Was it a tactical mistake?

Religion is a very personal matter. Many Congress people also attended the pran pratishtha, no one in the party stopped them or questioned them.

A number of Congress leaders in Delhi have resigned in protest against the party’s alliance with the AAP.

While every party worker would want to contest the election, there are only a limited number of seats. Getting into any alliance further reduces the chances of contesting. When the Congress took the lead in forming the INDIA alliance, we knew that it is in the larger interest of the country, and that is why we made some sacrifices.

What is your primary charge against the Modi government?

The Modi government has imposed unprecedented unemployment, unparalleled price rise, and widened income inequality in the last 10 years. Exercising its brute majority, it has repeatedly undermined institutions and bulldozed them. It has misused institutions that were earlier autonomous as a weapon to target the opposition. It has used the ED, CBI, IT [income tax department], and so on as extortion tools to fill its coffers through the unconstitutional electoral bonds scheme. The Prime Minister is indulging in hate speech. He is misrepresenting facts about our manifesto and spreading lies. All these are major issues in this election.

Why was there so much delay in seat sharing within the INDIA bloc? There is no INDIA bloc in West Bengal, Kerala, or Punjab. In Uttar Pradesh also Mayawati is out of it.

We as a party take decision on the advice of the local leadership. We don’t like to impose our views on them. Consultations take some time. But it works better because everyone becomes a stakeholder and, therefore, responsible for both success and failure. But even those parties with whom we could not work out seat-sharing arrangements, have declared that they are still a part of the INDIA alliance. The alliance is working as we expected.

How do you see Mayawati’s role in the 2024 elections?

Mayawati ji is a senior politician. I am not an election analyst, but whatever reports we are getting from Uttar Pradesh, we feel that she may have been under some kind of pressure.

The Congress was vocal against electoral bonds, but you also received donations through it..

I don’t understand your argument considering that the BJP alone got more than 50% of donations. Our opposition to it was on a matter of principle. The government had full access to the information about donors, thus making them vulnerable to manipulation. We could see clear links to believe that the government also used ED, CBI, IT to extort money. A better system would be to let voters know who is donating how much to which party.

Who will be the leader from the INDIA bloc if you think it can win the election?

We will cross the bridge when we come to it. Yes, all parties will sit together and decide. It is not the first time that this country is witnessing a coalition government. We have had very successful coalition governments in the past.

What is the Congress’ agenda in this election?

The Congress’ agenda is ensuring justice, nyay, to everyone. We have a 5 NYAY-25 guarantee agenda for the country. This includes welfare for farmers, jobs for youth, economic empowerment for women, social security for crores of deprived workers, and social justice for the marginalised. And doubling the free foodgrains being provided to the poor from 5 kg to 10 kg.

Also Read | ‘The BJP has not learnt its lesson’: Priyank Kharge

The Election Commission reprimanded you over your remarks about voter turnout data. Did you make a hasty comment in your letter to INDIA allies about the discrepancy in that?

I had written to the leaders of the INDIA parties about certain discrepancies in the voter percentage data and its delay by the Election Commission of India, to which the ECI replied out of turn. We have written so many complaints to the ECI earlier, but strangely, they chose to reply to my letter to the INDIA parties. After their reply came in, I again sent a letter underlining the same, because they never clarified on the delay in the release of voting percentages or subsequent increase.

But, I would also like to point out that the ECI in their letter to me seem to have falsely claimed that the Supreme Court had endorsed their methodology. One of the key points I made to them was to put out the absolute voting numbers in the public domain. Now, the Supreme Court has made some comments on it and asked why they cannot provide final voting percentages in 48 hours.

I only want to state that the credibility of the ECI, and autonomous institutions in general, is at an all-time low. The ECI needs to strengthen itself so that people continue to have faith in them.

The Congress was initially dismissive of the labarthi (beneficiary) but now you have promised to double free food grain to the poor. Why this turn around?

We were never dismissive about any welfare scheme. It was Modi who termed welfare measures as “revdi”. Even a few days back, he mocked the free travel being given to poor women, saying it hurts big industries. It is under Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, that the Congress-UPA government brought in the National Food Security Act in 2013. Only one Chief Minister, Modi ji, opposed it then. Even the BJP grudgingly supported it in Parliament and food security became a right. It is the Congress that rolled out the free rice scheme and ushered in reforms in the public distribution system. When COVID stuck, Modiji rebranded the scheme into Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, as if it was some temporary measure. We have even given 35 kg in Chhattisgarh to the extremely poor people. So we can easily provide 10 kg to the people now.

Do you feel it is tough for you to lead the Congress at a time when the party seems to be in the ICU?

A party in ICU has scared the Prime Minister! Every day, he has to resort to lies and propaganda. The fact is that we are fighting well with our limited resources, and our workers are on the ground. We will improve our tally in many States. INDIA parties will get more than 272 comfortably and provide a government whose focus will be social justice, progressive policies, and India’s growth.

The Prime Minister says that the Congress’ manifesto is inspired by the Muslim League.

I do not know which manifesto Modi ji is reading. Our manifesto does not mention any Hindu-Muslim narrative. Our manifesto is for the 140 crore people of India. Is filling 30 lakh government job vacancies only for one community? Is giving Rs.1 lakh to poor women only for one community? Is providing Right to Apprenticeship, and Rs.1 lakh support for a year to fresh degree/diploma holders for one community? I challenge Modi ji to read the Congress manifesto with me, word by word and line by line, and ask us any question, we will puncture his party’s propaganda.

Modi ji does not speak about his own manifesto or even his achievements. Is there a particular reason why the BJP manifesto was forgotten by Modi and Shah?

The Prime Minister recently said he never believed in dividing society on religious lines, and that the day he does that he would not remain fit for public life. How do you see this?

Modi ji is trapped in his own contradictions. One day he calls Muslims “ghuspaithiya” and makes hate speeches, the other day he says he would not be suited for public life if he indulged in Hindu-Muslim, and the other day he again flip-flops and repeats the same Hindu-Muslim rhetoric which divides society. His entire politics has been based on division. He has lost the narrative.

The BJP is saying that the Congress wants to give away the reservation available for OBCs to Muslims?

We are talking about protecting the reservation given according to the Constitution and not handing it over to this or that. INDIA is getting massive support in the election. They [BJP] are disturbed. That is why they are making such wild statements.

Is Rahul Gandhi’s pitch for a caste census having any resonance on the ground?

We are not doing it for votes. There are many things that we should do in the interest of the nation, in the interest of people.

ELECTION 2024

- Will the smaller castes upset the NDA applecart in Bihar?

- Jharkhand: A battle over tribal identities

Will the smaller castes upset the NDA applecart in Bihar?

As Kushwahas, EBCs and Dalits show signs of moving away from the NDA, the RJD-led Mahagathbandhan eyes gains in the closely contested election.

Published : May 24, 2024 17:19 IST - 11 MINS READ

Anand Mishra

RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav at a rally in Hajipur on May 17. | Photo Credit: PTI

As the Lok Sabha election entered its final stretch, there were indications of a change in the voting pattern in Bihar across the six completed phases and the seventh remaining phase. The dominant castes largely continue to be with the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), while Muslims and Yadavs as usual back the Mahagathbandhan. However, the EBCs (Extremely Backward Classes) and Dalits could be moving away from the NDA, for which they voted overwhelmingly in the past.

The NDA, which won 39 out of 40 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, comprises five parties in Bihar: BJP, Janata Dal (United), Lok Janshakti Party (LJP)-Ram Vilas, Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM), and Rashtriya Lok Morcha, or RLM (earlier known as the RLSP). The Mahagathbandhan comprises the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress, Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), and the Left parties: CPI(M), CPI, and CPI(ML).

Fissures are becoming visible in the Lav-Kush (Kurmi-Koeri) unity. The Koeris, or Kushwahas, have warmed to the RJD, setting aside a history of Yadav-Koeri rivalry. Kurmis constitute 2.9 per cent of the State’s population, while Kushwahas constitute 3.5 per cent.

Also Read | Leaders trade insults, play identity politics while unemployment rages in Bihar’s Seemanchal-Kosi region

According to the Bihar caste survey, EBCs constitute 36 per cent of the State’s population; Dalits, 14.6 per cent; Yadavs, 14.3 per cent; and Muslims, 17 per cent. This indicates that the RJD vote base accounts for over 30 per cent of the population. The LJP’s Chirag Paswan brings the votes of the Paswan or Dusadh community (5.3 per cent of the population) to the NDA.

JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar nurtured Kurmi-Koeri unity assiduously in the past. This group, along with the EBCs and dominant castes, formed a formidable support base for the NDA against the RJD’s Muslim-Yadav combine. Of the 11 Kushwaha candidates this time, three are from the JD(U): Santosh Kumar from Purnia, Sunil Kumar from  Valmikinagar, and Vijaya Laxmi from Siwan. Then there is the RLM chief Upendra Kushwaha in Karakat. The INDIA bloc has seven candidates, three from the RJD, and one each from the CPI(M), the CPI(ML), the Congress, and the VIP.

According to Abhay Kumar, a senior journalist from Patna, the election was tepid in the beginning but soon turned into an aggressive caste contest. He explained: “There is a marked shift of Kushwaha votes from the NDA to the Mahagathbandhan, which could spell trouble for the NDA in a number of seats where it was sure of winning, such as Ujiarpur and Aurangabad. In some other places, too, it has become agda-pichchda [dominant caste vs backward caste]. The RJD seems to have capitalised on this shift. In the Sheohar seat, a chunk of Vaishyas, traditional voters of the BJP, could vote for the Mahagathbandan candidate Ritu Jaiswal, who is a Vaishya. In fact, there is no uniform pattern in this election and preferences change with the constituency.”

Kushwahas moving away from NDA

The BJP realised a while ago that the Kushwahas were looking at alternatives and made attempts to keep the community on its side. One move in this direction was appointing a Kushwaha leader, Samrat Choudhary, as its State chief in Bihar in March 2023.

Voters on their way to a polling booth in Muzaffarpur on May 20. | Photo Credit: PTI

In February this year, Choudhary, who was Deputy Chief Minister by then, attended an event in Nalanda where his rhetoric was aimed at stoking Kushwaha pride. Ironically, the event was organised to mark the birth anniversary of the “martyr” Jagdev, the “Lenin of Bihar” who had raised the banner of revolt against the Brahminical social hierarchy nearly five decades ago. The Kushwahas had opted for ultra-left politics and were organised under the Arjak Samaj led by Jagdev, who remains the community’s most popular leader even 48 years after his death.

Even a partial return of Kushwaha votes to the RJD can spell trouble for the NDA. The sudden entry of the Bhojpuri singer and BJP member Pawan Singh, a Rajput, as an Independent candidate in Karakat set off speculation that the BJP was backing Singh under pressure from Nitish Kumar, whose bitter relationship with Upendra Kushwaha is well known. But on May 22 the BJP expelled Pawan Singh, apparently for contesting against an NDA candidate. Pawan Singh had earlier backed out from contesting as a BJP candidate from Asansol in West Bengal against the Trinamool Congress’ Shatrughan Sinha.

The CPI(ML) candidate in Karakat, Raja Ram Singh, is also a Kushwaha. With Pawan Singh likely to split the dominant caste votes, Upendra Kushwaha may find the going tough.

All this does not make for good Kushwaha vibes for the NDA. For instance, Malti Devi, a Kushwaha from Harouli Lalganj, says she will vote for Chirag Paswan in Hajipur because of the work of Ram Vilas Paswan and the personal touch the Paswan family has maintained. But her choice has nothing to do with Upendra Kushwaha. “Wo to udhar ke neta hain,” (He is a leader from that side) she says.

Watching Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chopper leaving after a public meeting at Maharajganj, Siwan district, on May 21. | Photo Credit: PTI

The cooling off of the Kushwahas may cause trouble for Union Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai, a Yadav and BJP candidate in the Ujiarpur seat of the “Ganga paar” region. Alok Mehta, the RJD candidate from the seat, which has a sizeable population of Kushwahas, is a well-known Kushwaha leader. The Muslim and Yadav votes are likely to go to the RJD too.  Rai won the seat in 2019, defeating Upendra Kushwaha, while the Yadavs had overwhelmingly voted for him then as there was no RJD candidate.

The CPI(M) has also fielded a Kushwaha, Sanjay Kumar, from its lone seat, Khagaria. He is pitted against the LJP’s Rajesh Verma, belonging to a business caste whose members were traditionally goldsmiths. This could be the weakest seat the LJP is contesting, given the social equations of Kushwahas, Muslims, and Mallahs besides Yadavs. This was the only seat where the NDA had a Muslim MP, Mehboob Ali Kaiser, from the LJP. Kaiser, who defeated the VIP candidate Mukesh Sahani in the seat in 2019, is now with the RJD.

If the victory of Chirag Paswan from his family bastion of Hajipur is a foregone conclusion, family rivalry might hurt the prospects of the LJP candidate Shambhavi Choudhary in Samastipur. Former LJP MP Prince Paswan, on being denied the party ticket, is learnt to have lent his support to Congress rival Sunny Hazari, the son of former MP Maheshwar Hazari.

Highlights

- The privileged castes are expected to vote largely for the NDA as before.

- Muslims and Yadavs will as usual back the Mahagathbandhan.

- Changes are expected in the voting pattern of EBCs and Dalits, who earlier voted overwhelmingly for the NDA.

A fight to watch in Munger

In Munger, sitting MP and former JD(U) president Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh, a Bhumihar leader, is locked in a tough contest with Anita Kumari Mahto of the RJD. Anita’s husband is the gangster-turned-politician Ashok Mahto, a Kurmi. Munger was won thrice by Bhumihar candidates after it was carved out as a constituency, but this time that may change, with the contest taking on a “forward versus backward” dimension.

The sitting MP in Aurangabad, Sushil Kumar Singh of the BJP, also faces a Kushwaha candidate from the RJD, Abhay Kushwaha. In the past the seat was represented mostly by Rajputs.

In Nawada, the RJD has fielded Shravan Kushwaha. With the backing of Ashok Mahto, who has influence in the region, Shravan is giving the BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Vivek Thakur a tough fight in what is otherwise an NDA bastion. The VIP’s Rajesh Kushwaha is pitted against former Union Minister Radhamohan Singh in Motihari.

In Saran and Patliputra, Lalu Prasad’ daughters Rohini Acharya and Misa Bharti may find it difficult to turn the tide against the BJP candidates Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Ram Kripal Yadav, both former Union Ministers. Rudy’s biggest support base consists of fellow Kshatriyas. Ram Kripal banks more on non-Yadav EBC votes.  The Yadav vote may split.

In Patliputra, a Yadav voter said: “Ram Kripal is a good person. He was also with Lalu Prasad earlier.” He refused to be named because of the fear that his shop might be bulldozed. But Harendra Singh from Maner block in the same seat believes that Misa, who had earlier lost by 40,000 votes, has a chance now with CPI(ML) cadre votes.

In Patna Sahib, the sitting BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad has little challenge from the Congress candidate Anshul Avijit, son of former Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar. Anshul’s candidature was a last-minute announcement by the Congress to placate Kumar. Anshul could not have contested from Sasaram, which his mother (she lost in 2019) and earlier his grandfather, Jagjivan Ram, represented. Sasaram is an SC reserved constituency, and Anshul is a Kushwaha on his father’s side.

Deepak Singh, who hails from Narma village in Patna Sahib, is a fan of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But he resented the 2018 amendment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, through which the Central government overturned a Supreme Court order that had held that a preliminary inquiry by a gazetted officer should precede the registration of an FIR under the Act. “It was a good judgment by the Supreme Court, but Modi got it changed because of vote-bank politics. Voters like us, who have always voted for the BJP, felt bad about it,” he said. His opinion reflects the unease among the BJP’s dominant caste voters over the party’s attempts to woo the SC, ST, and OBC communities.

RJD’s alliance with VIP seems to be working out well

The RJD’s alliance with the VIP, the political outfit of Mukesh Sahani (who calls himself “son of Mallah”), has given teeth to the Mahagathbandhan in Darbhanga, Madhubani, Jhanjharpur, Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, Khagaria, and Motihari. The VIP was earlier a BJP ally but moved away from it after all three VIP MLAs joined the BJP in 2022. Mukesh Sahani joined the Mahagathbandhan in April this year.

Lok Janshakti Party leader Chirag Paswan at a roadshow in Hajipur on May 15. | Photo Credit: PTI

Dalits in Bihar do not vote as a bloc, and they now appear to be changing their preferences. For instance, the Ravidas or Mochi community, which constitutes 5.3 per cent of the population, was traditionally loyal to the Congress. Among its members were Jagjivan Ram and his daughter, Meira Kumar. Of late, the community has shifted its loyalty to the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has never won any Lok Sabha seat in Bihar. The Musahars, who account for 3.1 per cent of the population, now rally behind former Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi, an NDA ally, and in some pockets they support the CPI(ML).

Supporters of the Mahagathbandhan are calling this Lok Sabha election a “20-20 match”. The expected weakening of the NDA’s performance, however, is on account of parties such as the JD(U) and the LJP. The BJP is likely to retain most of the 17 seats it is contesting.

The Mallahs strongly back the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, and they did so in Bihar, too, in the past. But now they stand firmly with the Mahagathbandhan. The RJD has also made some inroads among non-Paswan Dalits.

The alliance with the Left, particularly the CPI(ML), which traditionally had a strong base among Kushwahas and Dalits, seems to be benefiting the RJD, although the fear of Yadav hegemony has not gone away fully.

Tejashwi trying to recreate Lalu magic

When Lalu Prasad first emerged as an OBC leader, the entire OBC community and not just Yadavs responded to his appeal. His son and political heir Tejashwi Yadav is trying to recreate that appeal, but the weaker and numerically marginalised EBC castes are still wary of the “Yadavisation” of politics. That helps the BJP to deepen its subaltern Hindutva outreach.

Also Read | Bihar: Navigating change and stagnation

Only the BJP, the RJD, and the CPI(ML) have cadre on the ground. The CPI(M) and the CPI are weakened forces, while the Congress has no cadre. The HAM and the RLM are one-man parties. In 2014, the NDA minus JD(U) won 31 seats (BJP, 22; LJP, 6; RLSP, 3). In the opposition ranks, the RJD won four, and the JD(U) and Congress won two each, while the NCP got one.

What will be the key to the outcome of Lok Sabha election in Bihar? Will Nitish Kumar and Narendra Modi be able to keep their EBC vote banks intact? Will Tejashwi Yadav be able to counter the perception of Yadav intimidation and enlarge the social coalition by bringing in other castes? Kushwahas have warmed to the RJD after years of a frosty relationship. The results will answer these questions, but it appears that “small” could be big in Bihar: the numerically small castes, whose votes will vary according to candidates and constituencies, could actually decide the outcome.

Jharkhand: A battle over tribal identities

After bringing Babulal Marandi back into its fold, BJP is hoping to neutralise the tribal backlash over former CM Hemant Soren’s imprisonment.

Published : May 24, 2024 18:59 IST - 12 MINS READ

Anand Mishra

Jailed former Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren attending the last rites of his uncle at Nemara village in Ramgarh district on May 6.  | Photo Credit: PTI

In the Lok Sabha election in Jharkhand, a State with a tribal population of 26 per cent, the January 31 arrest of Chief Minister Hemant Soren in a case of alleged land grab has resulted in identity politics taking centre stage. Tied to this is the renewed call for “Sarna” dharma, the pantheistic religion that tribal communities in the Chotanagpur region follow. Both issues are keeping the BJP on edge.

Leaders of the BJP from Jharkhand, including Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda, have been asked to spell out their position on nature worship. Hemant Soren brought up the issue last year and made it known that tribal people are not Hindus and neither do they follow any religion other than Sarna. BJP State chief Babulal Marandi, the State’s first Santhal Chief Minister, is walking a tightrope on the issue, given the BJP’s stated Hindutva agenda.

