Desicritics Category: Politics: Freedom

Dr. Rajesh Talwar - Still In Custody

Shantanu Dutta — Thu, 3 Jul 2008 11:36:39 EDT

Dr. Rajesh Talwar, one of the accused in the now famous NOIDA double murder case was arrested on May 23rd and has since then been in custody. Although he is produced in court every now and then, bail is always denied on the pretext that further questioning is needed or various tests still need to be done. Guilty or not, even before anything is conclusively pinned on him, he has spent a month and more in jail and who knows how long he will have to stay.

What is worrisome is the manner in which he has been detained for so long a time. Dr. Talwar’s situation is not a tangled web full of complexities and spanning counties and continents like say Charles Sobhraj. Till the day of his death, he was living a very typical normal and middle class life. There is no criminal record that he had from past days that needs looking into. Dr. Talwar is no hardened criminal who would have learned the art of handling tough interrogation – as police clients go, he would have been among the softest they would have handled, and yet between the NOIDA police and the CBI, his questioning and interrogation seems to be dragging on forever.

We have been fixated on mostly on the human rights violations that the police and other Paramilitary forces supposedly carry out in the form of encounter killings of terrorists and under world dons. These have been even glamorized in ways with Bollywood basing many of their scripts on real life police “encounter specialists” with very little attempts at disguise. Closely related is the phenomenon of torture, custodial deaths and sub human treatment. Largely this happens to people for whom there is little public sympathy or to the anonymous and impoverished delinquent; again some one who has no one to defend them. Dr. Talwar’s case is an interesting one where he has no criminal record, no hardened criminal, not much of a likelihood of him absconding or scooting off to another country. Even so he continues in jail seemingly forever. Even the CBI who are supposedly the wizards in crime investigation are sweating and struggling to question and make sense of the answers of a man like Dr. Talwar who probably had never even seen the inside of a police lock up till now beats reason.

A recent campaign that originated in Mumbai and is now aiming to spread else where to expose inappropriate practices in the police including corruption was started by I K Chuggani. A retired man himself, he began harnessing the potential, energy and the connections of many other retired people in Mumbai to start a campaign against rogue elements in the police. They have a web site, a very strong Facebook presence as well as the infrastructure of a registered non profit based in Mumbai. It is truly a citizens’ movement and one that is looking not merely for money but active involvement and volunteerism, more actively on their Facebook group. Do look them up and join in. Looking at the predicament of Dr. Talwar, I for one paused to wonder for a moment as to what my coping mechanism might be if I were in a situation similar to his and sadly enough, I found none.

India Shining - The Death of Angrezi Hatao

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 2 Jul 2008 14:48:49 EDT

Angrezi Hatao! or "Down With English!" was once a very potent slogan in the fifties and the sixties. It was part of a political campaign which made the destiny of many politicians of the time on either side of the language divide. Prominent names who come to mind as leaders in the Hatao movement are Ram Manohar Lohia and former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, then with the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. The country had gained independence from the British and the English language was considered the most visible symbol of that rule and one that needed to be abolished as quickly as possible. Indeed, the constitution itself stipulated that English would be in use as a transitional measure for fifteen years and from Republic Day, 1965, Hindi was to be the sole official language.

Indeed with towering figures like Gandhiji and Pandit Nehru wanting Hindi too, it would not have been difficult to impose Hindi and displace English. That it did not happen and indeed the Official Languages Act of 1963 was enacted allowing English to continue was primarily because of one man and one movement, the Tamil Nadu based DMK and the Dravidian movement which loathed Hindi and the North Indian domination that they associated the language with.

With a violent anti-Hindi agitation taking a separatist turn, and the DMK coming to power in 1967, on a largely anti Hindi platform, English was finally given some place under the sun as an associate official language with the clear understanding that one day an atmosphere would be created that would allow Hindi to be the sole official language. But the Dravidian parties have held continuous sway since that election victory in 1967 and kept up their unrelenting opposition to Hindi and gradually the fire to impose Hindi died out.

Hindi, however, enjoyed state patronage in the cow belt, as did the various regional languages in their respective states, thus gradually chipping away at English by restricting its use in official correspondence, reducing its importance in school syllabi and glorification of the mother tongue.

