Tag Archive for 'Gujarat'
From The Wall Street Journal:
Ahmedabad: It’s easy to love a city where residents make sure to feed the birds. More than 120 bird feeders, known as chabutara, are scattered throughout the oldest neighborhoods of Ahmedabad, founded in 1411. Why do these creatures get so much attention? “They are innocent souls,” replies my guide.
The care and feeding of tourists is a more recent phenomenon. Long overshadowed by Rajasthan, its palace-filled and perpetually self-promoting neighbor, India’s western state of Gujarat has been slow to market the attractions of its biggest city, whose population exceeds five million. But it’s a surprisingly satisfying destination, including some outstanding museums, memorable walking tours (held both day and night) and delectably nuanced vegetarian cuisine.
With an eye to the city’s 600th anniversary next year, a growing number of entrepreneurs, social activists and public officials are gunning for a United Nations designation as a World Heritage City by revitalizing the older section, east of the Sabarmati River. (West of the river is a city of high-rises and malls, noted for its pharmaceutical and chemical industries and educational institutions.) More:
Ayesha Khan in The Indian Express:
So, I debate: should I now watch My Name is Khan, with its catchy tagline: “My name is Khan and I am not a Terrorist”. The tagline hurts. It insults.
Incidentally, my surname is Khan. And I know that a name like that needs lots of explaining. While I managed to rent a flat in the so-called cosmopolitan neighbourhood of Ahmedabad that is barred for Muslims, by paying more — about 50 per cent more — than the rest because I am a Khan. It was fine for a year till I renewed the rent lease recently. The building president, two days ago, asked me to pay up a month’s rent as “brokerage” for renewing the lease for the flat that she has nothing to do with — an absolutely unheard practice, which I refused. Otherwise, she said she would tell all that I am a Muslim and get me thrown out. Incidentally, the flat owner is decent and asked me to stay put, the neighbours are sweet. They are least concerned about my surname and more interested in my profession — that of a journalist.
But the building president thinks that a public revelation of my surname — Khan, which speaks of my religion — is leverage enough to get the flat vacated. I am curious to find out what happens next, and am ready for another bout of silent fights. More:
Margot Cohen in The Wall Street Journal:
In 2001, Bhadli village was a wreck. An earthquake had destroyed most of its 325 houses. In this remote district of Kachchh, formerly called Kutch — a land of desert plains, rocky hills and cracked salt marshes in India’s western state of Gujarat — deaths totaled more than 12,000.
The quake also jolted the livelihoods of the area’s many skilled artisans, whose handicrafts include embroidery, block-printing, weaving and bandhani, a tie-dyeing technique particularly prized by India’s big-city designers.
After the disaster, aid poured in. Dozens of organizations rushed to build houses. Designers stepped up, placing more orders for clothing and accessories.
But those designers often dictated brand-new patterns that artisans struggled to follow. Two brothers in Bhadli, Aziz Khatri, 31 years old, and Suleman Khatri, 33, decided their future lay down a different road. Rather than supplying tie-dyed cloth to order as they had before the earthquake, they would travel 105 kilometers to an innovative design school called Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya, and return to make their own tunics, scarves and other products. More:
In the Sunday Express a report from Anand in Gujarat, India’s surrogacy hub and the story of a woman who rented her womb:
Ramilaben Solanki: "This time I am asking for Rs 5 lakh ($10,000) because I am too weak to keep doing it many more times."
Before she pressed her inked thumb on the contract agreement, they had made Ramilaben Solanki understand that she is a womb. No more, no less. They had told her that the baby would be no part of her flesh and blood. That she was its shell, only a shell.
But sitting in the dark of her single-room, tin-roofed hovel—home to nine more people in her extended family—this 27-year-old domestic help in Gujarat’s Anand is still fighting to come to terms with herself. She thinks that the “pink infant with the golden hair and light brown eyes” of his American father, the one she bore and delivered, had come of her. Not through her.
For seven days and nights after, until the American couple from Wisconsin, US—whose sperm, ovum and money helped make her baby—flew in, Ramila had fed him her milk, sung him to sleep. She had also whispered in his ears that he is Deep, younger brother to her own five-year-old daughter, Deepali. More:
[Photo: The Indian Express]
At Dhoni village in Gujarat water is so scarce that they not only lock up their wells but sleep over the wooden lids as well to ensure that nobody steals their water. During the day women and children keep a watch over the small village pond. Parimal Dabhi has a report in the Indian Express. Photo: Javed Raja.
In Tehelka, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen tells Tusha Mittal that the global slowdown will hit India’s economy and the worst sufferers will be the country’s underprivileged
What are the principal challenges India faces in the new year?
There are traditional challenges and new ones. The traditional challenges include keeping our democracy functioning. The [general] election is coming; it is very important that there be wide participation. It is also important that our concerns about secularism, security, economic progress, and the removal of poverty and illiteracy be kept in focus. Election is a good time to focus on these issues rather than one caste battling another.