The opposition was quick to seize the opportunity to claim that tribal people had been neglected. Addressing an election rally in Chaibasa, the headquarters of Singhbhum district, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi reminded the audience that the “BJP had jailed a tribal Chief Minister” and that “the husband of Kalpana Soren had been sent to jail”. Rahul went on to remind the gathering about other incidents of atrocities on tribal people in BJP-ruled States.

Earlier, in Chaibasa, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at an election rally that it was his government that had recognised the role of tribal leaders like Birsa Munda in the freedom struggle by celebrating his birth anniversary as “Janjatiya Gaurav Divas” and also building a Janjatiya museum. Expectedly, BJP leaders have also repeatedly highlighted the fact that they appointed former Jharkhand Governor Droupadi Murmu, from the Santhal tribe, as President and that the Congress put up a candidate against her. Santhals are the dominant tribe in Jharkhand, with the Oraon, Munda, Khariya, Ho, and Paharia tribes also present in significant numbers. Hemant Soren’s arrest seems to have papered over the differences in the overall tribal identity of the State, which the BJP will have to fight hard to counter.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) won 12 seats (the BJP 11 and the All Jharkhand Students Union [AJSU] 1), but the opposition is pinning its hopes on its good performance in the Assembly election that took place soon after, when it won 47 of the 81 seats. It is also hoping, after Hemant Soren’s arrest, for a consolidation of tribal votes in its favour.

This time, the BJP is contesting 13 seats and the AJSU 1. In the Congress-JMM-RJD-CPI(ML) alliance, the Congress is contesting 7, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha 5, the Rashtriya Janata Dal 1, and the CPI(Marxist-Leninist) Liberation 1. The contest is intense in the five tribal seats: Dumka, Singhbhum, Khunti, Lohardaga, and Rajmahal. In the other nine seats, the BJP seems to have an edge, partly because the Congress has chosen to field political greenhorns.

While Dumka, headquarters of Santhal Pargana division, is the home turf of both the Soren family and Babulal Marandi, Chief Minister Champai Soren, who replaced Hemant, and former Chief Minister Madhu Koda, a Ho, hails from Kolhan division. The State has five divisions: Palamu, North Chotanagpur, South Chotanagpur, Santhal Pargana, and Kolhan.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi being felicitated by Jharkhand BJP chief Babulal Marandi at a public meeting ahead of the fifth phase of the Lok Sabha election, in Jamshedpur on May 19.  | Photo Credit: ANI

In the Kolhan region, the BJP has chosen Geeta Koda, Madhu Koda’s wife, who was a Congress MP from Singhbhum. She won in 2019 against the BJP veteran Laxman Giluwa and joined the BJP in February this year. Numerically speaking, it is a no-contest for Geeta; her tribe, the Ho, constitutes 51 per cent of the voters in this seat, while the Santhal, her JMM rival Joba Majhi’s tribe, constitutes 11 per cent.

But the fact that all six Assembly segments of Singhbhum are with the INDIA bloc (five with the JMM and one with the Congress) could work to the advantage of Joba. Besides, Joba has been an MLA for five terms and was Minister of Social Welfare, Women and Child Development and Tourism in the Hemant Soren government from 2019 to 2024. Madhu Koda won this seat as an independent in 2009.

Also Read | With Champai Soren installed as Chief Minister, JMM hopes to shore up support before election

Dumka is one seat whose outcome could well decide the future course of Jharkhand politics. Shibu Soren won it eight times and Marandi twice. The BJP’s Sunil Soren won it in 2019. Sensing the emotional connect that Hemant’s arrest could have with the constituency, the BJP turned to Sita, wife of Shibu Soren’s late elder son, Durga Soren, as the bhabhi (sister-in-law) who could be expected to counter the sympathy vote for the devar (Hemant, brother-in-law). Aware that a section of the party is sulking at Sunil being dropped, the BJP’s top leadership has promised a future role for him. The JMM candidate, Nalin Soren, is an old-timer who has worked with Shibu Soren for many years.

Addressing a rally in Dumka after filing her nomination, Sita lambasted the JMM government over corruption, saying: “The opposition is trying to push the point that Hemant was sent behind bars because he was a tribal and that tribal people are being undermined. They are also trying to project Modiji as someone who will destroy the Constitution. Do not be misled.”

On the Congress’ charge that Modi and the BJP were bent on ending reservation, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh countered in Hindi: “Kisne ma ka doodh piya hai jo aapka aarakshan khatam kar de” (who has got the guts to end your reservation). In poverty-stricken Dumka, Singh repeatedly used the phrase “dhan, daulat, dhanwan” (wealth and the wealthy) to hammer home the point that the BJP would bring prosperity to the region.

At Khunti, the birthplace of the iconic freedom fighter Birsa Munda in South Chotanagpur, Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda is locked in a rematch with the JMM’s Kalicharan Munda. In 2019, Arjun defeated Kalicharan by just over 1,400 votes. This was because the then Chief Minister, Raghubar Das, tried his best to defeat Arjun Munda due to internal political rivalry.

Highlights

- Rampant unemployment and the lure of quick money has pushed youth into cybercrime in places like Jamtara.

- Besides the lack of development, the loot of jal, jangal, jameen (water, forest, land) continues unabated. Even tribal villages close to Ranchi do not have basic infrastructure.

- Hardly 20 per cent of households in the State have access to tap water even after the Centre approved 315 water supply schemes for Jharkhand in December 2021.

The veteran politician Karia Munda won this seat eight times, seven times as a member of the BJP and once as a candidate of the Janata Party. The Mundas constitute 50 per cent of the population in the constituency, so the votes of other communities could be decisive. However, within the BJP, Arjun and Marandi do not have the best of equations, and Arjun’s only hope is that Marandi will allow him to breathe easy.

The former Jharkhand Congress president Sukhdev Bhagat is fighting the BJP’s Sameer Oraon in Lohardaga, also in South Chotanagpur. With the former JMM MLA Chamra Linda contesting as an independent, which could queer the pitch for Bhagat, Oraon seems well placed to win the seat.

In the only Scheduled Caste constituency in the State, the Maoist-dominated Palamu, Vishnu Dayal Ram, BJP MP and former State DGP, is locked in a contest with the RJD’s Mamata Bhuyian, but Kameshwar Baitha of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a former Maoist, has jumped into the fray, muddying the waters. Baitha won the seat as a JMM candidate in 2009 when he was in jail. Bhuyian is seen as a weak candidate. The contest here is being viewed as one between a former policeman and a former Maoist. The RSS has roots in the region, which could come in handy for Ram, who was Bhagalpur Superintendent of Police when “Operation Gangajal”, better known as the notorious Bhagalpur blindings case, happened.

In the remaining seats, the BJP seems to be ahead, partly because the Congress candidates are not well known, despite a couple of them being from political families. In Ranchi, for instance, former Union Minister Subodh Kant Sahay’s daughter, Yashaswini Sahay, is the party candidate, while in Dhanbad, it is Anupama Singh, daughter-in-law of the late Congress veteran Rajendra Singh. The BJP candidate in Dhanbad is Dhullu Mahato, an MLA who is said to have connections with the coal mafia, and this has not gone down well with the local party leadership and sympathisers of sitting MP Pashupati Nath Singh.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal with his Jharkhand counterpart, Champai Soren, at an election campaign in Jamshedpur on May 21.  | Photo Credit: PTI

Some other key contests are in Koderma (North Chotanagpur), where former RJD State president Annapurna Singh is fighting the CPI(ML)’s Vinod Singh, son of the late Mahendra Singh, who was shot dead more than a decade ago, allegedly by Maoists.

In Godda (Santhal Pargana), the BJP’s Nishikant Dubey is fighting the Congress’ Pradeep Yadav, who was earlier in Babulal Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (Prajatantrik). Dubey, a two-term MP, has brought many development projects, including an All India Institute of Medical Sciences and an airport, to this region and that could see him through. He was instrumental in the disqualification of Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra in the outgoing Lok Sabha and strongly backed BJP MP Ramesh Bidhuri after the latter made a communal slur on the floor of the House against MP Danish Ali, then with the BSP.

The BJP possibly breathes easy in Hazaribagh, the seat that Yashwant Sinha and his son Jayant Sinha have represented. The contest is between Manish Jaiswal (Hazaribagh Town MLA) of the BJP and Jai Prakash Bhai Patel of the Congress. In fielding Jaiswal, the BJP denied the ticket to Jayant Sinha. It is the first time that no one from the Yashwant Sinha family is contesting the seat in the last 25 years. Patel was the BJP MLA from Mandu and also the party’s chief whip before he joined the Congress in March. Patel is the son of Teklal Mahato, one of the JMM’s old guards, and this could hold him in good stead.

The BJP’s decision to opt for Raghubar Das as Chief Minister in 2014 antagonised tribal people, who favoured the Hemant Soren-led opposition alliance in the Assembly election that followed. After bringing Babulal Marandi back into the party, the BJP is hoping to neutralise the expected tribal backlash over the jailing of Hemant Soren. The BJP is hoping not only to corner a lion’s share of the 14 Lok Sabha seats but also bounce back to power in the Assembly election due later in the year. The BJP and the AJSU hope to gain a big chunk of the Kurmi and other Sadan (the old non-tribal co-settlers) votes. One of the reasons for the BJP’s poor showing in the 2019 Assembly election was that the two parties contested separately.

While the main contest is between the BJP and the INDIA bloc, there are signs of the emergence of a third player, the Jharkhandi Bhasha Khatiyani Sangharsh Samiti, led by a young leader from the Kurmi caste, Jairam Mahto. In seats like Ranchi, Giridih, and Hazaribagh, the Samiti seems to have some support among the youth, who believe that the traditional political players have not done much for them.

In Giridih, from where Jairam Mahto is contesting, the support for the new party seems more pronounced despite the presence of veterans like MP Chandraprakash Choudhary from the AJSU and the JMM’s Mathura Mahto. All three candidates are from the Kurmi caste. The emergence of Jairam Mahto, on the lines of another young Dalit leader, Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan in Uttar Pradesh, could be a worry for the traditional Kurmi party, AJSU, whose chief Sudesh Mahto has twice been Deputy Chief Minister in two rival alliance governments in Jharkhand with just five Assembly seats.

Also Read | Jharkhand: Sympathy factor

The outcome of the election could well decide the fate of the most popular and prominent political family in the State: the Sorens. Shibu Soren is a pale shadow of his powerful past, his son and political heir, Hemant Soren, is behind bars, and the party hurriedly elected a new Chief Minister from outside the family due to intense rivalry and competing claims for the post within the family. Champai Soren is likely to be replaced after the election with Hemant’s wife, Kalpana, who contested the Gandey Assembly byelection held on April 19, on the JMM ticket after the seat was vacated by the veteran party leader Sarfaraz Ahmad.

Nishikant Dubey said on the social media platform X: “Soren family has decided to insult another leader from Kolhan region after Madhu Koda. While Shibu Soren had removed Madhu Koda as CM and himself became CM, Hemant Soren has now decided that Champai Soren will be removed as CM and Kalpana Soren will become Chief Minister.”

What the intense campaigning does not talk about is the recovery of nearly Rs.35 crore in cash from the home of a domestic servant of a Minister’s personal assistant or that one can still see women trudging downhill to fetch water in villages close to the State capital, Ranchi. This absence of development could well be attributed to the political instability in the State since its formation in 2000; the State has had 12 Chief Ministers in 24 years.

Ironically, the only Chief Minister to complete a five-year term was the non-tribal Raghubar Das. The BJP has been on the ascendant since 2004, when it won only one Lok Sabha seat. It won 8 seats in 2009, 12 in 2014, and 11 in 2019. The Congress won six seats in 2004, one in 2009, none in 2014, and one in 2019. The JMM won four seats in 2004, two each in 2009 and 2014, and just one in 2019.

Besides the lack of development, the loot of jal, jangal, jameen (water, forest, land) continues unabated. Rampant unemployment and the lure of quick money has pushed youth into cybercrime in places like Jamtara. In fact, cybercrime in Jamtara inspired a Netflix series titled Jamtara: Sabka Number Ayega.

Even tribal villages close to Ranchi do not have basic infrastructure. For hundreds of villages, the drinking water source is the chua (shallow pit) or jharna (falls); water from taps is still a dream. Hardly 20 per cent of households in the State have access to tap water even after the Centre approved 315 water supply schemes for Jharkhand in December 2021 at a cost of Rs.9,544 crore under the Jal Jeevan Mission. Addressing an election rally in Khunti, Union Home Minister Amit Shah put the blame on the JMM-led government in the State for allegedly obstructing the scheme. To what extent such basic issues will impact the election is unclear, with all political parties unabashedly milking the tribal identity issue for electoral gain.

Demographics

- Lies and statistics: EAC paper spreads alarming half-truths about Muslim population growth

Lies and statistics: EAC paper spreads alarming half-truths about Muslim population growth

Released in the middle of the election and amplified by media, the working paper says minorities in India are not just protected but also thriving.

Published : May 24, 2024 19:52 IST - 9 MINS READ

T.K. Rajalakshmi

Muslim devotees offer prayers during Eid al-Fitr celebrations at a mosque in Kochi in 2015. | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT / THE HINDU

In mid-May, in the midst of the general election, a working paper released by the Economic Advisory Council (EAC) to the Prime Minister made its rounds in the media. The 67-page paper in the EAC-PM Working Paper series, “Share of Religious Minorities: A cross-country analysis (1950-2015)”, authored by Shamika Ravi, Abraham Jose, and Apurv Kumar Mishra, argues that minorities in India are not just protected but also thriving. This, according to it, was proven by their increased share in the population over a 65-year period.

The paper, however, exposes its own biases by lamenting the decline of the Hindu population in the subcontinent and highlighting the increase in the number of Muslims as a share of the overall populations.

Relying on data from the 2019 Religious Characteristics of States Dataset Project (RCES-Dem, 2017) for 1950-2015, the paper analyses the status of minorities measured in terms of their changing share in a country’s population over 65 years. It says that the share of the majority religious denomination, including in India, has gone down. However, the share of the majority religious denomination saw an increase in as many as 25 of 38 Muslim-majority countries, whereas in 33 of 35 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries this metric recorded a decrease. Also, in 94 countries with a Christian majority, the share of this majority registered a decrease.

However, the focus of the study is on India. The share of Hindus in India has decreased by 7.82 per cent (“from 84.68 to 78.06 per cent”). This, the paper notes, is “particularly remarkable” in the South Asian context in which the share of the majority religion in every other country has gone up while the minority denominations have shrunk “alarmingly” in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and Afghanistan. The report states that “it is not surprising therefore that minority populations from across the neighbourhood come to India during times of duress”. This suggests that India is a haven for minorities.

The paper says that all Muslim-majority countries in the subcontinent, except Maldives, have witnessed an increase in the share of this majority in the population. Bangladesh’s 18 per cent is the largest increase in the subcontinent, while Pakistan’s Hanafi Muslim population increased by 3.75 per cent, and the overall Muslim population rose by 10 per cent despite the creation of Bangladesh in 1971.

Population figures put up by the International Institute for Population Sciences at Govandi in Mumbai, a 2018 picture. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

What the report does not say, however, is that currently India is the most populous country in the world, followed by China, the US, and Indonesia. According to Worldometer data, sourced from the UN Population Division, India ranks first in the list of 10 most populous countries, whereas Pakistan and Bangladesh rank fifth and eighth. India accounts for 17.76 per cent of the global population, whereas Pakistan accounts for 2.99 and Bangladesh 2.17 only.

Also Read | Why is the government delaying Census 2021?

The report states that minority populations (Muslim, in particular) have been growing in non-Muslim-majority states. Three countries, Myanmar, Nepal, and India, have seen a decline in the share of their majority religious denominations. In Nepal, the Hindu population declined by 4 per cent (from “84 per cent in 1950 to 81 per cent in 2015”), Buddhists by 3 per cent, while the Muslim population rose by 2 per cent (from 2.6 per cent to 4.6 per cent). The Christian population went up from 0 to 2 per cent.

In Sri Lanka and Bhutan, the Hindu population declined by 5 and 12 per cent respectively, while the share of Theravada Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Tibetan Buddhists in Bhutan increased. Notably, the paper focusses on the increase or decrease in the share of majority populations in relation to the Hindu population, exposing a bias in its interpretation.

Share of minorities in population

The authors posit that changes in the religious composition of a population are a complex phenomenon involving several factors, but they decide to “abstract away from the causes of this change and instead focus on the share of the minority population as a cumulative outcome measure of their well-being”. The paper’s principal hypothesis is that a society that provides a congenial environment for minorities is likely to see their number increase or stabilise over a period of three generations. Just as the sex ratio is a marker for the status of women in society, the share of religious minorities in a population is an effective marker for determining well-being, the paper says.

The paper examines the demographic changes in the subcontinent with expressions laden with distinct bias towards the Hindu population and against the Muslim population. For example, while describing the changes in the demographic composition in Bangladesh (formed in 1971), it says the Hindu population declined to 8 per cent in 2015 from 23 per cent in 1950, while minorities increased by 22 per cent globally. “This helps us understand the scale of demographic shock that the Hindu population in Bangladesh was subjected to in the 65-year period from 1950-2015,” it notes, while observing that the Buddhist population remained constant while that of Christians trebled.

Likewise, it draws a tentative conclusion, based on media reports, of forced evictions of Nepali Hindus to explain the reduction in the Hindu population in Bhutan in the said period. In Sri Lanka, it says, the Buddhist population increased to 67 per cent compared with the “stark decline” of Hindus from 20 to 15 per cent. Likewise, Pakistan’s Hindu population has seen a “monstrous decline”, from 13 per cent in 1950 to 2 per cent in 2015. In India, while the population of Hindus decreased by 7.82 per cent, that of Muslims increased to 14.09 per cent from 9.84 per cent. The share of Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists also rose, whereas that of Jains and Parsis declined.

The broad conclusions of the paper with respect to India are as follows: one, within the immediate neighbourhood of South Asia, India has witnessed the biggest decline in the majority population next to Myanmar; two, minorities are “not just protected but thriving”; three, there is a conducive environment to foster diversity in the country; and four, India is among the few countries that has legally defined minorities and provided constitutionally protected rights for them.

The report says that these progressive policies and inclusive institutions have led to the rising number of minority populations in India. The paper lauds India’s “civilizational tradition of harbouring persecuted populations” and its assimilation of refugees: Tibetan Buddhists from China, Matuas from Bangladesh, and other refugees from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Afghanistan.

Muslims offer prayers at a mosque in New Delhi. The report states that minority populations (Muslim, in particular) have been growing in non-Muslim-majority countries. | Photo Credit: MANISH SWARUP/AP

While claiming to examine demographic trends, the paper glosses over fertility rates. It makes no attempt to inquire into the drastic variation in the total fertility rate (TFR, the average number of children born to a woman in her reproductive life) across regions. It is a known fact that wealth quintiles, education attainment levels, and economic status determine fertility rates. If Muslims were indeed thriving because their numbers had risen, then the same could be said of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe populations. According to the Planning Commission, between 1961 and 2011, the percentage of SCs as a share of the total population went up from 14.7 per cent to 16.6 per cent and that of STs went up from 6.9 per cent to 8.6 per cent.

Selective portrayal

The Population Foundation of India (PFI), an independent think tank, has expressed concerns about the media misreporting the findings of the paper and spreading alarm about the growth of the Muslim population. Poonam Muttreja, its executive director, said that the selective portrayal of data to highlight the increase in the Muslim population was an example of misrepresentation that ignored broad demographic trends.

Highlights

- A working paper “Share of Religious Minorities: A cross-country analysis (1950-2015)“ notes that the share of the majority religious denomination has decreased in India.

- The paper also notes that all Muslim-majority countries in the subcontinent, except Maldives, have witnessed an increase in the share of this majority in the population.

- The paper examines demographic changes in the subcontinent with distinct bias towards the Hindu population and against the Muslim population.

