Urvashi Sarkar

Thoughts, stories and ideas.

Tag: The Print

  • Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The marvellous freedom fighter and feminist that India forgot about

    Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The marvellous freedom fighter and feminist that India forgot about

    Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Sarojini Naidu during a Simla Conference | Facebook, @GandhiHeritagePortal

    Published in The Print. 3 April, 2018

    A reading of ‘A Passionate Life’, a collection of writings by and on Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, leaves the reader both mystified and in wonder. The wonder is because of the sheer scale of Kamaladevi’s contributions to the national struggle and subsequent nation building, whereas the mystery is why such an important figure in modern Indian history should have been neglected and forgotten.

    ‘A Passionate Life’ is testimony to the importance of Kamaladevi’s considerable work in various fields, ranging from the cooperative movement, settling of Partition refugees and handicrafts, to film and theatre. The editors, Ellen Carol DuBois and Vinay Lal, and the publishing house, Zubaan Books, must be commended for producing such a comprehensive volume that attempts to do justice to the full spectrum of Kamaladevi’s work — through her own writings, as well as essays that provide the necessary context.

    Kamaladevi’s writings take the reader to her life and times, which were difficult but heady. She had immersed herself in the freedom struggle — organising meetings and protests, participating in the salt satyagraha and other historic occasions.

    The influence of Gandhi over a generation of freedom fighters, including her, is evident. Though it would have been easy to be under Gandhi’s spell, Kamaladevi did not hesitate to question him. For example, when she felt that Gandhi had failed to include women’s participation in the salt satyagraha, she travelled to Surat to meet him and insisted that he give a call for women’s participation.

    Above all, Kamaladevi was independent-minded and refused to bend to authority or rules that she felt were rooted in injustice or discrimination. Her correspondence indicates that, during her travels abroad, she refused to report to police in Hong Kong, despite orders to do so each day, and completely ignored regulations. Calling herself “a tough guy”, Kamaladevi refused to submit to their insults. In her essay ‘Chasing me over the Globe’, Julie Laut notes how Kamaladevi had the British bureaucracy on edge because of her outspoken socialist anticolonial activism, which she displayed even while abroad.

    While Kamaladevi was in the United States, Japan, or China, she was not only drumming up support for India, but was also deeply interested in the concerns of those countries. She was aware of discrimination against blacks in the United States, and forged solidarity with them. Her correspondence includes an account of racism that she faced in the United States and her fearless response to it. In Japan, she was bold enough to speak out against Japanese imperialism. Kamaladevi formed solidarity with women wherever she went. These included Eleanor Roosevelt in the United States, Madame Chiang Kai Shek in Hong Kong and rural women in Japan.

    While Kamaladevi would be easily considered a feminist, she refused to call herself one. DuBois, in her introductory essay, examines Kamaladevi’s disavowal of feminism at length, and her explanations provide a glimpse into the dialectic of Indian women activists with feminism.

    As early as 1947, Kamaladevi was arguing for the right of the housewife to be recognised as a distinct economic entity, and equal pay for women. Noting the surprise of the British at Indian women getting the right to vote very early on, she wrote that the Indian women’s movement had a relatively smoother sailing compared to those in the West. She worried about the loss of momentum of the women’s movement in India after Independence, and felt that bourgeoisie women had failed to represent the interests of working-class women.

    Kamaladevi’s corpus of work was immense. As one reads about all she did, one can only marvel at her.

    The editors have done a stellar service by recovering Kamaldevi and collecting her writings from varied sources over the decades. These writings show her impressive grasp over the whole gamut of subjects. Fascinating as they are, the essays by Devaki Jain, Nico Slate and others are equally interesting for the various interpretations offered of her work and beliefs. Yet, for the wealth of writing that the book makes available on the public persona of Kamaladevi, one is left wondering about her personal life, of which we only get a few glimpses here and there.

    Recently, I found myself at the India International Centre in Delhi, another institution she had nurtured. For the first time, I noticed her portrait and was reminded of the remarkable and passionate life she had led and of her words: “Still, when I look back, I feel it was worth it, a span of life dotted with Herculean efforts, memorable events beset with pitfalls, all the same a rewarding experience of infinite value.”