The turning point for English probably came with Rajiv Gandhi, a man very visibly more comfortable with English than with Hindi. Although he just lived to serve one term, the changes he set in motion outlived him. The next regime to last a full term after his – that of Narasimha Rao - brought in reforms that English more or less indispensable. The last nail on the Angrezi Hatao campaign was nailed by Atal Behari Vajpayee, one of the earliest war horses of the anti English movement when he ran an election campaign based largely on an English slogan “India Shining” and introduced reforms and policies that have for the moment at least, made English virtually irreplaceable.

All these years however, the Hindi states continued to promote Hindi, even as savvy states like Gujarat and slow moving behemoths like the Left Front in Bengal gradually abandoned the emphasis on the mother tongue they had hitherto promoted. Their interest was in playing catch up with the Southern States which promoted English instead of Hindi and where knowledge economy businesses began to flow naturally. Present chief minister Mayawati’s decision to introduce English in schools from Class I itself is in that sense the end of an era with states like Uttar Pradesh, which earlier eschewed English, having done a 180-degree switch, realizing that it is increasingly the only way to transact with a wider world.

Today, Mulayam Singh Yadav is the only known figure still to favor Angrezi Hatao and is known to hold the conviction that English has been the major stumbling block in the development of regional languages in the country. He has gone to the extent of terming it as "the language of destruction, which has had a telling impact on the economy of the country". But considering his principal lieutenants like Amar Singh are silent on the subject and are themselves quite comfortable in English, it is not known how much of Mulayam’s polemics is for the gallery.

Come what may, with the silent decline and death of the anti-English movement, which was once an extremely emotive issue has definitely come to an end. And probably very few are even noticing its passing.

Stooges, Machismo-Driven Nationalism and Self-Reliance

Shantanu Dutta — Tue, 1 Jul 2008 15:03:27 EDT

One of the views that has been bandied about over the last months as we swing this way and that about the nuclear deal is that signing it will mean that the government would have sold itself as an American stooge and vassal. That is what the leftists are saying. Since then I have been ruminating on the words stooge and vassal – I mean is it such a bad thing after all, apart from the derogatory sounds of the words themselves. Now after listening to a Skype webcast, I am convinced that the nuances are far more complex and that provocative words hide much more than they reveal.

There are two kinds of stooges if we insist on using the word. The Skype webcast that I listened to was dominated by a man from Iraq - a very angry man indeed who is upset that his country is run by brown Americans masking as Iraqis. As a nation of immigrants, the United States has the advantage of producing individuals of every ethnicities and in an occupation situation as prevails in Iraq and Afghanistan, they come handy. They are their master’s voice and because they speak the language and some what understand the culture are useful viceroys. These are the real stooges that every one should be talking about.

Then there are those who believe that their national interests are best served by aligning to a particular power and therefore do so. After all the primary purpose of the government of any nation is to ensure peace and prosperity for their people and achieve it through globally acceptable legitimate means. In the Soviet era, the original Mrs. Gandhi, felt that India’s national interests at that time was best served by aligning with the Soviet block. Many sneered at her and called her a client state or pretty close to being one. But of course she didn’t give a damn and did what she considered right.

Come to think of it, India has its small share of stooges in the neighborhood though having not much to offer, it is losing them pretty rapidly. One of our concerns in Nepal is that the incoming government is likely to be more ambivalent in its relationship with India unlike the monarchy which was beholden to India. Arguably, it was a stooge Sikkim Assembly that passed the resolution to accede to India. Bhutan has no independent foreign policy independent of India and being a land locked country finds it to be in its national interest to remain so.

So what is the problem with being a stooge or a client state of the United States? Looking around, I see that they have done pretty well for some themselves, unless they are plagued by chronic bad governance like the Philippines. But that is an exception. For the prototype, look at Singapore. Look at Thailand. Look at South Korea—and just to compare, look too at North Korea. To look at an even bigger contrast, look at Japan, vanquished and brought to its knees by American nuclear bombs but today one of its strongest allies in Asia.

We need to get rid of a culture of machismo-driven nationalism that talks of self reliance, global domination and ideological neutrality; best exemplified by the so called non aligned movement in which every one right down to the last member was fully aligned. The government’s jobs is to ensure peace, prosperity and security for its people; that is why people it there. At one point of history ensuring peace for India meant being a Soviet stooge; today it might mean being an American stooge. And of course let us get words like stooge which sound so uncouth out of our vocabulary. Then we our self esteem and self respect would not be so badly wounded.

