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25 YEARS OF BIHAR PUCL. The People’s Union of Civil Liberties, Bihar State Unit, Patna, 2006.

IN 2006 the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Bihar, completed a quarter century of its tumultuous existence. For an organization like the PUCL, probably the best way to commemorate the milestone was to publish in two volumes, its reports on the enquiries carried out during this period, 1981-2006. Before going deeper into these volumes it is essential to give the reader a systematic introduction to the material contained in the two volumes.

The first volume carries reports on inquiries conducted by the state unit, whereas the second volume includes reports generated by the district units of the PUCL. The former is further divided into sub-sections on custodial deaths, alleged encounter deaths, police firing, cases of police atrocities, mass killings, communal disturbances, murders of activists, rapes, and atrocities on Dalits. It also provides place for miscellaneous reports such as deaths in mental asylum and kidnappings in Bihar.

The second volume includes enquiry reports of district units, organizational reports that allow the reader to trace the growth of PUCL, and intercessions with constitutional bodies such as the National Human Rights Commission and the Election Commission. This volume explores broader human rights issues, mass campaigns and drives for public learning, including appeals to the general public. Again, a section on miscellaneous cases reflects the broad range of concerns among the PUCL units and membership.

It needs to be mentioned that for every incident, whether major or minor, the reports ensure that the reader is able to access a wide range of opinions which include the victims, their neighbours, the concerned authorities at lower and higher level, the press and others whose views and information may be relevant to the case. In each case the conclusion arrived at by inquiry committees is accompanied by its justification, enabling thereby the reader to make up his own mind or raise his own doubts. In a sense then we are dealing with a somewhat unique genre of social enquiry/reporting, where the purpose goes far beyond disinterested investigation or even definitive chronicling. The purpose is to find the perpetrator and to point a finger at him as unambiguously as possible. But most of all, the purpose is to remind the victims that they are not alone and that sins against them will not be forgotten. This applies as much to cases, ostensibly trivial but made sensational by the media, such as the isolated death of an ‘alleged’ small-time drug dealer on the fringes of the citadel of crime.

Though the members of PUCL represent different ideologies and varying degrees of idealism or pragmatism, what really matters is their common faith in a naive but powerful presupposition, namely that truth has a way of catching up if you are willing to wait. While a wronged individual may be impatient and want instant justice, an organization like PUCL can show greater ethical stamina in plodding its way to justice and recovery of truth. Reports from the two volumes often reflect the hope of the perpetrator – that a crime will turn invisible, that the voice of the victim will be suppressed, and that bodies will simply vanish. Above all, the perpetrators appear confident that no one really cares. The reports capture the painstaking efforts of people who persist in caring, whatever the odds.

The reports are of particular value in a situation where both the victim and the perpetrator often seem to share in the cynical belief that nothing can be done. Such feelings of complete helplessness often seem to lend support to the wilful and megalomaniac tendencies of the perpetrator since the media too, despite some noteworthy efforts, has been unable to break the vicious circle of cynicism and helplessness. No one seems to know what really happened. Armchair thinking or ‘enlightened’ prejudice (read political correctness) is clearly no solution. In fact the solution can at times be very simple – let us go and ask. True, that someone should have done all the asking even before PUCL committees stepped in. But, since the asking never happened, at least we have the PUCL. In brief, what the volumes actually provide is an ongoing inquiry into the murky goings on in a social and political system marked by a wilful lack of openness and transparency.

Unusual for such compilations, each report is illustrative of the general process. The police firing in Aurai on 6 August 2001 is a typical case. Corruption in distribution of flood relief resulted in protest. True to form, the police first beat up the protestors, following up with firing when the crowd protested against its brutality. The report first lists the name of the members of the inquiry committee providing a description of the incident. A large paragraph patiently presents the version of the story given by the police. A longer section presents an account of the visit by the enquiry team after which the conclusions and the recommendations are listed. At the end the reader has a fairly coherent picture of the incident.

