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The CWG
imbroglio Dastardly
carnage |
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Setting
rapists free
The
phenomenon of Jat assertion
Love at
the level crossing
With the Tunisians
having enjoyed the fragrance of jasmine and the Egyptians throwing
(over) more than shoes, one is bound to take note of what started it
all. The spark was ignited on the social networking websites. So is
the virtual social the new real? Revolution
gone virtual
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Dastardly carnage
Reports
of massacre of some 20 Sikhs, including women and children, at Chhillar village of Rewari district have caused an understandable public outrage. Equally shocking is the state-sponsored cover-up of the heinous crime against innocent people by the then Congress government headed by Bhajan Lal. According to the FIR lodged at Haryana’s Jatusana police station, 20 persons lost their lives in the killings at Chhillar village. Official connivance is evident from the fact that even the FIR lodged by the then sarpanch of the village about the massacre on November 2, 1984, is untraceable. The fate of post-mortem reports is uncertain. The state government records claim only three Sikhs were killed in Haryana in the 1984 mob attacks on the community. It is not that the massacre was previously unknown. According to a report in a Jalandhar-based Punjabi daily, the issue was raised in the Haryana assembly on March 25, 1985, by Lok Dal member Sujan Singh, who alleged the death of 17 people. No follow-up action was taken. Earlier, the Bhajan Lal government had incurred the wrath of the Sikh community after its members passing through Haryana were humiliated during the 1982 Asian Games. It is natural for Sikh organisations to disbelieve the state government records of deaths at that time. There is a clear case for an independent inquiry, preferably by a judge of unimpeachable integrity, to ferret out the truth and fix responsibility so that the accused are brought to justice. The rule of law must prevail. It will not be an easy task since much time has elapsed but still eyewitnesses and survivors of the ghastly attacks are alive and willing to testify. Their faith in the justice system must be restored. Meanwhile, the public should be wary of petty leaders trying to squeeze political mileage out of the unfortunate incident. All these years they had kept quiet. The media too should guard against carrying provocative and irresponsible statements. The situation needs careful handling by all since the issue is sensitive.
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Setting rapists free
The
Supreme Court’s acceptance of a compromise reached between three convicts and their rape victim and the subsequent reduction of their sentence from 10 years of rigorous imprisonment to three and half years’ jail which they have already served have triggered an avoidable controversy. In an important order, a Bench consisting of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra has ruled that though Section 376 of the Indian Penal Code dealing with rape is a non-compoundable (i.e. which cannot be compromised) offence, there are “adequate and special reasons” in the criminal law for providing relief to the convicts in question. As the incident occurred in 1997 and the parties have entered into a compromise, the Bench upheld the conviction of the three persons by both the trial court and the Punjab and Haryana High Court, but reduced the period of sentence already undergone by them in view of the proviso to Section 376 (2) (g). The Bench, in its wisdom, may have taken a judicious decision to set the victims free. However, there are reasonable apprehensions that the ruling may send a wrong signal to the nation and blunt the campaign to tackle the increasing menace of rape firmly. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, while more than 53 rape cases are recorded everyday, a total of 21,397 rape cases were reported countrywide in 2009. The Bench may have raised the fine for the three convicts from Rs 1,000 to Rs 50,000 each, but this does not meet the ends of justice. Rape is a heinous crime. It disturbs the woman emotionally and its memory haunts her forever. The concept of “marital rape” may have gained currency, but is still not recognised in India under the law except when the wife is below 12 years. The other new trend is of raping the woman and then proposing marriage, if the accused feels that he would be convicted. Though the Supreme Court has endorsed this in some cases, including the practice of giving monetary compensation to the woman by the accused, it does not necessarily serve the purpose of the law and jurisprudence. What about the rapist’s criminal liability for the offence committed by him? Without undergoing exemplary punishment which also acts as a deterrent, rapists should not be allowed to get away by striking a compromise or paying compensation to the victims.
