Artists in India Protest “Growing Intolerance” and “ideological Viciousness”

Tribune India,  November 6 2015

24 filmmakers, Arundhati Roy return their awards

 

Arundhati Roy

Mumbai, November 5

Another 24 filmmakers, including Kundan Shah of “Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro” fame and Saeed Mirza who directed “Nukkad”, besides writer Arundhati Roy today returned their national awards over “growing intolerance”, voicing fears that the country’s robust democracy might be “coming apart” in the current atmosphere.

With this, at least 75 members of the intelligentsia have either returned national or literary awards, in an escalation of protests by writers, historians, filmmakers and scientists even as writer Nayantara Sahgal reiterated that “secularism was under threat” like never before. Sahgal was among the first to return the honours when she gave back the Sahitya Akademi award in October.

India: “Justice” System Produces Political Prisoners

[This review of a recent film, “Court”,  reveals the fundamental injustice of the Indian “judicial” system, and especially the systemic suppression of political opponents with laws created during British colonialism that were designed to suppress anti-colonial movements.   It must be noted , however, that the New York Times readily and arrogantly publishes critiques of other countries, but ignores near-identical  systemic injustices in the American system and in many other US-allied countries. — Frontlines ed.]

Movie Review: ‘Court’ Is Chaitanya Tamhane’s Unsparing Look at Justice in India

“Court” — NYT Critics’ Pick

By STEPHEN HOLDEN, New York Times, JULY 14, 2015

Vira Sathidar, right, in a scene from “Court,” directed by Chaitanya Tamhane. Credit Zeitgeist Films

 The wheels of justice grind slowly and mercilessly in “Court,” Chaitanya Tamhane’s quiet, devastating critique of the antiquated Indian legal system. As it follows the case of Narayan Kamble (Vira Sathidar), a 65-year-old folk singer and social activist accused of inciting what is presumed to be the suicide of a sewer worker in Mumbai, the film conjures an absurdist nightmare of bureaucratic incompetence, indifference and social inequity.

Narayan is first seen teaching children Indian geography in a crowded Mumbai classroom, then hurrying to board a bus that takes him to an outdoor theater where he is introduced to a small crowd as “the people’s poet.” Backed by a troupe of musicians, he sings a forceful song urging everyone to rise up against “religious, racist, casteist and nationalist jungles.” Midway through, Narayan is arrested.

The remainder of the movie observes his protracted trial. A travesty of justice that another filmmaker might have directed as a farce, the work has a gravity, a measured pace and a detachment reminiscent of a Frederick Wiseman documentary — “Court,” however, is fictional.

CPI (Maoist): “Condemn the arrests and torture of Maoist activists in Kolkata and Mumbai!”

COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MAOIST) — CENTRAL COMMITTEE — Press Release — March 2, 2012

In the last week of February 2012, the police have arrested activists of our Party including some senior cadres from Kolkata and Mumbai. On the specific intelligence inputs provided by the murderous APSIB, joint forces of police and STF of AP, Maharashtra and West Bengal have raided the shelters of our comrades in Kolkata and Mumbai suburbs and arrested at least nine comrades including two women comrades. Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna, Deepak Kumar Pargania, Sukumar Mandal, Bapi Mudi and Sambhu Charan were arrested from Kolkata while Comrades Dinesh Wankhede, Aasimkumar Bhattacharya, Suman Gawde and Paru Patel were picked up from Thane in Maharashtra. Comrades Sadanala Ramakrishna alias Santosh (62) and Aasimkumar Bhattacharya (65) were the seniors among the arrested. Senior comrade Sadanala Ramakrishna has been working for the revolution for at least four decades. He has been ailing with serious health problems for so many years. A mechanical engineer graduated in prestigious Regional Engineering College (REC) of Warangal from where martyr leaders like Surapaneni Janardhan and Azad were emerged as great revolutionaries of their times, Comrade Ramakrishna sacrificed his bright life for the cause of liberation of the downtrodden.

Both the two women comrades arrested – Vijaya and Suman – have been undergoing medical treatment for some time staying in the shelters outside the struggle zones. Particularly, comrade Vijaya has been suffering from serious heart problems.

The police forces, better known for worst kind of cruelty, have been torturing these comrades mentally and physically in custody. They have foisted several false cases against these comrades so that they could be languished behind the bars forever.