To take a different example, the section on carnages carries the following remark in its observations on an incident from Bhimpura in Jahanabad in 1999: ‘The killings of innocent persons have become the order of the day either because they belong to a caste which is believed to have formed the Ranvir Sena or because they are sympathizers or members of some CPI (ML) organizations. This is thoroughly unprincipled and condemnable. It is an individual who is responsible for his acts, including commission of a crime. The murder of his family, his relations, or members of his community or sympathizers of his party or members of the organization is unethical and unwarranted.’

The innocuous sounding paragraph clearly spells out the challenges faced by a society that has no place for a neutral voice. The prejudiced affiliations cover a wide ground, right from caste to political party, all of them rolled into one. The reports cover a wide variety of victims – stray individuals, women, journalists, BJP workers, Dalits, members of the upper castes and middle castes, and even doctors. It seems that even though the depressed sections are most often at the receiving end, we all take turns at being victimized in the absence of due regard for law and order.

The second volume carries considerable material on PUCL’s interventions on electoral and constitutional issues. Copies of letters to the Election Commission and the National Human Rights Commission clearly indicate the PUCL’s eagerness to make use of all possible platforms and state instruments to further the cause of social justice in Bihar (and Jharkhand, till it became a separate state). It would thus seem that in its role of neutrality, objectivity, commitment to individual rights and social justice, the PUCL has developed a versatile approach in attempting to engage the organs of the government as well as the public.

The three sections in the second volume – Debates, Education and Learning on Human Rights Issues, Campaigns and Major Interventions, and Reaching Out to the People – focus on the main strengths of the PUCL. But they also seem to indicate areas where the organization can acquire greater foothold. The interesting thing about the PUCL’s philosophical premises is that it believes it has the ability to develop organic links among the rural masses as well as the intelligentsia based in small and big towns. Whether it is able to achieve that organizationally in sufficient measure is something only time will tell. But one needs to remember that an organization like the PUCL has numerous options. Evidence from the mature and developed democracies of Europe and America suggests that a body like the PUCL will and should have a continuing role even in the distant future. As a democracy matures, there is often a likelihood of the public and the political parties growing less rather than more vociferous in their sensitivity towards issues of justice and freedom. Hopefully, as democratic values find a secure hold in the state of Bihar in the coming years, the PUCL may find itself becoming even more vigorous and watchful, gaining in relevance over the years.

Ratnakar Tripathy

 

PARTITION AND THE SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA: Extending the Subcontinent by Papiya Ghosh. Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, London, New York and New Delhi, 2007.

Partition and the South Asian Diaspora appeared in print in the wake of a rather tragic situation: the brutal murder of its author Papiya Ghosh, Professor of History at Patna University, reportedly by people belonging to a notorious land mafia. This review is therefore as much a tribute to the scholarship of a fellow scholar as a book review.

Partition and the South Asian Diaspora was planned as part of a trilogy resulting from the author’s study of the ‘Pakistan movement in Bihar’, which was to be the second volume. The third volume was planned to focus on the other backward classes and dalit Muslim politics in contemporary Bihar, drawing out its connections ‘with the non-ashraf contestation of the two-nation theory in the thirties and forties’ (p. xiii) – a very interesting theme in itself.

If there is anything that the history of the last two centuries, especially the last, reveals in a stark manner, it is that the quest for democratic citizenship, based on membership in a political community, comes accompanied by endemic violence and ethnic cleansing. This violence, arising out of endless attempts to define such political communities and to draw boundaries between members and non-members, has ultimately been responsible for creating refugees and exiles, people without countries, in their millions.

The volume is organized around a fascinating and a largely unexplored area, which is, precisely speaking, not exactly the ‘diaspora’ as we commonly know it – the huge body of migrants who left their home country for whatever reason. Foremost, in this volume, it refers to the large numbers of people who were transformed overnight into people without a country and a people without a state. The act of Partition, in other words the creation of two – and later, three – nation states repeats the story of the relentless creation of refugees, aliens and unwanted ‘boat people’ in the subcontinent, best captured in the figure of the Muhajir. A truly postnational history, this volume underlines that the story of Partition has not ended; it continues to fester in the unresolved issues of these ‘stranded Pakistanis’.