In a statement, the PFI pointed out that, according to the Census of India, the decadal rate of growth for Muslims had been declining over the last three decades: from 32.9 per cent in 1981-91 to 24.6 in 2001-11. The decline was more pronounced than that of Hindus whose growth rate fell from 22.7 per cent to 16.8 over the same period. On the basis of census data from 1950 to 2011, the TFR for all religious groups was declining, the highest decrease was among Muslims by 1 percentage point followed by Hindus by 0.7 percentage points. The trend showed that fertility rates were converging for all religious groups.

Muttreja said the PFI statement was issued quoting data from government sources such as National Family Health Surveys, Census, and the Sample Registration System to provide a perspective and evidence-based narrative. She said using demographic data for sectarian political objectives would lead to divisiveness, misrepresentation, and marginalisation of certain groups.

Asked whether the increase or decrease in the share of religious denominations signified anything by itself, she said the fertility decline was influenced by development factors rather than religious affiliation. Fertility rates itself are related to education and income levels. States with better access to health and education, such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu, exhibit lower TFRs for all religious groups. The TFR for Muslim women in Kerala is lower (2.25) than the TFR for Hindu women in Bihar (2.88).

Also Read | Despite India’s low ranking in the Global Hunger Index, Modi government is hesitant to address the issue

The conclusion that Muslim minorities were thriving in India as their numbers had increased therefore was flawed. First, the Narendra Modi government has received considerable flak for its treatment of Muslims. Modi’s words to describe Muslims, as infiltrators and those who beget more children, has been widely condemned. There have been repeated references to Muslim appeasement, and claims that the opposition would take away SC and ST reservation and give it to Muslims. Such narratives belie the assertion in the EAC paper of a conducive environment that fosters diversity. In fact, as soon as the EAC paper was published, the BJP began to claim that the Congress would provide a quota for Muslims if elected to power. The working paper provides an academic cover to the BJP’s political campaign centred around minorities. In hindsight, it does not seem to have worked.

West Asia

- Uncertainty in Iran after death of President Ebrahim Raisi

Uncertainty in Iran after death of President Ebrahim Raisi

Raisi’s death creates a void and opens up a wide field for competitors vying to succeed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Published : May 20, 2024 16:36 IST - 6 MINS READ

Iftikhar Gilani

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi delivers a speech at Tehran University on December 7, 2022. Iranian media declared President Raisi dead on May 20 after his helicopter crashed in a mountainous northwestern region. | Photo Credit: Iranian Presidency/AFP

In the early hours of May 20, a Turkish Bayraktar Akinci unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) detected a heat source in the mountainous northwest of Iran. The coordinates shared with Iranian authorities confirmed the wreckage of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

The helicopter, also carrying Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other officials, had gone missing on May 19 over East Azerbaijan province, prompting a massive rescue operation in the fog-shrouded forest. An Iranian official stated that hopes sparked throughout the night until they received the Turkish coordinates.

President Raisi was travelling near Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan, approximately 600 km northwest of Tehran. Initial conflicting reports placed the crash site near the village of Uzi. Turkish authorities released drone footage showing a fire, suspected to be the wreckage, 20 km south of the Azerbaijan-Iran border on a steep mountain. Tragically, all nine people on board, including Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, were confirmed dead.

Also Read | Ebrahim Raisi (1960-2024): Iranian President who confronted the West

Vice President Mohammad Mokhber will assume presidential powers until new elections are held within 50 days, as stipulated by the Iranian constitution. Analysts say this sudden transition leaves Iran in a state of political uncertainty, particularly regarding its domestic and foreign policies.

Conservative at the helm

Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric known for his conservative views, served as Iran’s eighth President from 2021. His rise to power was facilitated when the Guardian Council disqualified numerous reformist and moderate candidates in the 2021 election, clearing the path for Raisi’s victory.

Raisi faced substantial criticism for his role in the controversial 1988 judicial commission and his handling of the 2022 protests following the death of Mahsa Amini. Amini’s death on September 16, 2022, while in the custody of the morality police sparked widespread social and political unrest in Iran. The demonstrations were among the largest and longest in the Islamic Republic’s history, resulting in severe state repression, with over 500 protesters killed and hundreds more injured, disappeared, or detained.

A Controversial Leader’s Legacy

Born on December 14, 1960, in Mashhad, Ebrahim Raisi was a significant figure in Iran’s judiciary and political landscape. Raised with a strong religious education, he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a prominent and often controversial leader.

Raisi’s involvement in the 1988 mass executions of political prisoners, drawing widespread international condemnation and leading to US sanctions for human rights violations, remains a dark mark on his legacy. His presidency was characterized by a hardline stance against Western influence and internal dissent, yet he played a crucial role in recent diplomatic efforts, notably in improving relations with Saudi Arabia.

Raisi’s death leaves a substantial void in Iranian politics. Vice President Mohammad Mokhber is now tasked with guiding the nation through this transitional period. The future of Iran’s leadership is uncertain at this moment of significant political shift.

Raisi held several key positions in his career. In 1994, he was appointed head of the State Inspectorate Organization, a role he held for a decade. In 2004, he became the first deputy chief of the judiciary, later serving as Iran’s attorney general in 2014. By 2016, Khamenei appointed him as the head of the Imam Reza Shrine and Foundation in Mashhad.

Raisi ran for President in 2017 but lost to then-incumbent President Hassan Rouhani. However, in March 2019, following Ayatollah Amoli Larijani’s dismissal and subsequent appointment to the Expediency Discernment Council, Raisi assumed the position of judiciary chief.

In the presidential elections held on June 18, 2021, Raisi won decisively with 62 per cent of the vote, becoming Iran’s eighth president. His tenure was marked by significant challenges and achievements, and shaped a complex legacy that will influence Iran for years to come.

Despite widespread expectations that Raisi’s tenure would be marked by seclusion and controversy, he managed to navigate the complex world of international relations adeptly. Under his leadership, Iran continued to enrich uranium, escalating tensions with the West. However, Raisi achieved significant diplomatic success by restoring ties with Saudi Arabia in 2023, following Chinese-mediated negotiations, outwitting American diplomacy.

This reconciliation enabled progress in Iran’s peace talks in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia supports the government against the Houthi rebels backed by Tehran, and prevented military escalation.

Strategic pragmatism

Analysts view these diplomatic achievements as a testament to Raisi’s strategic pragmatism. The reconciliation with Saudi Arabia opened avenues for dialogue with other regional powers and contributed to a temporary reduction in regional tensions. In November, during Israel’s war on Gaza, both Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Raisi attended an emergency Arab League summit in Riyadh, advocating for more punitive measures against Israel. Beyond political gains, the reconciliation between two of the region’s major economies led to discussions about boosting trade ties.

Under Raisi’s leadership, Iran dusted off the Chabahar port deal with India defying potential US sanctions. Both countries recently signed a 10-year agreement to develop and operate Iran’s strategic port, providing India connectivity to Afghanistan and Central Asian countries, bypassing Pakistan. India will operate a terminal in Shahid Beheshti and invest $120 million into equipping it, with an additional $250 million loan credit facility for related projects in the port, bringing the contract’s value to $370 million.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a meeting with the families of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran on May 19. Raisi’s death marks a significant moment in Iranian politics, potentially reshaping the country’s leadership dynamics as he was seen as a potential heir to Supreme Leader Khamenei. | Photo Credit: OFFICE OF THE IRANIAN SUPREME LEADER/WANA/Handout via REUTERS

The exchange of prisoners between Iran and the US, announced in August 2023 and implemented in September, along with the release of $6 billion previously frozen in South Korea due to US sanctions, were also indications of Raisi’s widening the diplomatic room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis the Biden administration.

In the wake of the “Al Aqsa Flood” operation, when Palestinian resistance group Hamas attacked Israel, many states held Iran responsible for providing finances and military wherewithal. But just a few days after the October 7, 2023, attack, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken remarked that no concrete evidence linked Iran directly to the attack, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could not conclusively tie Iran to the planning or execution of the attacks.

But Iran’s sustained backing of groups like Hamas has amplified its influence in West Asia and streets in the Arab world. It has also forced many other Arab countries like Egypt to come forward publicly with support and aid for Palestinians.

Succession race opens up

Raisi’s death marks a significant moment in Iranian politics, potentially reshaping the country’s leadership dynamics. He was seen as a potential heir to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The sudden vacancy has now opened the field for other competitors. While the sensitive issue has mostly remained confined to power corridors, Khamenei’s loyalists are believed to be orchestrating a succession plan to ensure that the next leader is his chosen successor.

This week, former President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate sidelined from decision-making, brought the issue into the spotlight. In a public letter, Rouhani protested his disqualification from the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for appointing the next Supreme Leader. Rouhani, who served two terms as President from 2013 to 2021 and was a member of the Assembly of Experts for two decades, found his recent disqualification particularly significant.

With the Assembly of Experts holding an eight-year mandate and the 85-year-old Khamenei reportedly facing health issues, the composition of the assembly is crucial, as it may appoint the next Supreme Leader.

Analysts in Tehran suggest that in the absence of Raisi, the field has been left wide open for Khamenei’s son, the 56-year-old cleric, Mojtaba Khamenei, to be his successor. Mojtaba, largely absent from the media, is believed to be his father’s right-hand man, wielding significant influence and maintaining close ties with the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Also Read | Israel’s diversionary attack on Iran has set off a new security crisis in West Asia

According to Al-Monitor, a website covering West Asia, the list of potential successors has been kept confidential. Earlier in February, Mohammad Ali Mousavi Jazayeri, a senior member of the Assembly of Experts, defended keeping the list secret, citing concerns over potential assassination plots by Iran’s enemies, namely the US and Israel.

But insiders said that besides Mojtaba, Raisi and Hassan Khomeini, the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had been shortlisted for the topmost position in Iran. With Raisi’s death, there are only two competitors now.

Iran’s Foreign Minister dies

The helicopter crash also claimed the life of Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who was instrumental in presenting Tehran’s case to the international community and seeking ways to mitigate the harsh effects of sanctions.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in Tehran on November 23, 2022. | Photo Credit: ATTA KENARE/AFP

Born in 1964, Amir-Abdollahian graduated from Tehran University with a degree in international relations in 1991. Fluent in Persian, Arabic, and English, he served as the ambassador to Bahrain during President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration.

Amir-Abdollahian later became the deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs under both Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani. Before his tenure as Foreign Minister, he was the Special Assistant for International Relations to Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

As Foreign Minister, Amir-Abdollahian oversaw the restoration of diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in March 2023, ending seven years of tensions and leading to the reopening of embassies in both countries.

Iftikhar Gilani is an Indian journalist based in Ankara.

South Asia

- Protests in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir reflect frustration with disempowerment and interference from Islamabad

Protests in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir reflect frustration with disempowerment and interference from Islamabad

With the death toll rising and political stability at risk, the region’s deep-seated governance and economic issues come into sharp focus once again.

Published : May 27, 2024 18:50 IST - 9 MINS READ

Iftikhar Gilani

Pakistani rangers cordon off a street during a protest by the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) against rising electricity and flour prices, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad on May 13. | Photo Credit: SAJJAD QAYYUM/AFP

In the picturesque but politically turbulent region of Jammu and Kashmir, history seems to repeat itself with an eerie regularity. This time, however, the unrest, linked to political disillusionment and economic problems, is coming from the Pakistan-occupied parts of the divided region.

In the 1987 Assembly election in Jammu and Kashmir, which was widely criticised as rigged, the alliance of Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference and the Congress came to power. As part of a power sector reform, the government raised electricity tariffs, triggering protests in the old city of Srinagar in which four people were killed by police gunfire.

The protests quickly spread and triggered the demand for azadi (freedom). This was the beginning of a protracted Pakistan-backed insurgency that has continued in the region for over three decades.

Recent events in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK, also known as Azad Jammu and Kashmir, or AJK) mirror this pattern. Faced with a hike in electricity tariffs amid soaring inflation of 17 per cent in Pakistan, residents took to the streets in protest, resulting in the death of four people. The civil rights movement, while achieving its immediate demands, highlights the ongoing problems with governance and economic instability.

India controls about 55 per cent of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir’s land area, which supports 70 per cent of the population. Pakistan controls about 30 per cent of the land area, which includes the so-called Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and China controls the remaining 15 per cent of the land area, which includes the Aksai Chin region, the largely uninhabited Trans-Karakoram tract, and part of the Demchok sector. Pakistan has granted Gilgit-Baltistan a separate administrative arrangement and separated it from the rest of the region. On August 5, 2019, the region on the Indian side was divided into the two separate Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Also Read | ‘We have no seat in Pakistani parliament’: Justice (retd) Syed Manzoor Hussain Gillani

The areas of Neelum and Muzaffarabad in PoK border the districts of Kupwara and Baramulla in the Kashmir Valley. However, most of the area, including Bagh, Palindri, Rawalakot, Kotli, Mirpur, and Bhambar, lies on the other side of the Jammu division.

Although the Indian and Pakistani controlled regions have little in common in terms of race and language, they are linked by the boundaries drawn in the Amritsar Agreement of 1846, which still figure in official maps. Even though people across the Line of Control (LoC) remain indifferent to each other’s affairs, their political future is inextricably linked to the claims and counterclaims on their territory by the respective governments.

Historically, PoK has not been a hotbed of political unrest. The last time any major unrest occurred there was in February 1992 when the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front encouraged people to cross the LoC. The resulting conflict with the Pakistan Army was bloody and left 12 people dead and 150 injured.

Three Prime Ministers in four years

Other parallels with the “unpopular” Farooq government of 1987 are that the PoK has seen three Prime Ministers in four years since the 2021 general election. After the party of the then Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, won a majority that year, Sardar Abdul Qayyum Niazi was appointed head of government, but he was ousted and replaced by the businessman Tanveer Ilyas.

A year later, Chaudhry Anwar-ul-Haq, who also belonged to Khan’s party, took office with the support of Pakistan’s main political parties that were opposed to Khan. According to Justice (retd) Manzoor Gillani, a former Chief Justice of the AJK Supreme Court, this undermined public confidence in the government.

The journalist and analyst Arif Bahar argues that viewing PoK solely from a security perspective has led to a compromised leadership and festering problems. According to him, the strategy of remote-controlled leadership has failed, as evidenced by the Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC) movement.

The Anwar-ul-Haq government did introduce reforms such as abolishing secret funds, awarding government contracts through electronic tenders, and cutting government spending by more than 90 per cent. Its austerity measures, such as biometric attendance checks for employees and a crackdown on tax evasion, made him unpopular among the region’s 1,27,000 civil servants.

The lack of credibility has made it difficult for the government to implement economic reforms without a public backlash. Lieutenant General Asad Durrani, a former head of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, said: “This has shown that governments without public credibility and acceptance cannot afford to implement reforms such as reducing subsidies or increasing electricity tariffs. Reforms are best carried out by regimes that enjoy the trust of the people.”

Nabila Irshad, a lawyer and leader of the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Party, told Frontline that the unrest was not directed against the Pakistani state. However, she acknowledged that successive Pakistani governments had interfered with the tenure of the elected government to achieve certain goals, with serious consequences.

“Earlier, the weakness of the people was that they gave representation to unqualified people on the basis of caste, community, and regional affiliation. This incompetent leadership has failed to make the federal government recognise the national interest and instead focus on personal gains,” she said.

She said that the way forward was to implement true democratic principles, promote capable leadership, and ensure that the government served the people in an equitable manner.

Another politician from the region, Maria Iqbal Tarana, said the current wave of protests was a sign of change in the region and reflected the growing discontent among the people over economic hardships and perceived discrimination by the federal government in Islamabad. “The JAAC’s demands underscore a broader frustration and yearning for fundamental change,” she said.

Tarana, who is also the general secretary of the human rights wing of the Pakistan People’s Party, said that while the region had its own government on paper, led by a Prime Minister and supported by a Legislative Assembly, Islamabad had significant influence over its day-to-day affairs. “Following the abolition of Article 370 in Indian-administered Kashmir in 2019, concerns have arisen about the possible incorporation of Pakistan-administered Kashmir into Pakistan. However, the ongoing unrest is primarily due to economic grievances and local political demands rather than fears of assimilation or annexation,” she said.

Tarana said that legally PoK was neither fully integrated into Pakistan nor recognised as a sovereign state. She said the Pakistani government must heed the calls for economic relief and political fairness to restore peace in the sensitive region.

Highlights

- Violent protests erupted in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir over rising costs of food, fuel and essential utilities. There is growing discontent over the perceived discrimination by the federal government in Islamabad.

- The PoK has seen three Prime Ministers in four years since the 2021 general election, and a lack of credibility has made it difficult for the government to implement economic reforms without a public backlash.

- With traditional politicians on the ground not taking the lead in airing the grievances of the people, self-proclaimed nationalists are taking centre stage, supporting the creation of an independent Jammu and Kashmir state based on pre-1947 borders.

A Prime Minister’s frustration

Long before the protests took an ugly turn, Anwar-ul-Haq himself told a meeting of the Pakistan Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue that he belonged to the last generation of Kashmiris (people from PoK also call themselves Kashmiris) who still feel love and affection for Pakistan.

In the video recording of the meeting, which went viral, he can be seen explaining that the new generation is frustrated with the way the Pakistani establishment treats the regions.

In his presentation, he said that his region produced 2,600 MW of electricity, but it consumed only 350 MW. He wanted electricity at the same price as is generated at Mangla Dam in Mirpur. He said this dam produced power at Pakistani rupees 3 to 4 a unit, which is then passed on to the national grid and the power utilities, which in turn sell it to his government at Pakistani rupees 30 a unit.

A demonstration in Karachi on May 13 in support of civil rights groups protesting in Muzaffarabad. | Photo Credit: AKHTAR SOOMRO/REUTERS

“My electricity is not available to me. First it goes to you, then to the Central Power Purchase Committee, and then to the electricity boards. Then they write losses to our account. Every year in June, they tell us that you have a deficit of 600 million rupees and that you are unable to pay this amount, and deduct it from our share in the central budget,” Haq said.

He said that every June, when his government prepared the budget and waited for funds, a huge amount was deducted at source.

He told the Pakistan Senate that when Pakistan had to build a dam, his region had given away its land and sacrificed big cities like Mirpur. He asked Pakistani politicians why they were unable to build the Kala Bagh Dam in their territory.

“Why are the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh against its construction and why do not they have the same zeal to sacrifice themselves for Pakistan as the people of AJK,” he asked.

He even warned that the successive governments of Pakistan-administered Kashmir have been pressured so much that they have stopped breathing. “I tell you that my generation will be the last one to have affection and love for Pakistan. Relations are weakening day by day. Our space is getting narrower and narrower. If we raise our voice, we will be labelled nationalists, those who are against Pakistan,” he said.

In contrast to the homogeneous population of the Kashmir Valley, the demography of PoK is complex. The region is characterised by a caste, or baradari system, which also determines voting behaviour. The predominant groups are Gujjars, Sudhans, Jats, Rajputs, Mughals, Awans, Dhunds, and a tiny group of ethnic Kashmiris. The predominant language is Pahari, which is close to Hindko and Punjabi.

The Kashmiri-speaking population, which dominates on the Indian side (52.46 per cent in the whole of Jammu and Kashmir and 86 per cent in the Kashmir Valley), accounts for only 5 per cent on the Pakistani side.

Broader frustration

Observers say the protests over specific economic grievances reflect a broader frustration with disempowerment and frequent interference from Islamabad. There are fears that Pakistan may try to integrate PoK with neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab, on the pretext of ensuring law and order, and in the process dilute the region’s unique cultural and political identity and also end the people’s privilege of calling themselves Kashmiris.

Pakistan’s handling of the crisis will not only determine the future of governance in PoK but also determine the country’s diplomatic engagement and strategic posture on the world stage.

Also Read | How suspension of cross-LoC trade shattered Uri’s economy

With traditional politicians on the ground not taking the lead in airing the grievances of the people, self-proclaimed nationalists are taking centre stage. These groups gain traction by positioning themselves as opponents of both India and Pakistan and supporting the creation of an independent state of Jammu and Kashmir based on the pre-1947 borders.