    Cover photo:Facebook, @GandhiHeritagePortal

    Read original article: https://theprint.in/pageturner/afterword/kamaladevi-chattopadhyay-the-freedom-fighter-feminist-that-india-forgot-about/46710/

  • Azeem Ibrahim’s book on Rohingyas is a portrait of a people persecuted left, right and centre

    Published in The Print. 4 February 2018

    If Azeem Ibrahim’s book were to be summarised in one line, it would indeed be this— ‘The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide’ examines attitudes towards the Rohingyas in different periods of Myanmar’s history and shows the hatred meted out to them.

    The writer prods the motivations of various actors – whether the military, Aung San SuuKyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), the Buddhist extremists and the international community to show their collective complicity in the persecution and ethnic cleansing of a people.

    By constantly marking the Rohingya as outsiders who did not historically belong to Myanmar, the military rulers of Myanmar and their supporters strengthened the frameworks of exclusion to such a point that it became possible to deny them any form of citizenship and render them stateless.

    Ibrahim uses census and other historical records to trace the presence of Rohingyas in the Arakan region to the period well before the British invasion of 1826. After the British left, it became important to define who is Burmese; as being a Burmese came to mean being a Buddhist and the military had a strong hand in conflating the basis of citizenship with being Buddhist.

    The book is as much an analysis of the politics that dominates modern Myanmar, as it is about the tracing of systematic discrimination against the Rohingyas. Some of the most interesting parts of the book pertain to the NLD, which was the main opposition to the military rule, but also dependent on support from Buddhist monks, including extremists intolerant of the Rohingyas.

    Ibrahim notes that NLD has failed to directly challenge the military, in part because of the common interests of the military and some of the NLD elite. In fact, attacking the Rohingyas is one issue that the military and some of the Buddhists and NLD can agree on. The references to Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi show her to be equally complicit in her refusal to act for the Rohingyas and her beliefs about them.

    The motivations that drive Myanmar’s military leadership to maintain their grip over the country are brought out in detail. Their suspicion towards the international community is balanced by a need to trade and get weapons. Ibrahim reminds us that the international community which could have used much more leverage over Myanmar’s rulers has failed to do so. Following the 2012 massacres of the Rohingyas, the United States and Europe actually praised the ‘even-handed’ approach of the regime in containing the violence.

    The symbiotic relationship between Buddhism and the state are emphasised in Ibrahim’s analysis. The rigid elements of Theravada Buddhism, the Ma Ba Tha and 969 Movement, and the emergence of ‘Buddhism’s Bin Laden’ show the complete lack of tolerance for non-Buddhists and the hatred for Muslims in particular.

    In this analysis, it becomes important for Ibrahim to trace the reasons for the greater persecution of the Rohingyas as an ethnic minority compared to the other ethnic minorities of Myanmar. After Burma gained independence, life for Rohingyas was as difficult as life for other non-Burman ethnic groups. But the deterioration of the economy in the 1970s created the need to find internal enemies who would serve as a distraction. The Rohingya were ideal because they were unarmed, easily identifiable, spoke a non-Burmese language and were Muslims in a country with an overwhelming Buddhist population.

    Over various electoral cycles and periods of framing the Constitution, the rights of Rohingyas were systematically clipped and Buddhist identity became the base for citizenship. The 2014 census excluded them and forced them to identify as ‘foreigners’.

    Interestingly, the term used by the ruling dispensation for Rohingyas is ‘Bengalis’, that is, people who do not belong to Myanmar, but Bangladesh and should therefore go there.

    As life becomes increasingly difficult for Rohingyas in Myanmar, with restrictions on marriage, having children, travel and being forced to live in temporary camps, Rohingyas who flee the country do not fare much better. Many end up being trafficked and become slaves and offer cheap labour in Thailand’s fishing industry, while the women are forced into prostitution.

    Ibrahim’s book is ultimately a warning— what is happening to the Rohingyas qualifies as genocide. Though written before the 2017 massacre and mass displacement of Rohingyas, it delves into previous periods of violence and the reasons thereof, provide the much needed context for understanding the scale of one of the worst humanitarian disasters that has been unfolding for a long time, which the world has noticed only now.