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Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. — William Shakespeare
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The phenomenon of Jat assertion
The
Jat assertion bordering on aggressiveness was seen in a virulent form at Mirchpur. The 11-day blockade of rail tracks, national and state highways by Jats in a sizeable part of Haryana was described by The Tribune in its editorial dated January 29 as a “ long spell of lawlessness…..where a section of the people held the state to ransom”. It was a realm of nightmare where the state literally withered away in a part of Haryana. Even the critically ill and marriage parties were not allowed to cross the barricades. All sections of society were put to a crippling inconvenience, the poor and daily wage earners suffered the most. The Punjab and Haryana High Court described the situation as unacceptable and the Supreme Court directed the Haryana government to deal with the agitators effectively or be prepared for drastic steps by the court “ the kind of which not seen so far”. The phenomenon of the Jat aggressiveness has to be seen in its historical context. The Jats have been largely free from the rigours of the Brahminical ideology. The antipathy and disgust shown towards Dalits in some other states (in Maharashtra, for instance, a high-caste Hindu getting polluted if the shadow of a Dalit fell upon him or if he stepped on the foot prints left by a Dalit) was never seen in case of Haryana Jats, freeing them from the stranglehold of purity and pollution syndrome. The priest in Jat villages has been more an object of ridicule rather than veneration. Thus, the reformist content of the Arya Samaj pouring scorn on the elaborate rituals of the Brahminical clergy fostering numerous superstitions appealed to the Jats and they lapped it avidly. The Brahminical clergy came under a heavy onslaught by the Arya Samaj preachers and singers. Widow marriage, desired by the Arya Samaj, has been practised by Jats since ages through the custom of “karewa” and “naata”. One cannot find a single Jat widow in the widow homes at Varindavan and Kashi, where high-caste widows lead a dehumanised existence. The present conflict between the Jats and the Dalits in Haryana as seen at Dulina, Harsola, Gohana and some other places, now reaching a climax at Mirchpur village in Hisar district, looks paradoxical, keeping in view the liberal ethos of the Jats. A trifling incident of altercation between a Jat and a Dalit in Mirchpur led to a horrendous act of a mob torching Dalit hamlets on April 21, 2010, where a 70-year-old Dalit and his polio-stricken daughter were charred to death. The rest is history. There is a flip side to the Jat psyche. The Jats are no longer a clan as they used to be in the hoary past but the clannish mindset still persists. Ego, prestige, pride and a deep sense of brotherhood impelling one to help one’s kinsmen are important traits that cement clannish bonding as is reflected in the structure and functioning of khap panchayats of Jats. After the onset of modernisation and liberalisation a band of Jats has emerged that has acquired affluence through real estate, brick-kilns, service or business ventures and they strive to acquire a niche in the socio-political landscape of the state. They are in the forefront on various issues like amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act, reservations in government jobs, staging dharnas, organising blockades etc. The age-old institution of khap comes quite handy to them for mass mobilisation. Instead of a rational debate on the merits of an issue, they appeal to the primordial instincts of the community to charge it in order to build pressure on the power apparatus. This was best illustrated in the prolonged rail and road blockade on the Mirchpur episode organised by a number of khaps in Hisar and Jind districts. Since the Jats constitute the largest and electorally influential community in Haryana, the status quoist political elites of Haryana tend to be on their right side. If the administration had acted speedily after the carnage in Mirchpur and hauled up the kingpins who organised it, the matter would not have take the ugly turn. The state apparatus woke up from its slumber after Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Mirchpur. In a panic hyper action more than 100 persons were arrested indiscriminately involving a sizeable number who were allegedly not a party to the episode. This understandably infuriated Jats who took to the war path to browbeat the authorities. Now the caste cleavage between the Jats and the Dalits in the state is too wide to be bridged easily. Some are keen to give it a Jat-versus-non-Jat twist. One leader has floated a “Vanchit Varg Sangharsh Samiti,” suggesting that all the people in the state except the Jats are “vanchit” (deprived”). Another affluent non-Jat has appointed himself as the president of a Non-Jat organisation. In fact, deprivation is not the sole preserve of any single community. The economic crisis is so deep that a large part of every community falls in this category. The caste conflict is symptomatic of the sweeping changes taking place in the economic