issn 2278-3423 broadsheet on contemporary politics · broadsheet on contemporary politics volume 3...

Broadsheet onContemporary

Politics

Volume 3 No. 1 (Quarterly) February 2017 Donation : Rs. 20/-

Violence: Event and Structure

Editorial

A short summary of Slavoj Žižek on violence

Riots, pogroms and genocide, Paul R Brass

Beemapalli police shooting, Ashraf Kunnummal, SadiquePK & Ubaid Rehman

Smuggling and the BSF, Dipyaman Adhikary

Kunan Poshpora and women’s struggles, BS Sherin

Muslim images, MA Moid

Contents

ISSN 2278-3423

Image courtesy Bilal Ahmed

Editorial Group: Parthasarathi Muthukkaruppan and Samata Biswas

Resident Team: A Suneetha, R Srivatsan, MA Moid

Advisory Board: Aisha Mahmood Farooqui, Asma Rasheed, D Vasanta, Gita Ramaswamy, Gogu Shyamala, Kaneez Fathima, LalitaK, Madhumeeta Sinha, Rama Melkote, N. Vasudha, Sajaya Kakarla, Sheela Prasad, Susie Tharu, Swathy Margaret, B Syamasundari,Uma Brughubanda, Veena Shatrugna

Production: A. Srinivas, T. Sreelakshmi

Printed by: Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies, 2-2-18/2/A D.D. Colony, Amberpet, Hyderabad 500 013

Opinions and facts in this broadsheet are those of the editors and contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of Anveshi.

Printed at: Rowshni Graphics, IDA, Hyderabad-500 013. Cell No: 9246172133

Violence to jihad, Madhurima Majumder Who is a woman and who is a dalit? T Sowjanya Interview ASA, Kavyasree Raghunath and Manasi Mohan On Radhika’s side, Gogu Shyamala Structural violence and trans struggles, Gee Imaan Semmalar Violence against choice marriages, Rani Rohini Raman Kanhailal’s Draupati (Excerpt), Trina Nileena Banerjee

Anveshi Broadsheet - February 2017-2

The concept violence is often used andunderstood in terms of physicalassault and injury, and this sense

continues to be used widely. Restricting theterm violence to physical violence andignoring the other forms of violence oftenleads to the understanding that violence iseruptive and intermittent and otherwise thenormal situation is peaceful. This view paysno attention to the violence that is enmeshedin the conditions that are constitutive of whathas been understood as normal and peacefultimes. Burdened with subjugated identities,individuals and communities are constantlymet with both physical and non-physicalforms of violence. In many cases, theexistence of those identities is inseparablefrom the violence they face in everyday life.It is also possible to suggest that there is aconstitutive violence involved in markingcertain identities as more worthy than others;certain lives as more precious than others.Therefore, it is important not to think aboutviolence as merely a phenomenon ofintermittency in the otherwise peaceful/normal situation. This is possible by way ofconfiguring violence as not just a physicalphenomenon but as also present in situationswhere physical violence is completely absent.This would allow a broader understanding ofthe violence that is constitutive of normal andpeaceful situations. In addition to physicalviolence, vulnerable social groups are facedwith many other forms of violencereproduced and sustained by state andsociety.

In countries like ours, the state machinery,such as law, judiciary and police, oftenprotect the relationships of subjugation anddomination in the name of law and order.Society reproduces the subjugation bycreating and maintaining norms, values andbeliefs through various discourses, images,representations and ideologies. Subjugationsand dominations are sustained on variousaxes such as sexuality, gender, caste, regionand religion etc. Riddled with ideologies(not of mere ideas but of systematicallycultivated, reinforced, reproduced andpreserved material practices) of patriarchy,casteism, homophobia, elitism andislamophobia, our societies continue todemonstrate and ensure the subordination ofspecific sections of the society. All theseideologies sustain themselves and reproduceeach other. In such a scenario, it is imperativeto have an understanding of violence by

which physical violence is part of a largermatrix of violence that operates in the levelof discourses, images and representations onthe one hand and the conditions that placesome as privileged and others as vulnerableon the other hand. Violations of inegalitariansocial norms and values by the subjugatedcommunities are often treated as violence andstate machinery is often put to work againstthose communities whenever they protestagainst or violate those social norms. Inmany ways state and society work hand inhand to perpetuate the violence and maintainthe hierarchical orders that are inherentlyundemocratic. Draconian state policies andactions are often rationalized in the name ofdevelopment and welfare of the society,while they displace, stigmatize and push theminority groups to unlivable conditions. Anunderstanding proper of violence is possibleby evolving mechanisms not only to grapplewith the manifest physical violence, abuse,hatred etc. but also to seriously engage withthe conditions, relationships, and institutionsthat are central and fundamental in producingsuch violences. Modern institutions of stateand bureaucratic institutions often exerciseviolence not in physical form but in non-physical forms. Similarly, societal norms,governed by beliefs, values, and practicesregarding everyday ways of conducting lifeor the ways one organizes life events oftentake non-physical form of violence.Nevertheless, there is no denial that oftensuch forms of violence work on humanbodies and discipline the ways in whichhuman beings carry themselves to suit theacceptable norms both in private and public.Understanding and acknowledging thisnecessitates a move that does not restrict andreduce violence to physical actions.

Having noted the inadequacy of the restrictedusage of the term violence as physical action,it is also important to see what is therationality that governs and signifiesmeaning to such an understanding and whatis the ideology that tries to establish violenceas strictly physical act of assault, injury anddamage etc. This is not to suggest thatbroader conceptions of violence are anattempt to escape the ideologies of meaningand signification. Indeed, every meaning ofthe term is inescapably mediated anddetermined by specific ideological andpolitical persuasions. It is also possible tosuggest that within the spectrum ofunderstanding that considers only physical

assault, there could be varied dispositions.While police killings, firing pellets and staterepression are always presented asgovernmental mechanisms to maintain peace,law and order, the pelting of stones bystudents or minority communities is treatedas violence. State violence is justified in thename of law and order and journalisticwritings often assume that the state has thelegitimate power to use force in the interestof whole society whereas other groupsinvolving in resistance is condemned. What isimplicit here is an understanding that thereare certain violences that are legitimate andthe others illegitimate. To put it precisely, itis the legitimacy that determines what isviolence and what is not. Since the stateinstitutions are understood to be legitimateagencies in using force and involving inviolence, those actions are considered as notviolence but legal actions against violence.

While this shows how the meaning of theterm is ideologically determined, it alsoreveals that the same ideological actsdetermine what is also not violence.

In an interesting way, the identification of analterity to violence is also taking placestrictly within the realm of ideology.Condemnation of violence, without makingdistinction and the nexus between otherkinds of violence and the violence one iscondemning, is unproductive and oftenserves to legitimize the existing socio-political order. First step towards critiquingviolence necessitates an understanding aboutdifferent kinds of violence and theirimplications. These observations are crucialespecially in India where non-violence isupheld both historically and intellectually asa viable alternative against violence as if themeaning of both violence and non-violenceare self-explanatory. It is important to notethat non-violence is another kind of violenceand no imagination of politics exists, or evencould exist outside the realm of violence. Inmany instances language—by extension,discussion and deliberation—is understood asan alternative to violence. This could be seenon arguments that often condemn violence(physical) and propose dialogue or discussionas an alternative to violence as if language, isfree of violence. It does not need much effortto remember khap panchayats often producecruelties that are often outcomes ofdiscussion, deliberation, and talks. It shouldalso be noted that there are conditions thatstructure the domain of rational discussionsand deliberations in such a way that itexcludes specific sections of the societythough everyone is free to participate in thedeliberations. While it may not be easy tosuggest alterity to violence, one should be

Editorial


hopeful that violence could be confrontedwith certain kind of politics. Such politics, wemight be aware, may not be free of anysemblance of violence though.

Perhaps first step towards a politics againstviolence involves acts of naming. Namingsomething as violence is in many ways a dualact. On the one hand it is done against theauthorities that are legitimized to name whatis violence and what is not. It is against suchauthority and its refusal to acknowledgesomething as violence, that naming what hashitherto been unacknowledged as violencebecomes a political act. On the other, a fortiori,naming something as violence also entailsthat a specific condition, relationship or apractice being named is something producedby history and not natural or normal. This actcan only be done from an extraneous positionwhereby the one who names locates herselfoutside the logic that so far has governed andmaintained something as normal, natural andacceptable—therefore non-violent. These actsare also in a way un-naming or re-naming —that these acts refuse to accept the namesgiven and re-signify the meaning of thosepractices, conditions and relationships etc.These acts are political because they arecontestations of (and are also alwayscontested in return by) dominant practices ofsignification. While state invokes law andorder to exercise and justify its brutalities, thedominant groups in any society invoketradition and culture to cover up the violence.Practices of subjugation and domination areoften executed and vindicated in the name ofcultural practices. Often the underprivilegedgroups, particularly women become bearersof the values of tradition and culture of anysociety. It is always important to break thesanctity of those cultural and traditionalpractices exposing and naming the violenceinvolved in those practices.

In this volume of the broadsheet, we bringtogether a set of essays and an interview todiscuss significant issues of violence that areotherwise not given much importance in thediscussions on violence. We alsoacknowledge that the issues discussed here donot completely exhaust the different forms ofviolence that are present in contemporaryworld. The scope of the broadsheet, inaddition to many factors, has been limited byhuman sources. It nevertheless hopes to be atentative step towards a broaderunderstanding of violence.

Guest EditorsParthasarathi teaches at the English and ForeignLanguages University, Hyderabad and can bereached at [email protected].

Samata teaches at Bethune College, Kolkata andcan be reached at [email protected]

A short summary of a few pagesfrom Slavoj Žižek Violence:Six Sideways Reflections, New York: Picador. (2006) 2008

Subjective, systemic and symbolicviolence form the triumvirate Žižekwrites about in his 2006 book on

violence. Systemic violence is theconsequence, often catastrophic, of the‘smooth’ functioning of our economic andpolitical systems, while symbolic violence isthe violence inherent in language, in its‘imposition’ of a certain meaning. Both theseforms of objective violence work to maintainwhat is deemed as the ‘normal’, ‘non-violent’state of things, against whose backdrop,subjective violence is then perceived to takeplace, recognisable by the obvious signs ofcrime, terror and the like.

The same lens however, cannot make bothsubjective and objective violence perceivable.Systemic violence is the counterpart ofsubjective violence, against whose complexand extensive mechanism the ‘sudden’,‘irrational’ outbursts of subjective violenceneed to be understood. One needs to keep inmind that that humanitarian responses toinstances of subjective violence do notdepend on the magnitude of violence, per se,but are mediated through cultural,ideological-political and economicconsiderations. To prove this, Žižek cites theexample of a 2006 cover story of Timemagazine, documenting the death of 4million people in Congo over the last decade,as a result of protracted political violence. Butthe magnitude of this humanitarian crisisfailed to elicit any of the expected responsesfrom the reading public, and Žižek reads thislack of a response as being clearly politicallymediated. A mediation that ensures who is anacceptable victim (the victims of 9/11,Muslim women etc.) and who is not.

Žižek further illustrates that the horror of aviolent act and empathy with the sufferer,inevitably acts as a lure away from adispassionate engagement with the typologyof violence. In fact, even in the recounting ofa violent experience, the associated traumamakes the recollection more ‘truthful’,believable, as it is unexpected andunacceptable that the victim will be able torecount her experience of horror in any

coherent manner. “The problem here is partof the solution: the very factual deficienciesof the traumatised subject’s report on herexperience bear witness to the truthfulness ofher report, since they signal that the reportedcontent “contaminated” the manner ofreporting it.”

Then, Theodor Adorno’s famous saying, “Towrite poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”(published in “An Essay on CulturalCriticism and Poetry”), would no longer holdtrue, as the rational, cold realism of prosewould tend to be suspect, and inadequate,while perhaps only the evocative sensibilitiesof poetry would succeed. This, Žižek claims,might hold the key to the Left-Liberalurgency to ‘do something’, about the horrorsof violence. The urgency can both bewitnessed in statements like ‘A woman israped every six seconds in this country’, andbe exploited by capitalist enterprises likeStarbucks that urged their consumers to havecoffee because a portion of the proceedswould go to Guatemalan children, fromwhere they source their coffee. The urgencyto act, to react, can then be a recourse of onlythe post liberalization rich, incapable ofseeing beyond their immediate surroundings.

Žižek would, quoting Marx, resist thetemptation to react, opting instead in favourof sustained critical engagement, one thatwould refrain from knee jerk reactions tosubjective violence, and bring back to viewboth other forms of violence and our ownactive participation in it.

Invoking Picasso and the modernist chaos ofGuernica, Žižek writes: “According to a well-known anecdote, a German officer visitedPicasso in his Paris studio during the SecondWorld War. There he saw Guernica and,shocked at the modernist “chaos” of thepainting, asked Picasso: “Did you do this?”Picasso calmly replied: “No, you did this!””

This anecdote, brings back into focus thesystemic violence that engenders subjectiveviolence, and the task now, Žižek claims, is tofocus on the two less visible aspects of thetriumvirate of violence, i.e., its symbolic andsystemic forms.


Excerpted in good faith and with gratitudefrom http://faculty.washington.edu/brass/Ripogen.pdf

The study of the various forms of masscollective violence has been blightedby methodological deficiencies and

ideological premises that are as endemic tothe contemporary social sciences as are riotsin many of the societies we study. Indeed, itoften seems that, as with so much othersocial science work, our purpose is to displayour theoretical skills rather than to expose toview the dynamic processes that produce thephenomena we study. Our work thenbecomes entangled—even through the verytheories we articulate—in the diversionarytactics that are essential to the productionand reproduction of violence.

LabelsThe diversionary process begins with theissue of labeling, which itself is part of theprocess of production and reproduction ofviolence, and the post-hoc search for causes.We must know what we are studying beforewe can make the necessary generalizations,so the argument runs. So, we mustdistinguish clearly all the different forms ofviolence, from quarrels, feuds, vendettas, andother local manifestations of violence to thelarger forms of riots, pogroms, and genocide.However, the producers of violence arethemselves engaged in the same process andthey continually outpace and outwit us,producing new and varied forms of collectiveviolence, new “repertoires,” to use the Tilly-Tarrow term, that lead us into the game itselfrather than providing us a site for a distantgaze. Pogromists insist that the violence thathas just occurred is nothing more than a riot.Genocidal acts are labelled by theirperpetrators as merely spontaneous revengeand retaliation by justly and excusably

outraged members of a group, actingspontaneously against an “other” groupwhose members have misbehaved.

Of course, once immersed in the observationof forms of collective violence, we socialscientists must decide for ourselves whetherwe are witnessing something better labeleda pogrom than a riot, a massacre of innocentsrather than a fair fight between groups, agenocide rather than a “mere” pogrom. Wethen, unavoidably, necessarily, becomeembroiled within and take a position uponthe events we study. But this should be doneknowingly and purposely without hidingbehind the veil of the neutral social scientistsearching impassionately for precision andfor causation. Our main job, however, shouldbe not to classify and to label precisely, butto expose to view the dynamics of violenceand the ways in which each new large eventof collective violence is, in fact, differentfrom all others that have preceded it becauseof the very fact that its producers know verywell what it is that they do, what hashappened before, how to displace blamefrom themselves to others.