    Read the original article: https://theprint.in/pageturner/afterword/azeem-ibrahims-the-rohingyas-inside-myanmars-hidden-genocide-is-portrait-of-a-people-persecuted-left-right-and-centre/33378/

  • ‘The People Next door’ provides a wide angle view of India-Pakistan relations

    People Next Door, book cover and the author TCA Raghavan

    Published in The Print. 23 December 2017

    The India-Pakistan story has seen multiple iterations, told from various perspectives. Reams of literature have scrutinised the relationship, whether the layers of ties between the people or bilateral issues between the governments. Various authors have written about rifts and wars caused by disputes over land and water or spoken about the common grounds of history, language, sport and culture. We have had hardnosed militaristic analyses and conciliatory peace perspectives. Beyond this, can one have anything new to add?

    This is where T.C.A. Raghavan’s work, intriguingly titled The People Next door. The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan comes in. Raghavan who was the deputy high commissioner in Islamabad from 2003 to 2007 and high commissioner from 2013 to 2015, finds the gaps and spaces in the telling of well-known historical events, bringing to light little known and curious aspects of the relationship.

    The heads of states and foreign ministers who decided the course of history were not just names but real people with idiosyncrasies and prejudices, in Raghavan’s telling. Pakistan’s military rulers like Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq are not evil incarnate, but people who tried in their own way to resolve differences between the two countries. Therefore, we are told that Ayub Khan could have taken advantage by attacking India during the 1962 war with China, but chose not to. We learn about the great personal camaraderie between Morarji Desai and Zia-ul-Haq, but also about the subsequent coldness between Indira Gandhi and Zia. We also receive an account of Track-II peace efforts and the fate of these initiatives.

    As Indians, we are aware of the different views within the country on Pakistan. But how do Pakistanis view India? This is also where the book succeeds — in repeatedly holding up mirror images of the two peoples and how both view each other, rather than offering only a one-sided view of history. The author constantly evokes the title of his book through the course of chapters — we are constantly made aware of us and them of us — the people next door, staring at each other from close quarters but hopelessly distant and separated.

    In times of hyper nationalism, Raghavan’s is a measured voice of balance which gives us a view of what was happening behind the curtains of official history and formal motions of diplomacy on both sides. His account of the Bangladesh war of independence and its very different impacts on India and Pakistan make us aware of how crushing it was for Pakistan and how at diplomatic forums like the United Nations, Indian delegates were instructed by Swaran Singh to not display triumphalism.

    Raghavan attempts to show to us the flesh and blood of the relationship than just mapping the skeleton. How did people interpret the meaning of Partition in their lives? The fate of properties and belongings left behind when choosing the other country as home is exemplified in the story of ‘Bombay’s Jinnah House’ owned by Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Who should have legitimate claims to it? The daughter of Jinnah who lived in India, his sister who lived in Pakistan, or the government of India or Pakistan?

    Raghavan reminds us that the business of Partition had to be conducted too — the mass flows of people, administration of Hyderabad, Junagadh and Kashmir, division of territories and water bodies. He writes that the two governments had to work closely together and after the horrific violence of Punjab, were concerned about how the flows of people between the erstwhile East Pakistan and West Bengal could be peaceful.

    Harking back to another era, we are taken to a time when it was possible for thousands to travel to Lahore to watch a test match and for the governor general of Pakistan, Malik Ghulam Muhammad, to be present at India’s 1955 Republic Day celebrations. We are also made privy to the awkward episode of the high commissioner Kewal Singh attending the wedding reception of the son of Pakistan’s finance minister in Rawalpindi, coinciding with the outbreak of the 1965 war. The war was indeed a turning point in ties. Travel ceased and getting a visa became a herculean task. The ups and downs would thus continue over the decades.

    Raghavan’s book provides us a wide angle view of India-Pakistan relations and ought to be read by anyone interested in a humanist narration of ties between the two countries, told with a good dose of empathy.

    Read the original article: https://theprint.in/pageturner/afterword/people-next-door-provides-wide-angle-view-india-pakistan-relations/24466/

Urvashi Sarkar

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