To counter the Maoists the intelligence agencies and the police are targeting their urban support bases and safe shelters. In the process they are indiscriminately arresting and torturing activists who are fighting for the rights of the masses even if they are not in any way connected with the Maoists. One such example which has got considerable media coverage is that of the persecution of the activists of the Kabir Kala Manch (KKM). This is a group of Dalit activists in Maharashtra who use public performances involving songs and plays to propagate a programme of emancipation for the Dalits. The police in its perverted wisdom arrested one of their activists on the charge of being linked to the Maoists and slapped draconian sections on him. However, many civil society organisations in India and abroad protested this blatant oppression on false charges and now they have got some judicial relief. Anand Patwardhan of the Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee (KKMDC) reports -
A non Adivasi person's respectful celebration of the struggles of the Bhil indigenous people of India against the depredations of modern development - mostly exhilarating but sometimes depressing stories of a people who believe in drinking life to the leas.
Anarcho-environmentalism allegorised
The name Anaarkali in the present context has many meanings - Anaar symbolises the anarchism of the Bhils and kali which means flower bud in Hindi stands for their traditional environmentalism. Anaar in Hindi can also mean the fruit pomegranate which is said to be a panacea for many ills as in the Hindi idiom - "Ek anar sou bimar - One pomegranate for a hundred ill people"! - which describes a situation in which there is only one remedy available for giving to a hundred ill people and so the problem is who to give it to. Thus this name indicates that anarcho-environmentalism is the only cure for the many diseases of modern development! Similarly kali can also imply a budding anarcho-environmentalist movement. Finally according to a legend that is considered to be apocryphal by historians Anarkali was the lover of Prince Salim who was later to become the Mughal emperor Jehangir. Emperor Akbar did not approve of this romance of his son and ordered Anarkali to be bricked in alive into a wall in Lahore in Pakistan but she escaped. Allegorically this means that anarcho-environmentalists can succeed in bringing about the escape of humankind from the self-destructive love of modern development that it is enamoured of at the moment and they will do this by simultaneously supporting women's struggles for their rights.
Saturday, June 29, 2013
A Paranoid State
To counter the Maoists the intelligence agencies and the police are targeting their urban support bases and safe shelters. In the process they are indiscriminately arresting and torturing activists who are fighting for the rights of the masses even if they are not in any way connected with the Maoists. One such example which has got considerable media coverage is that of the persecution of the activists of the Kabir Kala Manch (KKM). This is a group of Dalit activists in Maharashtra who use public performances involving songs and plays to propagate a programme of emancipation for the Dalits. The police in its perverted wisdom arrested one of their activists on the charge of being linked to the Maoists and slapped draconian sections on him. However, many civil society organisations in India and abroad protested this blatant oppression on false charges and now they have got some judicial relief. Anand Patwardhan of the Kabir Kala Manch Defence Committee (KKMDC) reports -
No comments:
Post a Comment