Riots and pogromsConsider first the production of riots andpogroms. The first carries the appearance ofspontaneous, intergroup mass action, thesecond of deliberately organized—andespecially—state-supported killings and thedestruction of property of a targeted group.In fact, however, no hard and fast distinctioncan be made between these supposedlydistinct forms of violence, since pogromsmasquerade as riots and many, if not most,large-scale riots display features supposedlyspecial to pogroms. Rather, it is necessary toexamine the dynamic processes of theproduction of such violence and to note howthe act of labeling enters into it.

I have argued that, in places where eventslabeled as riots are endemic, they have, ineffect, become a grisly form of dramaticproduction in which there are three phases:preparation/rehearsal, activation/enactment, and explanation/interpretation.1

In these sites of endemic riot production,preparation and rehearsal are continuousactivities. Activation or enactment of a large-scale riot takes place under particularcircumstances, often in a context of intensepolitical mobilization or electoralcompetition in which riots are precipitatedas a device to consolidate the support ofethnic, religious, or other culturally markedgroups, by emphasizing the need forsolidarity in face of the rival communalgroup. The third phase follows after theviolence in a broader struggle to control theexplanation or interpretation of the causes ofthe violence. In this phase, many otherelements in society become involved,including journalists, politicians, socialscientists, and public opinion generally.

At first, multiple narratives vie for primacyin controlling the explanation of violence.On the one hand, the predominant socialforces attempt to insert an explanatorynarrative into the prevailing discourse oforder, while others seek to establish a newconsensual hegemony that upsets existingpower relations, that is, those which acceptthe violence as spontaneous, religious orethnic, mass-based, unpredictable, andimpossible to prevent or control fully. Thisthird phase is also marked by a process ofblame displacement, in which socialscientists themselves become implicated, aprocess that fails to isolate effectively thosemost responsible for the production ofviolence, and instead diffuses blame widely,blurring responsibility, and therebycontributing to the perpetuation of violentproductions in future, as well as the orderthat sustains them. In this phase also, theissue of labeling becomes decisive. Was it aspontaneous mass action between ethnic orreligious groups locked in a web of mutualantagonisms said to have a long history or apogrom organized by known organizationsor the state or both, with the help of thepolice?

In my work on India, I have argued thatwhat are labeled Hindu-Muslim riots have,

On the study of riots,pogroms, and genocide

Paul R Brass


more often than not, been turned intopogroms and massacres of Muslims, inwhich few Hindus are killed. In fact, in sitesof endemic rioting, there exist what I havecalled institutionalized riot systems,” inwhich the organizations of militant Hindunationalism are deeply implicated. I believethat such riot systems exist and have existedin many other places in the world, at leastfor the past two centuries, including inRussia, other parts of Europe, and the UnitedStates. In such sites, persons can beidentified, who play specific roles in thepreparation, enactment, and explanation ofriots after the fact. Especially important arewhat I call the “fire tenders,” who keepintergroup tensions alive through variousinflammatory and inciting acts; “conversionspecialists,” who lead and address mobs ofpotential rioters and give a signal to indicateif and when violence should commence;criminals and the poorest elements insociety, recruited and rewarded for enactingthe violence; and politicians and thevernacular media who, during the violence,and in its aftermath, draw attention awayfrom the perpetrators of the violence byattributing it to the actions of an inflamedmass public. When successful, as it mostoften is, the principal beneficiaries of thisprocess of blame displacement are thegovernment and its political leaders, underwhose watch such violence occurs. Here also,in the aftermath, social scientists becomeinvolved when they draw attention to thedifficulties of “governance” in societieswhere interethnic and intercommunalanimosities are allegedly rampant. Theythemselves then become implicated in apolitical discourse that, as Baxi has well putit, concerns itself with “the agonies ofgovernance,” rather than with the“suffering” of the victims of misgovernance,and thereby normalizes the violence againstits victims. 2

GenocideGenocide studies too suffer from severaldefects that compromise the systematic studyof its origins, the dynamic processes by whichit is produced, contained, or prevented. Thesedefects include excessive argument overlabeling, a narrowed focus on uncoveringpreviously unknown or little known sites ofgenocide, and forms of causal analysis thatinvolve little more than heavy-handed laying

of blame upon a particular or general source:the state, a leader, a whole people.

The argument over labeling is the mostdebilitating. It is really a struggle forterritory, for the right to make a claim ofutmost suffering and victimhood for apeople, or to extend the claim to encompassa wider range of sufferers. It is to that extenta political rather than a scientific struggle—for attention to one’s cause—in whichhistorians themselves become enmeshed.

The narrow focus on exposing to viewparticular sites of genocide previouslyneglected has merit and is necessary, but itoften gives the appearance more of aprosecutor’s amassing of evidence for a jury,in this case world opinion.

Causal analyses that focus upon the Germanor Turkish state, Hitler or Pol Pot, theGerman people as a whole and theiraccomplice peoples in Eastern Europe eithernarrow the gaze too finely or extend it toobroadly. The same considerations apply tothe arguments over the responsibilities ofRoosevelt or Churchill for failing to prevent,to save, to destroy. Too often such analysesprovide a halo over the head of the analystwho never asks himself or herself what,where, how he or she would have, couldhave behaved differently.

It is certainly necessary to strive for asaccurate a determination of responsibilitiesas possible in each case, to distinguishamong murderers, accomplices, and themerely silent observers or those who saythey did not know. It is also appropriate tonote the falsifications in speech andhypocritical acts in practice that are part ofthe process of producing violence. But thereis a difference between establishingresponsibility for a specific action or non-action—identifying it, delimiting it—andblaming. Although, of course, blameinvolves fixing responsibility, when it comesto broader social processes it does more inpractice: it frees others from responsibility.So, with regard to the assignment ofresponsibility, it is obviously the task ofscholarly observers to be precise and careful.In contrast, the assignment of blame issomething rather to be observed as part ofthe process of production of violence, which

takes place after the fact and, insofar as itblames others, justifies the non-actions ofthose not blamed, and frees fromresponsibility individuals, organizations,groups, even multitudes whose degrees ofresponsibility are thereby missed.

Genocide, like riots and pogroms, takesmany forms, of which the Holocaust, thoughthe most extreme in history, is unique notonly in its extent, but in its form. Excessivequarreling over whether such and such apeople deserve to have their misfortunesrank with those of the Jews of Europe divertattention from the analytic task of discerninghow, even now, genocidal acts are producedas a regular form of mass killings. In fact, Ihave argued that there are other forms ofgenocide that deserve particular notice,particularly of the mutual and retributivetype,3 a form of violence that develops instages that constitute clear danger signals.They include the following: 1) the use ofcategorical definitions to define a populationas entitled to dominate a particular politico-geographical space; 2) the consequentdisregard of the interests of interspersedpopulations not included in the definitions,who may find violence their last resort; 3)the breakdown of inter-communal orinterethnic linkages, especially politicalones, and the consequent communalizationof politics, followed by political polarizationand political stalemate; 4) the rise toleadership positions of persons who, ineuphemistic terms or openly, espouseviolence against a rival community or ethnicgroup; 5) the deliberate use of violence toachieve political ends, includingpremonitory, planned riots and pogroms,sometimes coming in waves or covering alarge territory; 6) escalation in the brutalityand scale of violence and in its forms,including, sexual abuse of women andsadistic violence perpetrated for the sheerjoy of it; 7) attacks so extensive and extremeas to lead to displacement of tens ofthousands of people, turning them intorefugees; 8) increase in the ratio of killingsto injuries; 9) deliberate use of violence as amechanism of ethnic cleansing; 10)transgressing of traditional boundaries bytargeting women and children, wholecommunities of people; 10) use of rape, as asubstitute for killing, as a device to


reproduce one’s own in the body of the otherand deny to the other community theprospect of reproduction; 11) intensificationof group solidarity and intergroup divisionproduced by the violence, leading toincreased mass participation for defense andrevenge and retaliation, that is to say, acomplete release of passion; 12) increasingpartiality of the police, their aiding andabetting of one side or the other or both,presaging a complete disintegration of allexternal restraints upon the illegitimate useof violence.

In short, in all cases of large-scale collectiveviolence, we need to be attentive not only tothe action taking place, but to the discourseabout it. We need to note the phases andstages of production of collective violenceand the deliberate testing of boundaries thattakes place in their production, the actionsthat confound our labels, the transgressionsthat signal the movement from one extremeform of violence to another, even moreextreme form. We need finally to payattention to the talk that takes placeafterwards, including our own, thatobfuscates rather than enlightens, that seeksprecise definition and “causes” rather thanexposure of what is concealed, thatcontributes to the persistence of violence byhiding more than it reveals.

Notes1 The theoretical framework in this essay iselaborated more fully in Paul R. Brass, Theft ofan Idol (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniversityPress, 1997) and The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence inContemporary India (Seattle:University of Washington Press, 2003).

2 Upendra Baxi, “The Second GujaratCatastrophe,” Economic and Political Weekly[epw.org.in; hereafter EPW], August 24, 2002.See also my own remarks on the uses andmisuses of the term “governance,” inPaul R.Brass, “India, Myron Weiner, and the PoliticalScience of Development,” EPW, July 20, 2002,pp. 3031-35

3 Paul R. Brass, “The Partition of India andRetributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946–47:Means, Methods, and Purposes,” Journal ofGenocide Research (2003), 5(1), 71–101

Beemapalli, a small seaside coastaltown, whose population ispredominantly a Muslim fishing

community, is situated in the Trivandrumdistrict of Kerala. About six years ago, on 17th

May 2009, between 2.30 pm and 3 pm thepolice shot and killed six Muslim fishermen,also injuring 52 others. It was the secondlargest police shooting incident in the historyof Kerala state since 1957. However,compared to the importance given to othersuch political events in the history of thestate, Beemapalli received little attention inthe collective memory of political strugglesin Kerala.

The shooting incident in Beemapalli involvedthe residents of Cheriyathura, a neighboringarea dominated by Latin Catholics, aprominent OBC (Other Backward Classes)community among Christians. Latin Catholicand Muslim fishing communities have livedin their respective neighbourhoods for quitea long time. Instances of past conflicts thatoccurred between them have been describedas ‘communal riots’. The dominant narrativeof Beemapalli killings always tried to portraythe police shooting as yet another episode ofcommunal violence.

The report of the Judicial Commission Reportheaded by Justice Ramakrishnan on theincident was shelved by theV.S.Achuthanandan led Left Democratic front(LDF), until 2011.The subsequent UnitedDemocratic Front (UDF) government also didnot want to discuss the commission report inthe legislative assembly. Moreover, twoyears ago, the police crime branchapproached the Trivandrum first class JudicialMagistrate to drop the existing cases againstthe police officers who were involved in thekillings. Besides this, many who were injured

in the police shooting have not been paid anycompensation, and are also being regularlyharassed with fresh cases being filed againstthem.

Mainstream political organizationsmaintained a convenient silence over thekillings in Beemapalli. Six years after thisincident, only a few Muslim organizations,such as the Solidarity Youth Movement(SYM), the local branches of Muslim League,the district committee of Samastha KeralaSunni Student Federation (SKSSF), PopularFront of India (PFI) and Social DemocraticParty of India (SDPI) spoke up about therights of Beemapalli residents and also insupport of their struggle for decentlivelihoods.

There was very little coverage of the incidentin the print and visual media. Madhyamam andThejas, which are owned by Muslims , werethe only newspapers that covered the incidentextensively. Both newspapers conductedinvestigations of the killings and published aseries of reports about it. These reports andother legal and political issues related to thekillings appeared regularly in thesenewspapers. As a result, the editors of bothnewspapers came under threat of beingbranded as ‘communal/fundamentalist’ fromthe state and society.

Meanwhile, prominent newspapers in Keralareported the police version of the killingsaccording to which, the ‘violent mob’ ofBeemapalli entered the Cheriyathura areawith ‘explosives from Nagpur’ and tried toattack the Latin Catholic Church in anattempt to kill the small Latin Catholiccommunity there. The police thus claimedthat the shootings happened in an attempt torescue the Latin Catholic community. Almost

On the Beemapalli policeshooting: state, violence andcommunity in Kerala

Ashraf Kunnummal, Sadique PK &Ubaid Rehman


all the newspapers, including the Englishlanguage ones, such as The Indian Express andThe Hindu, as well as Malayalam newspapers,like Malayalam Manorama, and Mathrubhumi,reported and thus reaffirmed the policeversion of the incident.

Different fact finding teams led by civil rightsorganizations, such as PUCL (People Union ofCivil Liberty) and NCHRO (NationalConfederation of Human RightsOrganizations), found that the shooting tookplace in a Beemapalli residential area andthere was no evidence of any attackstargeting the Cheriyathura residential area orthe Church. The minutes emanating from theall-party meetings just after the policeshooting also point to the fact that after theincident, the church authorities did not in anyway claim that it had been attacked. Even theLatin Catholic Solidarity Committee’s BishopSusapaakyam did not claim that ‘communalviolence’ had happened in Beemapalli.However, a few days later the churchauthorities began to follow the mainstreamnarrative of the alleged attack.

Paying attention to the politics of ‘naming’ ofthe Beemapalli incident will help to unpackthe police and dominant media versions. Inthe days following the incident, the policeand the media referred to it as the‘Cheriyathura firing’. This falsely indicatesthe misconception that the Muslim fishingcommunity of Beemapalli entered andattacked Cheriyathura, when the journalistsand fact-finding teams who went beyond thepolice version found that there was no suchthing as church attack or any Muslimsentering into the area of Cheriyathura. But inorder to refer to it as a form of ‘communalviolence’, the police had to construct this falsestory that Beemapalli residents attackedCheriyathura residents. Using this framing,the police made it appear as a legitimatecondition of shooting at a ‘communallymotivated violent mob’, and that they weretrying to protect a weaker Christiancommunity under attack from this ‘violentMuslim mob’, in the process restoringcommunal harmony. This ‘naming’ of theincident as the ‘Cheriyathura firing’ by thePolice gained consensus in Kerala throughthe media reports. After this fabrication bythe police, media personnel told us in manypersonal interviews that they had decided notto report this particular incident because itwas just ‘communal violence’. Journalistsargued that if they reported it by speaking

about the injured, it would cause furthercommunal divisions and they fearedspreading communal violence to other partsof Trivandrum.

Beemapalli means the habitation around theMasjid of Beema the famous and beautifulmasjid (and dargah shareef) built in the nameof Beema Umma. According to local oralhistorians, the Masjid’s name came from thename of a Muslim woman saint Syed UnnisaBeema Beevi who was the mother of ShaheedMahin Abubakar. Mahin Abu Bakar camefrom Arabia in the 14th century and foughtagainst local upper caste landlords and waseventually murdered. After forty days of thedeparture of her son, Beema Beevi also died.According to Fatima, an old woman inBeemapalli, most of Beemapalli’s residentsconverted to Islam from lower castes likeNadar (now a Hindu OBC community).Beemapalli Muslims today arepredominantly lower caste converts to Islam.

Most of the Beemapalli residents weinterviewed mentioned two importantdevelopments that have created increasingtensions with the state, including the police.The tensions arose when local residentsmigrated to the Gulf in the eighties, which inturn led to an increase in their wealth andresulted in the independent growth andprosperity of the informal Beemapallimarket. And finally, there is the successfulshrine festival they conduct every year.

According to the Mahallu Jamaat committee(the higher body of administration which iselected by Beemapalli residents), there arearound 28,000 Muslims currently living inBeemapalli. The shrine festival is the mainlife center for them. The main issue behindthe May 8-17 conflict was a clash betweensome of the Beemapalli residents and a fewpeople from outside over the control of thelocal market. Beemapalli residents viewedthis as an attempt to stop the shrine festivaland to sabotage the informal market relatedto it.