Ghosh begins by tracking the history of the Pakistan movement and the internal tensions within it, especially between the Muslim majority in the United Provinces and those living in provinces like Bihar. Even till the penultimate year of the movement, it was abundantly clear to the leaders of the Muslim League (ML) in Bihar that Bihari Muslims would not migrate and Jinnah’s call ‘would have been completely ignored.’ For, ‘migration implied a break with mosques, graveyards, and one’s heritage,’ as the provincial ML leader Jafar Imam put it (p. 5). It was the killings of the Muslims in October-November 1946 that radically changed the situation. Muslims started leaving Bihar in large numbers – some went to Sindh and others to different parts of Bengal. As we now know, relocating to newer territories is easier said than done. New tensions emerge; new fears take root. ‘Wherever the refugees arrived, they cast their shadow on inter-community relations’ (19). The potential for violence was inbuilt into these situations. And as often happens in such contexts, Bihari Muslims in East Pakistan maintained their separate identity – so much so that when the Bangladesh movement began, many Biharis apparently openly sided with Ayub Khan. ‘As a result, attacks on their shops and properties became common in Dhaka and Chittagong by December 1970’ (27).

But for the Bihari Muslims this transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh, argues Ghosh, ‘meant an interruption of their denominational homeland of the forties,’ creating a major new insecurity (27). Thus began another round of their refugee lives.

Bihari Muslims, who were now unacceptable even in Pakistan, twenty years after the first round of migrations, form the focus of Ghosh’s study. They could neither go back to Bihar, as they were now ‘foreign nationals’, nor to Pakistan since it was not ready to accept them. By 1972-73, says Ghosh, there were lakhs of Biharis living in camps and colonies in different towns of Bangladesh. It was in the decades since that the relatively well-to-do among these stranded Pakistanis began migrating to other parts of the world, especially the USA, Canada, Australia and UK. Through a detailed investigation based on archival work, interviews and news reports, Papiya Ghosh tracks the fate of these ‘stranded Pakistanis’, their initial attempts to go back to Pakistan (West) and following over a decade of failed attempts, at trying to get a ‘refugee status’ for themselves from the United Nations so that they could get the ‘advantages and protection granted to the Vietnamese, Burmese, Kampucheans and Afghans’ (51).

The utter callousness of the Pakistan government is apparent in a revealing episode narrated by the author. As late as in the 1990s, when the Organization of Islamic Countries contacted the Pakistan government over this repatriation issue, the Interior Minister Naseerullah Babar remained unmoved and in fact went on to state: ‘We are not ready to accept them… Let the Arabs take the "Biharis" as plenty of land is available to settle them in the UAE or Iraq or elsewhere in West Asia’ (54).

The second chapter, ‘Claiming Pakistan’, casts a fresh look at the forties’ homeland from the point of the Muhajirs and the Sindhis as it is seen retrospectively. It also looks at the new dynamics of the Muhajir movement, especially with the formation of the Muhajir (subsequently Muttahida) Qaumi Movement in 1984, as a global forum spread across the USA, Europe and UK. This is where the global diaspora becomes the central focus of the study.

In the last two chapters the study moves, somewhat unexpectedly and curiously, towards the politics of the ‘South Asian diaspora’ and attempts to enunciate a South Asian identity and articulate a politics around it. Thus chapter three, entitled ‘Resisting Hindutva’, goes into the spread of the Hindutva organization, especially the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its related diasporic networks on the one hand, and the counter initiatives formed in different parts of the USA. While Ghosh covers the period since the 1980s, her main attention is focused, naturally, on the period since the demolition of the Babri Masjid – the 1990s also being the decade of the ascendance of Hindutva generally.

Chapter four, ‘Redoing South Asia’ looks at the contemporary politics of the South Asian diaspora, especially in the United States and examines formations like the New York Taxi Drivers’ Union, led by two expatriate Indians but whose predominant membership is from Pakistani cab drivers. She also looks at the activities of networks and organization like the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), which later renamed itself Forum of Inquilabi Leftists in order to make it more open for non-Indian South Asians.