Elie Wiesel And The Kingdom of Night

Shantanu Dutta — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:58:50 EDT

Over the last week or so, I have been tracking several articles about the “outsiders” and the hostility surrounding them. Maharashtra of course has been of course very prominently covered, because of the ranting of the Thackerays. But of course Maharashtra is not the only state in the country plagued by xenophobia – it just so happens that every one has their correspondent stationed there and so what happens there gets around faster. But this trait of us vs them is every where. In Manipur. In parts of West Bengal. The rabidly ethnic Amra Bangali and Kannada Chalvali and many more of the kind.

Somehow in India things do not reach extremes – they get sorted out along the way but if any one wants to know the logical direction that these quasi fascist movements take, then they ought to pick up Ellie Wiesel’s riveting book Night. Of course, there are many, many books written on the holocaust – The Diary of Anne Frank being one of the most famous but Night is different because the author survived to not just retell a story but also be a prophetic voice into the future – for which he received the Nobel Peace prize in 1986.

Wiesel was first ghettoized and then deported along with his family from Hungary to Germany where he was separated from his mother and three sisters as men and women were separated. He and his father stayed together and survived for a while before age, deprivation and the sub human living conditions felled the father. Watching his father die before his eyes and watching other sons betray their fathers in a dog eat dog environment scarred him forever.

When the ethnic cleansing of the Jews began in Hungary, Wiesel and his family as well most other Jews are in denial that any thing more drastic than some minor harassment will ever take place. Wiesel remembers asking his father “Can this be true ? This is the twentieth century, not the middle ages. Who would allow such crimes to be committed ? How could the world remain silent ?”

Well the twentieth century came and went and many other episodes of ethnic cleansing and genocide came and went – Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia. These are of course the more well documented ones. There are numerous other hot spots of a smaller scale and many within our country. Although we have crossed the calendar into the twenty first century, it is still possible to ask in Wiesel’s child like fashion as to whether any acts spurred by anger or bitterness or hatred that make less than half a column’s worth of news will lead to any thing more.

Most of us believe that responding to what happens when a group of people in one part of the country act and believe that those others who are different from them are migrants and infiltrators or “unwanted” by one or the other name, the responsibility for action lies with the government and a bunch of professional human rights groups like PUCL. Such an attitude is common as most of us do not know what to do and how to get involved and some times as these issues are politically tinged, we want to be extra cautious.

In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Elie Wiesel recounted how surviving the holocaust forever changed his view of life. He says that after the war was over and he was finally released, he swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. He emphatically says that “ We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented….”

Looking at my own apathy and the apathy of most people around me, I wonder if the principal problem for most of us is that we have not been victims – yet and so we know nothing of the psyche of the wounded. The sufficiently insulated lives that we lead, kind of ensure that we remain protected. and as yet Elie Wiesel discovered, assurances can be misleading and walls and barricades can be broken.

Book Review : Speaking of Empire and Resistance by Tariq Ali

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:07:11 EDT

Tariq Ali is one of the most articulate leftist and secularist thinkers to have come out of Pakistan and has been living in exile in London since the 1960s when he began to speak out against the country’s first military dictators. Nearly fifty years later, he has lost none of his fire and has consistently spoken out against imperialism, colonialism, religious fundamentalism. In his book Speaking of Empire and Resistance conducted as a series of interviews with dissident thinker, David Barsamanian, the focus is on Anglo – American engagement in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Arab world.

In this extremely readable and extremely articulate book, Tariq Ali, reaches way back into history to recreate the history of imperialist involvement in the world- both the overt, in your face British imperialism, and the comparatively overt American imperialism. For instance Tariq talks about the nature of British imperialism – viceroys and governors ET all all imported from the mother country – and the American version where they simply bought off purchasable allies willing to do their bidding. King Hussein of Jordan, Suharto, the Pakistani generals, the Shah of Iran, the several Gulf Sheikhs Emirs is cited as examples.

