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An exercise in blame displacement
UK Sikhs hurt over Thatcher help for Operation Bluestar
Gurharpal Singh
A protest march in the streets of Amritsar prior to Operation Bluestar. AFP file photo |
The
revelations that Mrs Margret Thatcher's government in early 1984 provided support in the planning of the army operation in the Golden Temple complex have come like a thunderbolt from the past. Despite the best efforts of Prime Minister David Cameron, and the UK's top mandarin, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to manage the fallout, the damage to Anglo-Sikh relations has been done. Sir Jeremy's official inquiry report on the matter is a more elegant and nuanced affair than the Government of India's botched "White Paper on the Punjab Agitation". Yet the similarities are uncanny. There is the same culpable deniability. Both engage in blame displacement. But Sir Jeremy's inquiry, and the subsequent statement of the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, adds a new twist to the affair: Had Mrs Indira Gandhi followed the advice given by the SAS office, the casualties and destruction during Operation Bluestar would have been significantly less. It was the bumbling and incompetent Indians who made the greater mess. Not unexpectedly, this account has left the Sikh leadership in Britain bewildered, confused and angry. In fact, the official response raises more questions. There are references to files that have been burnt. Crucially, relevant correspondence between Mrs Thatcher and Mrs Gandhi has only been selectively made public. The admission from the Indian authorities that the advice given by the SAS office did have an impact has not been addressed at all. No doubt the Conservative leadership would like the matter to be quietly buried as the normal stuff of the daily business between friendly states. However, this is extremely unlikely because it is rich in symbolism and has very direct consequences. The immediate political fallout is likely to be during the next general election (May 2015). The Sikh voters are concentrated in key marginal constituencies in West Midlands and West London. Although traditionally the Sikhs, like other New Commonwealth minorities, have generally voted for the Labour Party, in the last decade there has been a perceptible shift towards the Conservatives, with Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) being the most high-profile MP. Some leading government frontline MPs are also potentially at risk in West London. In coalition politics Britain, where every marginal vote counts, the Labour Party is likely to drive the Conservatives into the ground over the matter. Not surprisingly, it is the Labour MPs who are leading the charge in calling for a more wide-ranging inquiry. If the experience of Northern Ireland is anything to go by, the Labour Party may end up making promises it is unable to fulfil once in government. The symbolic fallout should also not be underestimated. In the last two decades, notably since 9/11 and 7/7, it has been the Muslim community which has been at the receiving end of religious and racial discrimination. At the same time the Sikhs have emerged as the standard bearers of British multiculturalism by drawing on the rich history of Anglo-Sikh relations as the favoured sons and daughters of the empire. The cornerstone of this development has been the enduring respect for the Queen and Prince Charles, who has taken a special interest in Sikh affairs. Although the distinction between the monarchy and the government of the day is an important one, for the British Sikhs in particular and the Sikhs in general, this affair has all the makings of a historical low point in Anglo-Sikh relations. Potentially, it ranks with the treatment of Duleep Singh and denial of Sikh interests during Partition. Without an official apology or a thorough investigation that reveals the full level of British government engagement in the events which unfolded in June 1984, the long-term impact on the British Sikhs is likely to be a deep sense of betrayal and humiliation. Whether in India or in Britain there is nothing more ominous than humiliated Sikhs. At a time when the British Sikhs are emerging as a self-confident pillar of British social political life, the events of the last week have cast a deep shadow over this development. The parallels with the British Muslims since 9/11 cannot be ignored. There is the real possibility that British Sikhs will now become more insular, distrusting the state, and withdraw into the inner shell of Sikh identity. The ingredients for another round of single-issue mobilisation are already there with the existence of one of the most highly organised political lobbies, and recent debates over death penalty in India. A new round of agitation on the British government involvement in Operation Bluestar could have serious unintended consequences, both in Britain and within the Sikh diaspora. It should not be forgotten that the genesis of the Khalistani movement was rooted in Sikh identity politics in the English West Midlands in the 1960s. Such an outcome, of course, might not occur. Young Britain-born Sikhs are increasingly the majority within the community. But deculturalisation, assimilation and denaturing provide no guarantees that the Anglo-Sikh relationship will avoid turbulent phases in future. The life of Maharaja Duleep Singh in the 19th century Britain still provides a haunting reminder that the strongest professions of loyalty remain tempered with an acute awareness of the community's own interest. As Duleep Singh once declared, "We love the English and especially their monarch, but we must remain Sikhs". Even today British Sikh loyalty to the monarchy and the state is very much contingent upon the community's ideals and values not being transgressed or, as in the case of Operation Bluestar, compromised in the interests of the state. The roots of potential dissent, therefore, are implicit in the existence of British Sikhs as a moral and religious community; and any violation of these ideals could further fuel the rise of political Sikhism, whatever the level of integration. It is in light of these pressing compulsions that the Sikh political leadership in Britain has given notice that it does not accept the coalition government's response. As we approach the 30th anniversary of 1984, the UK government will have to come up with a more measured and considered response than Sir Jeremy's report if it is to fully assuage the anger and hurt felt by the Sikhs. The writer is the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and