This is an important book that covers a much-neglected area. Its first two chapters that focus on an analysis of the situation of the stranded Pakistanis are the strongest and they give us an insight into the workings of nation-states and their secret histories – their deep imbrication in the politics of ethnicity/identity and the production of aliens and refugees. One wishes that Ghosh’s work on the other volumes of the trilogy could also be posthumously edited if necessary and made available in the public domain as they thematically complement this volume.

Aditya Nigam

 

WOMEN WORKERS AND GLOBALIZATION: Emergent Contradiction in India by Indrani Mazumdar. Centre for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi and Stree, Kolkata, 2007.

THIS book basically presents the view of a Left oriented activist. Globalization is definitely a no-no for society and even more so for women workers. Various debates on women’s employment in India, including the feminization thesis and the prospects for the informal sector, are discussed in the introductory chapter. According to the author, the core of the women’s movement instinctively reacts to the process of liberalization and its impact on women as part of the enduring discourse on marginalization of the majority of the women in the industrialization process. There is, so the author argues, little change in the position of the women’s movement regarding feminization in the new global era. Such is the tone, tenor and argument throughout the book.

The informal sector debate at the international level has recently moved from being merely a description of the low productivity sector to ‘flexibalization of employment relations’ and informal work being regarded as voluntary and a stimulus to entrepreneurial energies. This debate, including on the provision of social security through worker’s contribution, according to the author, is not only couched in a populist discourse, it hides the actual shift in the employment policy of the state from providing direct employment and income transfers.

In a situation in which the role of the state has changed from direct provisioning to facilitation, the strength of the women’s movement is expected to lie in being able to direct the energies of the public and private investors towards a provision of more secure and productive employment. This would both benefit the poor workers as well as women.

The strength of the book lies in its detailed micro analysis of select sectors where women are concentrated, such as the garment export industry, electronics, home-based work, and the new service economy. In all these sectors, however, the focus is firmly fixed on the negative impacts on women. That many of these sectors are employment generating and provide new opportunities of work and skill enhancement to the women seems to have been forgotten. What could be done to improve the lot of the women trapped in say home-based work marked by low productivity and meagre incomes is not discussed. Given the fact that about 53% of women were in home-based work in 2004-05, ignoring their contribution to the household and the economy and considering them merely as a source of profit for the large industry is hardly designed to help them. Some of the cases though, such as of home-based bindi workers, do capture the stark reality of women and very useful for those who argue for regulation of such work and better social security for the workers. However, some constructive comments and discussion about how these workers could be shifted out of such work would have been more useful than merely persisting with the current negative tone.

Overall the book presents an unduly pessimistic view of women’s work and its future scenario. Globalization and opening up of the Indian economy to trade is presented as a near disaster for women workers. This is reflected in the concluding line of the book. ‘Globalization has only added more tiers to the layers of exploitation, forms of discrimination and inequality faced by women workers in India.’ Mazumdar continues to deny any possibility of an increase in employment opportunities both for the economy as a whole and for the specific sectors that the book focuses on. Equally, she rules out the possibility of productive employment for certain sections of women, or that the inflow of technology might lead to some skill-upgradation for women workers in at least some sectors.

The thrust of the argument is to ‘rescue the economic sovereignty of the state and direct it towards a more re-distributive growth trajectory.’ In the words of women-speak, ‘Our slogan is structural transformation towards equality… not inequality.’ There is a complete denial of the need for private investment, or for an open economy to allow for new technologies to infuse energy and competitiveness in the economy. In short, the book is unwilling to consider any positive externalities of globalization. Surprisingly for a left-oriented scholar, even the lessons from the fall of the erstwhile Soviet Union and the rise of the Chinese economy using the opportunities arising out of globalization, are not discussed. A serious discussion on the need to allow private enterprise to operate from a left perspective would have been a major contribution of the book.