The Beemapalli market is famous for its‘informal economy’ and people from all overKerala visit it to get ‘foreign’ goods. Thus,Beemapalli is a place that resides within thisnegotiated space of legality and illegalityfrom the viewpoint of the state. According tosome shopkeepers in Beemapalli, famousMalayalam movie directors are constantvisitors to the market to buy the latest

(‘illegal’) pirated DVDs/CDs of movies. Ourinterviews with Beemapalli residents showedus that it is the flourishing informal marketand autonomous life they had after the Gulfmigration which had an impact on theattitude of the state and police. The police andstate want to control this market and it was,according to the words of one of ourinterviewees, their ‘jealousy’ (asooya) towardsBeemapalli that led to the clashes. In thissense, the social mobility acquired throughGulf migration and the prosperity of the newnon-corporate market had an impact on theattitude of the police and state.

Recently, there has been an increasedpresence of police in Beemapalli and there areattempts to establish a few more policeoutposts in the area. Beemapalli residentshave questioned this move, and suggest thatinstead of building more police outposts, thegovernment should concentrate on advancingeducation by building more schools, sincethere is only one upper primary school thatwas established in 1981. The residents wonderwhy they are building a police station beforebuilding a good high school or college inBeemapalli.

It is evident that the incident of the policeshooting brought the issues of society anddevelopment in Beemapalli to a wideraudience. The residents are taking theincreased attention from the state as anopportunity to negotiate governmentalintervention to improve their livelihoods.Our recent visit shows that amidst the tragickilling of six of their people, the residents ofBeemapalli are active in building andsustaining their community’s life.

[Translated by Ashraf Kunnummal. Excerptfrom a field report in the Malayalam editedvolume Beemapalli Police Vediveppu : KeralamMarakkunnathum Orkkunnathum (BeemapalliPolice Shooting : What Kerala Remembersand What Kerala has Forgotten). Edited byAshraf Kunnummal ( Calicut : ThejasPublication 2012)]

Ashraf Kunnummal studies at University ofJohannesburg and can be reached [email protected].

Sadique PK studies at the English and ForeignLanguages University, Hyderabad and can bereached at [email protected].

Ubaidurahman works at Media One TV and can bereached at [email protected].


“Ki korbo dada? Jani to beaini . Ato dekhle ki ar petchole?”(What will we do sir? We know it’sillegal. Abiding by the law won’t feed us).

This is the confession of a smuggler.He further states, “Are dada amra ki arbonduk ba boma pachar korchi. Jacche to

goru. Ete kkhoti nai.”(Are we smugglingfiremarms or bombs? It’s mere cattle, theresno harm in it).

This could be the confession of any one of the90% of the people living in a village near theIndo-Bangladesh border. If we see the WestBengal map we will find a number ofdistricts where the Indo – Bangladesh fence issituated such as the North 24 Parganas,Nadia, Murshidabad, South Dinajpur,Jalpaiguri, Cooch Behar etc. Smuggling hasbeen widely prevalent in this stretch forseveral decades, with smuggling contentsvarying across districts. Murshidabadborder is well known for cow smuggling andN-24 Parganas border is famous forPhensedyl (a cough syrup banned inBangladesh, yet popular for its high alcoholcontent). Most of the smuggled cows are notfrom the local area but are brought fromPunjab and Haryana. So, the question is howdo these cows manage to travel across inter-state and inter-district guards and arrive atthe border to be smuggled across? The cost ofeach cow is between 5000—7000 INR. Afterdelivery into Bangladesh, the price of thesame cow will go upto anywhere between17,000 to 20,000 INR as it is is exported toSaudi Arabia. With 200-250 cows gettingsmuggled across the Indo-Bangladesh borderon any given day, one can easily imagine theextent of profit to be made.

Two kinds of people participate insmuggling. One, those few who arrange forthe cows to be brought to the border fromdifferent states, have connections with bothstate police and the border forces, makeaway with the maximum amount of profit tobe generated and are never found at theborder when their cows cross them.

The second group, larger in number, paid 500rupees to take a bunch of cows across theborder safely and to come back, consistsentirely of the villagers on the border. Since1970s, these villages have been victim of rivererosion where the changing course of therivers leaves the villagers with no agrarianland and often their homesteads too getdestroyed. Even though the number ofdocumented hunger deaths in the region isthe highest in West Bengal, they hardly everget any assistance from the governmentschemes and programmes. . These villagershave two potentially feasible livelihoodoptions: one is to migrate to Kerala, Delhiand other states in search of jobs, but suchmigration requires a significant amount ofmoney that most are incapable of raising. Thesecond, is to smuggle herds of cows across theborder, for a paltry sum of INR 500 per day.

Our organization, Banglar ManabadhikarSuraksha Mancha (MASUM), has beenworking closely with people residing inborder areas for two decades now. Asmentioned above, the large-scale smugglingthat goes on in the region is not possiblewithout active collusion between borderforces, state police and the others who controlthe smuggling businesses. It is welldocumented that the BSF knows exactly whatis being smuggled, when it is to be smuggledand through which ghat (point of crossing) itwould occur. However, we often hear andread about unarmed ‘smugglers’ beinggunned down by the BSF, invariably for ‘selfprotection’. Those villagers not shot to deathare often beaten up brutally, denied medicalhelp and incarcerated for long periods, for thesmallest of crimes. The following is thereport of an incident of BSF brutality thatMASUM intervened in, where several BSFjawans beat up a villager with completeimpunity.

***

Sariful Islam lives with his wife Papia Bibi,and minor children, Sahin and Sadikul at the

village Char-Majhardiar adjoining the Indo-Bangladesh Border. Despite being extremelypoor, Sariful did not get any help fromvarious schemes of the government meant forthe underprivileged and has not been enlistedas Below Poverty Line (BPL). He worked as adaily labourer and supplemented his meagerwages by being part of smuggling across theborder.

On the morning of 24th December, 2013,Sariful was trying to smuggle some cosmeticsand bottles of the cough syrup Phensedyl,some distance away from Border SecurityForce (BSF) Out-Post no.4 under HarudangaBSF BOP. Two or three on-duty BSF jawans ofthat out-post noticed him with those goodsand started to chase him. They caught himwith the goods and brought him to theoutpost and started to assault him with theirwooden batons. Then at about 6.30 am,another (unknown) BSF jawan, of the sameoutpost took him to Harudanga BSF BOPCamp while beating him severely. Then BSFofficials Mr. Abhinan Kumar Singh and Mr.Birendar came up holding batons in theirhands and asked something from thatunknown jawan, and together they started tobeat Sariful again. The victim was shoutingand screaming in pain and people living nearHarudanga BSF camp rushed there, uponhearing the screams. Among them, KalamSeikh, identified the victim and noticed theincident of brutal physical torture upon himand he informed Rabban Seikh (father of thevictim). Rabban Seikh and Rubel Seikh (hisbrother) immediately reached the main gateof Harudanga BSF camp but were forced toleave the place. They stood a short distanceaway from the camp and started to cry, seeingthe torture of Sariful.

After beating him for more than six hours, at12.30 pm, the involved BSF personnel wantedto take Sariful to Raninagar Police Station andordered him to get in to their car. But he wasunable to move due to severe pain. The BSFpersonnel lifted him on their shoulders to puthim into the car. The victim had severalhematomas on his legs, waist and back.

On the same day at about 2 pm, the involvedBSF personnel took him to Godhonpara BlockPrimary Health Centre for a medicalexamination and the doctor issued acertificate to the effect that no injuries werefound on the victim, as alleged. After that thevictim was handed over to Raninagar PoliceStation at 3 pm and a complaint was lodgedagainst him. Based on this complaint the

Smuggling and the BSF: acase study of violence at theIndo-Bangladesh border

Dipyaman Adhikary

Continued on page 10


Kunan Poshpora: an emblemof women’s struggles againststate violence

Sherin B S

The Kunan Poshpora mass rape does notoccupy a significant space in thenarratives of struggle in mainstream

Indian feminist discourse. The army enjoysthe greatest level of impunity in India, anation tinged with patriotic jingoism, whichcelebrates the army as the defenders ofnational pride and hides the brutalities thatarmy men commit on women in militarizedregions, both in the Northeast and inKashmir.

History of army occupation and women’sprotests

Army atrocities against women in occupiedzones came to public discourse in India afterthe custodial rape and murder of theManipuri woman Thangjam Manorama in2004. Her family said that she was picked upfrom her home by the Indian paramilitaryunit, 17th Assam Rifles on allegations ofbeing associated with People’s LiberationArmy. Her bullet-ridden corpse found in afield the next day had semen markssuggesting rape and murder with 18 bulletspiercing her body including the genitals.

Inspite of the report of an InquiryCommission, the Armed Forces SpecialPowers Act of 1958 (AFSPA) protected theAssam Rifles and the case was handed over tocentral jurisdiction. This led to widespreadprotests in Delhi and Manipur against AFSPA.Five days after the killing, a group of middle-aged women in Manipur marched naked tothe Assam Rifles Head Quarters shouting,“Indian Army rape us too, we are allManorama’s mothers.” This image laterbecame the iconic face of Indian women’sfight against AFSPA.

The idea of nation as mata and the honour ofwomen

The idea of nation as mother drawsparticularly on the patriarchal imagination ofwomen’s vulnerability. There is a strangecoagulation of cartographic and spatialconceptions with abstract notions of femininevirtues in the motherland imagery. Theallegory of the violated woman that stands infor any violation on spatial/cartographicboundaries thus inflicts pain on the soldier/male/protector of this imagery. But this is a

double bind. Any population that falls onthe fringes of this mainstream imaginary ofthe nation thus becomes accessible toretributive violation. Further, to disgrace acommunity, a people or a territory, theterritorial encroachment also extends tofemale bodies. The drastic violence onwomen’s bodies in Gujarat or Muzaffarnagarthus is not a momentary mob anger takenout on women but a logically pursuedpersecution from this historical imagination.On the contrary, as Mridu Rai points out, alarge majority of Muslims find it difficult toidentify with a nation imagined in acartographic space as the Hindu Goddess(Rai, 254.)

When the nation is imagined as a woman,the army becomes ‘her’ protector. A virulentmasculinity protecting the mother-nationbecomes the national symbol. Defendingone’s nation thus becomes the greatestvirtue for a male. When popular cultureperpetuates this image it is not just theforeign intruder but any identity that fallsoutside the frames of this imaginationbegins to occupy this hazardous position ofalterity. Anyone who challenges the statistversion of history, could be the state-labeledterrorist, the protestor, and the ‘anti-national’. Women in places of insurgencythus are turned into tools to silence a peoplewho fight against the state. The archetype ofHindu women jumping into mass pyres toescape the violation is perpetuated to justifyviolence on minority women. Violation as atool to punish and to avenge thus penetratesour cultural imagination.

The army in occupied zones, includingKashmir, uses sexual violence on women tocrush a rebellion. ‘Rape as reprisal’ preventsmen from joining armed struggle. SeemaKazi reports an ex- JKLF militant’s agony onseeing their women violated for vengeance.Often, they have to choose between freedomfor Kashmir and the rape of relatives. Shefurther argues powerfully that the sexualviolation of women in Kashmir movesbeyond being a mere political instrument tobeing a cultural weapon to inflict collectivedishonor on Kashmiri Muslim men(Kazi,155.)

Kunan Poshpora, the night of February 23rd

1991 and the subsequent fight for justice.1

From 1989, stories of violation of humanrights in Kashmir have been rampant, withimpunity guaranteed to perpetrators. Womenhave been raped in front of their families “asspoils of war”, giving the army a confidencebacked by the state with reports suggestingarmy, bureaucracy and judiciary comingtogether.

The twin villages of Kunan and Poshporafaced the crackdown around midnight on thisday. Men were dragged out of their houses tothe interrogation camps. In their chillingaccounts men narrate various methods ofinterrogation including dipping their headsin buckets of water with chillies in them,electrocution on the private parts leading topermanent impotence, rolling heavy logs ofwood on legs with soldiers sitting over themleading to permanent disability. Womenwere gangraped with six to seven army menattacking every woman including minors.Women report that rape as a term is notadequate to explain what happened to themthat night. They were tortured, kept atgunpoint, pushed against walls and raped bydrunken soldiers. The rape of a fully pregnantwoman who gave birth to a disabled childtwo days later and the rape of a girl withhearing and speech impairment are amongmany other heart rending narratives. Aboutsixty women got raped, ranging from the agegroup of thirteen to eighty. About thirtywomen gave testimony before the DistrictMagistrate, which was recorded with greatdifficulty after several days of protests.Thereis a long history of battle fought by thesurvivors of this mass rape to make theculprits accountable for the crime, eventhough no evidence was legally missing inthis case. From the District Prosecution thatreported “indiscripancies” in the“stereotypical narratives of women” to thepolice who were ordered to close the case in2013, there is a long history of negligence byauthorities in attending to this crime.

Fight against obliteration by women ofKashmir

If memory is the weapon against oppression,women of Kashmir have fought this battleagainst forgetfulness for 25 years. In 2014, agroup of young women from Srinagar filed aPIL before the High Court to reopen theinvestigations. They formed the SupportGroup for Justice for Survivors of KunanPoshpora (SGKP) in 2014, launching acampaign along with the legal battle,commemorating the anniversary by namingit Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day. In spiteof the Indian army’s constant intervention inthe reopening of the case and the repeatedadjournments by the legal machinery these


women engage in a longer and strongerbattle, etching the history of Kunan Poshporain collective memory.

Justice Verma Commission and the demandfor repeal of AFSPA : The army enjoysimpunity of the highest level, especially withAFSPA protecting them in Kashmir and theNortheast. The much-publicized case of therape and murder of two women at Shopian inKashmir has not so far, in spite of wideprotests and repeated appeals from humanrights agencies, met with any kind of legalredress. AFSPA protects the army personnelimplicated in crimes from being tried in acivil court. In the wake of the Delhi rape in2012 and the wide range of public debate onviolence against women, the Justice VermaCommission recommended bringing sexualviolence against women by members of thearmed forces or uniformed personnel alsounder the purview of ordinary criminal law.

Women’s plight in militarized zones

Women in militarized zones, ranging fromKashmir to Palestine, fight to survive in aspace occupied by cultural patriarchy,national exclusion and state violence.2 Incultures where the word ‘rape’ is taboo, theyhave risen in mass protests against rape andbuilt up support groups and resources for thesurvivors.

Women’s histories entangled in militaryinsurgencies have opened up a new terrain ofresponsibility for feminist scholarship.3 Toculturally, socially and politically engagewith the sexual violence by state personnelupon women who havea fraught relationshipwith the nation, feminist politics needs toundertake a severe re-assessment of the ideaof individual rights, civil

liberties and a revision of legal framework totake account of such actions. Today we lackthe language, the tools and often the freedomto engage with such histories.

Sherin teaches at the English and ForeignLanguages University, Hyderabad and can bereached at [email protected]

Notes1. Most of the factual information on Kashmir andKunan Poshpora are taken from Do you RememberKunan Poshpora? The Journey Man Picture’sVideo, Rape of Kunan Poshpora (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBAfN27MYmg )and also reports of Human Rights Organisations,support the facts and figures presented in thisbook. The authors cite interviews by army andpolice officials in many journals including theIllustrated Weekly where sexual violence againstcivilians in Kupwara is justified as a strategy tocurb militancy.