and agrarian relations in the state. The Green Revolution has reached a plateau and there is a crisis in agriculture. With the fragmentation of land-holdings and a high cost of inputs, farming has become a losing concern, putting agriculture labour too in distress. There is an upward mobility in a section of the Dalits through reservations in jobs and other state affirmative actions. With the breakdown of the Jajmani system, Dalits are no longer tagged to the farming communities and have started asserting themselves. This sometimes tends to create a conflict. The caste-ridden society compels a section of it to lead an inhuman life which finds no sanction in any ethical, spiritual or humanistic belief system. Divisive tendencies like caste and others pave the way for opportunist elements to capture power by relying on populist rhetoric and money power, which poses a serious threat to the democratic values and inclusive development. It is incumbent on the part of the administration to see that no section of society is allowed to take law in its own hands so that those who have remained under social oppression for ages have their rightful place in society and get due share in the fruits of development. The real issues being faced by society are skewed development, growing unemployment, rampant corruption, rising prices, crisis in agriculture, pathetic plight of those in the unorganised sector (according to the findings of the Arjun Sengupta Commision on Unorganised Enterprises, 77 per cent of Indians live on less than 20 rupees a day) and such other problems. This poses a grave threat to the Indian democracy. The recent events in Egypt should be an eye-opener. The per capita income is higher and the incidence of poverty lower in Egypt than in India. Yet people rose and put an end to the prolonged dictatorship there. Democracy in India acts as a safety valve. It too is under strain now from various quarters. It must be saved and strengthened in the larger interest of the toiling masses of India. This is a challenge to the liberal, democratic intelligentsia to give a constructive direction to the socio-political milieu of our
society. The writer, a retired academic from Delhi University, specialises on
socio-cultural affairs.
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Love at the level crossing It
was one of those still, warm, sultry evenings in the summer of ’65. As an Assistant Superintendent of Police I was then undergoing ‘Tear Smoke Course’ at the Police Training College, Phillaur. That particular evening I happened to be travelling with a coursemate to Ludhiana in his car. The trip had ostensibly been arranged by him to facilitate the Assistant Principal and his wife’s attendance at a wedding reception. We had to stop at the Phillaur level crossing because of an incoming train. The passengers of a rickety old Punjab Roadways bus, which seemed to have broken down, were already waiting impatiently at the crossing ahead of us. Dusk had descended and was inching towards an uneasy darkness when a tall girl handsomely endowed in looks and stature approached my companion and asked him for a lift. Anxiety was writ large on her face, but before he could muster courage to react, I quickly quipped in, “no problem at all” and the girl gratefully hopped into our car. We first went to drop the assistant principal and his wife at the reception venue before proceeding to drop the girl at her residence. By now she seemed reassured that we were officers and gentlemen and felt comfortable. She insisted that we come in to meet her parents. I greeted her father, a retired officer of the Royal Indian Engineers. He thanked me for escorting his daughter safely, even as an instant chord was struck between us! Several days later I mentioned the incident casually to a friend, also an IPS officer then, and to my pleasant surprise he knew the girl’s family well. My date with the family was fixed in August 1965. I paid for private journey in the official jeep and drove into their Chandigarh residence on the appointed day. I still vividly recall the trolley in the drawing room, laden with fruits and snacks (possibly on a returnable basis). The apple of my eye significantly picked up an apple, proceeded to slice it and dropped the first slice much to her embarrassment. The bells rang, the knot was tied and the rest is history. Over the years that we have been together, we have braved our highs and lows and despite our diverse views, upbringing, perceptions and interests, right down to food preferences, have arrived at the fusion of a deep-rooted relationship of mutual trust, respect, abiding love and concern. My wife reminds me at times that she was barely 20 when we were married, possibly implying that she has put up with me for 45 years, but I know deep down that the real import of these occasional utterances is a subtle reminder of something profound in our togetherness. What else could one pray for! Any Bollywood takers for this real-life story? The railways, courtesy our worthy minister’s largesse, would be more than willing to dole out a handsome subsidy for a script that foregrounds the level crossing coincidence provided, of course, it is transported from Punjab to West
Bengal!