Another old challenge is removing deprivation. Huge numbers of people suffer from chronic hunger, malnutrition, lack of schooling and healthcare. Political parties should focus more on these issues. When I gave a lecture in Parliament last August, I mentioned that I am sometimes disappointed that the pressure on the government comes more on issues that concern a few people, like the Indo- US nuclear deal or rise in petrol prices, and the huge deprivation of the underprivileged masses tends to get neglected.
From National Journal (via 3quarksdaily):
The controversy has been gathering steam in the Indian press and South Asian blogosphere for weeks now, but it went mainstream on Thursday when former GOP Senator Rick Santorum published an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer questioning the appointment of Shah to the transition team — prompting a Lost In Transition post Friday.
Shah, a Google executive who previously worked for Goldman Sachs and served as a Treasury official in the Clinton years, was appointed to the Obama transition team in November and has since been tapped to be part of the three-person team to develop technology policy. She is also reportedly being considered for Secretary of Energy.
However, her appointment to the administration has drawn strong reactions from the South Asian community. While many prominent Indian-Americans have stood behind Shah, others have raised doubts about her past. Dr. Shaikh Ubaid is part of a group including several Muslim and Sikh associations and dozens of college professors that sent letters to both Shah and President-elect Obama, requesting further information on Shah’s past associations.
“When she was appointed, it was initially a proud moment for us, her being an Indian-American,” said Ubaid in an interview given before Shah’s latest statement. However, the reports regarding Shah’s past ties to the VHP gave Ubaid and others a cause for concern.
[Updated on November 14]
Vijay Prashad in CounterPunch [via 3quarksdaily]:
But there is a less typical side to the Shah story. Born in Gujarat, India, Shah came to the United States as a two-year old. Her father, a chemical engineer, first worked in New York before moving to Houston, and then moving away from his education toward the stock market. The Shahs remain active in Houston’s Indian community, not only in the ecumenical Gujarati Samaj (a society for people from Gujarat), but also in the far more cruel organizations of the Hindu Right, such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Overseas Friends of the BJP (the main political party of the Hindu Right) and the Ekal Vidyalaya. Shah’s parents, Ramesh and Kokila, not only work as volunteers for these outfits, but they also held positions of authority in them. Their daughter was not far behind. She was an active member of the VHPA, the U. S. branch of the most virulently fascistic outfit within India. The VHP’s head, Ashok Singhal, believes that his organization should “inculcate a fear psychosis among [India's] Muslim community.” This was Shah’s boss. Till 2001, Shah was the National Coordinator of the VHPA.
[Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT.]
The Sonal Shah controversy:
And here is Reuben Abraham’s defence of Sonal Shah [via India Uncut]
And Vijay Prashad again in CounterPunch [via 3quarksdaily]: Guilt by participation
Previously in AW: Indian-born women figure on Obama’s A team
Indian-American Sonal Shah, a 40-year-old economist who heads Google’s philanthropic arm has been appointed an advisory board member by President-elect Barack Obama to assist his team make a smooth transition to power.
To read a brief backgrounder on her at Changemakers, click here. For news links click here, here and here.
Meanwhile, Preeta Bansal, a partner at the international law firm Skadden Arps, who was a senior advisor on the Obama campaign, is being tipped to play a significant role in the new Obama administration and speculation is rife that she could be the new solicitor general. Read that report in the Am Law Daily here.
Sonal Shah: The girl from Sabarkantha
From the Times of India:
Born in Mumbai, Sonal completed her studies in US after her father Ramesh Shah moved from Gujarat to New York in 1970. She, along with her sister and mother, joined him in 1972.
While Sonal, the eldest sibling, grew up in US, India helped define her strong social service values, says sister Roopal. “Sonal believes strongly in the power of young people to make a difference like Obama, she too believes in the spirit of service and the spirit of sacrifice…”
India’s leading intellectual, political psychologist and sociologist Ashish Nandy wrote an article in The Times of India on communalism in Gujarat society and the culture of its politics after the 2002 riots. The article titled “Blame the middle class” said:
Is it possible to look beyond the 35 years of rioting that began in 1969 and ended in 2002? Prima facie, the answer is “no”. We can only wait for a new generation that will, out of sheer self-interest and tiredness, learn to live with each other. In the meanwhile, we have to wait patiently but not passively to keep values alive, hoping that at some point will come a modicum of remorse and a search for atonement and that ultimately Gujarati traditions will triumph over the culture of the state’s urban middle class.
Recovering Gujarat from its urban middle class will not be easy. The class has found in militant religious nationalism a new self- respect and a new virtual identity as a martial community, the way Bengali babus, Maharashtrian Brahmins and Kashmiri Muslims at different times have sought salvation in violence. In Gujarat this class has smelt blood, for it does not have to do the killings but can plan, finance and coordinate them with impunity. The actual killers are the lowest of the low, mostly tribals and Dalits. The middle class controls the media and education, which have become hate factories in recent times. And they receive spirited support from most non-resident Indians who, at a safe distance from India, can afford to be more nationalist, bloodthirsty, and irresponsible.