Although they have little foothold in the Indian part of Jammu and Kashmir, the region is known for political accidents, twists, and turns. For this reason, the developments in PoK are being closely monitored in Srinagar and New Delhi as they are fraught with implications for stability in a region that is of critical importance to both India and Pakistan.

Iftikhar Gilani is an Indian journalist based in Ankara.

Interview

- ‘We have no seat in Pakistani parliament’: Justice (retd) Syed Manzoor Hussain Gillani

- ‘I don’t think Indian theatre is at a crossroads’: Amal Allana

‘We have no seat in Pakistani parliament’: Justice (retd) Syed Manzoor Hussain Gillani

The former Chief Justice of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir speaks about the recent unrest in the region, and more.

Published : May 27, 2024 18:50 IST - 5 MINS READ

Iftikhar Gilani

Justice (retd) Manzoor Gillani. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

The life story of Justice (retd) Syed Manzoor Hussain Gillani, who was born and brought up in Karnah, in the border region of Jammu and Kashmir, reads like a perfect Bollywood masala film. His parents travelled to PoK in 1947, leaving him, then 2 years old, in the care of his grandparents. His parents could not return because war had broken out by then and stayed back in Muzaffarabad. He attended the Government Degree College in Baramulla and then went to Aligarh Muslim University to pursue a degree in law. When he visited his parents for the first time in the late 1970s, they convinced him to stay back in Muzaffarabad. The author of five books, he has held positions such as Advocate General, Vice Chancellor of a university, and Chief Justice. A leading legal luminary in the region, he spoke to Frontline from Muzaffarabad about the recent unrest in PoK. Excerpts from the interview:

Why did the crisis escalate in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir?

The crisis escalated because the government ignored demands for equal treatment in subsidies, especially in flour prices, which also apply to Gilgit-Baltistan. These tensions surfaced publicly when the Rawalakot-based Awami Action Committee of Poonch raised these concerns on May 8, 2023.

The introduction of new taxes on electricity bills in August 2023, which were labelled as “protected” and “unprotected” taxes, further aggravated the situation. This led to widespread protests initiated by students of Muzaffarabad University and supported by local traders. These demonstrations also brought to light issues relating to the Neelum-Jhelum hydropower project. In response, the government arrested numerous people in September last year. Tensions came to a head when a Deputy Commissioner in Dodyal was attacked on May 9 after he tried to disperse a crowd, and protesters marched towards Muzaffarabad the next day.

Apart from these economic problems, what were the other factors that led to the unrest, and was anything done about it?

Basically, there is a structural problem in the relationship between Pakistan-administered Kashmir [PAK] and the Pakistani government. Only when they are streamlined under a constitutional mechanism will the problems be solved. In my opinion, whatever the Pakistani government does here in practice should be governed by specific constitutional provisions so that there is some accountability to the Parliament and the Supreme Court of Pakistan. There is no doubt that it is being administered by Pakistan in a similar manner as the provinces of Pakistan, but there must be a regulatory mechanism under the Constitution of Pakistan.

Also Read | Protests in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir reflect frustration with disempowerment and interference from Islamabad

Your side of Kashmir has not been as politically active as the Indian side of Kashmir. Why?

Lack of bold leadership like that of Sardar Ibrahim Khan, Sardar Qyoom Khan, and K.H. Khursheed is the main reason. There is no voice at the national level. The governments in Muzaffarabad bow to pressure from the Pakistani bureaucracy. Secondly, one-third of the 45 Assembly segments are reserved for non-resident nationals, commonly referred to as refugees from the Indian part of Kashmir. They do not live in Kashmir [Pakistan-administered Kashmir] and have no stake, but they influence the results and have a say in the formation of the government. They are dependent on the bureaucracy for various reasons such as issuance of residency certificates.

Since you have seen both parts of Kashmir, how do you compare them in terms of political power, distribution of resources, and so on?

The Indian part of Kashmir is governed by the Indian Constitution and is represented in Parliament and often in the Union government, and there is oversight by the Supreme Court of India. Apart from that, there has also been vocal leadership. If we minus what happened to Jammu and Kashmir on the Indian side after August 2019 and some other things, we realise that the institutions on that side are comparatively strong.

What is the political structure of PoK?

The region has a parliamentary form of government consisting of a Legislative Assembly, which is responsible for local affairs, headed by the Prime Minister and has a President as the symbolic head of state. And then there is another structure, the AJK [Azad Jammu and Kashmir] Council, which is headed by the Prime Minister of Pakistan. The catch is that all executive matters are the responsibility of the AJK Council, which is not an elected body and represents the Pakistani government.

Whatever policy matters and decisions the Pakistani government takes for the other provinces ipso facto applies to AJK as well. Unlike the Indian part, we have no representation in the Pakistani parliament. Almost all national political parties operating in Pakistan have their branches in AJK, and the party that forms the government in Islamabad usually governs in Muzaffarabad as well.

Also Read | ‘The election is an opportunity to end silence in Kashmir’: Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra

After the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, is there a fear that this territory will be annexed to Pakistan?

Apart from the constitutional arrangement, AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan are integrated with Pakistan in every respect. Apart from the scanty voices in favour of an independent Kashmir, people do not feel alienated from the rest of Pakistan. There is only formal constitutional assimilation left, which has been publicly expressed after the abrogation of Article 370.

Of late, many Indian leaders have been vowing to reclaim PoK, and it is even being suggested that the people there could start a movement and join the Indian Union. What is the legal and factual situation?

In my view, all agreements between the princely states and the British government lapsed on August 15, 1947. Therefore, the State of Jammu and Kashmir became technically free from August 1947. Parts of the State were liberated by the people from the forces of the local Dogra ruler, and they proclaimed their government on October 24, 1947. When Maharaja Hari Singh acceded to India, he was left with the part that had remained under him, not the part that had been liberated from him. The AJK government later entered into an agreement in which it ceded its sovereignty to Pakistan (Karachi Agreement of April 1948). That is the legal and factual position, which has remained hidden from the Indian public.

‘I don’t think Indian theatre is at a crossroads’: Amal Allana

The theatre director talks about her biography of her father, Ebrahim Alkazi, a pioneering force in Indian theatre.

Published : May 28, 2024 17:54 IST - 11 MINS READ

Ritika Kochhar

Ebrahim Alkazi with Amal Allana at Art Heritage gallery, New Delhi, in 2013. | Photo Credit: E. Alkazi Personal Archives/ Art Heritage Photo Archives

The March 22 launch in New Delhi of the theatre director and art gallery owner Amal Allana’s biography of her father, the multifaceted Ebrahim Alkazi (1925-2020), was unusual in many ways. Allana organised a reading of passages from the biography (titled Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive) in a kind of partial enactment, using two well-known theatre artists, Sonam Kalra and Rehaan Engineer. The selected passages referenced Alkazi’s personal and professional history: his relationship with Uma Anand; his wife Roshan’s depression and yet ceaseless support for him; their early years in war-torn London when penniless artists and poets like F.N. Souza and Nissim Ezekiel thronged to the couple’s tiny flat; Alkazi’s dramatic resignation from The Theatre Group in 1953, and later as head of the National School of Drama (NSD) in 1977.

Both the dramatised reading and Allana’s conversation with the art historian Naman Ahuja were disarmingly frank. We learnt of Alkazi’s strained relationship with his in-laws and, on a more humorous note, an incident where Alkazi attended a party in Delhi wearing only a shirt and briefs! Allana said that she had been named both Uma and Amal by her inclusive parents. All this to an audience that included Romi Chopra, Suneet Tandon, Gita Kapur, Nilima Sheikh, and many more luminaries of Delhi, all of whom would have worked with Alkazi at some stage.

Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive has the same rigour and honesty, although a life as big as Alkazi’s will need several volumes to do it justice. It looks at the grit of a young, penurious Arab immigrant, who chose to remain in India when his entire family left during Partition. It looks at his relationships with his friends, which often seem better than his relationships with family. It is unflinching in the way it looks at Allana’s relationship with her parents and relationship of the couple. But there is much left out. For one, it only talks about the dead in detail. It also rushes through his later years, after he left the NSD and set up the Art Heritage gallery and the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts (AFA).

Alkazi did not give too many interviews in his lifetime. Therefore, unlike artists and theatre actors like Naseeruddin Shah and Pankaj Kapur whom he trained and mentored, he became a shadowy and legendary figure. For people like me staring at a new India and looking for heroes to show the way forward, this book is essential both as art history and a lesson on how to pick ourselves up and start anew after each setback.

Cover of Ebrahim Alkazi: Holding Time Captive | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

I turned to Amal Allana for answers to the many questions I had while reading the book. Here are excerpts from some of her responses.

A very large part of the book is devoted to Alkazi’s theatre-building work. Do you believe that institution-building takes precedence over his contribution as a theatre director when one looks back at his legacy?

Talented both as a pedagogue and as a creative theatre director, Alkazi was an ambitious man, full of talent and new ideas. However, it is true that he felt that at that particular juncture of the nation’s history, his talents and energy could be best utilised in building a sound foundation for theatre practice by imparting professional training to students for the future.

Once in Delhi, he decided to devote all his efforts to training, which meant that he only did productions for the NSD with NSD students. Alkazi was aware that with student actors, only a certain level could be achieved. In later years, after he left the NSD, he spoke of the possibility of setting up a first-rate repertory of trained, mature actors, which would allow his directorial efforts to be realised with even greater impact. Although very keen on this project, he was all too aware that it would be impossible to support such a top-notch theatre company on his personal resources alone.

Another aspect of his creativity was his histrionic skills. After he arrived in Delhi, Alkazi, who had done most of the major roles in his own productions in Bombay—both tragic and comic—gave up acting altogether as he did not feel it was appropriate for him as director of the NSD to continue to nurture an acting career for himself. In fact, he turned down several good roles in films. These were among the kind of ethical choices and personal sacrifices that people like him made in the larger interests of nation-building.

Catalogue of Opening Lines–The Artworks of E. Alkazi (2019). | Photo Credit: Art Heritage and Alkazi Foundation for the Arts.

Also Read | 1962: Ebrahim Alkazi helms National School of Drama

How did you begin this project? What drove you to it? How long did it take? How did you get access to his partner Uma Anand’s letters, for example?

As I have mentioned of my father should not go unrecorded, as he has been a major figure in India’s cultural field. I think it was around 2007 that I began putting together a tentative timeline of his theatre work. In 2015-16, I curated an exhibition on his theatre career called “The Theatre of E. Alkazi”. This prompted me to take another step forward by trying to construct the timeline for his art-related work through the Art Heritage gallery, which ultimately led to a book on his contribution to the art field, called Ebrahim Alkazi: Directing Art: The Making of a Modern Indian Art World (2016), edited by Parul Dave Mukherjee. A few years later, on suddenly discovering 100 of his early artworks from the 1940s, we mounted them in an exhibition curated by Ranjit Hoskote called “Opening Lines: The Artworks of E. Alkazi” (2019).

The material we kept unearthing and documenting for these projects became a kind of foundational base which I started drawing on for this biography. All this material allowed me to make connections between the two powerful areas of his preoccupations: theatre and the visual arts. Wading through a sea of material—his drawings, sketches, paintings, notebooks, diaries, catalogues, articles, interviews, letters, and photographs that spanned practically a century, and that were mainly located in his homes both in India and abroad—was a massive undertaking. I often wondered if I would actually be able to assemble and compile!

Tughlaq by Girish Karnad, directed by E. Alkazi, with Manohar Singh as Tughlaq. NSD, New Delhi, 1974. | Photo Credit: Alkazi Theatre Archives

The book appears to be the journey of a king and a visionary. How do we look at the version of his detractors, especially the students who protested against him in his last days at the institution he set up, the NSD?

I think I have been fairly objective about my father to prevent this from becoming a hagiography. As I have said elsewhere, I am more interested in discovering the source of Alkazi’s ideas and the “process” of his work than in making an “assessment” of his contributions. This is for others to do. However, as we know, most strong people like my father, who have the ability to get things done, are usually in a hurry to implement their ideas, and that too, in an undiluted form. I think Alkazi’s terms in taking up any job, including the NSD, were fairly clear: if bureaucrats were unable to comprehend the far-sightedness of his views, he was willing to step down at any point. This is what he eventually did. The fact that he actually stuck to a government position for 16 years was rather commendable for an artist like him.

Alkazi rehearsing Dharamvir Bharati’s Andha Yug at Purana Qila, New Delhi, in 1974. | Photo Credit: Alkazi Theatre Archives

Many well-known people, not directly linked to the central biographical narrative, appear and disappear in the book. Was this deliberate? What was your aim?

I assume you are asking about my reference to groups of people. This has been done, for example, in some early chapters on Bombay, to give a sense of the cosmopolitan nature of the city, to which a large number of international artists gravitated. Then again, in the Dartington Hall chapter, I mention many artists dining together. This was part of a deja vu experience for Alkazi. These artists were like-minded, as they were primarily interested in creating a new global art form that would draw from world cultures and traditions. In mentioning these artists and others from time to time, my intention was to provide a cultural context for my protagonist… of giving the reader a general sense of the world Alkazi intellectually inhabited… of people who had a bearing on his thinking and ideas. There are other ways too in which I have tried to give a sense of Alkazi’s times. Capturing the flavour of that era was an important aspect of the book.

Antigone by Jean Anouilh, directed by E. Alkazi, Theatre Unit, Bombay, 1955. | Photo Credit: Alkazi Theatre Archives

Who carries on Alkazi’s directorial legacy in theatre, including people outside the family?

Alkazi did not establish a particular acting style, or gharana. There are no “disciples” in that sense to carry forward the guru’s tradition or legacy. Alkazi provided his students with a modernist “approach” to theatre that dovetailed into a way of living, of being and growing as an artist. He trained his students to have open and receptive minds and to be sensitive to the world around them. Many followed his advice and excelled in their art and became well known. Others may not have earned public acclaim but continue to live and work quietly, cherishing the insights and the path that he introduced them to. As he said: “The most profound art is the art of living!”

“ I think Alkazi’s terms in taking up any job, including the NSD, were fairly clear: if bureaucrats were unable to comprehend the far-sightedness of his views, he was willing to step down at any point. This is what he eventually did.”Amal Allana

Is India’s theatre movement at a crossroads today? If Alkazi were alive now, what interventions do you think he would have made?

No, I don’t feel Indian theatre is at a crossroads; it is not in a dilemma. Young theatre workers, like those in cinema and many other art forms, have clear, strong opinions and ideas of what they want to say and the way they wish to connect with their audiences. In many senses, they have arrived. Had my father been around he would have probably said: “Support them and promote them so that they are able to sharply and effectively articulate their views and connect with larger audiences.” He would probably have designed and conceptualised a very different syllabus for the drama students of today. His dictum was to constantly keep abreast of and renew one’s ideas to keep pace with changing times.

Also Read | Dismantling the gaze

Alkazi’s collection of photographs, now housed in the Alkazi Foundation, is invaluable visual history. Did he exhibit from this collection during his lifetime? What are the most significant highlights of this collection?

Alkazi’s collection of mid-to-late 19th century photographic works of India and South Asia, as well as his contemporary collection, have since 1996 been shown in major exhibitions across India and in museums across the world, in the UK, the US, and Europe. In India, the Alkazi Collection has had major shows at the various National Galleries of Modern Art in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, the most recent being “A Cinematic Imagination: Josef Wirsching and the Bombay Talkies”, at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, in Mumbai, which concluded recently. The foundation has published more than 15 volumes on works in the Alkazi Collection written by major photography scholars from across the world.

Alkazi and Roshen, 1948. | Photo Credit: Alkazi Personal Archives

Both this and the theatre material he collected over the years point to his legacy as an archivist. When did he begin to pursue this and what motivated him? How is the family continuing this journey of archiving cultural history?

Alkazi did not collect material on theatre. He documented and kept a fair record of his theatre work… primarily photographs of his productions. It was my mother who collected reviews and brochures of his plays, some newspaper articles, and his older paintings. She also kept his old notebooks and letters from their England and Bombay days. These are a part of our personal family archive.

It was in the mid-1980s that Alkazi began collecting vintage photographs of India dating back to the introduction of new technology in India. No longer looking at colonial India as picturesque or through the lens of Raj nostalgia, Alkazi invited Indian and international scholars to examine and analyse various aspects of the colonial gaze in the visualisation of India. The results were startling. British photography of India was not just a commercial enterprise carried out by businessmen but was used as an official tool by the British government to control and subjugate its colonised subjects. This was an entirely new reading of the photographs from a subaltern perspective. Thus, a new history began to be discussed and written about. It was this that gave the Alkazi Collection a certain distinctiveness and significance.

In 2015, when my father turned 90, we decided that we would build a small theatre archive (The Alkazi Theatre Archives) around my father’s theatre material. So far, we have succeeded in collecting some material on important theatre groups from across the country, which we have begun to disseminate through a series of annual exhibitions and a newsletter.

Ritika Kochhar is the founder of ArtRadio, an art-based podcast, and the author of three books that look at myth and gender.

South Asia

- Sri Lanka: Is it time for change?

Sri Lanka: Is it time for change?

Sri Lanka’s first presidential election after the protests of 2022 promises to be a pointer to what the people want: status quo or a drastic change.

Published : May 26, 2024 13:51 IST - 7 MINS READ

R.K. Radhakrishnan

A protest by JVP supporters against the Electricity Act, in Colombo on May 15. The JVP, a major opposition party, has been leading protests against soaring prices, and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, its leader, is the favourite to become President in the upcoming election. | Photo Credit: ISHARA S.KODIKARA/AFP

Ending uncertainty over the date of the Sri Lankan presidential election, the Election Commission of Sri Lanka on May 9 announced that the election would be held on a day between September 17 and October 16. The parliamentary election, also due, will follow the presidential election.

The election will be the first after the mass protests of 2022 that sent the then Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa, home, forced the then President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, into hiding abroad, and gave a new lease of life to a down-and-out politician, Ranil Wickremesinghe, who is currently the President.

In the election, there is one clear front-runner: Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Opinion polls put him on top of the pile of contenders even though the economic policies he has articulated so far can best be described as quirky. Wickremesinghe’s party, the United National Party (UNP), which underwent a partial revival after his ascent to the top job, is possibly the only party that can take on the JVP.

Sajith Premadasa, who broke away from the UNP and founded the Samagi Jana Balawegaya, has remained a dark horse since the last election. Other hopefuls, including the Rajapaksas and former army chief Sarath Fonseka, will be forced to pick one of these contenders in return for protection or position after the election.

Shanakiyan Rasamanickam, Member of Parliament, said: “This is geopolitically a very important election in the Indian Ocean region because Sri Lanka influences what happens in the region.” Rasamanickam, one of the few politicians who has wide acceptance across the political spectrum in the island nation, added: “It is too early to make predictions about the election, but it is certainly one of the most important elections in the country’s history.”

Also Read | Former Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa claims ‘foreign conspiracy’ ousted him in 2022

Amantha Perera, a Sri Lankan journalist, said: “What happened in 2022 [the Aragalaya protests] was a complete shift from the way Sri Lankans engage with politics. The public civic uprising, largely non-violent, wanted to change the system and the leadership. What has happened since then is that we have gone back to the same personalities.” According to him, the upcoming election will decide if the status quo will continue or if the people will effect a drastic change.

Election outcomes

Oddly, in Sri Lanka, unlike in most other South Asian nations, continuity, rather than change, in terms of governance has been the distinguishing outcome of many national elections. In the past few decades, for instance, the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the fall from grace of the Rajapaksas, and even the rise of Wickremesinghe were not directly related to elections. In the case of the LTTE, if the citizens of the Tamil-majority Northern Province had voted in 2005, Wickremesinghe would have won. The LTTE banned them from participating in the election. In that election, Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) nominee Mahinda Rajapaksa won, getting 50.29 per cent of the votes. Wickremesinghe secured 48.43 per cent. The LTTE was wiped out in 2009, which was a watershed event in Sri Lankan history.