There are also examples from India too – Tariq for instance mentions that except for World War II, when the country served as a transit point for Allied troops headed East, at no point did the British ever have more than 36,000 troops of their own in the huge territory of undivided India; yet they were able to retain control, by buying off the allegiance of the rulers of the princely states as well as the landed gentry and aristocracy. The Americans refined the process and bought off the leadership of countries en masse.

Some observations in the book are quite poignant. Citing numerous instances, Tariq Ali establishes how during the cold war era, in the name of suppressing communism, the secular elements of the polity of many nations were either weakened or completely eliminated. Indonesia which once had the world’s largest communist party outside the socialist countries is one example where Suharto’s brutal repression wiped the nation of a secular, non sectarian voiced. Afghanistan is another example cited where a secular government was first destabilized prompting Soviet intervention and then once the Red Army moved in, reactionary Islamic fundamentalists were intentionally marshaled, trained and then coaxed to fight the godless infidels. The vacuum left by the destruction of these secular forces has now been filled by the rabidly religious, for which the US and its allies alone are to blame.

The book has been written in the context of 9/11 and the subsequent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and has that anti war focus, but surprisingly enough does not appear to be biased. Tariq Ali traces out the many failings in the early communist states – particularly the Soviet Union and points out that their own failings were also largely responsible for socialism losing popular support and subsequently collapsing.

Tariq Ali’s consistently anti American stand may not be popular with those who support the American foreign policy and the actions of the current Bush Administration in particular; but so potent and well researched are his arguments going far back into history and tracing many of today’s burning issues to their very roots, that it would take back breaking research to counter his extremely logically argued point of view. And ultimately of one thing we can be sure; no matter what view point we hold- this book will make the reader sit up and take note that there is another way to go- even if it is a path hardly ever trodden.

Sexing Up Disasters

Dianne Sharma-Winter — Mon, 9 Jun 2008 01:35:21 EDT

Last week the US Navy ships, frustrated by the stonewalling of the military junta to bring aid to the estimated 2.5 million Burmese, slipped quietly out of the waters off cyclone ravaged Burma. Tailgating their ships were the British and the French fleets.
The Burmese once again have been left to suffer in silence, in the same way as their democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi has so eloquently demonstrated in her 13 years of house arrest.

I wonder if the people of Burma are still waiting for the help that sat off shore for four weeks during the diplomatic dithering that went on while they starved, shivered in torrential rains and attempted suicide out of the kind of despair that those who held their fate in their hands will never know.

Smugglers from the Bay of Bengal smuggled what they could into the area. They didn’t wait for international approval, they didn’t dick around with diplomatic double speak. Their response may have been a drop in the vast ocean of despair that swamped Irrawaddy basin, but it was heroic and human all at once.

The media, those able to make their way into the area or those already there continued to report, mostly anonymously for fear of military reprisals. The rest of the media reported from Bangkok rooftops and other places off shore, but there was a sense that they too were ready to leap into the fray if and when they received permission to enter Burma.

While the world waited, I thought about other natural humanitarian disasters in recent years. The tsunami of 2004, the earthquake that affected Pakistan, Afghanistan and India in 2005 were two that sprang to mind. I happened to be in Tamil Nadu that Boxing Day and for a month or so afterwards, so I was able to see first hand the sexing up of that disaster by the media who had an absolute field day.

I remember seeing helicopters carrying obscure Hollywood has beens to the distraught and displaced fishing people of that coast. I remember seeing fights between the displaced and those unaffected by the tsunami who equally received aid from whoever was handing it out. Worse still, I remember the unshakeable feeling that the headcount of those lost was somehow more “sexy” to the media by the huge amount of foreign tourists who were also taken that day.

As information filtered through to those of us foreigners on the coast of Tamil Nadu, it became apparent that what was to us a local tragedy was rapidly becoming an international tragedy. One Irish man who had a cell phone and who was in contact with the outside world reported at one gathering that “The Swedes seem to be the most affected.” In fact they lost around 62 citizens while ten thousand people were never heard of again in Tamil Nadu.

Less than a year later when a devastating earthquake hit the disputed area of Kashmir, the media response filtered through to me safe at home in the shaky isles of New Zealand. Having visited that area previously I had an understanding of the difficulty of even bringing aid to an area where roads and basic infrastructure didn’t exist. The media reported from where they could get to and we got a lot of reports of the situation in Balakot.