It is quite likely that the negatives overshadow the positives for a majority of women workers, particularly since their skill and educational levels are much too low to capture the advantages of the economic opportunities thrown up by globalization. However, a discussion on the way forward that might enhance women’s capacity to take advantage of the new economy, other than ‘rescuing’ the sovereignty of the state, would have added immensely to the debate on the discontents of globalization from the perspective of women workers.

Jeemol Unni

 

THE BURDEN OF REFUGE: The Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat by Rita Kothari. Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2007.

PARTITION of the subcontinent invariably invokes images of violence and migrations. The birth of India and Pakistan in 1947 was also a moment of drawing physical boundaries of the two new nation-states, dividing provinces and populations. While Punjab and Bengal were the two provinces that were physically divided between the two countries in 1947, the experience of partition was not limited to these two regions alone. The region of Sindh too, for example, though not physically divided between the two countries, was directly affected by the partition. As the Muslims from India began to move into the province, communal tensions began to mount resulting in the migration of Hindus from Sindh to India. Nearly a million Sindhi Hindus migrated to the Indian states of Gujarat, Maharashtra and elsewhere following the formation of the two new nation-states.

However, unlike neighbouring Punjab, the province of Sindh did not experience much violence and very few lost their lives to partition-related turbulence. The migrations thus were prompted more by fear of violence. Taking the sea route from Karachi, most of them arrived safely in Bombay and Gujarat without encountering killing and looting on the way. Another difference in the experience of Punjab and Sindh was that unlike Punjab not all Sindhi Hindus left their native land. Nearly as many decided to stay back in Pakistan as had migrated, and a significant number continue to live there even today.

It is this experience of the Sindhi Hindus that Rita Kothari wishes to add to the narratives on partition of the subcontinent and the experience of being a partition refugee in India. Her study has grown out of her personal experience of growing up in a Sindhi family and living in Gujarat. Based on qualitative and historical data, her focus is mainly the Sindhi communities of Gujarat in India where nearly one-third of all the Sindhi speaking population in the country resides. Apart from working with the migrants currently living in Gujarat, she also conducted some of her interviews in the Sindh, Pakistan.

As has been pointed out in some of the recent writings on partition, the experience of migration was not quite similar for everyone. Factors like class, personal status and gender mediated this experience. The tension between local Sindhi Muslims and Hindus had a direct class angle. Hindus in Sindh were relatively better placed economically and often treated the Muslims as a subordinate class of peasants. The rich Sindhis arrived in India without encountering any difficulty whatsoever. They also escaped life in refugee camps. Similarly, women experienced partition differently from men. They invariably narrated their stories using the plural ‘we’, ‘intertwining their selves with their family collective.’

Interestingly, the Hindus in Sindh were not very different from the local Muslims in terms of their culture and religious beliefs. Kothari repeatedly highlights the fact that Sufi culture and worship of ‘pirs’ united the two religious communities. However, as had happened in neighbouring Punjab, the reform movements began to divide the two communities. This communalization happened more among the Hindus of Sindh than the local Muslims, and a time came when almost every Hindu of Sindh became a member or a sympathiser of the RSS, a relationship that was further reinforced after their migration to India, during the process of their resettlement and later.

However, notwithstanding this association with Hindutva formations, the Sindhis never felt welcome in Gujarat or elsewhere in India. Not only were they treated as refugees and outsiders, their Hinduness was also seen with suspicion. Since they ate meat, drank liquor and were not too fussy about maintaining caste distinctions, the local Gujarati Hindus often treated them as ‘untouchables’ and ‘half Muslims’.

Over the years Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat have emerged as a successful business community. However, their economic success has not resulted in their social and cultural acceptance in the local culture. They continue to experience ridicule and prejudice from the local Gujarati population to the extent that the younger generation feels ashamed to be identified as Sindhis. Many of the younger generation avoid speaking Sindhi and go out of their way to present themselves as non-Sindhis.

This experience of social exclusion and prejudice has, however, not encouraged any kind of radical politics in the community. On the contrary, the Sindhis of Gujarat have moved away from their pluralistic religiosity which combined Sikhism and Sufism towards a right-wing Hindutva identity of the type preached by the RSS and VHP.