File photo: Demonstrators during the anti-government protest inside the office building of Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister in Colombo on July 13, 2022. | Photo Credit: ARUN SANKAR/AFP

In 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa was voted to power after the bomb blasts of April the same year. But in less than three years, a people’s uprising, largely peaceful, threw him out. Wickremesinghe lost in the parliamentary election in 2020 but still entered the parliament as the UNP nominee; his party had secured enough votes to nominate one person to the parliament.

In 2022, a series of circumstances combined to propel him to the Prime Minister’s office, after Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned as Prime Minister following public protests. Wickremesinghe was later appointed President by parliament after the then President, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country.

Mahinda’s fall from the pedestal was even more stunning. Until 2009, the Sri Lankan state was battling the LTTE. When the conflict ended with the comprehensive victory of the state forces in May 2009, there was euphoria and elation in the Sinhalese heartland, in the south of Sri Lanka, and Mahinda became a rock star overnight.

Soon after the war, Mahinda decided to seek a fresh term much before his tenure was scheduled to end. The people voted him back with an overwhelming majority in 2010.

However, in just under five years, Mahinda was voted out of power, but he staged a comeback in 2019. This time, though, the limits set by the Constitution ensured that Mahinda could not contest. Hence, Mahinda’s brother Gotabaya contested and won the 2019 presidential election. In 2022, Gotabaya had to flee the country after people filled the streets demanding accountability following massive economic hardship.

No slogan to attract voters

Now, however, the ground has shifted, and politicians across the spectrum are unable to find a viable slogan to attract the people. Wickremesinghe is projecting himself as a person who lifted the country out of the abyss it had fallen into, and has done quite a lot of plain-speaking.

Targeting the stock market cartel, he said on May 15: “Some say parliament will be dissolved soon. When they say this, the stock market crashes the next day. Then they buy stocks. When the government says they are not doing it, it [market] rises again. Then they sell and make profit.” He has made it a habit to use various platforms, including parliament, to engage in plainspeak; but it is unclear how much of this will propel people to vote for him. People want solutions, not more speeches.

Wickremesinghe is the most erudite and possibly the biggest intellectual-politician in South Asia, but he lacks charisma and, more importantly, the ability to embrace all kinds of people across the spectrum. Unlike Mahinda, he has zero people-connect. However, efforts are on to reposition him as the person Sri Lanka needs at this point.

Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe speaking during the a FAO session, in Colombo on February 20. | Photo Credit: ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP

Kanchana Ratwatte, former Chairman of Bank Of Ceylon, Sri Lanka’s largest public sector bank, said that the country managed to come out of its worst crisis since independence when democracy was under threat.

He said: “The peaceful transition of the presidency was finally achieved adhering to the laid out provisions of the rule book. Subsequent decisions which were implemented were all possible due to the rock-solid parliamentary majority that the SLPP [Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna] secured in 2020, when they won 144 seats. Compared to the period that Greece took to move out of the crisis, it is evident that a strong parliament that was handed over to the incumbent President was the cornerstone that resulted in stability being restored within a few months.”

He added: “Whatever the outcome of the next election is, there is going to be a hung parliament that will result in a not-so-favourable outlook in the medium term. Any coalition that is formed will have diverse opinions diametrically opposed and that will entail catastrophic consequences.”

Hardship on the ground

On the ground, there is not much change in the lives of the lay public. The hardship has eased a bit but daily wagers and the middle class are still struggling hard to make ends meet simply because wages are static while inflation remains high. The drop in inflation is from a hyperinflation scenario, and hence, even though government statistics correctly point out that inflation has fallen, this fall is from an already crushingly high level.

Also Read | Sri Lanka election: Bumpy road ahead for India

There are reports of people in villages opting to disconnect their power connections because electricity rates have shot up. To add to the people’s anger, the government has signed an agreement to buy power from a company owned by Gautam Adani at a much higher price than it is purchasing now.

“A majority of people face extreme hardship,” said Dilrukshi Handunnetti, a lawyer and director of the Centre for Investigative Reporting. “Unemployment is high, tax evasion needs to be plugged... a lot of qualified professionals are emigrating.”

She added: “Politicians owe it to the people of this country to present workable solutions to the economic and other problems. More than anything else, manifestos of political parties should be semi-legal documents. We need to have the right to ask them questions on their promises after the election.”

Art

- Art of resistance: Venice Biennale, 2024

Art of resistance: Venice Biennale, 2024

At the 60th edition, works on politics, war, sexuality, identity, and anticolonial defiance converge to make a grand statement against oppression.

Published : May 28, 2024 16:47 IST - 10 MINS READ

Shaikh Ayaz

The Spanish Pavillion at the 60th Venice Biennale. May 1, 2024, in Venice, Italy. | Photo Credit: VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO/ /Getty Images

With its storied history dating back to 1895 and a scenic setting for the thought-provoking art it showcases (although La Serenissima has been overrun by selfie-seekers lately), the Venice Biennale is a gift that keeps giving. This year’s landmark 60th edition, titled “Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere” (April 20-November 24, 2024), curated by Adriano Pedrosa, sets out to disrupt the Eurocentric gaze. It compels us to see the world through the eyes of the previously marginalised. True to its powerful theme, it throws the spotlight on contributions from indigenous groups, queer and LGBTQIA+ achievers, historical outcasts, and self-taught artists, not only turning the overlooked fringe into the mainstream but also underscoring the surprisingly different and often contradictory meanings that the term “foreigner” holds within itself. In our increasingly globalised world, that word carries a political and social sting, but as the well-meaning Pedrosa implies, it also strangely defines us all.

Pedrosa, currently the artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art in Brazil, is the first South American and the first openly queer curator in the history of the “Biennale Arte”, as the Italians like to refer to the art convention that draws a horde of art lovers, artists, gallerists, and global cultural enthusiasts every other year to the historic but increasingly fragile lagoon city of Venice. The biennale’s main exhibition is clustered between the Giardini—a Napoleon-era garden complex that has served as the hub of the biennale since its first edition in 1895—and the adjacent Arsenale, home to a former shipyard whose decrepit beauty continues to act as a powerful reminder of Venetian maritime power in the 13th century.

A general view of the Central Pavillion at Venice Biennale, 2024. May 1, 2024, in Venice, Italy. | Photo Credit: VITTORIO ZUNINO CELOTTO/ Getty Images

Step inside the Giardini and your eyes are immediately dazzled by a vibrant explosion of colour. A monumental mural, created by MAHKU (the Huni Kuin Artists Movement), an indigenous collective from the Amazon region in Brazil, adorns the central pavilion’s facade, paying homage to the stories, hymns, and allegories from the artists’ native Huni Kuin community. After spotting endless rows of hardbacks of Nil Yalter’s Exile is a Hard Job at the Biennale’s bookshop, an encounter with the Turkish-French feminist artist’s iconic work at the central pavilion turns out to be a deeply authentic and moving experience.

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At first glance, Exile is a Hard Job (inspired by the words of the poet Nâzim Hikmet) looks like a mosaic of images, weaving together micro-narratives of Turkish refugees in Paris. But these seemingly disparate stories coalesce to paint an evocative picture of the broader experience of exile—a subject that Yalter is intensely familiar with, having herself journeyed from Cairo to Istanbul and ultimately settling down and making her name in Paris. Exile is a Hard Job is accompanied by a Bektik yurt/tent model, which the artist calls Topak Ev. The work is filled with rich symbolism, this time dealing with gender politics among the Bektik nomadic community of central Anatolia. The 86-year-old legend was honoured with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in this year’s Biennale.

Tales of colonisation

In the central pavilion, one of the figures who stands out is Andrés Curruchich, a Guatemalan master of Maya Kaqchikel ancestry, whose naive frolics betray a much more conflicted history: the bloody advent of Christianity in Latin America and how it wiped out the continent’s indigenous culture and identity. Curruchich’s granddaughter, Rosa Elena Curruchich, is also represented at the Biennale, her bite-sized canvases offering glimpses into her country’s chequered past.

The Museum of the Old Colony, 2024, by Pablo Delano. | Photo Credit: Matteo de Mayda/ La Biennale di Venezia

A similar tale of colonisation hangs ominously over Pablo Delano’s photographic prints. Delano, a native of Puerto Rico, was born and raised in what remains the oldest colony in the world. This territory, initially under Spanish rule and later under the US, has endured over five centuries of colonisation. Delano’s endeavour testifies to the challenges faced by his community. By imbuing his space with an aura reminiscent of a museum, he also questions the fundamental concept of cultural institutions and their relevance in contemporary conversation.

Nowadays, the best part about biennales is the videos that sit gracefully at the intersections of art, cinema, ethnography, and anthropology, often armed with big ideas and displayed in such a way that visitors can walk in and out freely. Pedrosa has his ear to the ground when it comes to trends in video art. Making his maiden appearance at the Biennale, the Italian artist-researcher Alessandra Ferrini bitterly critiques the Italian occupation of Libya with a terrific video installation. Unveiled in three acts, Gaddafi in Rome: Anatomy of a Friendship incorporates visuals, news clips, and historical documents to simulate a rendezvous between Silvio Berlusconi and Muammar Gaddafi (based on their real-life meeting in 2008), in yet another example of showcasing anticolonialist resistance this year.

The boldest statement against rising xenophobia and reactionary politics in Denmark and other EU countries comes from Superflex, the Danish art collective whose provocative posters bear the message: “Foreigners please don’t leave us alone with the Danes!” I spy plenty of visitors picking up the flyers as a memento and walking out with them. It is a testament either to the anarchic relevance of Superflex’s political protest or, perhaps, they are just design savants lifting the famous posters to decorate their bathrooms.

Perilous journeys

Over at Arsenale’s Corderie, once a rope-making factory, the Italian art theorist Marco Scotini’s videos exude a compelling “call to action” sense of urgency. Since 2005, Scotini’s Disobedience Archive has championed video art as a powerful tool for activism in the digital age. Through his collection of political events (the ever-evolving project remains a work in progress, documenting new movements as they unfold), Scotini seems to argue that cinema can be a disruptive force for social change.

Topak Ev, 1973, by Nil Yalter. | Photo Credit: Matteo de Mayda/ La Biennale di Venezia

The French-Moroccan artist Bouchra Khalili collaborates with refugees and stateless citizens on The Mapping Journey Project. Her project consists of eight videos, each capturing a human hand tracing perilous journeys on the atlas with a permanent marker. The three-part “Nucleo Storico” section contains abstract pieces and portraiture from the Global South, presenting an alternative view of Modernism.

But it is the “Italians Everywhere” segment, with its conceptual coherence, radical display, and a continuous flow of visual surprises that bristles with originality. Pedrosa assembles 40 immigrant Italian artists in this room, where their paintings are encased using the architect Lina Bo Bardi’s celebrated glass easel contraption, revealing both the front and back of each piece, as if baring their very soul to the audience.

Indian presence

Amidst the opening-day frenzy of the Biennale, I catch sight of artists from the Bengaluru-based Aravani Art Project basking in the well-deserved recognition for their mural at the Arsenale. Their work deciphers and translates the experience of transgender and non-binary communities in India. Standing in front of their mural, I cannot help but notice a befitting detail: a caged bird soaring towards her freedom.

Diaspore, 2024, mural painting by Aravani Art Project. | Photo Credit: Andrea Avezzù/ La Biennale di Venezia

This year’s Biennale features a select group of Indian artists, predominantly renowned masters like Amrita Sher-Gil, Ram Kumar, Jamini Roy, Francis Newton Souza, Sayed Haider Raza, and B. Prabha. But it is Bhupen Khakhar who resonates the most with the “Foreigners Everywhere” theme. His radical, homoerotic painting, Fishermen in Goa (1985), reminds us of his personalised approach to art and sexuality long before the arrival of the Aravani girls.

Highlights

- The Venice Biennale’s landmark 60th edition, titled “Stranieri Ovunque—Foreigners Everywhere” (April 20-November 24, 2024), sets out to disrupt the Eurocentric gaze

- This year’s Biennale features a select group of Indian artists, predominantly renowned masters like Amrita Sher-Gil, Ram Kumar, Jamini Roy, Francis Newton Souza, Sayed Haider Raza, B. Prabha, Bhupen Khakhar, and M.F. Husain

- War, oppression, and political turmoil are major threads, reflecting universal human emotions amplified by the sombre narratives emerging from West Asia in recent years

My top pick among the dozens of collateral events dotted across Venice has to be the M.F. Husain immersive show titled The Rooted Nomad. The barefoot master of Indian art was a man of inexhaustible contradictions, one who had both a strong connection to his roots and a wandering spirit. The re-enacting of his fascinating life and art (call it Husain-verse) in a warehouse in Dorsoduro seems a fitting tribute to the artist who lived and died in exile while yearning for his homeland, the ultimate foreigner.

Sins of imperialism

On my second day, I decided to revisit the Giardini and the Arsenale. With a jaw-dropping 88 countries participating this year, trying to see everything can feel a bit overwhelming: it is like navigating through a Chinese supermarket to catch a glimpse of every item on display. There is a strong buzz around the German, French, and UK pavilions, with massive crowds gathered since morning, undeterred by the seasonal downpour. I wander into the Australian pavilion’s exhibition Kith and Kin, which riffs on the consequences of English imperialism, particularly on the island continent’s indigenous populations and aboriginal tribes. Archie Moore won the Golden Lion for this work, becoming the first Australian to receive the accolade. Similarly, the Spanish pavilion’s Migrant Art Gallery takes a sobering look at the Spanish conquests of the New World.

Fisherman in Goa (1985) by Bhupen Khakhar. | Photo Credit: Matteo de Mayda/ La Biennale di Venezia

As evening descends, lines outside the British pavilion begin to thin, and I am finally swept into the haunting world of John Akomfrah’s Listening All Night to the Rain. Arranged into cantos (under the influence of Ezra Pound, we are told), the multichannel video installations combine poetry, philosophy, activism, archival footage, sound art, and masterful acoustics to create a beautifully layered, meditative space that reflects on Britain’s colonial legacy. Akomfrah emphasises the importance of sound in his work; other artists want you to see, he urges you to listen. For Akomfrah, water carries memory, and it never forgets. And so, into this flowing river he immerses the sins of English imperialism.

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The Czech Republic’s poetically titled “The Heart of a Giraffe in Captivity is Twelve Kilos Lighter” is by far one of the finest pavilions of the year. In telling the poignant story of the giraffe Lenka (much like Robert Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar), who died in a Prague zoo, Eva Koťátková’s collaborative project implicates you for the crime of being human. A deep disquiet gnaws at your soul as you walk around the broken pieces of the giraffe’s heart.

Elsewhere, war, oppression, and political turmoil are major threads, reflecting universal human emotions tragically amplified by the sombre narratives emerging from West Asia in recent years. Increasingly a cultural outcast, Russia has ceded its prime biennale spot to Bolivia this time while Ukrainian artists get to share their traumatic memories of the Russian invasion at the Polish platform.

Pavilion of Great Britain: “Listening all Night to the Rain”. | Photo Credit: Matteo de Mayda/ La Biennale di Venezia

A bid for a Palestinian pavilion was rejected. Yet, the genocide in war-ravaged Gaza received the world’s attention—even Israeli artists declined to open their pavilion until a ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas. In such grim times, can art help us grapple with the harsh realities of life? Somewhere, a pro-Palestinian poster provides an answer. It states: “Now is the time for art and poetry. For art that rejects the logic of prevailing power. Art is inherently political. It engages with society, assuming a role either in complicity or resistance.”

Tempted to dismiss this as mere hyperbole or idealism? Think again. In a world teetering on the edge, the power of art to challenge and inspire feels more urgent than ever.

Shaikh Ayaz is a Mumbai-based journalist who writes on art, films, and culture.

Counter Culture

- Voice-over onslaught in Baby Reindeer

Voice-over onslaught in Baby Reindeer

The storytelling in this new Netflix series about a failed comedian who is stalked and harassed hinges on its voice-over which refuses to recede.

Published : May 29, 2024 21:17 IST - 7 MINS READ

Prathyush Parasuraman

A still from Baby Reindeer | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Our cinema has destroyed us as much as we have destroyed our cinema. Our demands are both mirrored and modified by the art we consume, we create; we have all caved in to this dialectic of doom. When the columnist Kyle Chayka looks at our viewing patterns and sees the emergence of “ambient television”, that is television that can be played in the background as we waive our attention, choring elsewhere, he is gesturing at both our split consciousness and the forced magnetism of the thing being consumed itself, aware that it is made for an audience who will not see, truly see, what has been made. So everything has to be verbalised, every affect clarified, nothing must remain subterranean or ambiguous. And god forbid there be ambiguity, we must also know that it is, indeed, ambiguity—that, too, must be clear.

Unsurprisingly, Richard Gadd’s highly acclaimed Baby Reindeer begins as most Netflix dramas and most storytelling begin these days: with its conflict clearly articulated at the outset before bending back into a flashback that explains how we got here. A cowardly narrative choice, this has been so mainstreamed it seems to have become the most natural expectation from stories today—to ask and have answered, at the very beginning, why it deserves our attention. (This is also a frustration filmmakers have confided in private conversations, the way feedback from platforms is crippling their vision, forcing them to put the “meat” upfront in their story.)

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Gadd, who is both creator and writer, also stars in the lead as Donny Dunn, a character based heavily on his life’s experiences. Dunn is at the police station to report stalking and harassment from a strange, large, and imposing woman, Martha (Jessica Gunning). The policeman refuses to take him seriously. Why would he? The statistics of assault fly in the face of his accusation. The lanky Dunn has to explain how it came to be.

The ever-present, prescient voice-over

Baby Reindeer is not as simple psychologically, though, and the show keeps hinting at this complexity as some sort of cinematic virtue. Dunn works at a bar to make ends meet, and this is where he first encounters Martha. Since she has no money, he offers her a cup of tea on the house. She is a bit fidgety and strange, but he encourages her as she flirts with him. He gives her his email, not his number. Soon, there is a flood of mail, ranging from the randy to the rundown. A question hangs over this interaction. Why is he pursuing this conversation?

We have by way of an answer another cowardly narrative choice, the ever-present, prescient voice-over: “I felt sorry for her. That’s the first feeling I felt. It’s a patronising, arrogant feeling, feeling sorry for someone you’ve just laid eyes on, but I did. I felt sorry for her.” The show does not allow us to reach this starched conclusion or even allow the possibility of the question hanging excitedly, unresolved, over the show itself. Besides, it presents the most agonising archetype of our generation: the self-aware man, whose self-awareness does nothing to nudge his actions towards that awareness.

“Is the voice-over the voice of truth or do we have to be suspicious of it the way we must be suspicious of any artist who speaks of their life, given as they are, so easily, to self-mythologising? It is this instability that makes Baby Reindeer a show that is psychologically astute. ”

The show explains this posture more fully as the episodes pile up in both trauma and psychoanalysis.  Here is a man who is so hollowed out of self-respect that the slightest pleasurable spark towards him sends him slobbering. This is fascinating because it destabilises the first voice-over, about him feeling sorry for her. Did he really feel sorry for her, or is he using his sympathy as a scaffolding to hide his bruised ego that is now being burnished? Is the voice-over the voice of truth or do we have to be suspicious of it the way we must be suspicious of any artist who speaks of their life, given as they are, so easily, to self-mythologising? It is this instability that makes Baby Reindeer a show that is psychologically astute.