I do remember seeing one report from New Zealander Mike McRoberts who had walked for three days into the mountains to report on something other than was what becoming common fare. Looking at his dusty clothes, hearing his breath straining in the high mountain air rapidly chilling with the approach of winter I thought, “Good on ya, mate.” I was proud of him for doing what I expected reporters to do, to search out the human truth of what we call the news.

In the case of the Pakistan earthquake, the story died as winter approached and people suffered and froze in the harsh climate of the Himalaya and the even harsher climate of disaster in a politically sensitive area. But was it the political or the geographical landscape that delayed relief efforts? India was the first country to offer aid to her warring partner and for that I had to say another (if slightly more cynical) “Good on ya, mate.”

India and Pakistan at least talked and finally agreed on opening up entry points for relief aid in the Pakistan controlled area known as POK and relief, although slow in coming, eventually made an appearance. They talked and that’s the point here. There was some communication which resulted in aid reaching some of the affected. It may not have been a perfect solution but it was a nod in the direction of humanity.

While I am pondering the history of disaster politics, Mother Earth revealed another weapon of mass destruction. The earthquake in China’s Sichuan province has devastated millions of people of a scale that is yet to be fully appreciated. But I was left with the uncomfortable feeling that the many international media hounds who were baying at the shores of the Irrawaddy delta simply turned tail and camera and headed for the hills and valleys of Sichuan in order to bring us the news.

The few brave media souls who stayed in Burma are now the odd cry in the wilderness of the sexing up of disasters in the media. Disaster sells. Quiet suffering doesn’t. When the monks took the streets last year in Burma, images were splashed across the world. “This is a momentous time,” reported the BBC’s Andrew Harding in hopefully authoritative tones. But nothing changed, the monks got bashed and beaten and gassed and things went back to abnormal.

Aung San Suu Kyi quietly entered her thirteenth year of house arrest during this time, no doubt feeling even more isolated from her people and the world than ever before given the circumstances they now face. I wonder if from the window of her house she watched the Americans slinking away with their aid relief.

Now I am left scratching my head wondering how it is that America could invade Iraq on a raft of sexed up charges that were later proved to be false, can deny the truth of the suffering of the Burmese people?

Then words of another BBC reporter rang hollowly in my ears from five years earlier when reporting on the invasion of Iraq. “There is no doubt,” said Matt Fry, “that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world and especially in the Middle East is increasingly tied up with American military power.”

Then I cheered myself up with the thought that all that unused relief aid sailing out of South East Asia might get diverted to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people who are without such basics as clean water, medicine and food. After all they have been waiting five years now for their liberation with no end in sight.

Sorry Burma seems you just weren’t sexy enough.

Intimidation of the Press

Shantanu Dutta — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 09:40:55 EDT

Two separate incidents occurred over the last few days where the Press was intimidated. The profiles of the two cases are quite interesting. In the first instance, a case of sedition was filed by the Ahmedabad Police Commissioner against a journalist from the Times of India.. The provocation was a series of articles that the newspaper ran, alleging links between the city police chief and a former underworld don. As the news blew up into a major storm, the Gujarat police leadership distanced itself from the action of its own police chief in Ahmedabad, stating that the act of filing an FIR against the TOI journalists was his own independent decision.

It is a shabby display of power of the grossest kind that a policeman can independently decide to book journalists for sedition because they have written things that he did not want to hear. Would a private citizen have this kind of facility? Of course not. Even assuming that the journalists did write some thing objectionable, there is a clear conflict of interest in a situation where an aggrieved public servant instead of referring the matter to his superiors for action, chooses to file a criminal case to defend him. Besides a layman’s reading of the Indian Police Code does not indicate that Section 124 has got any thing to do with writing articles in newspapers as such.

The other case is of a type that we are of course becoming increasingly familiar with. A newspaper decides to write about an iconic figure and all manner of rage is stirred up, all in the name of “hurt sensibilities” or “a spontaneous response” by aggrieved people. In this particular instance, the Marathi newspaper “Loksatta” from the Indian Express group had editorially commented on the decision of the State government to put up a statue of Shivaji in the Arabian Sea- a statue that in its size, is supposed to surpass the Statue of Liberty. For his efforts, the editor had his house vandalized and copies of the newspaper were burnt at his doorstep. Incidentally the paper made had no comments at all on the persona of Shivaji or his rule – all known to be potentially inflammatory material. All that the paper had said was that the present government was trying to gain shallow political mileage by putting up statues.

