THE HINDU EDITORIAL – MAY, 26, 2022
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Communal clouds Kerala and its government
must mobilize opinion against communalism of all hues The slogans raised by a child at a rally in
Kerala’s Alappuzha on May 21 were chilling not merely for the death threats
that they make. The fact that an innocent child could be indoctrinated and
tutored such that he could call for violence portends a communal storm that
is making landfall in the State. Organizers of the rally, the Social
Democratic Party of India (SDPI), disowned the slogans, but not in any
reassuring manner. The Islamist group’s claim that its rally was to save the
republic does not cut ice, considering its track record and the threatening
posturing that it has engaged in, in recent years. It is merely using the
democratic space and the prevailing environment of Hindutva upsurge to
advance its dangerous, nihilistic communal agenda. At least five people have
been killed in Kerala in SDPI-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) rivalry in
the State in recent months. In April, in Palakkad, an SDPI worker and an RSS
worker were killed within a span of one day; in December 2021, a State
Secretary of the SDPI and a Bharatiya Janata Party OBC Morcha State Secretary
were killed in Alappuzha in a similar pattern. This was preceded by the
murder of an RSS worked in Palakkad, in November. All these killings were
brutal in nature, and added an unmistakable communal hue to violence in
Kerala unlike the occasional clashes between the RSS and the CPI(M). The
latest incident is not an isolated one. Muslim angst is being harnessed by
extremist organisations that dismiss the Indian Union Muslim League, a
constituent of the Congress-led United Democratic Front, as a futile
political platform for the community. The BJP and the RSS are pushing hard to
expand their presence in the State. A toxic cloud of communalism is
enveloping the State, as Hindu, Christian, and Islamic groups, and devious
politicians are trying to profit from disharmony. The Opposition Congress and
the BJP have condemned the Alappuzha incident and criticized the ruling
CPI(M) for its disturbing ambiguity on the issue. The Kerala police have
filed an FIR in connection with the provocative slogans, but what is missing
is a political message. Both in words and action, the Kerala government and
the ruling Left Democratic Front led by the CPI(M) must make it clear that
any call or mobilization for violence is unacceptable in the State. Political
expediency must not be a determinant in responses to communalism. Along with
strong administrative measures, Kerala must shore up all its inherent
strengths through popular mobilization against communalism of all hues –
Hindu, Christian or Muslim. The government must take the lead. Unending tragedy The U.S. must impose a ban
on assault weapons, expand checks for gun ownership The U.S. once again faced the grim consequences of
its unwillingness to tackle gun violence at its source when a man shot dead
at least 19 children and two adults, including a teacher, at an elementary school
in Uvalde, Texas. The shooting marks the worst such attack in the U.S. since
the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attack in 2018, when a former
student of the school in Parkland, Florida, opened fire, killing 17 people
and wounding 17 others. A similar major shooting that led to outrage yet saw
no permanent reform in guns laws occurred at Sandy Hook elementary school in
Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, in which 20 first graders and six school
employees perished. The Uvalde tragedy has also shaken the nation for it
comes scarcely 10 days after a shooting at a supermarket store in Buffalo,
New York, which officials described as a racist hate crime, claiming 10
lives. Overall, there have been at least 26 school shootings in 2022 alone
and at least 118 incidents since 2018, according to reports that have tracked
this statistic over the past four years. Last year witnessed 34 school
shootings, the highest number during this period; there were 24 incidents
each in 2019 and 2018 and 10 in 2020. Addressing the nation after the Uvalde
attack, U.S. president Joe Biden made an urgent plea for common-sense gun
control reform, saying, “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the
gun lobby?.. I am sick and tired of it. We have to act… these kinds of mass
shootings rarely happen elsewhere in the world… It’s time to turn this pain
into action. Yet, it
would be unrealistic to hope for meaningful change in the U.S.’s view on the
Second Amendment, which assures citizens of the right to bear arms. Several
Presidents, mostly Democrats, have tried and failed to get even basic gun
control laws passed through congress. Former President Barack Obama, for
example, came away frustrated after Capitol Hill rejected no fewer than 17
attempts by his White House to bring common-sense gun control to the floor of