Read the article here:
The Gujarat police has filed a criminal case against Nandy for ‘promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth and language.’ The article, the complaint says, was highly intemperate, vituperative and showed Gujaratis in a low light.
Nearly 200 academics and activists have signed a protest against “this latest case of harassment of intellectuals, journalists, artists, and public figures by antidemocratic forces that claim to speak on behalf of Hindu values sometimes and patriotism at other times, especially in Gujarat, but who have little understanding of either.”
Read the statement here:
The desert grasslands of Gujarat in India may be remote, but the Halepotra tribe make the long journey worthwhile. Tom Parker in The Guardian:
‘This is it, it’s probably not what you expected,” Shakur said with a wry smile as he stopped his battered 1965 Fiat 2300 beside a collection of five bhungas – traditional cylindrical mud huts with white walls and grass-topped roofs.
Shaam-e-Sarhad looked like all the other tribal settlements we’d passed en route, though its surprisingly large huts had a few welcome extras such as a ceiling fan and a separate outdoor bathroom.
We were in one of the most remote parts of India, in Kutch’s desert grasslands in the state of Gujarat, with the Pakistan border and the edge of the vast salt plain known as the Great Rann of Kutch just 15km to the north – hence the resort’s name, which means “Sunset at the Border”.
From Agence France-Presse:
It’s a village like thousands in India — a few corner shops and dusty lanes dissecting small, mud-and-brick houses into haphazard rows on the edge of lush fields.
What sets Jambur apart are its inhabitants — some 4,000 men, women and children of unmistakably African origin called Siddis, and virtually all of them poor. “They’re the lost tribes of Africa,” said Ashish Nandi, sociologist at New Delhi’s Centre for Developing Societies.
But the Siddis in this village 470 kilometres (290 miles) southwest of Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of the western state Gujarat, say they know nothing of their origins as descendants of African slaves.
Arundhati Roy in Outlook.
I never met Hrant Dink, a misfortune that will be mine for time to come. From what I know of him, of what he wrote, what he said and did, how he lived his life, I know that had I been here in Istanbul a year ago I would have been among the one hundred thousand people who walked with his coffin in dead silence through the wintry streets of this city, with banners saying, “We are all Armenians”, “We are all Hrant Dink”. Perhaps I’d have carried the one that said, “One and a half million plus one”. [One-and-a-half million is the number of Armenians who were systematically murdered by the Ottoman Empire in the genocide in Anatolia in the spring of 1915. The Armenians, the largest Christian minority living under Islamic Turkic rule in the area, had lived in Anatolia for more than 2,500 years.]
I wonder what thoughts would have gone through my head as I walked beside his coffin. Maybe I would have heard a reprise of the voice of Araxie Barsamian, mother of my friend David Barsamian, telling the story of what happened to her and her family. She was ten years old in 1915. She remembered the swarms of grasshoppers that arrived in her village, Dubne, which was north of the historic city Dikranagert, now Diyarbakir. The village elders were alarmed, she said, because they knew in their bones that the grasshoppers were a bad omen. They were right; the end came in a few months, when the wheat in the fields was ready for harvesting.
CNN-IBN’s Arunima spoke to Bilkis Bano after a special CBI court sentenced 11 people to life imprisonment for rape
It seems justice may finally have been delivered in one of the most shocking cases of the post Godhra riots. The special CBI court on Monday sentenced 11 people to double life imprisonment for rape in the Bilkis Bano case.
Bilkis says she knows she’s won a landmark judgement, but the battle has only just begun. CNN-IBN’s Arunima spoke to Bilkis after the verdict.
Arunima: Has justice been done?
Bilkis Bano: Justice has been delivered six years later. Eleven people have been sentenced but the policemen involved have gone scot free. So my struggle will continue will they are punished.
Arunima: Was it a lonely battle?
Bilkis Bano: A lot of people helped me. They encouraged me not to give up, not to get scared and continue the fight. Without them I couldn’t have achieved this.
Arunima: Do you feel safe about your child’s future in Gujarat?
Bilkis Bano: I want my children to have proper education, a good upbringing and a peaceful life.
Mail Today has a package on the Bilkis Bano rape case, with interviews and comments. Hartosh Singh Bal compares her with Zaheera Shaikh.
The Bilkis Bano case may well become the benchmark for how cases related to the Gujarat riots need to be handled. After the Best Bakery case, Bilkis’ story was perhaps symbolic of the quest for justice in the state. The similarities in the two cases are obvious — a young woman who is the key witness to murder by rioting mobs, and the delay and the frustration of obtaining justice till the Supreme Court intervenes and ensures the case is heard in Mumbai.
more
And, this is the report
Justice came on Friday for Bilkis Yakoob Rasool alias Bilkis Bano — survivor and living reminder of Gujarat’s post-Godhra communal carnage. A sessions court in Mumbai held 13 of the 20 accused, including an assistant police inspector, guilty of gang-raping Bano, who was five-month pregnant then, and murdering 14 members of her family in 2002.