What explains this? And how would it fit in the larger literature on migration and minorities? It was not only during the partition related migration that the Sindhi experience was different from that of the Punjabis and Bengalis, their experience of settling down has also been very different and provides a fascinating case for an examination of several issues concerning culture and politics in contemporary India. While Rita Kothari’s book provides us with an interesting ethnography and a touching account of the everyday life of Sindhis in Gujarat, it unfortunately does not go substantially beyond narrating that which is largely a personal experience of the author.

Surinder S. Jodhka

 

POLITICAL VIOLENCE AND THE POLICE IN INDIA by K.S. Subramanian. Sage, New Delhi, 2007.

K.S. Subramanian, who has donned the hat of a policeman and scholar with great aplomb for over three decades, examines the role of the police from the perspective of growing political violence in India. Within this frame this is an important study, because the police in India has mostly been commented upon and reviewed by ex-cops who have relied more on hindsight than on social science perspectives.

Subramanian’s study comes at an opportune time as well. The Supreme Court judgment on the Prakash Singh-N. K. Singh PIL on police reforms last year has escalated pressure on the Indian state to introduce the many reforms suggested by the Dharam Vira chaired NPC (1980), the Padmanabhaiah and the Rebeiro Committees. Given the increasing frequency of police indiscretions across the country, the creation of accountability structures in the police and reducing political interference in its organisational functioning, as well as in making important appointments at the top levels, have assumed significance. That there cannot be good governance without a good police that carries an enormous burden of performing the sovereign policing functions of the Indian state in accordance with the constitutional norms, attaches added importance to social science explorations on this subject which, despite some notable exceptions, has been lacking in the Indian case.

The eight substantive chapters of the book take up rather diverse issues such as state response to political violence in India, the crisis of the Indian police system, the Intelligence Bureau, the central paramilitary forces, Naxalite violence, violence against Dalits, the Gujarat riots and the Northeast. Obviously, analysis of such disparate issues in the context of police and political violence is possible only if the data on each of them is seen from a theoretical framework built around the sovereign policing functions of the state. Subramanian does attempt that, but not only is his data base small, the theoretical framework too is breezily stated and inadequately applied.

The introduction, for example, states some of the conceptualizations on the Indian state, but neither does he discuss the transformation in the policing functions of the Indian state between 1860 and 1947, nor lays down a methodological scheme to analyse the themes he picked up; he does not explain the reasons behind the selections. Why discuss the IB in particular and not the ‘intelligence’ functions of the police, the entire gamut of organisations involved in it and its use and misuse? Why discuss the Gujarat violence without highlighting its specificity and significance vis-à-vis other notable cases of communal riots? Why analyse only the Naxalite violence and not the terrorist violence too, specifying significant ideological and methodological differences between the two and the resulting problems with the state response? The same applies also to the analysis of the Northeast, which is a complex issue in itself.

Indeed, the different chapters are marred by their specific problems. In most cases, the author has satisfied himself by quoting stated views in previous analysis. Not only is there a complete absence of primary data, even the secondary data has not been re-examined from any fresh perspective. The analysis of the police system should at least have led to a primary analysis of the volumes of police commission reports beginning 1860 and ending with the NPC, going through the reams used by the state police commissions. Surprisingly, a quote from the Fraser Commission Report (1902), which was the first major attempt at police reforms by the colonial administration, comes through a secondary source. His premise that the British had no incentive to reform is challenged by the way they designed the police since the award of the right to Diwani in the Bengal Presidency, ‘improving’ the thanadari system, applying the Royal Constabulary model in Sindh, the Act of 1860, the Torture Inquiry Commission (1855) of the Madras Presidency, the Fraser Commission (1902) that severely indicted the police, and laying down the framework of the current criminal justice system. Of course, the rationale for ‘reform’ was within the framework of a colonial state. He would perhaps have done better by juxtaposing the rationale of their reform with that of the post-independence democratic state, particularly the recent initiatives such as the Malimath Committee Report.

Coming from a policeman scholar, the book disappoints; it neither displays scholarly rigour, nor a concerned policeman’s introspection.

Ajay K. Mehra

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