Congress. While conservative lawmakers seek to score political points by
fiercely defending the constitutional right to bear arms, it is common
knowledge now that at the heart of the U.S. Congress’s refusal to stamp out
gun violence in schools and other public spaces is shadowy lobbying on
Capitol Hill by the deep-pocketed and well-networked National Rifle
Association and, along with them, the entire gun manufacturing industry. If
Mr. Biden genuinely wishes to clamp down on this violence, which has ripped
into America’s soul for several generations now, he may have no choice but to
follow in Mr. Obama’s steps and use his presidential power of executive
actions to enforce gun control measures. These should, at a minimum, include
an assault weapons ban, expanded background checks for gun ownership and
boosted funding for federal enforcement agencies regulating gun
proliferation. Driving
the Balkanisation of India There is an ascendancy of
a political ideology with little understanding of the idea of India as a
coalition of the willing PULAPRE BALAKRISHNAN One of the reasons for celebrating the completion
of 75 years of India is that it has survived as long. At Independence there
had been skepticism whether it would. The chief doubter was Winston
Churchill, who claimed that India was no more than a geography, the peoples
of which the British had helpfully brought under one umbrella through
conquest. But as we celebrate India’s journey, it would do to recognise that
today forces are at work that weaken its unity. In particular, two projects
that appear to have the blessing of the present political dispensation at the
Centre have the potential to actually destroy it. The Gyanvapi issue First, we watch with shock and awe the developments
related to the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi. The court has been petitioned to
allow Hindus to worship at what has for centuries been a mosque. Impartial
observers state that there is incontrovertible evidence that the mosque was
once a temple that was demolished at the orders of the Mughal emperor
Aurangzeb. Now, we have the Places of Worship Act of 1991 that disallows a
change of status of a religious structure. This ought to be sufficient to
protect the mosque concerned from the threat of a change in its status as a
site of worship for Muslims. But should we see this solely in legal terms?
Should, if it comes to that, Indian Muslims of today be asked to vacate a
mosque based on an act in the distant past that they are not responsible for?
Should India’s Hindus not rise to a magnanimity that would reconcile them to
the injustice done to their ancestors, heart-rending as it is even to
imagine? Not only are they the overwhelming majority of this country now but
they also have plenty of places to worship in. From another democracy Last year, the United States President, Joe Biden,
even if he now enjoys a diminished popularity globally, made an important
speech at Tulsa, Oklahoma. U.S., where he had gone to commemorate the 1921
Tulsa Race Massacre. He had said, “We do ourselves no favors by pretending
none of this ever happened or it doesn’t impact us today, because it still
does impact us today. We can’t just choose to learn what we want to know, and
not what we should know. We should know the good, the bad, everything. That’s
what great nations do. They come to terms with their dark sides….” Mr. Biden
was suggesting that while Americans must remember, they must also move on
without hoarding grievances. This message is valid for both the Hindus and the
Muslims of India, depending upon the context. There is
something incomplete in the project of singling out Muslim rule in north
India for a record of violence in our history. Though it is yet to be
established whether the decline of the great Dravidian settlements of
northern India was due to Aryan expansion or environmental causes such as
drought, we have reason to believe that this expansion was not without
violence. After all, verses in the Rig Veda invoke Indra, the Pre-eminent
Aryan god, as the slayer of the “dasyu”, literally “the enslaved” inhabitants
of India. All over northern India, there was still quite recently a pride
expressed in the subjugation of the local population by the Aryans upon their
arrival. But Hindu nationalism sits uncomfortably with such exultation, for
it renders the Aryans foreigners in this land, without the legitimacy to
define its cultural norms. The pattern of settlement in India whereby the
Adivasi have been corralled into inaccessible spaces such as mountains or
banished to the extremities of villages suggest that this was the result of a
concerted move to exclude them from social life. This could not have been
possible without the threat of violence. Another project, of
language Speaking of the destruction of religious icons,
there is evidence that the Aryans may not have been so ecumenical after all.