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With the Tunisians having enjoyed the fragrance of jasmine and the Egyptians throwing (over) more than shoes, one is bound to take note of what started it all. The spark was ignited on the social networking websites. So is the virtual social the new real?
I
am
not good at maintaining relationships. I feel particularly distressed by the prospect of picking up the phone and calling an old friend whom I have not spoken to in a long time. We just do not share common interests and the equation we had earlier, when we lived in a similar setting, it just does not exist anymore. I am sure that while you all might not be as socially awkward as I am, you would agree that there does seem to be an inertial barrier when it comes to rekindling and maintaining such relationships. And then, if you turn out to be a social bumblebee like yours truly in today’s world, with all its focus on networking, then God help you. Aditi Chatterjee, final year BBA student, Symbiosis, Pune
Asgerali Masalawala, final year Engineering student, IIT Bombay
Malavika Belavangala, research scholar, IIM Bangalore,
Bangalore
Kunal Somkuwar, media professional, Nagpur
Sushil Shintre, teacher, Teach for India, Mumbai
So when I logged on to Facebook and started trying out their new and cool helpful features, you can imagine how beautifully my fatalism shattered. One simple status message update ensures an end to all jibes from near and dear ones. A comment on a pretty photograph leads to an interesting conversation. One is able to follow, one’s favourite columnists, artists, newspapers, magazines, photographers and thinkers from all over the world. Friends with varied interests keep posting interesting links and snippets which give you access to information you would just not have come across in routine life. Social interest groups put you in touch with like-minded people from around the world. On a deeper plane, the idea of online social networking helps us connect with people, no matter how far they are from us physically, at hitherto unimaginable levels. Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin are the new matchmakers, classifieds, headhunters, all rolled into one - from scrabble buddies to dates to vacation homes and even more, you find everything and everyone out here. This is the new grapevine. This is where most public conversation happens. Today when people ask you to spread the word, it is your twitter status that they are asking for. News spreads faster than an Aussie bushfire out here. Apart from the regular fanfare, there is something else at play here as well which we should not lose sight of. When you put 500 million people from around the world, across regions, religions and races together on a common platform, more than the differences it is the similarities which will get highlighted. Denying your populations the basic rights and freedoms they need to fulfill themselves is unlikely to work in our times, given that these people now have a window to the outside world and an intimate knowledge of how things work elsewhere. Tunisians and Egyptians, who had suffered for long at the hands of their iron-fist rulers, connected with each other via Facebook, decided that they had had enough, and simply marched and protested their way to freedom with their governors looking on helplessly. Bahrain and Yemen are in the throes of similar protests. Arabs in Saudi Arabia and Jordan are giving their leaders the jitters. One almost wishes that our youth would ‘hang’ scamsters in public with such public trials, given the complacent mould our government and opposition have slipped into vis-à-vis corruption. But, as with every idea, there is a flip side to online social networking as well. Quite a few critics of the phenomenon believe that it has taken away a sense of meaning from most relationships. Today, you have people making up online personas reflecting what they want to project themselves as, rather than who they are which can lend hollowness to most relationships. Then again, in our zeal to be the foremost trend-spotters, we often end up making hasty predictions such as one leading writer Roger Cohen of the New York Times who says that Facebook is causing the revolution in Tunisia. Malcolm Gladwell goes on to even state that the so-called revolutions of today are no revolutions as compared to the ones the world has seen - such as the Black Civil Rights’ Movement in the 1960’s. The writer is a final-year civil engineering student of IIT, Bombay
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Revolution gone virtual If