Humanities, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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MIDDLE |
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Coming to terms with life in city
Harman Grover
 Like
many others before me, I came to Chandigarh with many dreams. A village girl, from an orthodox family, I had to fight many odds before I arrived here. I was so scared. I couldn't even take a walk by myself. Time passed. And now, I have been all over the city, everywhere. It feels good to just walk aimlessly. I just didn't realise when I turned from a hyper, frustrated girl to a girl who wrote a new story on the wind everyday.I was far away from my home. A lot of thoughts occupied my mind. My parents were worried as I was alone. I had no idea about how to start this journey, how to manage myself at a new place, how to deal with new people. And then, when my thoughts mellowed, I realised I have to live up to my little dream. There was solitude around me again. And then I met someone, a new roommate and a companion. She didn't really have any goals. In just two months, I felt a strange love for this place, as if it was my own. What lay at the core of this love? What has this place given me to love it so much? Actually, Chandigarh is as tough as it is beautiful. I was tense, started strolling in the balcony. I thought that being born in a village in unhealthy family conditions was just not good. But being independent and away from all those worries for a few months (my training period) was nice. Then she (my roommate) came. Just the two of us and two cups of coffee! I look back upon a lonely night made less lonely by sharing coffee. The joy of achieving goals is meaningful only when shared with someone else. Being a year senior, I helped her with her studies, and she made me realise what I actually wanted. Being with her, I observed that she embraced herself as she was. She told me that we were much more fortunate than so many others who were unable to afford education. She took me to an orphanage where we spent some time with the kids. This brought some meaning to my life. She used to celebrate positivity and ignore the haters. I learnt to accept the change. I tried to stay with positive people who exuded joy and shared good thoughts. That little room turned into a home. We danced, had parties and fun. We used to sit in the balcony and watch constantly the traffic on the main road at night, for hours. "If you bug me anymore, I'll throw you off this terrace", I said to her one day and she giggled. Life these days tells me: "If you listen to me, come with me to the lane of dreams. Take all your fragrance and brightness in your arms". Whenever I heard life knocking, the heart opened all the windows and we both friends rejoiced. The solitude on the lips has melted. The divide between a rural girl and an urban girl vanished. Only now do I see that my strange love for this place is actually because of my friend from whom I have learnt the essence of being free. There's a new earth and a new sky. Write a new story on the wind and you will see that this place is even more beautiful than you have ever imagined!
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OPED
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Our cities create gendered spaces
Men and women not only use the city space in different ways, they also experience it differently. Women have been disadvantaged by the physical layout of a city, by the distance between workplace and home. Rising crime rates against women demand that our cities be designed for spatial coexistence
Rajesh Gill
Cities are designed for the benefit of men. Models courtesy Department of Indian Theatre, Panjab University. Tribune Photo Pradeep Tewari |
Despite
a long history of urbanisation, a major challenge confronting contemporary cities all over the world is to make cities inclusive, safer, humane and sustainable not only environmentally, but also socially and culturally. Cities will have to evolve methods to forge democratisation, political participation by all urban residents, gender equality and full participation by all residents, irrespective of ethnicity, class, caste and religion. These objectives were forcefully brought out by the United Nations in the Second HABITAT Conference held in 1996 at Istanbul. After more than a decade, however, the Report of ‘State of the World’s Cities 2010/2011’ by UN HABITAT exposes the increasing disparities/divide within cities of developing countries. The 2013 report is not very promising either on this front. The report defines “inclusive cities” as “Cities that share a few basic features that can take different forms in various conditions: they provide the opportunities and supportive mechanisms that enable all residents to develop their full potential and gain their fair shares of the “urban advantage”. In an inclusive city, residents perceive themselves as important contributors to decision making, ranging from political issues to the more mundane routines of daily life….The concepts of human relations, citizenship and civic rights are all inseparable from urban inclusiveness.” Cities as masculine centres
An inclusive city, as defined for the purposes of this report, is one that provides all residents with adequate housing and decent basic services and facilitates equal access to social amenities, opportunities and other public goods that are essential to the well being of everyone. However, scholars led by Marxist feminists have argued that cities are masculine spaces, gendered enough to exclude women from core locales and public spaces. Literature indicates that unlike ethnic, class and racial differences in city spaces, gender specific spaces in a city are not obvious as one finds both men and women in all neighbourhoods. Yet it is true that in spite of this spatial coexistence, men and women not only use city space in different ways but also experience it differently. Early feminism emphasised that women had been disadvantaged by the physical layout of a city. The separation between work and home for instance had greatly reflected and reinforced this disadvantage. This dichotomy was associated by Wilson (2001) to the distinction between public and private domains, with the public linked to the city and the private to the home and the suburbs. Thus, it was argued that although both men and women share spaces in same houses and neighbourhoods, yet they occupy different spaces for work and