2. Women of Kashmir have shown immensestrength in addressing this violence. Kashmir nowhas women’s organizations representing the

police registered one criminal case videRaninagar Police Station Case No. 751/2013dated 24.12.2013 (G.R. no. 3932/2013) undersections 188/379/411/414 Indian Penal Codeand under section 12 of Passport Act andsection 227 (b) (ii) of Drugs and CosmeticsAct. The victim was also tagged in anotherold pending criminal case vide RaninagarPolice Station Case No. 685/2013 dated16.11.2013 (G.R. no.3566/2013) under sections143/188/379/411/413/414/333/307 of Indianpenal Code and section 27 (a) (b) (ii) of Drugsand Cosmetics Act. It is relevant here tomention that in the written complaint lodgedby BSF in connection with Raninagar PoliceStation Case No. 685/2013 dated 16.11.2013(G.R. no.3566/2013) it was admitted by BSFthat the victim was subjected to “preliminaryquestioning”. It is also worth noting that thevictim was apprehended at about 6.30 am on24.12.2013 by the BSF and he was handed overto police at about 3 pm. The police producedhim in court on the next day. Such prolongeddetention of the victim obviously deterredthe victim from having early access to justiceand paved the way for the perpetrators in theBSF and the police to manufacture documentsthat would justify their actions, whileundermining the victim’s rights.

On 25.12.2013, the victim was producedbefore the Additional Chief JudicialMagistrate Court, Lalbagh. On the same day,one advocate defending the victim filed acomplaint in the court stating the brutalphysical torture of the victim by BSFpersonnel and also requested that medicalassistance be given to the victim. Theadvocate also filed two bail petitions onbehalf of the victim in connection with theaforesaid two criminal cases in which thevictim was implicated. The bail petition wasrejected but the medical treatment wasallowed. Sariful was then sent to LalbaghSub-Correctional Home for judicial custodytill next production in the court. On22.01.2014, he got bail.

On the same day, a fact-finding team fromMASUM spoke to an unnamed BSF SubInspector from the Harudanga camp whodenied that any incident of torture had at alltaken place. Protecting the border fromunarmed villagers and a herd of cows maynot be a very difficult task if the BSF putstheir mind to it. However, border protectionand the stoppage of smuggling becomes anissue only when the security personnel do notget their promised share, or become triggerhappy. Often, they claim to have shot at

smugglers with AK 47, for self preservation,when the said ‘smugglers’ are 100 metresaway, armed only with sticks.

***

Till date, MASUM has lodged thousands ofcomplaints to the National Human RightsCommission, and in 17 cases monetarycompensation has been awarded to thevictims or their families. But never have BSFpersonnel been pulled up for their acts ofviolence. Like the armed forces, the BSF toohas its own court, where civilians are notallowed. In case of complaints, personnelaccused of willful brutality, are rarelyawarded the maximum punishment ofsuspension. At the most, a BSF jawan accusedof murder, will be transferred to anotherborder, or else, the victim is given somemonetary compensation.

The discourse against smuggling does nottake into account the poverty and destitutionof people living in border areas who areforced to take part in it, neither does itquestion the impunity with which armedforces are encouraged to kill, maim andtorture.

Dipyaman works with Banglar ManabadhikarSuraksha Mancha (MASUM) and can be reachedat [email protected].

mothers of lost children (Association of Parents ofDisappeared Persons (APDP) started by ParveenaAhangar is one of that) as much as there areorganisations for “half widows” who struggle forjustice against stigma, ostracism and loss. Theterm half-widow shows the strange and traumaticplight of women whose husbands have disap-peared in the conflict, chiefly custodial disappear-ances. Clerics in Kashmir have recently ruled thatwomen whose husbands go missing can remarryafter waiting for 4 years.

3. Zubaan Series on sexual violence and impunityin South Asia is an attempt to historicize sexualviolence as a weapon of war in South Asia. Eversince 1970s mutilated, tortured and raped bodiesof women floating on water are symbolic of army/paramilitary tactics to suppress the LTTE uprisingin Sri Lanka. The severely mutilated and sexuallyassaulted body of Isaipriya, the LTTE reporter andactress, during the final days of the elimination ofLTTE by Sri Lankan army, evoked internationalattention.

References :

Batool, Essar et al Do You RememberKunanPoshpora? Zubaan Series on Sexual Violenceand Impunity in South Asia. New Delhi: Zubaan,2016.

Kak, Sanjay.ed. Until My Freedom has Come: TheNew Intifada in Kashmir. New Delhi : Penguin,2014.

Kazi, Seema Between Democracy and Nation: Genderand Militarisation in Kashmir. New Delhi: WomenUnlimited, 2009.

Rai, Mridu. “ Making a part Inalienable: FoldingKashmir into India’s Imagination” in Until MyFreedom has Come. 250-278.

Continued from page 8


Few years back a young German womanresearcher landed in Hyderabad toconduct a study on a topic related to

Hyderabad’s Muslim women as part of heracademic requirement. After a stay for acouple of months and completing the projectshe was about to leave. At this stage I wasfeeling curious about her experiences andopinions about Hyderabad’s Muslims. Iwondered how a foreign researcher handlesher research and her relationship with hersubjects in the context of the existingstereotypes about Hyderabad’s Muslims andthe old city. I decided to ask her a fewquestions. “Did anybody offer any opinionor advice before you started your fieldwork?” She replied, as I expected, “Yes myhost (Hindu) did. When he came to know thatI will be visiting old city and interacting withMuslims he felt nervous. He advised me to beextra careful and warned me that Muslims areviolent and unpredictable, quarrelsome andilliterate, backward and ill-mannered etc. andthe old city is the place where frequentcommunal riots break out”. I asked her, Whathappened did this advice influence you? Shesaid, “I became really nervous and hesitant atthe beginning. I thought that this is a newcountry and I will be interacting with thepeople of Hyderabad for the first time so Ithought it is better to be cautious”. I asked,“Well, now you have successfully completedyour project after spending so much time inold city among Muslims, what happened toyour caution?” She said, “I already had theexperience of working with Turkish womenin Germany. I knew a bit about Muslims. Thishelped me in overcoming my apprehensionsquickly”. I asked her “then how did you findthe Muslims of Hyderabad?” “I found them tobe exactly opposite to the fearfulcharacterization of my host! It was so easy tointeract with them. I was very comfortablewith the people of the old city except for thetraffic, chaos and the irritating salesmen whokeep insisting on visiting their shops. I foundthe women well-cultured and friendly. A fewof them invited me to dinner, familyfunctions and even gave me gifts” shereplied. “I have become friends with somany. I would love to come back again toHyderabad if I could”.

I always remember this conversation whilethinking about perceptions and realities of

Hyderabad. I try to think about the ‘host’s’perceptions and opinions, (this host was alsoan old resident of Hyderabad) and wonderhow and why people develop such opinionsabout Hyderabad. I realize that the negativeopinions about Hyderabad’s Muslims are offour types. According to the first the Muslimsare aggressive and violent; second, they arebackward, i.e., ill mannered, outdated andliving in past; third, they are unreliable andunpredictable and lastly they are communal.

Thinking about the history of Hyderabad, Ifelt that five phases of violence can be noticedthat were intimately linked with Muslimsand influenced the opinion about them.

Things began in the turbulent decade of 1930and 40s when people started thinkingcommunally on Hindu and Muslim lines, asthe new political developments made themsee each other in new light. The oldperceptions and opinions, which look soinnocent and naive now, gave way to newperceptions about each other. The SeventhNizam—the last ruler of Hyderabad is nowbeing seen as unjust and biased, and theMuslims are seen as communal. With theRazakaars activities in 1947-48 the Muslimsbegan to be seen as aggressive and violent.This was the first phase of violence that hasinfluenced the opinion about Muslims formany decades to come. It is still used to tauntand pressurize Muslims.

The second phase of violence came in theform of the Police Action which wascompletely one sided and against Muslims.However, surprisingly in popular memory itdoesn’t find as important a place as that of theRazakaar atrocities.

In the third phase that followed Police Actionwe see internal quarrels among Muslims. Therise and presence of rowdies, pahelwans,bhais, and other criminals and their mutualfights on the issues of land grabbing,assertion of their hegemony and revenge fornearly three decades created negativeimpression about Muslims and the old city.Domestic violence too was common in thisperiod. As it is clear the Muslims themselveswere its biggest victim. This aspect createdthe image that Muslims are quarrelsome,violent to their own women and families and

old city is a place where undesirable elementslive.

The fourth phase of violence can be associatedwith election related situations andcommunal riots. Mobilizing the votes of thecommunity to win the elections became acompulsion for both Hindus and Muslims.The communal riots and electoral violencewere merged and used for both purposes. Thecommunal conflict has long existed but theactive rioting period was between1978-92 i.e.,for fourteen years. These riots mostlyoccurred in the old city and as usual Muslimswere always arrested, creating an image ofthe old city that it is a dangerous place andMuslims are communal and rioters.

The fifth phase began after 9/11 (2001) whenthe terrorism became a big issue all over theworld. The agencies suddenly started findingall kinds of terrorist and sleeper cellsbelonging to different extremistorganization, ISI agents, al-Qaidasympathizers and now ISIS supporters,conspirators who were planning to kill toppoliticians etc., in the old city of Hyderabad.The arrests that were made were highlightedso much in the media that the locals toostarted fearing the old city.

Now going on to the second image ofMuslims that they are backward, illiterate, illmannered, rude etc., I find a strange contrast.Till 1948 Hyderabad was the most desirableplace for poets, writers, intellectuals,academicians, experienced administratorsetc., from all over India. The Nizam’sgovernment, its education department andespecially the Osmania University was thebiggest employer of such people. There was abrain drain into Hyderabad State. But afterHyderabad was acceded to the Indian unionthe Muslim percentage in government jobswas reduced to a minimum and there was ahuge drop out of Muslims at all educationallevels as most of the Urdu medium schoolswere closed. The other economic changesmade it impossible for Muslims to invest incultural and educational activities resultingin a sharp decline in Muslim cultural traitsand habits.

The third image of Muslims as unreliableemerged soon after the Militaryadministration took charge of HyderabadState after the Police Action. The newadministration assumed that the Muslimemployees and the populace may notcooperate with the new administration astheir loyalty will be more with the Nizam orPakistan. It is likely they thought that it wassafer to suspect Muslims in order to succeedin their mission rather than trust them and

Muslim images

MA Moid


Violence to jihad: a summary

Madhurima Majumder

fail. This led to the removal of Muslims fromresponsible positions and the suspicionamong populace that these Muslims maysecretly be organizing themselves for a revoltor revenge. These suspicions in theadministration crystallized into a traditionthat influenced the perceptions andunderstanding of old city and Muslims.

The image of Muslims as communal has alonger history, but when Muslims startedsupporting the local Muslim political partyMIM after its revival, and avoided voting forother political parties they were consideredcommunal. The communal riots toocontributed to this image significantly.

Now the question is how local Muslims lookat these images, how they explain it tothemselves? I found the answer to thisquestion to be interesting and informative.On the one hand, the Razakaar episode andthe accession of Hyderabad state to Indianunion is seen by Muslims as a conflictbetween the moral and the political sense.Hyderabad patriotism is seen as a moralresponsibility and thus struggling forseparate Hyderabad was highly legitimate.On the other hand, the one who supportedHyderabad’s accession was seen as driven bya new vision of a unified Indian that hadgreat potentials for all its citizens. In this

framework, the internal violence within thecommunity is seen as a result of collapse ofall value systems that governed Muslimslives. It is recognized as arising due to theneglect of the government to the Muslimpredicament and a case of aggression turninginwards.

The communal riots were seen by Muslims asan attempt by right wing Hindu forces tofurther subjugate the Muslims and preventtheir conditions form improving, thusperpetuating Hindu dominance. Muslims’own resistance to riots was seen as self-defense and a means not only to protect lifeand property but also to save their self-worthin their own eyes and as an opportunity tocreate unity among themselves. Similarly, theelectoral violence was recognized as a meansto consolidate the Hindu votes (and scare theMuslims away from voting) by the Hinduoriented party. Against this, it was necessaryfor Muslims to force themselves into themainstream, take charge of their own lives,and become part of the democratic system sothat their own rightful share can be acquired.Also, the threat of violence made thempresent oriented and encouraged them toconfront their existential challenges head on.Indulging in escapism was suicidal andunavailable. They felt that through the rout of

resistance to the imposed violence, if theycould take charge of their present then so beit, as they realized keenly that the terms ofsurvival are set by others and not by them.

Similarly, the accusation of being communalis rejected by Muslims. Muslims of the oldcity strongly deny that they are communal.They blame the mainstream for failing tounderstand the individual and collectiveinsecurities Muslims are thrown into sinceindependence; the collective responses ofMuslims to their predicament has throughspecific demands of better services bygovernment, need for security, need forprotecting their identity. Though these arecentral features of the popular politics, theyare termed as communal.

Thus, the subject of the stereotypes ofHyderabad’s Muslims and their own reactionto them provide an interesting insight in tothe recent history of the region. It alsoreveals the structure and extent of violencethe Muslim community of Hyderabad faces inthe present time and the options available tothem to deal with it.

Moid works at Anveshi Research Centre forWomen’s Studies and can be reached [email protected].

[This is a summary of an excerpt from thechapter ‘Islam and Violence’ in the bookJonathan Lyons (2014). Islam Through WesternEyes: From The Crusaders to the War onTerrorism. New York: Columbia UniversityPress,pp 117-122.]

Jonathan Lyons in his book Islam Throughthe Western Eyes (2014) grapples with theunderlying reasons for the Western

understanding of Islam as inherently violentand hence a legitimate target of correctiveviolence. He argues that this is not a present-day phenomenon and can be traced as farback as twelfth century Europe where suchanti-Muslim sentiments were aggressivelypropagated during the first crusade. PostSeptember 11, 2001 attack on New York, theWest saw a repackaging of this old sentiment

that pre-supposes an Islamic world which isincapable of having any rational world viewother than religious fanaticism. In thechapter titled “Islam and Violence” Lyonstries to show a link between the Westernunderstanding of Islam as inherently violentand its discourse of the war on terrorism. Theauthor does this by bringing in examplesfrom popular opinions, media and socialcommentary on the phenomenon ofcontemporary terrorism.

In fact, President G W Bush’s constantreference to the word crusade in relation tothe West’s prerogative to wage ‘war againstterrorism’ instantly hit a nerve, especiallyamong the conservative right. This rhetorichas aided in writing off the Islamic world asperpetrators of wrongful violence, with the

secular Christian West taking upon itself theposition of the protector of humanity. It hasafforded the West the choice of aggressivetactics and advanced weaponry in its wars,permitted it to dismiss civilian deaths as“collateral damage” and in the same breathpronounce attacks like that of September 11as an attack on humanity.

The question that was reiterated in thespeeches of political leaders and became astaple in public opinion was not “What led toa group of people to attack?” Rather, it wasthe rhetorical catchphrase “Why do they hateus?” This question does not impose anyserious inquiry but foregrounds theassumption that the Muslim East must hatethem. Bernard Lewis’s commentary on Islamis symptomatic of this unquestioned belief.Lewis pronounces that the East has foreverhated the West when he writes in What WentWrong, “They have been hating us for a longtime… and it’s very natural that they should.You have this millennial rivalry between twoworld religions, and for now, from theirpoint of view, the wrong side is winning.” Infact he goes on to place the Muslim world asthe losing side and places this hatred beyond


the realm of doubt, as, “you can’t be rich,strong and successful and loved, particularlyby those who are not rich, not strong and notsuccessful. So the hatred is something almostaxiomatic.” (2000)

This line of argument negates the possibilityof any other explanation for the anti-Westernsentiment among Muslims such as therejection of Western interpretation ofmodernity, resistance to colonial hegemony,dismissal of life goals set in a capitalistculture and so on. Lyons in Islam and Violencedemonstrates how appropriation of termslike jihad and shahid and locating them ascentral religious tenets has been pivotal ingiving leverage to the organic connectionthat is drawn between Islam and violence (ofthe non-righteous kind!). Convenientselective focus and omission run throughoutin the Orientalist tradition of scholarship onIslam. Despite having complex andmultivalent meanings, a religious conceptlike jihad gained sudden focus and popularityand assumed one fixed meaning—that ofaggressive warfare (against all non-Muslims)in the Western discourse which saw furtherintensification post 9/11.

A bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi getsreferred to as a “jihad mission” with theassumption that the meaning of the term isuniversally understood and shared, even by aMuslim believer. Daniel Benjamin and StevenSimon in their bestselling book, The Age ofSacred Terror (2002) do not even include theterm jihad in their otherwise detailedglossary. The interpretation of jihad as “holywar” has been so wholly adopted by thepopular understanding that even thecontemporary Muslim militant groups haveoften embraced a similar interpretation ofjihad. This goes on to show that not only theWest but even these groups find it useful intheir political and religious mobilization.This has come at the cost of overlookingliterature that could possibly provide analternative to this militaristic interpretation.Though alternative readings of the concept of‘greater jihad’ that refer to the believer’sinternal struggle to overcome her/his basehuman nature and be a better Muslim findmention, they are often dismissed asapologetics of Muslim scholarship.

The case of such selective focus can bedemonstrated by looking at the glossaryentries provided by Benjamin and Simon,which present an inconsistent mix of classical

and contemporary interpretations of Islamicscholarship to argue the significance ofviolence in the Islamic faith. A concept likedar al-harb which means “abode of war” butessentially refers to the non-Muslim world,gained much attention despite being absentin Qur’an or the prophet’s sunna1. In fact theterm dar al-harb was discarded by classicaljurists and yet it finds prominence inBenjamin and Simon’s writing as it alignswith their viewpoint.

To strengthen their argument of Muslimsbeing under the religious obligation to resortto militaristic force, they refer to Lewis’reading of the term jihad which they claim has“modern scholarly consensus”. Interestingly,this “modern scholarly consensus”strategically bypasses any actualrepresentation or engagement with anyMuslim scholar and instead prefers to seethem as a unified whole. This in turn helps inascribing definitive reading of Islamic textsdevoid of any context, which may or may notreflect in the everyday lives of Muslims.

It is perhaps not so surprising that any otherkind of reading that challenges their theoryof the connection between jihad and violenceis quickly dismissed e.g., the idea of spiritualor “greater jihad”. This is demonstrated by theauthor who refers to Benjamin and Simon’sendnote in their book, The Age of Sacred Terroras an example.

“The last century has seen a trendtowards the interpretation of the so-called greater jihad as the more genuineform of Islamic struggle… Untilrecently, however, Muslim scholarswere unanimous in insisting on thepriority jihad had as warfare against theunbeliever. Bernard Lewis made thiscase most famously, but modernscholarly consensus on the matter issummed up by the new edition ofEncyclopedia Islamica.” (Benjamin andSimon, 2002)

Ironically, according to Lyons, Benjamin andSimon refer to Encyclopedia of Islam (Tyan 1991)which is a standard Western reference workthat is edited by Bernard Lewis. To strengthentheir argument, they also cite an essay onjihad by Douglas E. Streusand (1997) who inturn draws his understanding of the termfrom Lewis’s work, thus making the cyclecomplete.

In sum, the underlying reason for the long-standing monopoly of West over thediscussions on legitimate use of violence inconflicts with the Muslim world reliesheavily on the Orientalist interpretations ofthe Muslim East as the “other”, the perfectanti-thesis of the ‘modern’ and ‘rational’Judeo-Christian West, thus discounting thepossibility of any rationale behind theiractions.

Madhurima Majumder is a fellow at AnveshiResearch Centre for Women’s Studies. Email:[email protected]

Books referred to by the author (Lyons)

Benjamin, Daniel, and Steven Simon. 2002. TheAge of Sacred Terror. New York: Random House.

Lewis, Bernard. 2002. What Went Wrong? WesternImpact and Middle Eastern Response. New York:Oxford University Press.

Streusand, Douglas. 1997. “What does JihadMean?” Middle East Quaterly 4, no. 3:9-17.

Tyan, E. 1991. “Djihad.” In Encyclopedia of Islam,2:538-540. Leiden: Brill.


Gender justice ends with women!

In several cases, the category ‘women’,excludes Dalit women in India. Thenotion that ‘all women are white and all

blacks are men’ becomes ‘all women areupper-castes and all Dalits are men’ in theIndian context. (Rekha Raj, 2014) A case inpoint relates to the protests around the 2012Delhi gang rape. The media, while projectingthe upper-caste middle class woman figureand invoking the ‘sexual purity’ of the rapevictim, overlooked the endemic caste basedsexual violence against Dalit women. In thiscase, the innocence of the rape victim was notovertly asserted, but through projection ofthe rape victim as an upper-caste/middleclass woman whose purity had to be guardedby the caste groups or even by the state. Thiswas also asserted by the upper-castes after theChunduru caste atrocity. In 1991, Dalit menwere attacked and killed by the landowningReddys in the village of Chunduru in AndhraPradesh. Reddy men have justified theatrocity against Dalit men as a punishmentmeted out to them for sexually harassingReddy women. Though there was no truth init, the Reddys along with the other upper-castes organized protests which not only tookan anti-Dalit tone but also criticized the statefor failing to protect the upper-caste woman’schastity from the Dalit men. The protestsaround the Nirbhaya rape had also takensimilar tones in that it is the state’sresponsibility to protect woman’s purity. Thissignifies merely the upper-caste woman’spurity because the category of Dalit womenfalls outside these constructions of caste andsexual purity. The silence of mainstreamfeminists on the Khairlanji caste atrocityagainst a Dalit woman is a prime example of

the feminist movement’s exclusion of Dalitwomen. (Rege 2013)

Violence against Dalit women is generatedby the caste system which constructs a‘graded patriarchy’ for women along with the‘graded inequalities’ of castes. Therefore thesexual violence against Dalit women is sonormalised in our society that the rape of aDalit woman is not considered rape at all.Sharmila Rege writes

In almost all regional languages in Indiathe word for ‘rape’ is equivalent to thephrase ‘stealing the honour of’ and sincelower caste women by the virtue of theirdouble oppression have no ‘honour’ tospeak of the right to redressal is oftendenied. (1995)

In several cases, upper-caste males havecasual access to Dalit women’s sexualitywhich is not considered as rape or sexualviolence. Instead, the Dalit woman isconsidered ‘impure’, lacking in sexual/castepurity.

Dalit women who take up political strugglesoften face character assassination as ithappened in the case of Rohith Vemula’smother Radhika. At the height of protestsagainst the involvement of the right-wingleaders in discrimination against a Dalitstudent Rohith Vemula, questions have beenraised about his Dalit identity and the onus ofproving his caste identity has fallen solely onthe mother of the victim. When Vemula’sfather announced that he does not belong tothe SC community and he has no idea howhis son has become an SC, the media and theright-wing took this as an opportunity todiscredit Rohith Vemula’s victimization.

Who is a woman andwho is a dalit?

Sowjanya T

However, the life of Radhika has been that ofa Dalit woman who experienced castediscrimination not only within her ownfamily, which had adopted her as a child, butalso within her matrimonial family. This is asignificant opportunity for feminists torethink the patriarchal family system and tochallenge the state’s patriarchy which frameschildren into the father’s caste identity evenin an inter-caste marriage, more so when thefather’s caste identity is inadequate to protecthis family from caste discrimination.Similarly, it is important for the Dalitmovement to rethink Dalit family becauseinter-caste marriage is politically asserted bymany Dalit ideologues as a way ofannihilation and diffusion of castes.However, as we have seen, feministintervention has been minimal in the case ofRadhika with regard to rethinking the familyas Radhika’s vulnerability at the intersectionof caste and gender is different from that in amiddle-class woman’s position in inter-castemarriage. On the other hand, if at all RohithVemula’s mother had given birth to herchildren out of wedlock, would the Dalitmovement have supported her side, is thequestion. Can the Dalit movement re-imagine Dalit woman without touching uponher sexual or marital history is anotherquestion that deserves an answer.

Many Dalit ideologues have practiced inter-caste marriage in their lives as part of theirpolitical struggle. Whether these ideologuesor indeed the Dalit movement has thoughtabout the position of Dalit women in inter-caste marriage remains impalpable—reinforcing the sense of the saying ‘all theDalits are men’. While the upper-castewoman’s marriage with a Dalit man gainsmore respectability within the Dalit familyby the virtue of her caste position, Dalitwomen end up being exploited by upper-caste men and not given the position of awife. In several instances, Dalit women havecommitted suicide after being exploited bythe upper-caste men even in the name of‘love’ and ‘ideology’. The case of Sunita, apost-graduate student who committed suicideon UOH campus, after being exploited by aReddy male student is an example of suchviolence against Dalit women. On the otherhand in cases like those of Chandra Sri andRadhika, Dalit women faced castediscrimination within the family itself.


After Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder* at theUniversity of Hyderabad (UoH), the members ofAmbedkar Students Association (ASA), UoH wereat the forefront of protests demanding justice forRohith, condemning state sponsored atrocities onstudents. The following are excerpts frominterviews conducted with ASA members,highlighting the experience of symbolic andphysical violence faced by marginalized students inuniversity spaces.

Q: Though Rohith Vemula’s institutionalmurder is singular in the way it conditioned anationwide protest and consolidated amovement both inside and outside theuniversity, don’t you think the violentexperience undergone by Rohith, from thesocial boycott to everyday forms of violenceis a common factor many marginalizedsections are facing due to the structure of theuniversity system?

Umesh Bujji: All Indian educationalinstitutions are established on thefoundations to protect the secularism, to beanti-casteist, to promote democracy, to have afreedom of thought, etc. so that it can buildinclusive and knowledge based society. Butthe casteist and brahmanical mind set andarrogance of owning knowledge byparticular sections, could not digest the entryof marginalized sections in highereducational institutions. These caste proudpeople ruined the structure of universitysystem by implementing and practicing castevisibly and invisibly.

Agnes Amala T: The growing intellectualityamong Dalits and other marginalized sections,is not tolerated by the upper caste. Since theirvoices are there wherever there is an injustice,attempts are made to suppress them by justfiling some false charges on them. Suspension

or rustication of Dalit scholars is seen as aneasy and normal course of action in theuniversities. The violence undergone by Rohithis one such example of violence undergone bythousands of Dalit students in universities. Tostop this day to day violence, Dalits andmarginalized sections need to have a strongermovement in the long run.

Vijay Kumar: We can say that there issystemic or institutionalized harassment thatexists, which is not only faced by Rohith butby many students from marginalised sectionswho join the university. Only when ourstudents take such kind of extreme steps likeRohith did, these kinds of issues are noticedand discussed. Before Rohith, Pulyala Raju,Madari Venkatesh lost their lives and we hadprotested against such violence happening toour students and the administration thenaccepted their mistake.

Dontha Prasanth: When it comes to thesuicide of Rohith Vemula it is not only castediscrimination and caste based exclusion butalso political victimisation because theincident clearly depicts how the voices ofAmbedkarites were deliberately suppressedthrough the punitive mode such as socialboycott. In villages, we can see that someonewho violates the dictums of caste, whoquestions these caste hierarchies, whosurpasses caste boundaries, will be punishedin utmost brutal manner by the existingpanchayats of the village. In a similar mannerat University of Hyderabad, we five dalitresearch scholars chose to voice the concernsof Dalits, of minorities and the larger sectionsof Dalit bahujan masses of this country. Wetried to talk about Dr B R Ambedkar’s ideas,his idea of nation, his disagreement withcapital punishment which were clearlyechoed in the Constituent Assembly, and our

Interview with members ofAmbedkar Students Association,University of Hyderabad.

Kavyasree Ragunath & Manasi Mohan

Chandra Sri has written how she had beendiscriminated in her matrimonial home dueto her caste position. (Gogu Shyamala 2002)Therefore, the acceptance an upper-castewoman receives in an inter-caste marriage bythe Dalit family may not be independent ofthe caste and patriarchal structures. However,the way the upper-caste families perceivetheir women as the ‘gate ways of caste purity’(Uma Chakravarti 2008) leads to violenceagainst Dalit men who marry upper-castewomen.

The Dalit ideology on inter-caste marriagetoday has to rethink the Dalit family based onthe conditions of Dalit women. Theinheritance of caste identity from the fatherfigure is the result of patriarchy. However,casteist patriarchy makes the children of Dalitwomen unacceptable to the upper-castefamilies in inter-caste marriage. Theargument that the children of Dalit womenwho marry upper-caste men should not usereservations because they inherit theproperty of the upper-caste father or that suchDalit women have acted against the interestof their community is based solely on casteistand patriarchal attitudes (Rekha Raj, 2014).Dalit ideology on marriage, therefore, shouldnot only be free from caste but from sexismand patriarchy as well.

Sowjanya teaches at Tata Institute of SocialSciences, Hyderabad and can be reached [email protected]

References

Chakravarti, Uma. Gendering Caste: ThroughFeminist Lens. Calcutta: Stree, 2003.

Raj, Rekha, “Dalit Women as PoliticalAgents” in Deshpande (ed.) The Problem ofCaste: Readings on the Economy, Polity andSociety, New Delhi: Orient Black Swan, 2014.

Rege, Sharmila. Against the Madness of Manu:B.R Ambedkar’s Writings on BrahmanicalPatriarchy. Delhi: Navayana, 2013

Rege, Sharmila, “Caste and Gender: TheViolence Against Women in India” inJogdand (ed.) Dalit Women in India: Issues andPerspectives, New Delhi: Gyan PublishingHouse, 1995.

Shyamala, Gogu. Nallapoddu, Hyderabad:Hyderabad Book House, 2003.


attempt to defeat RSS agendas of trying toappropriate Ambedkar. Then we wereviewed as a threat by the RSS, BJP and ABVP.Thus, they have in a full-fledged mannerplanned and executed this entire episode.Their involvement is clear: starting fromMLC Ramachandra Rao, Union ministerBandaru Dattatreya, local MLAs Raja Singh,Kishan Reddy—everyone has come andplayed their bit in this incident. Ministry ofHuman Resource Development itself had sentfive letters, hence, we could see a clear plot ofpolitical victimisation. When social boycottsort of punishment was given against us, wecould see from the minutes of the executivecouncil that it has clearly reflected that thepunishment was given as instructed byMHRD and not in accordance with principlesof justice. Hence we believe that this is aselective and specific targeting ofAmbedkarites consisting mostly of Dalits, apolitical victimisation of them in accordancewith the agendas of RSS and BJP to make thisnation a Hindu Rajya. So in this case ofRohith Vemula we can see the angle of casteas well as political victimisation. If you lookat other suicides like Madari Venkateshmostly the reason is the caste discriminationthat is pertinent in the department, the nonallotment of supervisors for dalit studentsirrespective of the merit of the students .

How do you perceive the systemic operationof violence in a university space from theentry to exit? What are the sites of suchviolence?