An obscurantist mob and the public servant of a democratic state should have little in common with each other. But these two fringes of society – the Democratic State with all its lordly élan and dignity and the lumpen elements with in society with no other intellectual pretensions except the intelligence of a mob have both used power to further their own ends. The elite as in the case of the Police Commissioner dug up provisions of the law to silence opponents as in the case of the journalists or in the case of the human rights activist and doctor Binayak Sen who has been held without charges for more than a year in Chattisgarh for alleged links with Maoists. The lumpen mobsters lacked the sanitizing wand of the law and used naked displays of muscle and violence to get their way. But either way, the blatant intolerance of dissent and its suppression through any means available is despicable.

Pakistani Activist Ansar Burney Deported From India

Ashish — Sat, 31 May 2008 12:05:26 EDT

Sometimes the doings of the Indian Government are very mysterious, and many times they just don't make sense. Take this example: The deportation of Pakistani human rights campaigner and former Human Rights minister as soon as he arrived at the Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi (back to Dubai from here he had arrived). Deportation? You normally expect that to happen when there is a criminal involved, or if somebody arrives in the country without a visa, and you really don't want to let him inside the country. For those who do not know about the doings of Burney in recent times, here is a bit of background:

The case of Indians in Pakistani jails (and vice-versa) is an emotional issue, one that affects plenty of families on either sides, and one that both Governments deal both as a prestige issue as well as one that is supposed to be of high priority (for reference: Indian diplomats are believed to be less caring about the plight of Indian citizens in foreign jails rather than the diplomats of other countries, specially of the West). A long standing issue has been the one of Indian prisoner of wars from the 1971 war (who are supposedly still in Pakistani jails, but which every Government of Pakistan has denied, and whom Indira Gandhi did not make an all out effort to get back when she released the thousands of Pakistani prisoner of wars from the 1971 war). Another recent issue, highlighted in the media has been the cases of specific Indian prisoners in Pakistani jails, many of whom have been there for some time.

A long background, but it serves to highlight the doings of Ansar Burney. He has apparently made an effort to visit jails, and taken up the case of many Indians who have been in Pakistani jails for a long time. The 2 most recent such persons in the limelight have been Kashmira Singh, and Sarabjit Singh. Burney, as the term goes, batted for both of them, and played an active role in the actual release of Kashmira Singh. He even came in for criticism when Kashmira Singh foolishly stated that he was a spy (people in Pakistani criticized him for helping in getting a spy released), but he was unfazed, and has been making statements in favor of Sarabjit Singh.

Then compare the treatment he has suddenly received on arriving in India:

Seemingly intrigued by the deportation of Pakistani human rights activist Ansar Burney on Saturday night, the Ministry of External Affairs has sought details about the action from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). The MEA has asked the MHA to state why Burney, who has been fighting for the cause of Indian prisoners in Pakistan, was deported, sources said.

Burney, who came to New Delhi on Friday night to attend a conference on terrorism, was immediately sent back from the Indira Gandhi International Airport to Dubai from where he had arrived. MHA sources said the former Human Rights Minister of Pakistan was sent back because of a 'look-out notice' against him.

This is all the more surprising since Burney had only recently visited India, and met both the Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, and the Foreign Secretary; so such an action is very surprising. Could it because the new Pakistani Government did not like his actions and wanted to humiliate him and got the Indian Government to issue a look-out notice?

Marriage, Loving Style

Harold Bergsma — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:43:42 EDT

I found out yesterday that a good friend of mine, with whom I sing in the Unitarian Universalist Choir, had a mixed marriage. “My wife is Jewish” he said. I frowned, not having put two and two together. Later when I spoke to her she told me that among Jews, to marry a gentile was generally prohibited and that for women particularly, it was important to marry within the Jewish community.