there was a graph representing man’s social quotient, then in the present times, it would have gone through the roof. This is no ‘smile-at-strangers’ or ‘say-hello-to-passers-bye’ socialising that we’re referring to, but hardcore, social ‘networks’ developing each passing minute. All thanks to the virtual sphere of social networking that has made us more social than the good old ‘social animal’ Aristotle had talked of. For most of us, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (another popular social networking website in US) and the like are more familiar than our immediate neighbours. We all know how Twitter jeopardised Shashi Tharoor’s political career, and how Facebook has declared itself the authority in the lives of so many tweens, teens and even adults. From the simple ‘what’s on your mind’ to ‘Farmville’, Facebook got more people hooked on to it than even the life-saving yoga practices of Ramdev. Seems like people would prefer dying with a bigger friends list than a healthier heart! So this social/virtual world is definitely big! Now what does this widespread insanity (not confined to gender or age) mean? The sociologists have a mixed view on the way social networking sites are tending to blur the distinction between the private and the public self. Psychologists seem to be applying personality theories to the individuals who use them. Ketaky Sharma, HR Manager, with a Masters in Psychology, says: “It really has helped many introverts interact and carry the advantages over to real life. However, emotionally vulnerable users should be extra-cautious. So I say, keep a wise head on your shoulders, and you will never come across the shadiness of online social networking”. Nidhi Kohli, working as a Social Media Marketing Executive with CueBlocks, an E-Commerce Solution Company, points out, “Social networking is the virtual network-based social gatherings, perhaps the second best use of Internet our race has known, the first being the e-mail.” Cyber activism is all about the way in which social networking sites are fast becoming forums where both the authorities and dissenters play games. For instance, An activist, Fouad Mourtada was arrested for creating a fake Facebook account of Moroccan King’s brother on the Facebook. A woman in an American restaurant was fired for putting on Facebook, the rudeness of a customer who had refused her a tip. She was fired by her manager who was also in her friend list. Ajinkya Bhosale, (a professional from Infosys Technologies, Pune) says, “It was a great medium for friends separated by distances to bond. But now it is obviously bringing about a social change as we’ve seen in Egypt. However, virtual activism can only trigger and connect the revolutionaries. The real work of bringing a change can’t be accomplished online, for that action is required and the streets have to be measured.” Prashanta Gowda, a business man from Bangalore, has a totally different take, “I am totally against these. Though I did have a profile on them, yet it didn’t mean any value addition to my life.” No doubt, the gap is narrowing between the virtual and the real worlds for sure, but sometimes the virtual world works in our destiny’s favor and we end up making a real life-changing choice. If someone found her soul mate on Orkut, someone else struck friendship with another, sitting thousands of miles away. Though distances between people are fast shrinking, there are problems such as cyber stalking, raised by paedophiles and other miscreants who scour these pages for possible victims. Aastha Bhai Chibber (who is working with an IT company) voices her concerns over privacy issues, “These may connect people but have brought down the privacy of people to zero. Each social networking website has its own pros and cons and the boundary separating their use and misuses is blurring.” Acknowledging this, Avantika says, “A profile on the social networking sites does make you vulnerable and also increases the chances of misuse of data.” Whether we love it or hate it, such social networking sites have certainly transformed our process of socialisation, far beyond the usual befriending and chatting. Businesses are already getting major windfall gains and soon the latest buzz of social buying will catch up (heard about Group On, Snap Deal; Group Ons Indian equivalent and the likes?) and the social graph is going to get more colorful and ever more interesting. Gautam Sharma, a Mumbai-based free lance writer and film maker, sums it quite well, “It’s the electronic version of drugs. Love it or hate it, you can’t keep away from it. Once you are on it you can’t live without it.” The writer is manager
copywriting, CueBlocks technologies, Chandigarh
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Online social networking makes you feel connected - and the best part is, you can choose to connect at your convenience. Also, these days everything from news, to polls, to virtual marketing - everything comes through on social networking sites. So there's immense potential to influence and channelise the opinion of the
masses.
For me, a social networking website is a way to keep in touch with old friends with whom I tend to lose contact. I guess these websites are a good way to stay connected with old friends, but one has to be careful about finding new friends here. And of course, it's a very convenient way to remember
birthdays.
I'm okay with the idea of Twitter for its brevity of content but
Facebook, even with its privacy settings, is public enough to have every aspect of your life dissected and scrutinised which I'm not comfortable
with.
Online social networking makes networking very easy. Besides, it is of immense help to those of us in the media and advertising industries and in the fields of corporate public relations and
marketing.
Online social networking has split our existence into two parts—physical and virtual. I'm not sure if that is always a good
thing.