Umesh Bujji : From day one till you as astudent leave this campus, your caste is opento all in this university. At the time ofsending admission letter/on the day ofdeclaring results student’s caste is disclosed.For instance; in admission letter the selectedcandidates are listed out based on the caste:for each caste community they give onemark—for all SCs they put *(star) markbefore their name; for STs they give **(twostars); for OBC they give # (hashtag);***(three stars) to PWD/VHD students.Hence, students can easily recognize who iswhat. Moreover, if the students belonging toSC/ST or OBC communities clear their examin the general category, they will still putthese caste marks before our names. Theydirectly criticize reservation policy and thereserved students because we are thought ofas getting our degrees easily. Many facultymembers are not happy with the introductionof Rajiv Gandhi National Fellowship (RGNF),

Maulana Azad National Fellowship forMinority Students (MANF) etc. as if they aregiving the money from their own pockets.This administration will not simply sanctionthis fellowship as they do it to the JRF/CSIRfellowships. A few directly tell us that we aregetting all these facilities as beggars. Allthese humiliating and provocative activitiesare done by individuals in the departments,or in the schools. There are a few schoolswhere Scheduled caste, Scheduled Tribestudents repeat their courses twice.

Vijay Kumar: Every semester when theregistration to the new semester begins wehave to fight with the administration becausethe university doesn’t release the scholarshipson time and if our students don’t receivescholarships they will have mess dues andwouldn’t be able to register for the newsemester. Ultimately sufferers are Dalits,Adivasis and Muslims. The system fails tounderstand the social and economicbackground of the students, that they dependsolely on their fellowships because theirparents are not able to support themfinancially. Even the state governmentdoesn’t release the scholarships on time. Theuniversity is not considering these thingseven on humanitarian grounds and fails tosupport students. We cannot show any hardevidence to prove these kinds of atrocities orpoint at some person and say that this personhas committed this. It is being normalizedand made part of the system.

Coming to academics and classrooms, when astudent from a village background joins theuniversity we cannot expect him to suddenlyreach the levels of the professors who havecompleted their studies from prestigiousinstitutions, their way of teaching will bedifferent and our students find it difficult tocope with this. In my department when weapproached our professors saying that we arenot able to cope with their way of teachingand requested them reduce their level ofEnglish so that we can also follow it theyreplied that it is a central university and it iswe who have grow up to their expectations.These kinds of reactions are another kind ofatrocity and here also we cannot show asingle person as responsible for this.University should take the responsibility tounderstand the aspirations and dreams of thestudents and support them in difficult timeswhoever he or she is, whether from uppercaste or lower caste. Due to these kinds ofatrocities they are not able to pursue their

courses and many of our students are leavingthe courses in middle and some are made topass securing a very low percentage of markswhich will not be of any use in the future forhigher studies or jobs.

Agnes AmalaT: Victimizing them and givingminimum pass mark or fail marks in thedegree level and in PhD level delay inallotting research supervisors, not signing inthe fellowship forms at the needed time,making the students meet [the supervisors] atfrequent intervals without any reason... In alarger context, since all the key and highpositions are with the upper caste facultiesthey do not allow Dalit students to finishtheir course on time whether it is PG, M. Phil,Ph.D. These make them emotionally weakerand academically make them to lose interest.This is a systemic discriminatory practice,which is being followed in all universitiesand institutes.

Would you say something about thestrategies and activities that ASA as aformation has undertaken to counter theinstitutional violence?

Agnes Amala T: ASA as the oldestorganization in the Hyderabad universitycampus [has been the] forerunner for manynew organizations. ASA being the firstorganization started a help desk for [new]students during their admission to solveadmission related doubts and queries. ASAorganizes many lectures on contemporaryissues relating to democracy, caste, atrocitiesetc. apart from that many protest ralliescondemning various acts of violence onDalits and other marginalized sections.

Umesh Bujji: ASA organizes nearly 40lectures in an academic year by inviting theavailable scholars across the country,conducts political classes on Dr. B RAmbedkar to make them conscious how casteprevails in the campus, the forms it takes, andrecent trends in caste atrocities, harassmentand violence too. Mostly, we organizelectures on democracy, freedom, casteatrocities, and institutionalization of caste, onAmbedkar, on liberty, on secularism, oncommunal violence, on caste discriminatorypractices, on education, and on recent issuesin debate. We have representatives in eachhostel and in each department, so that,identifying the students who are facingproblems is very easy and we will take upissues and solve them. If administration is not


ready to solve the problem we organizeprotests, rallies, dharnas, hunger strikes etc.We also fought and led many strugglesrelated to undemocratic policies, or decisionsrelated to the freedom of thought or studentrights etc. In my ten years of experience inthe campus, ASA has dealt with hundreds ofissues on the rights of students and has foughtto establish the democratic atmosphere, andwe have democratized the university. I amnot saying this as an ASA member, it hasbeen said by many professors in the Campus.ASA has contributed a lot to make thiscampus more democratic.

Vijay Kumar: From its inception ASA hasstarted its fight against the brahmanicalattitude within the university. Even today theuniversity is operated by a handful ofbrahmins only, majority of the professorsbelongs to upper caste that too from thebrahmin community. So ASA was started tohelp the people, the students from themarginalized section. From its inception tilltoday ASA is fighting with the motive to helppeople in terms of their academic as well asin solving their financial problems within inthe campus, in making them aware of theirpolitical status and to bring all the studentsbelonging to marginalized section under onepolitical umbrella and give an answer to theadministration, they are striving for it. WhenI say strategies, it includes political strategieslike ASA contested in the elections with leftorganizations and all the other Dalitorganisations like BSF, DSU, TSF. For thebenefit of marginalized sections some of itsstrategies worked and some we lost like SFIand some left organisations at times turnedagainst ASA and these became obstacles. Sostill there are many obstacles for ASA andother organisations for marginalizedcommunities to reach out and achieve itsgoals.

How does the logic of casteism work in auniversity space? How do you see them inrelation to the blatant caste practices outsidethe university?

Agnes Amala: As our voices in villages arebeing suppressed by the dominant castes asthey own land, when it comes to daily wage oratrocities [we] could not raise our voices, wewere not able to mobilize, to gather and assertour voices and fight for our rights. Think ofhow they kept our forefathers ignorant withoutawareness of their rights. In the same way, ineducational institutions also though majorityof Dalits get high cutoff [marks] and get

admission in general category once they cometo university all the oppressive attitudes of thecaste people are showered on our students,destabilizing them and projecting them asincapable of doing their studies. If wemobilized together and assert our rights byeducating ourselves this is not tolerated by thesecasteist people. And that results in filing falseallegations and ruining our lives. Since theycannot democratically do anything they use allthe possible undemocratic methods to curb ourrights and voices—which is a traditional castesystem being practiced in villages. i .e.suspension of Dalit students can be directlyequated with the a Dalit family that is beingisolated from the main village for a period oftime if they enter into caste Hindu household,drink water from the common well, enter intothe temple etc. In the universities, it happens ifraise our voice against Hindutva forces andquestion our loss of rights etc.

Dontha Prasanth: …but the only difference isthat there in the village it comes through directviolence—like if anything happens the personwill just be killed. Here psychological violencewill be more. Violence will be inflicted on theminds. The torture will continue on a day today basis. That fellow may not beat you but hewill torture you every day with extraassignments and tough things. That is how thereis a difference in the functioning of the castesystem.

Vijay Kumar: Outside we can clearly find outwhat are the ways in which caste is beingoperated, but in the universities it is much moredifficult to find out how caste operates. As inthis case we cannot say Apparao has directlykilled Rohith and we cannot ask the governmentto book him under SC/ST Prevention ofAtrocity case although he is directly involvedin the case, but outside it is operating in directway, a person might directly perform anatrocity on the Dalits or Adivasis but here [itis] not like that. Here it functions through itsown systems like the academic system andadministrative mechanism, and in theiroperation atrocity and untouchability is beingpracticed. They are making and directing ourlives to end up like Rohith, Raju and Venkateshor otherwise leave the courses as it is happeningin Mathematics department. Whenever a Dalitgets admission in that department he will leavethe course within two or three months, most ofthe MA students who left the course fromMathematics department are Dalits. Why onlyDalits are leaving, that is the indirect way ofoperating untouchability.

Umesh Bujji: Actually, the dominant castepeople don’t like to lose their socialhierarchy, therefore, on whatever thoughtsthey come here to the campus, they willcontinue the same casteist mind set with norespect or esteem for the Dalits. They are notready to change their mind set [because] itmay result in the loss of their social powerwhich is related to economic, political,cultural dominance. So, literally, they followbrahmanical attitude and show their castedomination here in the campus. So, wheneverthere was a voice from the suppressed sectionthey cut it off. I think this educatedbrahmanical, fundamental, conservativemindset is more dangerous rather than thevillage brahmanical mindset. If it is invillage, if they boycott us, we will leave thatplace and go somewhere and live. But, here,we can’t leave because of degree, we can’tlose our future, here there is no way to exceptfight backs to solve the problem to reach theDr. Ambedkar’s aim or to survive. They feelthat whole knowledge is their own, all ourlives are in their hands, so, whatever they dois accepted. But, as Ambedkarites, we realizethat constitution is ultimate and freedom ofthe people is more important. Freedom fromthe caste system is important.

Manasi Mohan and Kavyasree Raghunath are MPhil students in translation studies at theUniversity of Hyderabad and can be reached [email protected] [email protected].

*NotesThe term ‘institutional murder ’ is a widelyused critical re-signification of what have sofar b een dubbed dalit student “ suicides” ininstitutions of higher education. It has beenused by Mayawati (BSP leader and the ex-CMof UP), widely by the English media, by thewriter Satchitanandan very soon after Rohithdied, and by several other activists andthinkers. This term has challenged the casteistnaming of these “tragic exits from socialdeath“ as occurring due to fatal personalflaws (weakness of character, failed loveffairs, etc.) in individuals who cannot cope.This powerful renaming is reminiscent of theway in which the death of young marriedwomen in the 1970s which were termedsuicides, were renamed ‘dowry deaths ’ inthe 1970. In both cases, the critical renaminghas brought out the truth of these deaths asthe ultimate step out of unbearablecircumstances.

Resident Editors


From the sea came a tsunami and carried away achild building castles on the shore. The child’sname was Rohith Vemula. But why would natureattack him so? He was a person who loved nature!

[A mother’s question]

It is indeed a travesty to his memory thathe has been painted as a traitor. Someexamples of what, as a PhD scholar, as an

intellectual, a patriot, Rohith wrote onFacebook: valuing women and men whoreaped harvests and how they protectednational food security; remembering thefamilies of the soldiers who were theprotectors of the distant national borders;focusing on how in the villages, manychildren do not have water to drink—if theyhad, that it was dirty; etc. A traitor?

Institutionalized dominationWe know that institutionalized dominantforces—patriarchy, caste, religion always tryto dominate the foundations of civil societyand terrorize its members.

Today the dominant forces have intensifiedtheir brahmanical attack on educationalinstitutions. If we ask what happens whengovernment itself attacks institutions withtheir undemocratic practices,the answer is:People like Rohith Vemula die. The vicechancellor, the government and theadministration together became the cause ofRohith’s death. It seems as if theirdetermination was to put a stop to Rohith’sstrong attempt to succeed as a scholar. Hadhe pursued ordinary employment writingvarious competitive exams; had he resignedto his failure in the university and become anactivist or politician; or had he worked as adaily wage labourer in the city or village;nobody would have found it a problem. Theonly problem was that Rohith made an effortto stand up as a scholar and Ambedkariteintellectual. This is why the university closedaccess to the entire infrastructure (library,canteen, fellowship, class room access, etc.)that Rohith needed for his attempt. This

institutional ostracism is clear from his firstletter to the VC. The message to Rohith thatbecomes clear in these actions is “Die! Orleave the university!”

Rohith’s predicament was not unique. Thishas happened to several students: some died,many languish even today. All theseoccurrences have remained untold as minorincidents in the everyday life of the nation.The important thing is that Rohith’sunnatural death became the focus of amovement that brought critical issues topublic debate.

PolarizationThe student world accepted Rohith’s desires,thought, experience of discrimination and hislife practice as its own.This is why theyjoined the movement as a wave ofcommitment with crystal clear demands.

Rohith was a mirror to society. There was acomplete polarization. If on the one hand,the administration and the HRD ministrytried to categorize Rohith as a non-dalit, andhis death as a suicide due to depression, onthe other, the students were certain that hiswas an institutional murder.

If the students’ embraced Rohith, the local(Andhra and Telangana) BJP, theadministration and some news channels (likeBharat TV) ranged against Rohith, descendedto a new low and subjected his memory toindignity and humiliation, calling him atraitor. Did they not seek to murder the deadRohith a second time?

What was depressing through all this wasthat Rohith, such a great soul, had to end hislife. The act of suicide is completely againstthe spirit of Ambedkarism and self respect.In spite of having such wisdom andeducation, was Rohith trapped in theuniversity’s web of deception? What does itmean when one who belonged to thehistorically conscious Ambedkar StudentsAssociation commits suicide? In spite of

Rohith having many options and avenues tostay alive, why didn’t he use them? In thepast, ASA students who were rusticatedstruggled against their rustication for longyears and succeeded in building a career forthemselves. Shouldn’t today’s ASA memberslearn from the experience of failure, struggleand success experienced by theirpredecessors? On the other hand, had the ASAhad taken Rohith’s mother Radhika’s supportperhaps the thought of suicide may not haveentered his mind.

Radhika and familyIt is worth stepping back and examining thelife his mother Radhika lived. We see thatshe swam against the current from birth. Herbirth-parents of the Mala caste (SC)informally handed her over to her adoptiveparents of the Vaddera caste (BC) without herconsent. Though her adoptive mother lookedafter her food and clothing, she did not getRadhika educated as she did her ownchildren. Radhika who studied in anordinary government school had to drop outand work as a servant in her adoptivemother’s house. Again, without her consent,the adoptive-mother (as her ownresponsibility) got Radhika married to a manfrom the Vaddera caste. The husband got toknow within a few days of the marriage thatRadhika belonged not to the Vadderacommunity, but was a Mala. With this,Radhika’s in-laws humiliated her. Thehusband beat and abused her saying “I havebeen burdened with a mala bitch!”

She withstood it all and stayed her ground,bearing three children. Her condition wasknown across the village. However, whenRadhika saw her husband beat up his ownmother, she decided that the influence of sucha violent and cruel man on her childrenwould be very harmful. She left his houseand moved with children to the Malawada.Her new neighbours embraced her arrivalsaying that their child had returned. Raja,was barely two months old. The two elderchildren too were toddlers. She rented aroom and subsisted as a tailor. She sent thetwo elder children to a nearby school. Shegot a caste certificate and brought them up asMalas.

With this minimal shelter and support as aMala woman, Radhika worked incessantly toensure her children’s future. All the childrenstudied well, but Rohith was exceptional.Seeing how the children came up in life,

On Radhika’s side

Gogu Shyamala


Radhika forgot her own troubles. Thus wasRadhika, with no support from childhood, themother who overcame obstacles at each step,the woman who gave birth to our VemulaRohith Chakravarty. Rohith’s hardworkingand honest nature came from Radhika alone.

She would make it a point to tell her sonseach day, “Live among all with love andresponsibility, my precious ones. But mostimportant, have responsibility to yourfamily. Only if you see of your mother withlove and tenderness will you learn how totake care of your wife with love. You shouldnever become like your father who beat hismother”.

Neelima the eldest finished her intermediate,Rohith entered the PhD programme and Rajafinished his Masters in Science. With herchildren’s encouragement, she enrolled in theAmbedkar Open University and completed adegree. The process of Radhika getting herchildren and herself educated, nurturing herfamily and protecting it from violence are allcrucial.