A suffocating subjectivity

It is also this instability that has to be forcefully read into the show because otherwise it is buoyed by a suffocating subjectivity, Dunn’s voice-over expressing every itch, every strange decision. The show does not want you to stew in discomfort even as it depicts precisely that. So when it comes to the central decision, that of Dunn returning to the famed television writer and name-maker Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill) who shows interest in him and his comedy even after Darrien has drugged and assaulted him, he makes us comfortable about his unreasonable decision. In our heads we ask why he did this. In the show we hear his “I should have… I wish I had… I would love to tell you…”

That between intention and action there exists a gulf is a symptom of life itself. That we need to be reminded of it, because we are so used to them aligning in our cinema, is Baby Reindeer insuring itself against being misunderstood. It wants us to know that he, too, does not really know. The frustration only builds when Dunn thinks he knows and begins to treat himself as an object over which to perform therapy. When he is raped, his inner make-up fundamentally, brutally, changes. He now starts having sex with men, being passed around: “I started having reckless sex with people of all genders in this desperate pursuit of the truth…. If I am passed around like a whore, I might at least shed this idea that my body is part of me somehow. Like who cares if it happened before. It’s happened a ton of times now, so what does it matter?”

The strange clarity of this is only comparable to the strangeness of the desire to produce clarity in and about such a situation—anytime anyone gestures at “the truth”, emotional or otherwise, something stinks. He immediately backtracks: “But it does matter. It mattered because… he’d been vindicated somehow”—he being Dunn’s rapist, and the vindication being Dunn’s bisexuality, which he now has to confront. The thing about such statements—grand and clarifying and terrifying in their clarity as they might be—is that their clarity is deeply suspect because it turns everything into a symptom of a diagnosis, making the body a machine that works on reason, with clear cause and effect. When the voice-over takes over this role and performs it, another kind of violence is enacted upon the story: that of streamlined subjectivity.

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It is what makes Baby Reindeer increasingly stifling to watch because it hinges so much of its storytelling on its voice-over, and its voice-over refuses to recede, to doubt itself and take a beat. It is a relentless onslaught of perspective. So, when Dunn does go to the police station to report Martha’s stalking but refuses to report all the other things she had done that would alert the police—groping him, attacking his girlfriend—it is because “I couldn’t stand the irony of reporting her but not him,” that is, his rapist. Dunn continues: “There was always a sense that she was ill, she couldn’t help it, while he was a pernicious manipulative groomer. To admit to her was to admit to him, and I hadn’t admitted him to anybody yet.”

The voice-over—trailing behind every decision, every utterance, making sense of it, padding incoherence with reason or, at best, awareness—is a smokescreen. The voice-over wants to convince us of its moral pedigree, even as the character flirts with the immoral; the voice-over and character are, after all, part of one body, and we cannot, truly cannot, cast an aspersion on one without the other. And it is this self-aware “I Made A Mistake” voice-over that keeps protecting its protagonist, and it is here you sense the story’s, and the protagonist’s, stumbling, agonising insecurity: an unwillingness to be, truly, despised.

Prathyush Parasuraman is a writer and critic who writes across publications, both print and online.

Essay

- Clues, culprits, and cultural crossovers: Indian detective fiction is entering the mainstream

SPOTLIGHT

Clues, culprits, and cultural crossovers: Indian detective fiction is entering the mainstream

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 8 MINS READ

Tarun K. Saint

Detective fiction writers now weave captivating tales that blend mystery, social commentary, and local flavours into page-turning bestsellers.

My interest in detective fiction germinated fairly early in the 1970s, with Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven, moving forward to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Three Investigators, and eventually the works of Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. Most of us young readers in India were not especially attuned to the stereotypes that marred some of these stories, especially in Blyton and even in Doyle. Comic book detectives like Chacha Chaudhary (with Sabu, his sidekick from Jupiter) were as far as one went with reference to the Indian scene then. Later, the films of Satyajit Ray introduced me to his character Feluda through Soumitra Chatterjee’s memorable personification of Ray’s ace sleuth; I read many detective stories by Ray in translation. Byomkesh Bakshi became part of the cultural landscape after Basu Chatterjee’s adaptation of Sharadindu Bandopadhyay’s stories for Doordarshan, with Rajit Kapur and K.K. Raina taking on the roles of Byomkesh babu and his sidekick, Ajit babu.

However, curiosity about Indian and subcontinental detective fiction was really stimulated after I began to teach the genre at Hindu College, Delhi. While detective fiction was part of the BA English Hons syllabus at Delhi University (DU) in my time, Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was the only representative text in the paper on Forms of Popular Fiction, besides Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s innovative Chronicle of a Death Foretold in a paper on Contemporary Literature. (This major gap has since been remedied with Madhulika Liddle’s Crimson City and Ibn-e Safi’s The House of Fear being included, after syllabus revision at DU.)

Evolution of Indian detective fiction

It was certainly a challenge to engage with Golden Age detective fiction and with Christie’s rule-breaking novel in particular as well as Marquez’s subversive gem, especially in the context of the debates with respect to the literary canon and the definitions of literary and popular fiction, while exploring other variants such as American hard-boiled thrillers and Scandinavian detective fiction. However, I soon began to feel the need for sustained engagement with the evolution of the form in the Indian context. As a teacher I would try and bring in references to exemplars from the subcontinent in class, which led up to an exploration of the archive and of contemporary writing from South Asia.

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As Shampa Roy shows in her book, Gender and Criminality in Bangla Crime Narratives: Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (2017), the popularity of goyenda (detective) fiction in magazines and novels in late 19th century Bengal had much to do with the advent of colonial modernity and the Anglicisation of the elite. While translations from English and French sources introduced the form to the bhadralok, adaptations with familiar plots in new settings allowed for an indigenisation of detective fiction in Bengal as perhaps nowhere else in the country.

A still from the Netflix adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games where the central character, the troubled police officer Sartaj Singh, was played by Saif Ali Khan. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Modernisation and Westernisation had this dual effect across India. Western models were translated and adapted, along with hybridisation of the form (and the induction of local elements), in Francesca Orsini’s account of the evolution of Hindi jasusi (detective) fiction. As Orsini demonstrates, elements from dastans (tales), such as the figure of the ayyar (spy or trickster), were incorporated into the Urdu and Hindi jasusi narratives without magic and with more emphasis on deduction (in Orsini’s Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertaining Fictions in Colonial North India, 2009).

Highlights

- There is a need for sustained engagement with the evolution of the form of detective fiction in the Indian context. Western models were translated, adapted, and hybridised in Hindi jasusi (detective) fiction

- The masculinist assumptions underpinning the genre in the West, and in 19th century India, were interrogated in the wake of the rise of feminist consciousness

- Contemporary detective fiction serves as a means of highlighting the injustices of of society

Some of the earliest detective fiction in Tamil was written by women, creating a space later extended and claimed by Ambai. The role of translators and editors of magazines who encouraged adaptation, synthesis, and localisation was undoubtedly crucial. As Laura Brueck and Orsini point out in the essay “South Asian crime fiction” (in The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction), Vai. Mu. Kothainayaki Ammal (1901-60) was the first detective novelist writing in Tamil, as early as the 1930s, while in English, the novel Detective Janaki by Kamala Satthianadhan was serialised in The Indian Ladies’ Magazine in 1933-34.

Some of the earliest detective fiction in Tamil was written by women, creating a space later extended and claimed by Ambai. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

The masculinist assumptions underpinning the genre in the West, and in 19th century India, were further interrogated in the wake of the rise of feminist consciousness and the different waves of the women’s movement in India. Some writers working in English situated their amateur women detective figures in historical times, while others created women detectives negotiating present-day settings, whether as amateurs or as professionals, often reflecting real-world changes in the constitution of the police force in India.

Classic detective stories

It was important to keep this complex history of the form in mind when I brought together the stories as editor of The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction (Volumes 1 and 2). While I included some classic stories of the earlier era, with translations of archival stories by Sharatchandra Sarkar and Rabindranath Tagore (his parody of the form in “Detective”, from 1898), as well as selected reprints of stories by Sharadindu Bandopadhyay, Ray, Tamilvanan, and Vikram Chandra, the effort was also to reach out to contemporary authors for fresh work. Thus, an invitation was circulated among both well-established and upcoming authors and translators to submit offbeat detective stories with a recognisable Indian dimension. The idea was to pose an intellectual challenge, with suitable modifications of the clue puzzle structure of Golden Age detective fiction, besides incorporating social critique as in Ambai’s collection A Meeting on the Andheri Overbridge and Vikram Chandra’s story “Kama” and novel Sacred Games.

The invitation created space for experimental and parodic stories as well as hybrid forms. In this context, the setting was absolutely crucial, as a way of generating the ambience of the detective story. Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai have been the coastal crucibles where tradition and modernity found their respective points of balance in detective stories. Calcutta was the preferred locale for many goyenda stories, reaching a high point in the work of Sharadindu Bandopadhyay and Satyajit Ray and, subsequently, many more. In several stories the city of Mumbai/Bombay assumes a definite character, as the venue both for unbridled aspirations and the inexorable fall as dreams are shattered with the onslaught of grim reality.

In particular, Ambai’s detective stories set in Mumbai are layered examples of cosmopolitanism with vernacular roots, as she unpacks the form in order to examine the labyrinth of metropolitan existence, often from varied subaltern perspectives. Simultaneously, the hinterland has also become the locale of heinous crimes and investigations, given the impact of lopsided development paradigms.

Blurring the lines

As submissions came in and selections were made, the stories were grouped in five sections. Stories featuring Sherlock Holmes style-amateur detectives, albeit with Indian moorings, are in Volume 1. This is followed by a section on experimental and parodic detective fiction. Stories blurring the lines between detective fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and the existential thriller round off this volume. Volume 2 begins with a section on police procedurals, with policemen or women as protagonists. A section of historical mysteries concludes the second volume: here we find detectives from earlier periods solving crimes long before the advent of forensics and DNA testing.

A promotional for the two volumes of Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

The diversity of the new kind of writing now coming to the fore, whether in the regional context (in translation from Tamil and Bengali) or in English became apparent. The genre seems to be thriving, as the detective assumes centre stage as a mediator of ethical and social dilemmas. The detective story has become, in the best of the recent work, a lens through which the manifold injustices of Indian and subcontinental society can be illuminated.

Also Read | The detective from Majestic

As a mode of fictive testimony, the form bears witness to the continuing imperfections of the institutionalised system of law and order, as well as to the traumatic residue of past injustices (such as the collective violence during Partition and its afterlife). The scar tissue of prior historical trauma is bared here even as authors attempt to uncover the basis for the loss of faith in judicial processes and to unmask the pervasive working of power structures that seek to silence marginalised sections of society.

Earlier, I had made a foray into editing sci-fi (The Gollancz Books of South Asian Science Fiction, Volume 1 and 2 were the upshot). As I see it, both science fiction and detective fiction remain niche subgenres, though detective and crime fiction are possibly emerging into the mainstream to a greater extent. The braiding together of forms as writers reflect on crimes not only of the present, but also of the future is a sign that sci-fi and detective fiction need not be seen as watertight compartments. Such hybridisation is an indication of the porosity of boundaries and the vitality of such popular forms even as they continue to be reinvented.

Tarun K. Saint is an independent scholar and anthologist, who has most recently edited the two-volume The Hachette Book of Indian Detective Fiction (2024). This essay draws on the Introduction to the volumes.

Book Review

- Knife by Salman Rushdie: Chronicle of a death foretold—and foiled

Knife by Salman Rushdie: Chronicle of a death foretold—and foiled

The book cuts through Rushdie’s many worlds of darkness and of light, bringing with it the sea of stories that will survive.

Published : May 29, 2024 17:04 IST - 5 MINS READ

Geeta Doctor

Salman Rushdie displays his entry in the Golden Book in the city hall, Hamburg, Germany on May 13. | Photo Credit: Christian Charisius/dpa via AP

The cover has the eloquence of the Turin shroud.

The word “Knife” of the title slices through the parchment-coloured whiteness of the book’s cover, obscuring the “i” at its centre. In that moment you experience the shock of the assassin’s blade as it entered the whiteness of Salman Rushdie’s right eye. The rest, as they say, is a memory of a murder foretold but miraculously foiled.

Both the horror of the repeated stabbings onstage and Rushdie’s meticulous recreation of the attack through his many interviews and online appearances, eyepatch in situ, tends to elevate him into the pantheon of tragic American-style icons. He could be the Charles Lindbergh, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, or even the Elvis J. Presley of the literary world, the secular saint of free association, if not free speech, which might be a more desirable term from his point of view. There is one dramatic difference. He has lived to burnish his own halo. He does so in such style, with such immense gusto, that love him or leave him, he has proved once again that he is a star.

Knife

Meditations after an Attempted Murder

By Salman Rushdie

Penguin Random House

Pages: 320

Price: Rs.699

Since the fatwa on him by Ayatollah Khomeini for the imagined heresy in The Satanic Verses that led Rushdie into years of exile in the UK, Rushdie has found himself catapulted into a space uniquely his own. As described in a third person narrative in the novel Joseph Anton: A Memoir, parts of which feature in Knife, Rushdie’s ordeal in the wilderness serves to sharpen his vision to an extent that is unnerving. Dare we say it is an Auschwitz of the mind where the victim and the guards are trapped in the klieg lights of their own making?

To us, of course, he will always be Midnight’s Child. A nomad born on the cusp of a fabled subcontinent’s history at the very moment that it was being cleaved into blood-soaked segments. Saleem Sinai lives in a Bombay that crackles with the raw intensity that Rushdie brings to his vision of the city of his birth and with it his evocations of family life long after he abandoned both to live in permanent exile in the cities of the West, and post his underground years, opting finally for New York, where he now lives. He is a nowhere man who is also everywhere in his mind and in his books.

Invoking Naguib Mahfouz

Amongst the many writers Rushdie invokes during his meditations that take on a serial quality as his rehabilitation progresses is Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006), the Egyptian writer and Nobel Prize winner. The magnificent cycle of stories that make up the Cairo Trilogy shows Mahfouz to be a passionate family man like Rushdie but also qualitatively different.

When Mahfouz watches how the three great religions stalk the streets in Children of Gebelawi, inspired perhaps by the Coptic scholar Salama Musi, he explores the different strands that make up Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The one phrase that occurs repeatedly in Rushdie’s oeuvre like a mantra is the line from Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To which the wiser older Mahfouz would reply: “I believe in life and in people.”

Also Read | Attack on Salman Rushdie demonstrates the resilience of hate

Rushdie reports with a deep sense of retroactive regret that late in his life Mahfouz was stabbed in 1994 in a street in Cairo, possibly for opposing the Khomeini fatwa against Rushdie. Yet one of the characters in the Mahfouz trilogy asks: “Kamal had long wondered what was true and what was false, but perhaps doubt was as much an evasion of responsibility as mysticism and a passive belief in science.” A little later he asks: “Could you be a model teacher, an exemplary husband and a lifelong revolutionary?”

One thing that appears evident through the pages of Knife as against Joseph Anton, even a Rushdie can become an exemplary husband given the right circumstances. After having made unkind remarks about his second wife, he goes on to describe one of his more famous wives as being graced with “majestic narcissism”, which could be seen as complimentary. She returned the compliment after they split by stirring a sweet-sour dish of kumquat chutney so glorious it can be watched online.

It is Rushdie’s uxorious references to his current wife who stood by him as he lay nearly dead of multiple stab wounds that merits attention. If there were an index to the book, she would occupy two-thirds of it. That must surely signify a step further in the sainthood category if not for him, at least for her.

Also Read | The long reign of Khattam-Shud

At one point in Joseph Anton, Rushdie recognises that to remain a lifelong revolutionary in the Mahfouz sense of the term, one has to accept change. He writes: “In this new world, in the dialectics of the world beyond the communism and capitalism confrontation, it would be made clear that culture would be the primary too. The culture of central Europe was asserting itself against Russianness to unmask the Soviet Union. And ideology as Ayatollah Khomeini and his cohorts were insisting would certainly be primary. The wars of ideology and culture were moving to the centre of the stage. And his novel unfortunately for him would become a battlefield.”

In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, that most enchanting collection of stories written for his son Zafar after the trauma of banishment, he becomes a child again, named Haroun. It evokes the time when Rushdie would be put to sleep in his old bedroom by his Father Anis, about to fly out of his window like Peter Pan. After many fantastical adventures Haroun and his father Rashid return to the City. It has changed. It is still raining. Its name has changed. It is called Kahani, the story where life begins.

Salman Rushdie’s Knife cuts through his many worlds of darkness and of light, bringing with it the Kahanis that will survive.

Geeta Doctor is a Chennai-based writer, critic, and cultural commentator.

Book Review

- Swadeshi Steam: A shipping company propelled by patriotism

- Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings is a riveting read, but relentlessly dismal

- Somnath Batabyal’s powerful take on Assam’s turbulent past falters in execution

Swadeshi Steam: A shipping company propelled by patriotism

The story of Tamil freedom fighter V.O. Chidambaram Pillai, who helmed a shipping company that hoped to stand up to a British hegemon at sea.

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 6 MINS READ

Manu S. Pillai

A special postage stamp released to commemorate VOC’s birth centenary on September 5, 1972.  | Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Some years ago, the Collector of Madurai was reported to have donated Rs.5,000 to a family. It was not poverty alone that brought them to his notice but the fact that they were the descendants of a heroic freedom fighter: a man described by A.R. Venkatachalapathy as “the first popular leader produced by the Indian Nationalist Movement in south India”.

Swadeshi Steam

V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Battle against the British Maritime Empire

By A.R. Venkatachalapathy

Penguin Random House India

Pages:514

Price: Rs.999

The reference is to V.O. Chidambaram Pillai(1872-1936), also known as VOC, who, just over a century earlier, had helmed one of the most ambitious business ventures in Indian history: a shipping company that hoped to stand up to a British hegemon at sea. The steamers acquired for this alone were worth lakhs of rupees, and they were received in Tuticorin with much fanfare. But the tide turned, and in what is one of the freedom struggle’s more tragic episodes, both the company and VOC were left broken. In Swadeshi Steam, Venkatachalapathy tells this story.

As such, it is rare to find a history of failure. But here we have just this commodity, examining a milestone in India’s anticolonial movement. It is a granular, painstakingly built volume—a project the author pursued for decades. The effort is patent through the text as is the feeling that a less determined scholar might have given up. The archives, after all, are fragmentary and spread out. Often, sources are contradictory—there is, for instance, no clear figure as to what the two big steamers owned by VOC’s Swadeshi Steam Navigation Company (SSNCo) were worth; the numbers vary. It is to Venkatachalapathy’s credit that he did not waver in his commitment. And as a result, for the first time, we have in a single place an exhaustive account of what it took for VOC and his associates to raise their economic challenge to the Raj.

The bulk of this nearly 500-page book is concerned with some six years starting in 1906. It was at this time that VOC, his patriotism fired up by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and his more aggressive brand of nationalism, banded with others to launch the SSNCo. From the start, he perceived this as not a business enterprise but a cause for “the welfare of our motherland”. This was “the abode and shrine of our divinely pure Mother India”, and any profits would serve as “national moral gain”, not a means to fatten the purses of shareholders. Coming soon after the launch of the wider Swadeshi Movement, the company’s very name boldly flaunted its loyalties. It broke the monopoly on coastal trade of the British India Steam Navigation Company—seen as “almost a branch of the [colonial] Indian government”—by waging this war not only against a powerful commercial entity but also the imperial state.

Also Read | Reclaiming the legacy of Tamil poet Subramania Bharati

VOC’s determination and energy were essential to the SSNCo’s early momentum: he travelled to find backers, obtained most of the company’s funds, and gave patriotic speeches to inspire public subscription. His British opponents reciprocated in kind: they poached employees, cut rates to render the SSNCo unviable, and exploited government links to harass and intimidate anyone who would support this brown challenge to white profit. In the end, it was the latter that prevailed, for the game was rigged.

VOC’s politics, meanwhile, left him susceptible to the charge of sedition—like many others in this period, including Tilak—and after public agitation led to violence in 1908, he was imprisoned for years. The SSNCo soon floundered. Faced with a tilted field and predatory competition, even the most valiant efforts by his partners could not prevent the company from folding.