Capitalism’s Real Gravediggers

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Beware the ‘Gush-Up Gospel’ Behind India’s Billionaires

by Arundhati Roy, Financial Times, ZNet

Antilla Mansion on Altamount Road in Mumbai

Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “pay your respects to our new ruler.”

Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I’d read about this, the most expensive dwelling ever built, the 27 floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the 600 servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn – a soaring wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches, bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, “trickle down” had not worked.

But “gush-up” has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2bn, India’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to a quarter of gross domestic product.

The word on the street (and in The New York Times) is, or at least was, that the Ambanis were not living in Antilla. Perhaps they are there now, but people still whisper about ghosts and bad luck, vastu and feng shui. I think it’s all Marx’s fault. Capitalism, he said, “ … has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, it is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”.

In India, the 300m of us who belong to the new, post-“reforms” middle class – the market – live side by side with the ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800m who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than 50 cents a day.

Mr Ambani is personally worth more than $20bn. He has a controlling majority stake in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a company with a market capitalisation of Rs2.41tn ($47bn) and an array of global business interests. RIL has a 95 per cent stake in Infotel, which a few weeks ago bought a major share in a media group that runs television news and entertainment channels. Infotel owns the only national 4G broadband licence. He also has a cricket team.

RIL is one of a handful of corporations, some family-owned, some not, that run India. Some of the others are Tata, Jindal, Vedanta, Mittal, Infosys, Essar and the other Reliance (ADAG), owned by Mukesh’s brother Anil. Their race for growth has spilt across Europe, central Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Tatas, for example, run more than 100 companies in 80 countries. They are one of India’s largest private-sector power companies.

Since the cross-ownership of businesses is not restricted by the “gush-up gospel” rules, the more you have, the more you can have. Meanwhile, scandal after scandal has exposed, in painful detail, how corporations buy politicians, judges, bureaucrats and media houses, hollowing out democracy, retaining only its rituals. Huge reserves of bauxite, iron ore, oil and natural gas worth trillions of dollars were sold to corporations for a pittance, defying even the twisted logic of the free market. Cartels of corrupt politicians and corporations have colluded to underestimate the quantity of reserves, and the actual market value of public assets, leading to the siphoning off of billions of dollars of public money. Then there’s the land grab – the forced displacement of communities, of millions of people whose lands are being appropriated by the state and handed to private enterprise. (The concept of inviolability of private property rarely applies to the property of the poor.) Mass revolts have broken out, many of them armed. The government has indicated that it will deploy the army to quell them.

India: Libraries discovered to be instruments of revolution

[A persistent investigation appears to have revealed a suspicious library and suspicious readers.–Frontline ed.]

Hindustan Times,  November 24, 2010

‘Naxals used library to spread their ideology’

The banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), dubbed as the single largest threat to India’s internal security by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, had set up a base in the city to propagate their ideology and to connect with the youth. The Naxalite allegedly used a reading library situated in the  slums along the Jogeshwari-Vikhroli Link Road (JVLR) in the western suburbs for this purpose, a witness has told the police. The witness in his statement to the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) has named Surya Devra Prabhakar, an alleged naxalite leader who was arrested by the ATS on January 19.

Prabhakar, a member of the politburo and one of the top most leaders of CPI (Maoists), was arrested from Kanjurmarg and he had been working in the city since 1991, trying to lure people towards the naxalite ideology, the witness has said.

Prabhakar had been a member of the organisation since 1978 and was a member of the Maharashtra State Committee of the CPI (Maoists). He allegedly controlled operations for Dahanu, Wada, Palghar and other rural areas and had, therefore, set up base in Mumbai.

“He used to preach his ideology before a group of people at the library. Prerna Wachnalay, situated on JVLR helped him get an audience,” said the witness in his statement.

According to the witness, whose testimony is part of the charge sheet filed by the ATS against Prabhakar in August, Prabhakar used to regularly visit the slums at JVLR and had developed friendship with locals by offering them help by paying their bills and performing their small chores. Prabhakar spoke of the naxalite struggle and activities of the erstwhile People’s War Group (PWG), the witness has stated in his statement.

When the Hindustan Times visited the library on Monday, it was found locked and locals there refused to say anything about it. “It opens at 7pm and people come here to read books,” a man in mid-20s, who was sitting nearby said. He refused to talk further.