Absconding fatherThe father had no role. He showed noresponsibility to the children Radhika borehim. He was a patriarchal despot whodestroyed his family. Despite being born tothe Vaddera community, he inherited neithertheir philosophy of community labour, northeir civic responsibility and insteadmanifested a dominant caste masculinity.The fact that his wife was a Mala woman,disturbed him, and he took it out on her.What then was his children’s crime that heabandoned them? If he was so nauseated byRadhika being a Mala woman, why did hehave children with her? After these childrenwere born, he married yet again and led hislife apart from Radhika and her children.From that point on, even until the momentRohith died, he did not consider Radhika’schildren as his own.

Having lived for so long as a completestranger, he suddenly surfaced in the mediaclaiming to be Rohith’s father. I wonder whatthe ethics of the religion that embraced himwas, that tutored him to conduct himself insuch a manner! Why did the media and theBJP find his irresponsibility so attractive?“Rohith was my son. We are of the Vadderacommunity. Rohith is not an SC”, hedeclared. The BJP publicized this relentlessly.

Caste and patriarchyThe BJP located and brought the hithertounknown father for this single purpose. Whydid Radhika who bore Rohith, nurtured himand brought him to the university remaininvisible to the BJP? This may be our, or atleast my, naïve question, because the BJP’sHindu brahmanism values the father anddevalues the mother so much that theybrought this absconding drunkard on themedia stage atop a bottle of ‘dollar whisky’.Everybody knows that they did this to havekey officials at government and universitylevels, and important politician escape theprovisions of the SC/ST Atrocities Act.Clearly, the BJP has tried to use its authorityto get a certificate that Rohith was not an SCand used this technicality to escape laws thathave been the hard won outcome of dalitstruggles, and further to deny the democraticcommunity rights of Rohith and his mother.

Why did the local TV channels ignoreRadhika and foreground the useless father?Had the channels focused on her story, itwould have been an inspiration to so manysingle mothers, dalit, non dalit and those ininter-caste marriages. Television’s moderncasteist and patriarchal values can be seen inthe case of Radhika if we contrast herinvisibility with the publicity and recentfanfare around INFOSYS Narayanamurthy’sletter to his daughter. In this letter, he saysthat it is her mother (his wife) who took thegreat responsibility of instilling qualities inher. Is it indeed not a shame, that the story ofthe struggles of this mother, Radhika toinstill values in her children and nurturethem, have been silenced by the media? Is itnot the fact that Narayanamurthy was amember of the successful brahmanical elitethat gave his absolutely mediocre letter ofparenthood such praise, and that the intenselife struggle of Radhika a poor dalit motherwas ignored?

Dalit student struggles and the communityIt is in this context that we shouldunderstand the establishment of a ‘veliwada’in the university campus by the ASA inopposition to the anti-dalit acts. Inhindsight, I think it was critical for theveliwada students to have kept their parents,and especially Rohith’s mother Radhika,informed of events. It was equally essentialthat these students involved differentorganizations in their own communities likethe Ambedkar Youth Organizations, PhuleYouth Organizations, etc., and thus extended

the struggle. Perhaps Rohith did not tell hismother that the university effected a socialboycott on him and were harassing him,fearing her ability to withstand the shock.This was the first mistake. Absorbing thehumiliation himself, and committing suicidewas his fatal mistake.

If these students were not of the ASA, itwould be possible to think that they were notaware of dalit struggles against humiliation,not aware of Ambedkar ideology, not awareof other democratic movements in theTelangana and AP States. This was not thecase with either Rohith or the ASA. Had theparents and communities been involved, theywould have joined the students in theirveliwada protests. Dalit communities wouldhave come together. Would not the eventswould have taken a different turn? This is notonly a problem of the ASA. Most dalit andleft movements have functioned on the basisof male leadership and individualizedparticipation. The ASA has simply followedthis trend.

Perhaps there are some lessons to learn fromthis.

Gogu Shyamala works at Anveshi Research Centrefor Women’s Studies and may be reached [email protected].


Structures of oppression like caste, class,patriarchy and racism function throughcreating inequalities that are

maintained and perpetrated throughinstitutional support. And hence structuralviolence often, is carried on for so long that itinvisibilises and often legitimizes itself andits operations to even the very people onwhom the violence is inflicted. Rather than anindividual acting out an oppressivebehaviour, it then takes on the form of anentire edifice of oppression operating insubtle as well as direct ways to violentlyexclude, oppress and dominate.

Existing scholarship or popular culture ontransgender people in the Indiansubcontinent pendulate between depicting usas phantasmagoric beings who don’t belongto either gender (linked to myths andmonsters in Hindu epics), or freezing us innarratives of victimhood. This paper attemptsto look at the kinds of structural violencefaced by trans people in order to make themachinations of power more visible. Relativeprotections and vulnerabilities of course,depend on factors like caste, class, whetheryou were disowned when you were young,which region you live in, whether you havetransitioned into manhood or womanhood,whether you can ‘pass’ (be socially recognisedas binary gender) etc.

It is a known fact that there is a high dropoutrate of trans people from school. The reasonsmay be many, including constant ridicule,discrimination in marking systems, sexual

harassment from fellow students andteachers, punishments for gender nonconformity etc. A lot of trans people are alsodisowned by their natal families due to thenotion of shame which originates from castepatriarchy. Trans women or gender nonconforming youth raised as boys aredisowned at a higher rate than trans men,partly because femininity is culturally seen asa sign of weakness rather than masculinitywhich is seen as a sign of strength or courage.

The lack of education and homelessness at ayoung age are partly reasons for most transwomen across caste engaging in street basedlabour like sex trade or begging. The othermajor factor being brutal and deliberateexclusions in employment which close off allother options. In fact, Living Smile Vidya in aconversation titled “Transphobia as a type ofbrahmanism” talks about how begging andsex trade have almost come to be like fixedcaste occupations for trans women/hijras.

The only employment options for transpeople apart from sex trade/begging andtraditional roles like badhai are the lowerrung positions in NGOs that receive HIVfunding. Since trans women/hijras areengaged in sex trade, they were identified asa ‘high risk’ groups and subsumed forciblyunder the category of MSM (men having sexwith men) under HIV intervention work.Though the top down structure of these NGOsretains feudal power relations, a section oftrans women/hijras for the first time,managed to get jobs as community

mobilisers to distribute condoms andencourage people to undergo screening andtreatment for HIV. Later, when some of theHIV intervention networks expanded toinclude a rights based discourse, some ofthem were promoted as spokespersons of theNGOs in media advocacy. Though the NGOsgive a semblance of dignity during work tothis section of trans people, the pay scaleremains low and their decision makingpower, negligible.

The exclusions faced by trans people inemployment result in a high rate ofvulnerability. It is a well known fact thatviolence during sex trade is faced by allwomen engaged in it. Police violence is alsovery high against trans communities withalmost no recourse to legal protectionsavailable to us in case of crimes against us. Infact, there is a high rate of hate crimes, rapesand murders against trans communities. Evenwhen cases are registered, they are done withgreat difficulty following which noinvestigations, let alone convictions takeplace. For instance, there was a concertedeffort led by trans women in Hyderabadrecently, demanding one trans murder case tobe investigated after almost 30 non lethalphysical assaults went unheeded by policedespite FIRs being filed.

On November 26th, 2014, more than 47members of the transgender community werepicked up from various places across the cityof Bangalore and illegally detained at theBeggars’ Colony, an infamous ‘rehabilitationcentre’ for people engaged in begging. Theywere detained under the KarnatakaProhibition of Beggary Act, 1975 althoughany trans woman who was in a public placewas randomly picked up regardless ofwhether she was begging or not. TheImmoral Trafficking Prevention Act, thepublic nuisance and indecency provisions arealso routinely used to criminalize transwomen occupying public spaces. TheKarnataka Government in April 2011amended section 36A of the Karnataka PoliceAct to criminalize the hijra community,giving police stations the authority to keep aregister of hijras and their details like placeof residence etc.

The laws used to criminalize trans people areinformed by a caste based morality of

Structural violence and thetrans struggle for dignity

Gee Imaan Semmalar

“For ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is a battle for freedom. It is a battle for thereclamation of the human personality”. – Dr. B. R. Ambedkar


keeping public spaces free of the ‘pollutingpresence’ of all people engaged in begging,including hijras. It is significant in thiscontext of understanding the attempts to keeppublic spaces caste puritanical, that religiousmendicants are exempted from beingcriminalized under the Beggary Act. So, wesee that while begging and sex work are fixedoccupations for the hijra community, similarto imposed caste occupations, they are highlystigmatized, offer no dignity and arecriminalized. The same caste morality is inplay when trans women are denied housingin all residential areas except the slums. Theresidents of the slums, mostly from loweredcaste and working class backgrounds, alongwith trans people across castes, face issues ofaccess to water, right to food and nutrition,healthcare, sanitation etc.

The exclusions in the field of health care, aswe know, are stark when it comes to lowincome families from dalit, Adivasi andMuslim backgrounds. Trans people acrosscastes face difficulty accessing health care.Medical practice categorizes trans people ashaving a ‘gender identity disorder’. Thoughthe latest edition of the Diagnostic andStatistical Manual of Mental Disorders of theAmerican Psychiatric Association replacedthe diagnostic term ‘Gender IdentityDisorder’ with the term ‘Gender Dysphoria,’it is still listed as a “disorder” in theInternational Classification of Diseases of theWHO. So, to access trans specific health carelike hormone replacement therapy or genderaffirming surgeries, it is mandatory for theperson to get a certificate after psychiatriccounselling stating that they have a “genderidentity disorder” (most Indian governmenthospitals follow the ICD of the WHO). Theprocess of medical transitioning is a long andarduous one with the struggle to identify thefew hospitals that provide the service,navigating a difficult and insensitivebureaucratic process, lack of medicalknowledge in medical community abouttrans specific health needs, poor quality ofservices provided etc. Due to the fact thatbreast augmentation is a procedure perfectedfor cis women under patriarchal medicalpractice, trans women are also able to accessonly this particular surgery with relativeease. But as a whole, since the transcommunity is not a socially powerful group,

no funds are sanctioned for new research ontrans specific health care which results in noimprovement to the poor quality of healthcare provided. The private clinics have begunto identify this population as a vulnerableone that is in desperate need of accessibleservices and have begun catering to agrowing clientele at a prohibitive price. Thepoor quality of surgical interventions inprivate as well as government medicalpractice show an apathy to the transcommunity which is enabled to a great extentby the impunity from legal action for medicalmalpractice. The inaccessibility of the justicesystem to trans people greatly reduces thepossibility of medical negligence cases beingfiled. The recent death of a 25 year old transwoman, Alisha, in Peshawar, after receivingdelayed treatment as the doctors weredetermining her gender during emergencytreatment, shows that accessing generalmedical support which is not trans specifichealth care is also impossible. The situation isthe same in many parts of the worldincluding in India. Last year, we lost a 22 yearold trans man in a private hospital in Delhidue to a problem related to the administeringof anesthesia before a hysterectomy. Thehospital had no records of his admission andrefused to provide even a death summary.

The Supreme Court on April 15,2014 ruledthat trans people could change their legalgender markers without surgery or hormonalinterventions. In spite of what was widelycelebrated as a progressive judgment, therehas been no implementation of the judgmentand trans people are still routinely beingdenied the right to change their legal genderon identity documents without fulfillingsome arbitrary criteria of surgicalinterventions. When persons are denied basicidentity documents that match who they are,what is in fact denied to them, is a wholegamut of citizenship rights. Withoutdocuments that reflect who you are,everything from accessing the PublicDistribution System or the educationalsystem to get employment becomes tedious,if not impossible. Unemployment evenamong the few trans people who haveaccessed formal education is often due to thefact that gender markers on school passcertificates and educational degrees cannot bechanged. The violence is enacted by the very

act of erasure of the selfhood and alliedcitizenship rights of trans people. Manywould ask, but why do you want to be legibleto the state to enact its oppressivegovernmentality on? Such a question comesfrom a position of immense privilege ofcitizenship rights and fails to understand therelationship of subaltern communities andthe state. There is no doubt that all subalterncommunities bear the brunt of brutal stateviolence. But most subaltern communitiesoften, work towards accessing full citizenshiprights under an imagined welfare state withits attendant protections and benefits.

Trans women/hijras are often referred to as‘eunuch’ by state policies, judiciary andmedia. The word ‘eunuch’ finds mention inThe Hyderabad Eunuchs Act, which is basedon the Criminal Tribes Act Amendment of1871. The British, in 1871, included ‘eunuchs’among other tribes, castes and social groupsconsidered criminal at birth. In 2005, thecentral government introduced an E categoryin passport application forms where E stoodfor ‘eunuch’. There were protests from thetrans community at the use of the word and itwas later revoked. The linguistic violence/erasure runs deep. It is symptomatic of, andleads to further structural exclusions/violence against our communities.

Structurally, trans people face exclusions inlanguage, history writing, medical care,housing, employment, legal system andeducation. When the exclusions are so grave,indeed, the very act of living is arevolutionary one. I believe that when thelowered caste trans woman engaged in streetbased labour receives full citizenship rightsunder a welfare state without discrimination,the struggle for social democracy and justicewould have made a serious headway.Currently, the issues of trans people are yetto be taken seriously by groups engaged intransformative, democratic struggles.Meanwhile, this many centuries old strugglefor the reclamation of human personalitycontinues to inspire many younger transpersons like myself.

Gee is a writer and artist based in Bangalore andcan be reached at [email protected]


An ‘honour’ crime as an act is not newin India. There is much folklore onthe violence being done to young

people who assert their choice in havingrelationships/marriage. Narayan (2003)represents an old tale of Chuharmal andReshma. Chuharmalwas a Dusad (Dalit) boyand Reshma was a Bhumihar (landlord uppercaste of Bihar and U.P). They were in arelationship with each other and were killedin an attack by Reshma’s brother and father.For Dalits of this area this folk tale plays aninspirational role and every year a carnival isorganised in some areas of Bihar by the Dalitsto celebrate the heroism of Chuharmal. Atthe same time the play based on their storyhas been banned by the Bhumihars who seethis play as an insult to their caste. One canfind several other such examples in severalother folk tales. Although such acts ofviolence have been practised from a longtime, the nomenclature of ‘honour’ killings/crimes given by western media, made severalscholars categorise these forms of violence assuch. It has also merited more mediareporting, which is very visible in the rise inthe number of reported cases of ‘honour’crimes. One can say that now the reporting of‘honour’ crimes has increased, which is to anextent, true.

While discussing the rise in the reporting of‘honour’ crimes in media, it is also necessaryto discuss how the cases of ‘honour’ crimesare being discussed in the media. Earlier,cases of ‘honour’ crimes were being reportedfrom Haryana and Western UP, where khappanchayats had visible role to play. However,one should note the over simplification of‘honour’ crimes in media reports, whereseveral times, ‘honour’ crimes have beenequated only with khap panchayats. This sketchtries to present existing patterns of ‘honour’crimes being reported in India, with the helpof a few cases. In this exercise, the attempt isto present ‘honour’ crimes as a form ofstructural violence, which occur because of

the several inequalities existing in the Indiansociety.