leisure. Traditionally, men have been moving to their workplace every day, while women have stayed back at home, taking care of their role as homemakers. With this background in place, city centre or downtown was looked upon as a place for men and the suburbs were seen as natural spaces for women and children. The city could be thus divided into discrete male and female zones. Sophie Watson (1988), another feminist scholar, argues that housing location and tenure have played a crucial role in creating patriarchal structures of injustice. Home ownership as the dominant form of housing tenure and suburbanisation as the premier residential site have gone to the disadvantage of women. Watson argues that the ‘suburbanisation of home ownership’ results into social and spatial relations that limit women’s access to urban facilities, resources, labour market and finance capital, simultaneously reinforcing domestic relationships, again to the disadvantage of women. Cities have also been interpreted by feminists from the standpoint of women’s safety. Women often divide the city spaces into places that are ‘safe’ and those as ‘unsafe’. Dora Epstein (1997) says, “There is a story to this fearing, this fearing that maps the cityscapes into places I will go and places I will not. As speaking subjects, sentient members of urban terrains, we can narrate our cartographies of avoidance, our fearing, far better than we can narrate how the fearing came to be. We know, can articulate, what we have deemed ‘unsafe’— the strange, the unfamiliar, the supposedly violent ‘other’ against we have insulated and barricaded ourselves-and what we have deemed as ‘safe’— the lit, the populated, the orderly, or seemingly controlled to which we have clung. We felt justified when violence occurred in the realm of our ‘unsafe’; felt shock when it occurred in our ‘safe’.” The unsafe home, school It has therefore been argued that the women, who consistently and in routine have to use the public spaces for work or other purposes, mark the areas which are safe and others as unsafe. However, all these spaces may not be the same for all women. While some of such spaces such as escalators/lifts, dark and secluded spaces, masculine spaces, may be identified by all women as unsafe, other spaces may be differently defined by women from different background. Schools in many slum areas, as corroborated by the U.N. Report, are not child friendly and in some cases are even hazardous for girls. During menstruation, girls will not attend school if basic toilet facilities are not available at school. The heightened risk of sexual violence in poor, overcrowded classrooms hinders educational prospects for girls. The report further indicates that more or less unwillingly, girls often give in to unwanted sexual advances from boys or even teachers, leaving them exposed to unwanted pregnancies. Reinforcing gender advantages Geographers too have underlined the social relevance of spatial structures. According to another scholar, initial status differences between women and men create certain types of gendered spaces and that institutionalised spatial segregation reinforces existing male advantages. Another feminist geographer has argued that urban structure in capitalist societies reflects the construction of space into masculine centres of production and feminine suburbs of reproduction, whereby definitions of femininity and masculinity are constructed in particular places, most notably the home, workplace and community. How men and women should behave in the home are negotiated not only there but also at work, school and at social events. Dwellings often reflect ideals and patterns of relationships between men and women within societies and families. Studies have shown that women in typically male occupations earned more and had higher status than women in typically women occupations. Women have continued to be concentrated in certain occupations all over the world, occupying separate workplaces from men. Thus in modern workplaces there are not only men’s and women’s jobs but also men’s and women’s spaces. Since more and more women are going out to work and since they do not share most of the workplaces with men, contact between the two genders is reduced. Since public status derives significantly from occupational skills, workplace segregation leads to lower status among women in cities too, spatial relations influencing women’s status. Studies from Thailand, Brazil and China, indicate that younger women easily become commodities selling exotica and sexuality as part of the sensuous image of tourism. Globalisation has also created a strong and sizeable section of consumers among women, particularly in cities. This is especially true in the off shore pink collar industries. Working as telephone receptionists, programmers and print shop workers, these urban women spend a substantial portion of their wages on fashionable clothes, shoes and cosmetics, considered essential for their work status. Some studies indicate that women in the metropolises have been transformed into compulsive shoppers, spending most of their time and money in the shopping malls. Need for inclusiveness The U.N. HABITAT Report also highlights the most vulnerable condition of women and girls in cities of the developing countries. It states that girls and young women living in poverty in cities consistently face steeper challenges than their male peers when it comes to acquiring the knowledge and skills they need to live healthy, productive lives. The Report further states that a majority of young female slum dwellers tend to bear children at an earlier age than their non-slum counterparts. Women who do work in developing countries tend to do so in the informal economy, owing to lack of formal job opportunities in many regions, leading to confinement of slum dwelling women to largely informal jobs. The report thus suggests that continued emphasis on expanded opportunities for girls and young women, therefore, would be an essential requirement if the Millennium Development Goals are to be met in cities. With the increased crimes against women, especially in cities, a more participatory approach to urban planning, with an increased stress on “social planning” is urgently required. It is high time for urban planners to realise that cities even in countries like India that claim to be democratic, continue to be gendered instead of being inclusive. The writer is Professor, Department of Sociology, Panjab University, Chandigarh.
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