Marriage of commerce with nationalism

While Swadeshi Steam narrates these happenings in breathless, sometimes overwhelming detail, questions emerge on the tensions implicit in a marriage of commerce with nationalism, between sober pragmatism so necessary to business and the heady spirit of the political pulpit. With the SSNCo, all at once it was a political statement (standing up to colonial power) and a commercial enterprise (which had to operate on terms set by the same hostile power). How could these be reconciled?

Economic viability was contingent on toning down assertions of nationalism and focussing on building the business; indeed some directors tried to rein in VOC for these reasons. But from the latter’s perspective, the raison d’etre of the SSNCo was political. If the company abandoned its pointed nationalism, what was to separate it from any other Indian-run shipping business, of the likes that had long existed in Bombay and Bengal?

Venkatachalapathy is in sympathy with VOC here. For example, an article in The Modern Review (May 1909) that charged the icon with recklessness is deemed patronising. It argued that “calm discretion” would have benefited the SSNCo; that a “commercial vessel [that] came in contact with the dangerous political rock” would “be wrecked” (a not surprising claim, given how even today power can make life difficult for businesses). But similar points were made by VOC’s colleagues from the start too, and they did so, arguably, to protect the entity in an unfriendly environment. So also, we read how the SSNCo was “propelled by patriotism and not steam”. But it appears that while VOC was propelled by patriotism, many company directors did not believe this to be sustainable fuel. Where he remained a patriot first and a businessman second, these opposing colleagues advocated an inversion of the formula.

“Throughout the book we see VOC as a public figure and as an able organiser of people and resources. But we do not get a sense of VOC as a human being. ”

While one understands Venkatachalapathy’s affection for VOC, as a reader I could not help but try and view the question from the perspective of these dissenting directors. Would they not also have had the best interests of the company in mind? While some did harbour a personal dislike for VOC—his popularity seems to have bruised many egos—these were also intelligent men. Criticism from his fellows, then, that a little tact on VOC’s part might have saved their cause seems not unfair. In merging the political stage with the boardroom, the company was left in a precarious position. But then again, this might be a moot point: as Venkatachalapathy shows, the British side was not prepared to brook any challenge to its monopoly in the region, so even a more cautiously managed SSNCo would likely have been crushed simply for eating into its entrenched rival’s profits.

Also Read | An Irish link

On the whole, Swadeshi Steam is a highly instructive, vastly detailed work of scholarship. I sensed a gap in one respect alone. Throughout the book we see VOC as a public figure and as an able organiser of people and resources. But we do not get a sense of VOC as a human being. The first 30 years of his life are covered in just two pages, and there is little by way of early influences and what went into the making of his character. Older (and admittedly dated) biographies speak of conflict with his father, a stint where he tried to become a hermit, and so on. Elaborating on these aspects of its protagonist’s life would have added emotional texture to the text, which it lacks in its present shape. And understanding this facet of VOC is important. How else can we account for the fact that this staunch opponent of the Raj, diminished by prison and political marginalisation, in later life ended up naming one of his sons after a British judge?

Manu S. Pillai is a historian and writer.

Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings is a riveting read, but relentlessly dismal

The novel delivers a raw portrayal of a broken life amidst the ruins of Cape Town, challenging readers with its stark depiction of humanity in crisis.

Published : May 26, 2024 17:54 IST - 5 MINS READ

Manjula Padmanabhan

Presented in shards and splinters, the story echoes Deidre’s shifting states of consciousness, with the past and the future both clawing at her. | Photo Credit: Getty Images/ iStock

Cape Town, South Africa, 2028. On the very first page, we watch as a slatternly one-legged woman called Deidre van Deventer struggles out of bed in order to relieve herself in an old plastic mixing bowl. The scene sets the tone for all that follows in this short, riveting, and yet relentlessly dismal novel. Middle-aged and single, Deidre lives alone in a tiny corner of a dilapidated public housing complex. Water is in short supply and must be trucked in, under armed escort. Residents queue with ID cards and containers to collect family quotas. The crippled woman survives on alcohol, cigarettes, and toxic memories of an earlier, more middle-class existence.

At the outset, she still has a friend or two willing to put up with her foul mouth and filthy personal habits. She has a brother called Ross whom her mother idolises. There is a grown daughter called Monica, who lives overseas and sends money to support her. Her father is dead and her mother, Trudy, though lost to dementia, is cared for by the state in a clinic across the road.

Crooked Seeds

By Karen Jennings

Picador India

Pages: 226

Price: Rs.499

Meanwhile, a police investigation is in progress. Despite Deidre’s reluctance, a scrupulously polite black male officer arrives to transport her in his car to the site of her past. It is the plot of land on which her childhood home once stood. The building that her father had built with his own hands was reduced to rubble by a bomb blast. It was the same bomb blast that blew off her leg and destroyed the lives of her whole family.

Shards and splinters

The police have questions, but Deidre’s fuddled brain refuses to focus on what they want to know. They ask about the bodies that have been discovered buried in the backyard of the family home. Bodies of children. They want information about Ross. Suspected of being a pro-apartheid terrorist, he has been absconding for some years. Although Deidre’s memory cannot furnish answers, the questions stir the rubble in her brain. From the ruins of what she half-remembers, a secret begins to emerge that is even worse than what the police suspect.

Also Read | Bleak house

Jennings’ writing is as pitiless as a surgeon’s scalpel, picking out details in stark, short sentences. The dialogue is bone dry: after offering her neighbour Miriam a cup of tea, Deidre says: “Oh, listen, if you want that cup of tea, you’ll need to take your own tea bag. I don’t have any.” No attention is wasted on niceties such as romance or love though there are tiny flickers of remembered tenderness: the soft hair on a baby’s head, the single earring and old leather jacket of a first boyfriend.

Presented in shards and splinters, the story echoes Deidre’s shifting states of consciousness, with the past and the future both clawing at her. As we witness her descent down the slope of squalor until there is nothing left to describe, it is hard to like her or even to pity her. As Miriam says: “Every time I think I’ve seen the worst of you, you come out with something even more terrible.” It is rare, really, to read of a woman’s downfall described in such unsparing terms. In some ways, that is an admirable feat because women characters are so often held to unrealistic standards of behaviour.

Cover of Crooked Seeds | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

In other ways, however, I feel as if the author is telling the reader that this novel is going to dive down into a pit of nastiness that, in today’s world, can only be associated with people of the white race. In other words, it is as if she is appropriating bad behaviour as something to be expected of a white person, as a racial stamp. On account of her own whiteness, she permits herself the freedom to do that. But is that courage or is that exploiting a loophole in the literary world’s value system? Is it a higher truth or reverse racial stereotyping?

Reading The Island

In order to try and sort out my thoughts, I read another of Jennings’ books, The Island. It was longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and comes with lavish recommendations (as does Crooked Seeds). But, right away, this earlier novel about a lighthouse keeper whose lonely life on an island is intruded upon by a man who washes up half-dead on the beach, immediately reveals itself as superb. The tone of the writing is as austere and stripped down as in Seeds. But the construction of the suspense across the brief span of 215 pages (on Kindle) and the denouement that is as abrupt as it is fitting are masterful. Observations about the behaviour of hens and seagulls, of a man’s ageing body, of solitude and the appreciation of solitude—all of these have a quality of truth and light that quicken the reader’s senses. A story that might have been as dismal as Seeds is instead lifted up to a higher plane, attaining a type of noble inevitability.

Also Read | Maps of the mind

I would strongly advise reading both books. They are both, in their separate ways, about the catastrophe that befell the people of South Africa, historically as well as after the end of apartheid. Both books are harsh, unsparing portraits of a people and a culture in crisis. But they are presented in a culture-neutral voice, which makes it easy to extrapolate from these characters to humans in crisis anywhere in the world.

Manjula Padmanabhan is an author, playwright, artist and cartoonist. Her most recent book is Taxi, a witty, racy novel set in Delhi, about a woman taxi driver.

Somnath Batabyal’s powerful take on Assam’s turbulent past falters in execution

Red River is an ambitious third novel examining sociopolitical issues of migration, statehood, separatism, and identity.

Published : May 26, 2024 17:27 IST - 5 MINS READ

Abhinav Chakraborty

Boys play cricket on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Guwahati. Rizu, Samar, and Rana are united by a love of cricket. | Photo Credit: Ritu Raj Konwar

Somnath Batabyal’s third novel is mostly set in the Assam of the 1980s and 1990s, when the State was in turmoil over the “outsider question”: to whom does the State rightfully belong? To the indigenous Assamese alone? The subcontinent’s history has ensured that a sizeable portion of the population consists of Bengalis, some of whom were part of the erstwhile Assam province while some migrated from Bangladesh during Partition. As the main city in the north-eastern region of India, Assam’s capital, Guwahati, has a mixed population of Indians from all over the country. Are they all outsiders to be driven out? The militant outfit the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) fought for a State only for the Assamese, resulting in a massacre of everyone they considered to be “foreigners”, especially Bengalis.

Batabyal deftly captures the turmoil of the days of the anti-Bengali protest. The ghosts of the infamous Nellie Massacre of February 1983, in which nearly 2,000 Muslims—mostly women and children—were butchered in broad daylight for being “outsiders” from Bangladesh, haunt his novel. Batabyal uses the ULFA agitation to comment on xenophobia in general, which is often not as personal as it seems to be. Its roots lie in socio-economic problems such as poverty and lack of employment rather than in individual animosity.

Red River

By Somnath Batabyal

Context

Pages: 364

Price: Rs.699

Narrating the stories of three families across two generations, Red River begins dramatically. It is June 1983: a new television set has arrived at Gopalpur Rajbari in Assam a day before the cricket World Cup final. The rajbari (royal house) is home to Banalakshmi “Lucky” Dutta and her family consisting of her husband, Amol, and their children, Samar and Tina. In the world outside the household, resentment against non-Assamese groups is boiling over, stoked by ULFA activists. That night, as the family celebrates India’s unexpected victory over the West Indies, members of the ULFA pay them a visit to deliver an ultimatum: they must leave Gopalpur within a week.

Interlinked stories

The story then switches over to Major Kabir Singh Chaudhary, an Indian Army officer stationed in Nagaland, who had escorted Lucky out of Dhaka to India in the days preceding the Liberation War of Bangladesh in 1971 and fallen in love with her. October 31, 1984, is the day we meet Kabir. It is a fateful day: in Delhi, Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards as retaliation against the Indian Army’s Operation Blue Star carried out at Indira’s behest. Kabir is informed by his senior colleague that his father—a former high-ranking Army officer who had resigned in protest over Operation Blue Star—has died in the riots that broke out in Delhi following Indira’s assassination.

Also Read | Inheritance of war

The news of this senseless killing comes close on the heels of a counter-insurgency operation carried out by Kabir against ULFA members who were purportedly armed. The operation went horribly wrong, causing the death of a dozen or so unarmed young men. As Kabir ponders what to do with the lone survivor, a boy named Romen Kalita, he is hit by the news of his father’s death. Batabyal thus shows how in two places separated by miles, similar battles, sparked off by fears of difference, are being played out, resulting in the death of innocent people. Romen will also eventually end up dead, probably the victim of an encounter killing, pointing to the dreaded presence of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in north-eastern India that gives the military unlimited powers. Through such incidents, Batabyal examines sociopolitical issues of migration, statehood, separatism, identity, and so on.

Cover of Red River. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Romen is the older son of Madhob Kalita, a headmaster in Assam’s Moramela village. While Madhob is initially wary of the “anti-foreigner fervour” sweeping across Assam, he ends up joining the ULFA when Romen’s bullet-ridden body turns up at the ghats of the Brahmaputra in Moramela.

The next generation

The story then moves to the next generation as fate conspires to bring the disparate families together in Guwahati. Madhob’s younger son, Rizu, is the star of his school. His closest friend is Lucky’s son, Samar, a voracious reader. Rizu finds his popularity challenged when Kabir’s son, Rana, joins the school after his father gets posted to Guwahati. Rana’s goodness and charm soon have everyone singing his praises, making Rizu jealous.

However, an incident where Rana comes to the rescue of Rizu and Samar in a street fight cements the friendship between the three. Then an act of terrorism rips through Samar’s neighbourhood, upending the carefree existence of the three young adults.

Also Read | Rajiv Gandhi: The original ‘Accidental Prime Minister’

Batabyal’s prose in Red River is spartan, with the occasional flourish and moments of indulgence. The austere style evokes the tumultuous atmosphere and the finer nuances of the relationship between the three boys with precision. The balance of power in the friendship is determined by questions of identity even though they trust one another. Samar, a Bengali in Assam, seeks social protection through his bond with Rizu; at the same time, he detests this feeling of inferiority. When Rizu falls for Samar’s cousin, Leela, Samar exults in the advantage he thus gets over his friend.

The novel begins to falter when Batabyal decides to shift the story’s point of view to Samar. With Samar controlling the narrative, the details of Rana’s and Rizu’s lives seem like an afterthought. Ditto with the women in the story, especially Lucky and Leela, who seem to have been created just to keep the plot moving. In Red River, Batabyal makes a strong case against othering by showing how it uproots and ravages lives while not gaining anything for anyone concerned. But the effectiveness of the message is lost in the lazy storytelling. Red River ends up as a novel big on ideas but weak in execution.

BOOK REVIEW

- Zeyad Masroor Khan’s memoir explores fear of the ‘other’

Zeyad Masroor Khan’s memoir explores fear of the ‘other’

The book shows the impact of communal tensions on individuals and communities.

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 5 MINS READ

Abdullah Khan

On the campus of Aligarh Muslim University. The book offers a nuanced exploration of the city of Aligarh and its rich history. | Photo Credit: PTI

For me, reading Zeyad Masroor Khan’s memoir, City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh, evoked a sense off deja vu. Four decades ago, back in 1981, I found myself at my maternal grandmother’s house in Bihar amidst whispers of communal tension. Rumours circulated among the elders about a planned procession for Saraswati Puja by the Hindu community intending to pass near the Muslim graveyard and mosque. The Muslims opposed this, saying that the procession should follow its traditional route as they feared it would escalate tensions and potentially lead to violence if it entered the Muslim locality.

City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh

By Zeyad Masroor Khan

HarperCollins India

Pages: 312

Price: Rs.599

As apprehension mounted, the sight of the police in our neighbourhoods only heightened the anxiety among Muslims. Everyone believed the police would support the Hindu community if anything happened, a fear based on past experiences of police involvement in communal violence.

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In the days preceding the planned procession, sleep was a rare luxury, and when it did visit, it was frequently interrupted by haunting nightmares. Every noise sent shivers down my spine as though the threat of Hindu mobs loomed ominously over us. As a 9-year-old, this experience deeply distressed me and left a lasting impact on my mental health.

How communal tensions shape personalities

Looking back on those days, I see similarities between my experiences and the ones recounted in Zeyad’s memoir. The fear, uncertain communal relations, and threat of violence are familiar. Through his storytelling, Zeyad reminds me of the impact of communal tensions on individuals and communities and how they shape our personalities.

Cover of City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh by Zeyad Masroor Khan

The narrative unfolds with a nuanced exploration of the city of Aligarh, its rich history, and the complex interplay of mythology and contemporary politics. The author delves into the conflicting claims surrounding the city’s name, juxtaposing the present narrative propagated by a right-wing group with historical records that paint a different picture of its origins. This sets the stage for a deeper examination of the city’s identity and the forces shaping its communal dynamics.

Central to the story is the depiction of Farsh Manzil, the author’s house, in Uper Kot, a well-known Muslim ghetto within Aligarh affectionately abbreviated as U.K. Positioned at the intersection of Hindu and Muslim enclaves, the author’s childhood home and places around it serve as a microcosm of the country’s communal divide. Initially, the author is oblivious to the underlying tensions, and then his innocence is shattered by a sudden discovery: a mysterious button hanging in a room of his home.

Highlights

- Abdullah Khan reviews Zeyad Masroor Khan’s City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh.

- This book of memories shines a light on the impact of communal tensions on individuals and communities.

- The book explores the city of Aligarh, its rich history, and the complex interplay of mythology and contemporary politics.

- The latter part of the memoir shifts focus to Delh and on how Muslim ghettos like Shaheen Bagh and Zakir Nagar are discriminated against.

The pressing of this button sets off a series of events that reveals the harsh reality of life in Uper Kot. Functioning as an alarm system, it alerts Muslims in the area to any visible signs of Hindu mobs attacking Uper Kot. The unfolding scene depicts panicked Muslims gathering in the streets ready to defend their neighbourhood against potential attacks from the mobs, providing a poignant insight into the lived experiences of Muslims in the Hindi heartland. This incident serves as a stark reminder of the community’s vulnerability and the absence of formal protection from law enforcement for minorities.

Later, Zeyad recounts a harrowing riot where his pregnant sister, Sayema, narrowly escapes harm as the mob converges near their residence. Despite a temporary return of peace after the riot, underlying tensions linger. Following the loss of many Muslim lives in the riots and also in police firings, young men from the Muslim community, often labelled as “troublemakers”, are arrested. Interestingly, the authorities find few troublemakers among the majority community, highlighting the biased role of law enforcement agencies in addressing such disturbances.

Amidst the unsettling narratives that fill the pages of this memoir, there are moments of warmth and humanity that stand out. One such instance occurs when the author recounts an incident aboard his school bus, where he and his fellow Muslim classmates, along with a few teachers, find themselves surrounded by a hostile Hindu mob. In this situation, Bablu, the bus helper, emerges as a hero, fearlessly confronting the mob to protect the children. His selfless and courageous act tells us how individuals can show compassion even in the most challenging and dangerous circumstances.

Being a Muslim in Delhi

In the latter part of the memoir, the narrative shifts to Delhi, where Zeyad shares his experience of how Muslim ghettos like Shaheen Bagh and Zakir Nagar are discriminated against, not only by the civic authorities when it comes to providing basic amenities but also by the private service providers like taxi services and food delivery apps. Believing that Delhi is not like Aligarh, he decides to live in a Hindu-dominated colony and then realises how wrong he was. The Delhi riots in 2020 work as an eye-opener for him. He reflects on how peaceful demonstrations against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act were vilified, leading to communal conflicts orchestrated with the knowledge of politicians and administrators. The tactics used in Aligarh to fuel communal tensions were repeated here.

Also Read | Lost homeland: Review of ‘Rooh’ by Manav Kaul

In the subsequent chapters, Zeyad reflects on the distribution of suffering during riots, stating that both majority and minority communities bear the brunt of violence. He argues that while minority communities often face significant devastation, majority communities also experience losses in terms of lives and property. Politicians and instigators of these riots exploit the suffering of both groups for their own political gains. Proposing a solution to these recurring cycles of violence, he says: “If we were ever to win this fight against these twin emotions of hate and fear, it would be with a bit of madness, courage, and love.”

Many of the author’s personal anecdotes are interesting, yet some of them do not seamlessly align with the overarching theme of the book and could have been reserved for another book. Nevertheless, City on Fire: A Boyhood in Aligarh is an insightful exploration of communal dynamics in Aligarh and elsewhere and skilfully blends personal anecdotes with a wider sociopolitical analysis.

Abdullah Khan is author of two novels Patna Blues and A Man from Motihari.

Bookshelf

- New books on the shelves

New books on the shelves

Fiction on the intimacies of relationships, non-fiction on how a silenced community created a tongue of their own, and many more.

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 3 MINS READ

The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories

Translated and edited by Bruce Fulton, Introduction by Kwon Youngmin

Penguin Classics

Rs.550

This essential introduction to Korean literature travels from the Japanese occupation and the colonial era to the traumatic war between North and South and the breakneck urbanisation of later decades. Featuring some of Korea’s biggest writers, it deftly captures 100 years of the country’s vibrant short-story tradition.

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A Nest of Vipers

Harini Nagendra

Constable

Rs.499

In the latest instalment of the “The Bangalore Detectives Club Series”, set in 1922, the Bangalore Constabulary is on high alert as The Prince of Wales is scheduled to visit the city. Kaveri Murthy, feeling confident after solving two murder cases, goes to watch the Bangalore circus only to find the celebrity magician disappear into thin air.