People who tried to break the barriersThis year on 13th March 2016, in broaddaylight, V. Shankar and Kausalya wereattacked by some people on bikes. The wholeincident was recorded in a CCTV camera asthe place happened to be a busy bus stand inTirupur, Tamil Nadu. Shankar was from aDalit community while Kausalya was frompowerful Thevar community. Shankarsuccumbed to the injuries and died whileKausalya survived serious injuries. LaterKausalya’s father surrendered in front of thepolice and took responsibility for themurderous attack. In 2012, upper caste girl NDivya and Dalit boy I Ilavarasan married,things started getting complicated whenDivya’s father committed suicide followingdisturbing remarks from his communitymembers. Divya’s father’s death led to attackson Dalit houses in Dharmpuri, Tamil Nadu.Also, PMK leader S. Ramados, allegedlymade remarks against Dalit boys “who marryupper caste girls for short lived marriages”.After the situation became tense and volatile,Divya left her husband’s house and returnedto her mother’s house. She also declared inthe court that she wanted to stay with hermother and not with her husband. After a fewdays of Divya’s deceleration, Ilavarasan’sdead body was found on a railway track. In asimilar way, Rizwanur Rehman’s dead bodywas found on the railway tracks of Kolkata,after his marriage to the daughter of a bigbusiness man. Md. Abdul Hakim was shotdead by his wife’s relatives after severalyears of their marriage, when they had triedto come back to their village after being inexile for a long period. The way in whichMonika Dagar and Gaurav Saini wereharassed by Monika’s family members andUP police, which led to Monika’s death andGaurav’s torture in police custody, presentsthe nexus between police and hierarchicalstructures of the society.

Cases of Manoj-Babli, Ravinder-Shilpa aresuch where on the one hand, khap panchayat’sdiktats had led to Manoj and Babli’s death andcontinuous torment of their families.Ravinder’s parents were asked to sell theirproperty and leave the village. These twocases reflected the assertion of strongpolitical and structural power by khappanchayats. In both, police and localadministration did not take resolute actionsagainst khap panchayats, as their regularmeetings and venomous attacks on thesefamilies continued. It was only the ordersfrom the local or High courts, which helpedthe victims get some respite from the violentordeal.

Many Deaths, Many Unanswered QuestionsThe above mentioned cases representcommonly followed patterns of violenceagainst marriages or relationships of choicebetween girls and boys. On one hand in areasliked Haryana, Western Uttar Pradesh andRajasthan, where khap panchayats are present,most of the cases do involve the provocativerole played by khap panchayat members, wherethey force girl’s family to take action againstthe couples. Having said that, it should not beimplied that in these states, all ‘honour’crimes happen only after the khap panchayatgets involved. There are several cases wherefather, brother or any other male relativekills the couple in fit of rage. PremChowdhry, in many of her works has arguedthat maintaining caste hierarchy and tomaintain the hold on land for economicreasons are also crucial factors behindcontrolling women of the community. In oneof the cases discussed with film maker NakulSingh Shawney, the political ambition of alocal leader appeared to be the main reasonbehind the instigation of the mob to kill theman whose marriage was ‘problematic’ in theeyes of the khap.

Moving ahead, to the other form of violence,which is entirely committed by the familymembers, the notion of loss of ‘honour’becomes the focal point. The cases discussedabove are only few of the cases of violencewhich happened on the couple or on one ofthem. One can keep adding to the list severalsuch cases of suicides/murders of youngcouples who had successfully managed to getmarried but later became victims of violenceof hatred. From the states like Punjab andHaryana, almost every day news reports ofsuch killings appear. During my research onsuch cases (which included collecting newsreports on ‘honour’ crimes spanning adecade), I had found several cases reported in

Violence against choice marriages:locating the patterns andexploring the ways ahead

Rani Rohini Raman


newspapers, where parents or relatives hadkilled either one or both after many years oftheir marriage. In such cases, as mentionedabove, primary reason of killing was eithercontinuous provocation from communitymembers or sudden feeling of loss of‘honour’. By mentioning this, the point whichI want to make is that, the notion of ‘loss ofhonour’ or loss of ‘control over daughter/sister’, is so deeply rooted among thepatriarchs of the houses that even afterseveral years of marriage of their daughters,the goal of regaining their ‘honour’ emergesas the main reason behind many of suchkillings.

Structures behind such forms of violenceSuch forms of violence, which are done tocontrol women’s sexuality so that caste andreligious hierarchies can be maintained,cannot be seen in isolation from largerunequal societal structures of India. A form ofviolence, where family members, communitymembers, khap panchayats, police and judiciaryare equally involved, needs to be analysed tounderstand its structural roots. Whenevercouples elope, to get married, to escape fromseries of violent ‘instruments’ pointedtowards them, they struggle to be safe fromthe hands of angry family members andconservative police machinery. But at thesame time, when eloped couples are fromdifferent castes and especially if boy is fromDalit community, then not only the boy, buthis entire family is forced to go through thestructural violence being instigated by khappanchayats or other such communitycollectives. Such practiced forms of violenceagainst marginalised communities, in thename of ‘honour’ is one of the most neglectedareas that needs to be focused while searchingfor answers against ‘honour’ crimes

Rohini is a fellow at Anveshi and can be reached [email protected].

References:

Badri Narayan, “Honour, violence and conflictingnarratives: A Study of Myth and Reality”, NewZealand Journal of Asian Studies 5, 1 (June,2003); 5-23

Chowdhry Prem. 2007. Contentious Marriages,Eloping Couples/ : Gender, Caste, and Patriarchyin Northern India. New Delhi, New York:Oxford University Press.

Chowdhry, Prem. 1994. The Veiled Woman.Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Interview with Nakul Singh Shawney,Documentary filmmaker, “Izzat Nagri kiAsabhya Betiyan”

Mahasweta Devi’s short story“Draupadi” appeared for the firsttime in a collection called

Agnigarbha in 1978 post-Emergency Calcutta.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s translation ofthe same appeared in the winter issue ofCritical Inquiry in 1981:

Draupadi’s black body comes evencloser. Draupadi shakes with anindomitable laughter that Senanayaksimply cannot understand. Her ravagedlips bleed as she begins laughing.Draupadi wipes the blood on her palmand says in a voice that is as terrifying,sky splitting, and sharp as her ululation,“What’s the use of clothes? You can stripme, but how can you clothe me again?Are you a man?” She looks around andchooses the front of Senanayak’s whitebush shirt to spit a bloody gob at andsays, “There isn’t a man here that Ishould be ashamed. I will not let you putmy cloth on me. What more can you do?Come on, counter me—come on, counterme-?” Draupadi pushes Senanayak withher two mangled breasts, and for thefirst time Senanayak is afraid to standbefore an unarmed target, terriblyafraid.2

Twenty years later, in 2001, while still incollege, I watched Manipuri director H.Kanhailal’s play Draupadi performed inKolkata at the Academy of Fine Arts at afestival organised by Nandikar. During theclimax, veteran actress Sabitri Heisnamappeared in the nude on stage. Describing theclimactic section of the play as it appears inAmar Kanwar’s film, Deepti Misri haswritten:

In the segment of the performed playincluded in Amar Kanwar’s 2007documentary The Lightning Testimonies(Roushan Bayaan), Sabitri, her back to theaudience, advances menacingly towardthe soldier, initially holding together ather front the single length of cloth thathas been handed back to her after herrape. As she approaches the nowcowering soldier, she opens her cloth all

at once with a bloodcurdling scream:“Confront my body!” Swirling the clotharound to almost completely cover thesoldier, she stands naked over him.3

In July 2004, a group of Manipuri womenstripped naked in front of the Western Gate ofKangla. The 17 Assam rifles personnel hadpicked up Thangjam Manorama from herhouse and shot her dead on 11th July. Thepossibility of rape was acknowledged, therewas evidence of bullet wounds on her privateparts4. Manorama was a little over thirty andsuspected of insurgency. I quote from a newsreport that appeared in The Sangai Express:

Following the naked outburst of angerand bottled up rage, the districtadministration of the two districts ofImphal acted swiftly and imposed anindefinite curfew in Greater Imphalareas from 11 am today.[…] Policemenwho rushed to the site found themselvesin an awkward position not knowinghow to deal with the women who hadbared all. The women folks raised anumber of slogans, questioning, howlong they have to suffer, while their sonsand daughters are being trampled,tortured, raped and killed by thesecurity personnel.5

From the evidence and interviews I havegathered so far on the field during the courseof my research on the subject, I am fairlycertain now, that the women whoparticipated in the protest at the gates ofKangla in July, 2004 were not aware of theexistence of Kanhailal’s Draupadi as a play.Hence with great and almost uncanny force,the complex interface between theatricalperformance and political action comes to thefore when we think about this strange timelag between theatrical performance andpolitical reality.

When I interviewed Sabitri and KanhailalHeisnam about the production of Draupadi inImphal in March, 2011, I wanted to knowtheir views on the connection between thesetwo events. Their subsequent statementselucidated what seemed to be a strange,

Excerpt (with minor changes) from TrinaNileena Banerjee, “Kanhailal’s Draupadi:Resilience at the Edge of Reason”Published in Theatre of the Earth: Clarifying the Trajectoryby Kanhailal Heisnam (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2016)1


strictly non-empirical, reverberation betweentwo discrete, yet significantly ‘historical’moments in their milieu. Ima Sabitri saidabout the experience of her performance: “Ihad for all my life heard stories of womenwho had been raped. I had felt their pain.When I heard the story of Draupadi fromOjha6, it seemed like our story. In therehearsals I felt I needed to release my wholespirit, my whole soul. It is a question of thesoul. With clothes I feel it is not real. It is atrick. At that culmination, I am fullyauthentic when my body is bare. My energyis released, it vibrates. If I do not go throughall of Druapadi’s pain myself every time Iperform, my acting would not succeed.” Andin the course of the long interview, OjhaKanhailal said: “As far as I know, there is nodirect connection. The imas7 who protested in2004 did not have any relationship with theplay. They probably don’t see plays. They areold, some of them not very educated. But thatis not the point. Things just happenhistorically at a juncture. They have the spiritinside, the spirit of the times. There is noconscious connection. The spirit of the real lifeand the spirit we try to create through ourtheatre are synchronised. That is the point.”

The excerpts from the interviews, I wouldlike to believe, speak for themselves.Kanhailal’s point about the zeitgeist seems animportant one. What seems to pervade bothnarratives – the theatrical and the political- isthe willingness, the ability and the feltnecessity of engaging with pain as anembodied practice – pain as, in fact, animperative to the process of bodilyintervention in the public space as actor/protester. Both speak of activating a kind ofenergy, a body language, where the spirits ofpast pain – not technically the actor’s own8 –may be mobilised in the crisis of the presentmoment through a willing, renewed andritual engagement with that pain. Thequestion is not one of effectiverepresentation, a mere achievement of which(as Sabitri Heisnam felt) would be ‘a trick’,but on what Saba Mahmood calls “theaffective and embodied practices throughwhich a subject comes to relate to a particularsign – a relation founded not only onrepresentation but also on what we can callattachment and cohabitation”9.

In Sabitri’s performance, a moment of surplusor rupture is created - where theatre andpolitics spill over into each other, allowingwomen’s political and performative voices tofind intimate connections with each other.These voices then manage to escape (inprotest and in performance, as well as in the

spaces where the two overlap), in productiveways and even for short periods of time, thedictates of (sometimes claustrophobic)community or state-driven narratives.Draupadi, therefore, mirrored with astrangely proleptic voice the very bodylanguage that the imas chose when theybrought themselves out on the streets toprotest Thangjam Manorama’s death at thegates of Kangla in 2004. Though the event hasbeen severally called the Ima’s (mothers’)protest, the women at Kangla were, for once,not protesting only on behalf of the Meiteicommunity – as mothers, sisters, daughters orbread-winners of the family; they wereprotesting on behalf of their own violatedbodies, a novel twist in the ‘resistance’narrative which cannot perhaps be fullycontained within the logic of Meiteicommunity identity. Although there havebeen subsequent attempts, both by scholars10

and the people of Imphal (some of whom Ispoke with at length during my visits to thecity in 2009 and 2011) to reclaim the event atKangla for the community and place it withina history of bravery of Meitei womanhood(especially the Nupi Lans11), there are seriousruptures within the seeming continuum. Amoment of surplus (or escape) had beencreated and witnessed. It would not be easyfor conventional narratives of either the stateor the community to appropriate andsubsume this political moment in its totality.But the imas of Kangla were preceded byanother hanubi who had stripped herselfnaked in protest on a Calcutta stage in 2001.She was performing, these women were not:or is it really that simple? What are theelements of theatrical spectacle operating in apublic political event? What is the politicalpotency, if any, of a purely theatrical event?Perhaps we can here begin to map a tentativesyntax for examining how ideas of ‘what ispolitical’ travel from and between theseseemingly separate zones of theatricalpolitics and political theatre.

Trina Nileena Banerjee teaches at the Centre forStudies in Social Sciences, Kolkata and can bereached at [email protected].

Notes1Trina Nileena Banerjee, “Kanhailal’sDraupadi: Resilience at the Edge of Reason,”in Theatre of the Earth: Clarifying the Trajectoryby Kanhailal Heisnam. (Calcutta: Seagull Books,2016), pp. 153-165.2 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Draupadi byMahasweta Devi” [Critical Inquiry 8.2 (1981):381-402] . The translation was reprinted inWriting and Sexual Difference [Ed. ElizabethAbel. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1982].

3 Deepti Misri, “Are You A Man?” [Signs, Vol.36, No. 3 (Spring 2011), pp. 603-625].

4 Deepti Misri, “Are You a Man?” andNamrata Gaikwad, “Revolting Bodies,Hysterical State: Women Protesting theArmed Forces Special Powers Act (1958)”,[Contemporary South Asia, Volume 17, Number 3, September 2009 , pp. 299-311(13)].5 ‘Women give vent to naked fury in front of17 AR at Kangla’, July 5 2004 (Imphal), in TheSangai Express <http:// e-pao.netepRelatedNews.asp?heading=12&src=150704> [last accessed 14October 2005].6 The word ‘Ojha’ in Meitei means ‘teacher’and this how Sabitri Heisnam usually refersto Kanhailal Heisnam.7 The word “ima” in Meitei means “mother”.8 “We are Manorama’s mothers!”, the imashave been recorded as stating. [Cited in Misri,“Are You a Man?”, pp. 614].9 Saba Mahmood , “Religious Reason andSecular Affect: An IncommensurableDivide?”, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 35, No. 4 (1January 2009): 836-862.

10 Walter Fernandes, “Limits of Law andOrder Approach to the North East”[Economicand Political Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 42 (Oct. 16-22,2004), pp. 4609-4611].11 The history of the two ‘Women’s Wars’ orNupi Lan in colonial times is associatedalmost entirely with the women’s market.These wars were waged, on both occasions,against the policies and orders of the colonialadministration. The first Nupi Lan took placein 1904 when the residence of the BritishPolitical Agent Major Maxwell was burntdown by unknown persons and Maxwellordered a supply of free labour from theMeitei people in order to rebuild the house.Women gathered in thousands and protestedagainst the orders of the government until itwas finally withdrawn. There was a similarorganised protest by women in 1925 againstthe imposition of a water tax by the BritishGovernment. The next major Nupi Lan tookplace in 1939 (when Manipur was almostfacing a famine) against the official policy onthe unlimited export of rice from the valleyby Marwari traders. [See Soyam Lokendrajit,‘An Artist’s Response to ContemporaryReality: A Case of Two Directors’ in SeagullTheatre Quarterly: Theatre in Manipur Today,(Calcutta: The Seagull Foundation for theArts, June-Sept, 1997), p. 26 and ManjusriChaki-Sircar, Feminism in a Traditional Society:Women of the Manipur Valley, (New Delhi:Shakti Books, 1984), pp. 34-37.]

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