Interracial marriages are looked down upon by many world-wide communities yet today; they are looked down upon or ‘prohibited’ because of religious beliefs, because of caste, economic reasons or social pressure. Even in the good ole’ USA such prejudices still exist. The United States Supreme Court’s 1967 decision struck down anti-miscegenation laws: the law changed previous prohibitions. Even so, it took Alabama’s Supreme Court until the year 2000 to finally change its anti-miscegenation laws. Imagine this, until eight years ago; it was a felony to marry a person of a different race! We are talking here about race, not caste, not difference in religious beliefs. But these are often intertwined, as in the case with my friend, who has a ‘Jewish’ wife, which implies both religion and ethnicity. Is there some parallel to the caste system?

We celebrated the anniversary of the 1967 Loving Day two weeks ago by having lunch with our friends. We raised our glasses and toasted Mildred Loving. Who in the world is she? Mildred Loving was the black woman who got this all started here in America. She was a black woman who lived in Virginia and fell in love with a white man and married him. One night, according to a New York Times News Service Report, quoted by The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 11, 2008,

“Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point the morning of July11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bed-room and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, ‘Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?’ Mrs. Loving answered, ‘I’m his wife.’”

The marriage certificate was produced but the sheriff responded that a certificate from Washington D.C. was not valid under Virginia law between people of different races; an inter-racial marriage performed outside of Virginia was not valid. The couple later pleaded guilty to having violated a Virginia law called the “Racial Integrity Act.” Their one-year prison sentence would be suspended, they were told, if they left the state and did not come back to Virginia, together, for 25 years!

Marriage, Loving style, had been hit hard. The man who sentenced them, a certain Judge Leon Bazile, said something like, if God had meant for blacks, coloreds and whites to mix it up, he would not have placed them on different continents in the first place. He told them that as long as they lived they would be known as felons. Good gracious!

In 1963 Mrs. Loving decided to act; she could no longer stand being ostracized. The civil-rights movement was in full swing and according to some reports she wrote to Attorney General Robert R. Kennedy for help. She was referred to the ACLU, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the rest is history. Eventually their having pleaded guilty to the Virginia anti-miscegenation law was set aside, struck down. The Supreme Court’s 1967 decision struck down anti-miscegenation laws, but Southern states were slow to change their constitutions. It took Alabama until the year 2000 to change. Now all children born to cross-race marriages have inheritance rights and their heirs can receive death benefits. Men and women equally. Imagine that.

All of the above hits very close to home. As a teenage lad living in Ludhiana, in the Punjab of India, I played tennis with one of the medical students in the Women’s Medical College. Between serves and doubles matches, my sister being my partner, I met and talked to a young Christian Indian woman who was in her first year of medical school. Let us call her Lavina. We spoke in Urdu of many things, piar, mohabbat, ishq; perhaps sweet things like laddus and gulab jamuns. She laughed at my jokes in English. We continued to play tennis, eventually playing singles. (See my novel, Lalla and Lavina, Stories of Indian Women, Authorhouse Press) It was very evident that my father was upset with me when representatives of her family came to discuss marriage arrangements. Upset is a mild word. He was furious, asking, “What have you done?” No marriage was arranged. I did speak in Urdu to her father and apologized for having played tennis and for talking with her alone. I was forbidden to play tennis. I never saw her again. Writing that still causes me pain.

My father had frequently talked to me about what he called ‘The American Creed.’ But thinking about my father’s strong negative attitude toward the possibility of his son being involved, and heaven forbid, marrying an Indian woman, still hurts deeply. The famous author, Gunnar Myrdal (1944) who wrote, “An American Dilemma” presents a scholarly treatise on this very subject.

At the center of Myrdal's work in An American Dilemma was his postulate that political and social interaction in the United States is shaped by an "American Creed.” This creed emphasizes the ideals of liberty, equality, justice, and fair treatment of all people. Myrdal claims that it is the "American Creed" that keeps the diverse melting pot of the United States together. It is the common belief in this creed that enable all people -- white, black, rich, poor, male, female, and foreign immigrants alike -- with a common cause and are thus able to co-exist as one nation. Wikipedia.

Co-exist yes, but marry?

I am very aware of the thousands of marriages between Indian women and British men during the period of the British Raj. I am aware of the history of Anglo-Indians in India. I had many good friends and teachers who were Anglo-Indians and have broken bread with them in their homes. And yes, I am very aware of the meaning of raising children who are of mixed blood in a culture that labels this miscegenation and isolates them. How else can I say it? If you visit my web site you will see a picture of me with my loving wife of 33 years, Dr. Lily Chu, an ethnic Chinese, and our wonderful, ‘mixed blood’ son.