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Summer of Then

Rupleena Bose

Vintage Books

Rs.699

In the vein of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, Summer of Then uses a voice and a commentary to examine the life of a young English literature teacher who moves between cities, seasons, and two men. It explores the intimacies of relationships―sexual, romantic, platonic―against the trauma of sexual abuse.

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Love in the Time of Hate: In the Mirror of Urdu

Rakhshanda Jalil

Simon & Schuster

Rs.699

This is a book about love, especially love for one’s country. The literary historian and translator Rakhshanda Jalil uses Urdu poetry, invoking its proclivity to love, inclusivity, and communal harmony to look at how the social fabric of secular India is changing and what legacy we are bequeathing to the generations to come.

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Embedding Subversion and Gender Identity: ‘Ulti’, the Secret Language of the Hijra-Koti Community

Enakshi Nandi

Tulika

Rs. 950

Opening a window onto the world of the hijra-koti community in West Bengal, this book particularly seeks to understand the significance of Ulti, the secret language spoken by them. It shows us how a silenced community created a tongue of their own to give voice to their suppressed selves; and how language helps forge bonds of solidarity and community, which in turn strengthens the language itself.

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Adivasi Art and Activism: Curation in a Nationalist Age

Alice Tilche

Permanent Black-Ashoka University

Rs.795

Alice Tilche draws on anthropological fieldwork in rural western India to chart changes in Adivasi aesthetics in the wake of homogenising forces such as Hinduisation and globalisation in the 21st century. She documents curatorial projects located not only in museums and art institutions, but in the realms of the home, the body, and the landscape.

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Fiction

The Details

Ia Genberg, translated by Kira Josefsson

Wildfire

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Enlightenment

Sarah Perry

Mariner Books

___

Poems

K.G. Subramanyan

Seagull Books

___

Greek Lessons

Han Kang

Hamish Hamilton

___

Non-fiction

Believability: Sexual Violence, Media, and The Politics of Doubt

Kathryn Claire Higgins and Sarah Banet-Weiser

Polity

___

How Britain Loves the NHS: Practices of Care and Contestation

Ellen A. Stewart

Policy Press

___

Radical Intimacy

Sophie K. Rosa

Pluto Press

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Towards a Sociology of Selfies: The Filtered Face

Maria-Carolina Cambre and Christine Lavrence

Routledge

SHORT STORY

- Birds of the air: A Hindi story in translation

SPOTLIGHT

Birds of the air: A Hindi story in translation

Published : May 29, 2024 17:58 IST - 10 MINS READ

Phanishwar Nath Renu

Translated by Vanashree and Bindu Singh

A story from an influential voice of small-town India about two spirited young vagabonds, and their strange bonding.

When the bagghi-cart driver felt that a naughty boy was swinging on the back door footboard, he swirled his whip, yelling: “Get down, you bastard!” Haribol—Harbolwa—jumped down, giggling, and before entering the nearby alley, hurled an expletive: “Ssaaley! You husband of a whore!”

Harbolwa had learned this new expletive from a squabble between Bhujangi the trolley man and Halmaan the vegetable vendor.

Harbolwa was visiting this alley where there was a school for girls. Oh no! The other day, the school peon had recognised him: “Ssaaley, you’re the one pinching my goat’s teats, milking? You live in the butcher’s alley of Sabzi Bagh! What brings you here?” Harbolwa mustered some courage and replied: “I’m just standing. Am I snatching anything from anyone?”

“Ssaaley! How dare you talk back? One slap will break your nose. I know what brings you here. Young babies relieve themselves in the drain for ‘three minutes’, and you watch! Ssaaley! Get lost!”

That day, Harbolwa had asked his best friend Furjan: “Ae Furjanwa, do you know what ‘three minutes’ means?” Harbolwa sensed what was going on behind Furjan’s long unhappy face. His uncle had denied him breakfast as punishment. Consoling Furjan, he said: “Yaar, a single day without breakfast and you’re desperate. I am denied food for the entire day, abused, and thrashed. Listen, I’ll show you what ‘three minutes’ means.” Pointing his finger towards an advertisement on the wall in front of him, Harbolwa began peeing on the picture. “Understood? Heh heh heh!”

Also Read | No one like Appa: A Tamil story in translation

It was a holiday. Harbolwa looked around and noticed a drain where all the young girls did it. No, he was not getting his “three minutes” because he was scared of the gatekeeper. He thought that he should pay a visit to his mother’s sister’s house. Slowly, he tuned his newly learnt nasty word into a musical note, a filmi one, singing: “Whore... hubby of a whore... whore, whore…ho ho!”

As he emerged from the alleys, he noticed some children of his age busy tying a broken can to a donkey’s tail. But what a cunning donkey! It would curl its tail tightly inward. Harbolwa dug into all his pockets in order to join others in that exciting game. “Oh yes. A hook-up wire!” Nobody was asking, but he intruded in that group to be of some help in that venture: “Don’t do it this way. Take this hook and knot a rope to it before wrapping it around the donkey’s tail, then secure the hook.” It was a smart technique indeed.

And it was here that he met Sudarsan. Harbolwa clapped happily, running behind the fleeing donkey, with the can tied behind clinking tan, tan, tan. “You came just in time,” said Sudarsan.

“Where do you live? Have you got a mother? Brother or sister?”

Sudarsan told him that he had a stepmother who doted on him. His father, however, was a butcher; actually, his father was the step-parent. When his real father died, this father tricked his mother into marriage, and forcibly applied sindoor in the parting of her hair. Ma began crying, but to what good! His mother finally agreed only on the condition that he would treat her son Sudarsan as his own, “otherwise I will not be your wife”.

“Aye, Sudarsanwa! Is that your father coming?”

“Let him come.”

“I’m going!” said Harbolwa. “I have to visit my mausi.”

“Yaar, wait!” said Sudarsan.

Sudarsan’s father was approaching, screaming: “You swine! It’s already 12 o’clock, and you’re loafing around?”

“It’s not a workday at the shop,” replied Sudarsan.

“If it’s a holiday, why didn’t you go home until now? Ssaaley, one day I’m surely going to flay your skin black and blue. Leave at once!”

When his father walked further across the alley’s curve, Sudarsan patted his face, as if wiping off the vitriol received, and then sniggered at him from behind. Glancing at Harbolwa, he asked: “Where are you going?

“Mausi’s house.”

“And where does she live?”

“Near the madhouse.”

Harbolwa inquired: “And where is your home? Where’s your shop?”

“Here, inside this alley,” Sudarsan said, waving his hand in one direction. Have you ever visited Peer Sahab’s tomb? It’s close by. Let’s go to your mausi’s house, yaar. Come on.”

“You? Why tag along with me to my mausi’s house?” But like a leech, he stuck to him.

Walking further, noticing a broken tap facing the corporation building gushing fountain-like water thrilled both of them.

“How about bathing?”

“And you?”

“They boisterously played naked in the fountain water, pressing their fingers in the mouth of the tap to enjoy the sensation of water spraying on their bodies.”

Sudarsan unbuttoned his pants and merrily let the shower flow all over him. Harbolwa, however, was reminded of something urgent. “How about cleaning my pyjama,” he said, pulling a bar of soap from his pocket and tossing it to the ground. They boisterously played naked in the fountain water, pressing their fingers in the mouth of the tap to enjoy the sensation of water spraying on their bodies.

The mohalla children saw the two unfamiliar boys and began shouting, summoning their entire gang: “Catch-catch-catch hold of these ssaaley!” Harbolwa was scared. Sudarsan, on the other hand, carelessly gurgled and rinsed his mouth with water.

Their leader, a bear-like boy, stepped forward and shouted: “Abey, where do you live? Ssaaley, why have you come here to bathe naked, fools!” Harbolwa quickly changed into his half-dried pyjama. Sudarsan, still unruffled, began laughing. Sudarsan’s laughter irritated the bully-leader further. “This duffer appears wicked, watch out!” warned the leader.

“Aren’t you Dafali?” Sudarsan inquired.

When called by his name, Dafali’s short hair stood up on his head. His pupils dilated. He said: “You... you, where do you live? What’s your name... How did you get my name?”

“Didn’t your mother take you to Hakim’s medicine shop the other day?”

Dafali’s mouth widened in surprise. “Yes!” he exclaimed.

Sudarsan giggled once more.

“Arrey, he is known to me,” Dafali said. He and his companions vanished into the alley.

“You know, he’s so big and still pees in his bed!” Sudarsan said.

“That’s why the rascal ran away,” Harbolwa chuckled.

But today, the scowl on mausi’s forehead showed she was not at all pleased to see him. “And who is he?” she asked harshly, eyeing Sudarsan suspiciously. “Didi rightly thrashes you. One day you’ll end up in jail if you loaf around with all the rowdies of the world. Run home right away!”

Harbolwa failed to understand: “Why was mausi so furious?

Walking back, Sudarsan asked: “Yaar, who was sitting inside the shack? Is he your uncle?”

“Uncle? No. Uncle lives in Barauni.”

“Then who was the man in the red shirt?”

“Where?”

“Arrey! I peered inside and saw someone. That’s why your mausi hurriedly rushed out, furiously blocking the entry.”

“Oh!” Harbolwa fell silent.

“Will you be offended if I say something now?” Sudarsan asked, but said it anyway: “Your aunt is a shameless whore.”

“Go away!”

“Why should I go? I peeped inside.” Sudarsan’s laughter made Harbolwa’s face resemble Dafali’s. Like when the shameful secret that he pees in the bed was disclosed to Sudarsan.

On the way back, they stopped for a while in front of the public tap of the Corporation.

Harbolwa asked: “So, in which shop do you work?”

“In a notebook shop. Ssaala, the stench of rotting gum will make your head explode. Will you work there?”

“How much money do you get?”

“Nearly fifteen rupees.”

“Only?”

“What more one can get for gluing papers—one hundred? Tell me, do you want to work?”

Some loud noises nearby made them realise that an accident had occurred at the crossing of Makhaniya well. Both did not want to miss that and quickened their steps towards the site. But when they arrived, the game was over. A scooter-rickshaw collision had injured two people, and both had been taken to the hospital. Sudarsan and Harbolwa felt bad for having missed the thrill of witnessing the mishap.

Sudarsan walked up to a beedi shop.

Coming back to Harbolwa, lighting a beedi, he asked: “Will you smoke a beedi?”

“I don’t smoke.”

As Harbolwa began walking towards his mohalla, Sudarsan felt a vague sense of loss, a twinge in his heart. “Aye, listen!” he exclaimed.

“What is it?” Asked Harbolwa, stopping.

“I’ll accompany you to your house?” Sudarsan said.

“No. It’s useless. My mother will burst into cursing you too. “

“Will you work?”

“I’ll ask my father?”

“Let me go, I’m going to be late.”

“Wait a minute, yaar! Really! It seems like I’ve known you for a long time.”

Harbolwa laughed. Perhaps his twinkling laughter captivated Sudarsan. “Do you use charcoal to brush your teeth?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll do it as well.”

“Forgive me if my words hurt you, brother!” Sudarsan said as he held Harbolwa’s hands.

Harbolwa could see in Sudarsan’s eyes a strange yearning and felt his heart stirring. He paused. “What happened?” he asked Sudarsan.

“Ssaala! I will be badly battered.”

“You?”

““Ssaala, as long as I remain a minor, I will be routinely beaten like a dog! I don’t want to go home.... I want to get away somewhere else.” Both stood silent, brooding for a long time near the Bakarganj Mosque, under the shady neem tree. ”

“Ssaala, as long as I remain a minor, I will be routinely beaten like a dog! I don’t want to go home.... I want to get away somewhere else.” Both stood silent, brooding for a long time near the Bakarganj Mosque, under the shady neem tree. “Until I’m an adult, I’ll have to put up with kicking and thrashing anyway. Ssaala! Listen! Will you do one thing: selling in salima [cinema] hall?” Sudarsan mimicked the sounds hawkers make: “Fries, fresh from the pan, tuntun bhaaja [fried pakoras]!”

“Bhaaja in salima?”

Sudarsan told him: “There is a tuntun bhaaja company near ‘Loun salima hall. Many of my friends work there. Lots of fun, yaar! But no one is willing to stand in for a guarantee. And why would our ssaala-fathers let us have our own money? It’s twenty rupees a month!” Sudarsan clarified further: “You have complete freedom at work, and you also get to see salima without paying for a ticket.” He had asked his father to stand as a guarantor. “Will the tuntun bhaaja company owner give Rs.100 in advance?” his father had asked. “The owner of the notebook shop had paid 200 in advance.”

Laying his hand on Harbolwa’s shoulder, he asked tenderly: “Tell me, will you work in the tuntun bhaaja company?”

“But who will be our guarantee?”

“We’ll make that happen.”

“How?”

“In our mohalla, there is one Amjad Mistry. His power alarms people. Once we get jobs at tuntun bhaaja, no ssaala father will have the courage to grab hold of us, bring us back home, and beat us brutally. But, ssaala Amjad Mistry is a rogue,” Sudarsan said, spitting.

Also Read | The Idlers

“What guarantee could he be if he is a rogue?” Harbolwa asked.

“That is why he’ll stand as our guarantor,” Sudarsan laughed.

The drums of a wedding party began to beat somewhere near Bankarganj Mohalla. Both took a deep breath.

Sudarsan laughed: “Who cares! Wedding! We’ll be kids until we grow a moustache and a beard. Let’s go to Amjad Mistry’s house.”

Sudarsan had suddenly become everything to Harbolwa. Sudarsan was the only person in the world he cared about. Only he could understand his loneliness and misery. Harbolwa firmly held Sudarsan’s hand. “I’m scared, though...”

“Scared of what?”

“My father...”

“Arrey! Once we join the company. Look, then—everyone, yours and mine—father, mother, uncle, and aunt will pamper you and me. Understand?”

“Will we get this job?” Harbolwa asked, putting his arm around Sudarsan.

“We need to sweet-talk Amjad Mistry.”

“We’ll do it! We’ll do whatever it takes to get this job. We don’t want to return home.... Spit on home!”

“Certainly?”

“Certainly.”

Selected by Mini Krishnan

Reproduced courtesy of Indian Literature, Sahitya Akademi

Illustrations by Siddharth Sengupta

BACK PAGE

- ‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen

‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen

Published : May 22, 2024 16:00 IST - 0 MINS READ

Appupen

Letters to the Editor

- Letters

SPOTLIGHT

Letters

Published : May 30, 2024 11:00 IST - 3 MINS READ

Readers respond to Frontline’s coverage.

Election 2024

The 2024 Lok Sabha election will go down in history for two reasons: first, the blatant disregard of established democratic principles, and second, the misuse of the Enforcement Directorate and the Election Commission to intimidate the opposition and bend the rules of the game to suit the ruling party (Cover Story, May 31).

After the second phase of polling, the BJP’s campaign has assumed diabolical dimensions. Narendra Modi’s hate speech is unbecoming of a Prime Minister, an abominable crime committed for petty political gains.

T.N. Venugopalan

Kochi, Kerala

The Cover Story has rightly analysed the decline in the Election Commission’s standards over the years. Campaigning in this election continues to be marked by personal attacks, mudslinging, and hate speeches by political leaders, including the Prime Minister, who have thrown decency and decorum to the winds. The Election Commission’s recent directive both to the BJP and the Congress to shun divisive speeches appears to be a damage control exercise, a case of too little and too late.

At this juncture, one cannot help remembering with admiration former Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan, who discharged his duties without fear or favour and turned out to be the biggest nightmare of errant politicians.

It is a matter of utmost regret that elections in the world’s largest democracy continue to be fought on caste/communal lines, with candidates resorting to personal slugfests and a sectarian agenda rather than debating and discussing issues relating to growth and development, relevant to the common man.

B. Suresh Kumar

Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu

The trajectory of autocratisation towards authoritarianism in the country is too conspicuous to avoid the attention of any diligent mind. As the saying goes, eternal vigilance is the price we have to pay for undiluted liberty. Rabindranath Tagorehad the foresight to observe: “The real freedom is not freedom from, but freedom for....” But we are in the midst of a situation where both varieties of freedom are in an evanescent phase.

The phraseology “twisting the knife in the deeply wounded electoral process” was vindicated byPalanivel Thiaga Rajan’s article “ECI ushers India toits electoral nadir”. That the electoral process in the country, regarded as the bedrock of a functional democracy, is actuallyridden with pitfalls at every turn of the process is flabbergasting.

Ayyasseri Raveendranath

Aranmula, Kerala

Poverty in the UK

It was pathetic to read about the state of education and healthcare in the world’s fifth richest country (“Down and out in the UK”, May 31). The news that 17.5 million people in the UK are living in overcrowded, dangerous, unstable, or unaffordable housing and the rise, year after year, in the number of people sleeping on London’s streets speaks very poorly of the country’s basic infrastructure while exposing the bureaucracy’s ineptitude in addressing it.

As the UK grapples with issues of transport poverty, illegal migration, and unaffordable healthcare, its Indian-born Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seems to be busier with elections rather than focussed on addressing these humanitarian issues.

R.V. Baskaran

Chennai

Era of deprivation

When I saw the word “neoliberalism”, I suspected the article was authored by an academic, and for sure it was (Cover Story, May 17). When will it dawn on professors and the media that the days of plentiful jobs are long over?

The plague may be back but not the era of well-paying non-stressful lifetime jobs with all their sops and benefits. Hand-wringing will not help; constant relearning and honing of skills useful to others may do the trick. Also, even the most efficient government policies and programmes or global charitable works will never be enough to cover the already burgeoning population. Tough drastic measures need to be taken to control the population first.

S. Sumant

Bengaluru

Table of Contents

Frontline

Manipur | One Year Later — Lede

Eyes wide shut: How the state turns away from Manipur’s realities

Manipur | One Year Later

Editor’s Note: The deafening silence on Manipur

Arambai Tenggol: How a Meitei ‘sociocultural organisation’ became an armed-to-the-teeth militia

Singing in the dark: How artists from Manipur are reacting to the conflict

From the Sidelines

400? 272? 210?

Election 2024

As jobs and development take centre stage, caste loyalties trump communal polarisation in Uttar Pradesh

ELECTION 2024

BJP faces uphill battle in Himachal Pradesh as local issues eclipse national sentiments

Contrarian Punjab may throw up a surprise again

Can Trinamool’s welfare schemes counter Sandeshkhali scandal impact in West Bengal?

The Kunbi twist in Maharashtra could hurt the BJP

INTERVIEW

Mallikarjun Kharge: ‘Nobody in this country imagined we would have a Prime Minister who lies so much’

ELECTION 2024

Will the smaller castes upset the NDA applecart in Bihar?

Jharkhand: A battle over tribal identities

Demographics

Lies and statistics: EAC paper spreads alarming half-truths about Muslim population growth

West Asia

Uncertainty in Iran after death of President Ebrahim Raisi

South Asia

Protests in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir reflect frustration with disempowerment and interference from Islamabad

Interview

‘We have no seat in Pakistani parliament’: Justice (retd) Syed Manzoor Hussain Gillani

‘I don’t think Indian theatre is at a crossroads’: Amal Allana

South Asia

Sri Lanka: Is it time for change?

Art

Art of resistance: Venice Biennale, 2024

Counter Culture

Voice-over onslaught in Baby Reindeer

Essay

Clues, culprits, and cultural crossovers: Indian detective fiction is entering the mainstream

Book Review

Knife by Salman Rushdie: Chronicle of a death foretold—and foiled

Book Review

Swadeshi Steam: A shipping company propelled by patriotism

Crooked Seeds by Karen Jennings is a riveting read, but relentlessly dismal

Somnath Batabyal’s powerful take on Assam’s turbulent past falters in execution

BOOK REVIEW

Zeyad Masroor Khan’s memoir explores fear of the ‘other’

Bookshelf

New books on the shelves

SHORT STORY

Birds of the air: A Hindi story in translation

BACK PAGE

‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen

Letters to the Editor

Letters