We are about to embark on a historic period in American history as we prepare to select candidates for both the Republican and Democratic Parties. Barack Obama, if he is elected, would become a world leader, a key figure in current global history, and imagine, he is a man of ‘mixed blood’, his mother a white, and his father a black from Africa. We have come a long way since 1967! The road has not been easy. Marriage, Loving style, will seldom occur elsewhere, globally. Social value systems, caste, cultural styles, legal systems will prohibit it. But I am very glad that Mrs. Mildred Loving wrote to Robert F. Kennedy and started a whole new cultural era, one that is exciting to live and love in. A toast to Mildred Loving!

Book Review : Changing Gods by Rudolf C Heredia

Shantanu Dutta — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:16:41 EDT

In his work, Changing Gods the Jesuit sociologist Rudolf Heredia very eruditely unpacks the rather prickly subject of religious conversion - no mean job. Fr. Heredia looks at the subject from several angles and poses some probing questions. At the outset, he defines some terms – Atmaparivartan - a conversion within one’s religious tradition – for instance sanatan dharmi Hindu choosing to become a follower of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or a Christian becoming born again. Then there is Dharm Parivartan, a conversion across religious traditions – A Hindu becoming a Christian or a Christian becoming a Muslim. The author maintains that while atmaparivartan is accepted and tolerated in society, Dharam Parivartan has become increasingly politicized and frowned upon.

Of course, the two terms are not neat packages. If a Hindu Dalit chooses to become a Buddhist or a Sikh, is he doing Dharmantaran or Atma Parivartan? According to VD Savarkar, the father of Hindutva, anyone whose pitra bhu (fatherland) and punya bhu (holy land) is anywhere in undivided India, is a part of the Indic civilization and therefore a Hindu; the others – basically Muslims and Christians are foreigners. However Neo Buddhists coming in from a Dalit background or Sikhs particular about preserving their particular identity may not agree. Heredia pursues Savarkar’s thesis further by asking if in countries like Sri Lanka or Thailand, Buddhism should be considered a foreign faith or Hinduism in Bali should be considered one, as Buddhism or Hinduism are not indigenous to these countries.

The author presents some interesting case studies: The journeys of Dr. Ambedkar, Mahatma Gandhi, Sister Nivedita and Pandita Ramabai. The stories of the two ladies, both contemporaries are particularly interesting. Sister Nivedita, begins life as Margaret Noble, becomes disillusioned with Christianity and is attracted to the teaching of Swami Vivekananda. She becomes his disciple but her vision for India is more radical than what he or his Ramakrishna Mission can digest. Shortly after Swamiji’s death, she is cold-shouldered by the apolitical Mission and ends up bonding with Hindu Revolutionaries like Aurobindo Ghosh who she helped in his exile to Pondicherry and Vivekananda’s brother for whom she stood bail when he was arrested on charges of sedition.

Ramabai begins as a Hindu Brahmin; Sanskrit Scholar titled by Hindu scholars as Pandita, is widowed at a young age and begins questioning Hindu patriarchy. She comes in contact with the Anglican Church, converts to the Christian faith and is scorned by Hindus. However Anglican Christian is not her niche and as she continues her relentless questioning, she falls out with the Anglicans and remains a Christian but without quite belonging to any sect or denomination. Was the journey of Nivedita and Ramabai a Dharamantaran or an atma parivartan or bits of both? In a spiritual journey, the markers get somewhat blurred.

The author questions the isolationism of the minority religions and says that ghettoism does not facilitate dialogue but rather the furtherance of silence which he says is a fit bed-fellow for suspicion and the propagation of stereotypes. Dialogue he says would facilitate greater understanding between different faiths and reduce tensions. Some of the other questions and issues the book examines is the conversion tradition in various religions including supposedly non proselytizing faiths like Hinduism. The book also looks at the many Freedom of Religion Acts in different states including those from pre independence days in the princely states. An interesting speculation is when Dr Ambedkar led his followers out of the Hindu fold into his Navayana school of Buddhism, promising them freedom from the exploitation that they faced in Hindu society , what would have happened if the Freedom of Religion Acts were in place. Would his offer to his followers have been interpreted as an inducement? Interesting question that !