Archaeologists who participated in the excavation on sites of Harappan
civilization in western India have pointed to the deliberate destruction of
remnants of the phallic symbol carved in stone. Admonition of the worship of
shishnadeva, literally phallus god, may be found in the sacred literature of
Vedic Hinduism. So, the destruction of the religious icons of conquered
peoples in India is not confined to Islamic rule in north India. For some
Indians, it dates back into our pre-history. This is not to even suggest a
moral equivalence, for violence against any defenseless people is cowardly,
but it does serve to bring some perspective into the debate about retributive
justice related to the injustices of the past. It is the Adivasi amongst us
who are least likely to have blood on their hands. Aligned
to the project of isolating the religious minorities of India is Hindu
nationalism’s second project – that of establishing Hindi as the dominant
language in the country. Purely a reflection of the will to dominate, it
cannot be rationalized as the pursuit of retributive justice, and, unlike the
other project, has unabashed state support. The issue has remained dormant in
the country after a very mature settlement of it in the 1960s, whereby it was
agreed that English would be used in the communications of the Government of
India so long as the southern States want it. Since
2014, we have seen a renewed thrust being given to Hindi by the Central
government. The attempt to impose Hindi on the rest of the country is both
insidious and predates the present. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being
disingenuous when he speaks of the equal importance of all Indian languages
while his Home Minister does not miss an opportunity to remind the country of
the special status of Hindi. Far too much time and resources of Central
government institutions are wasted on promoting Hindi when all its
functionaries understand English perfectly well. Nothing but linguistic
chauvinism keeps this pursuit alive. Even the so-called socialists of north
India are not above it, as revealed by Mulayam Singh, then Chief Minister of
Uttar Pradesh, writing in Hindi, in the 1990s, to his counterpart in Kerala,
a politician with a far longer tenure in public life. Sadly, the sentiment
that Hindi should prevail is quite widespread in India, as seen in the recent
comments of Bollywood actors. These purveyors of mostly costume drama may
aspire for Hollywood status but do not have the large-heartedness of a Marlon
Brando, who championed the rights of native Americans. The
relentless thrust to impose Hindi came close to succeeding in the mid-1960s,
but it took arson and self-immolation in Madras State to fend it off. Today,
the moment is less propitious for the Hindi chauvinists. The south is far
more advanced than the Hindi heartland in terms of both social and economic
progress. In fact, it serves as a beacon of hope for north Indian workers in
search of a livelihood. Even the ordinary southerner sees Hindi as the
language of the most backward part of the country, one where Muslims are
bullied, women are subjugated and politicians are treated as minor feudal.
So, why would south Indians agree to be ruled in the language of a region
they view as unworthy of emulation? It is not even necessary for them to
recall that Hindi is the language of the most recent migrant to this ancient
land. They simply reject the majoritarian grounds on which it is deemed to be
the national language. A diverse peoples Constitutionally, India is a union of States. Its
founders crafted an entity that has so far held out under great adversity.
But India is also a coalition of peoples that are diverse in terms of their
histories and culture. For it to hold together requires leaders with large
hearts and not merely big chests. We see today the ascendancy of a political
ideology with little understanding of the idea of India as a coalition of the
willing. Incapable of winning hearts and minds, it has spawned a divisive
politics which has the potential of wrecking a union put together with great
care. Only a determinedly active citizenry can avert this outcome. India must shift the
discourse on abortion rights It is not just a family
planning and maternal health issue, but also a sexual health and reproductive
rights issue SONALI VADI & SUMEGHA ASTHANA As two women public health practitioners who have
studied and worked in India and the United States, we voice our solidarity
with women in both countries at this precarious moment for abortion rights. Our public
health journeys started with witnessing maternal deaths in India. One of us,
on her first clinical rotation, saw a woman die of sepsis, infection in the blood,
due to an unsafe backstreet abortion. And the other, during her rural health
internship in Uttar Pradesh, witnessed a pregnant woman die on a wooden
hand-pulled cart because she was unable to reach the hospital in time. The
images of these two women with their swollen abdomen and pale, dying faces
still haunt us, as we reflect on the privileges we enjoy as women belonging
to a certain class and caste in India. The facts Woman, pregnant people and transgender persons in
India struggle every day to exert their choice about birthing and their
bodily autonomy. Yet, despite this bleak reality, netizens on social media in
India claim that the country is more progressive than the try is more
progressive than the U.S. on abortion rights because we have the Medical
Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 (“MTP Act”). Such a self-congratulatory
attitude in neither in good faith not is it factually correct. According
to the World Health Organization, six out of 10 of all unintended pregnancies
end in an induced abortion. Around 45% of all abortions are unsafe, almost
all of which (97%) take place in developing countries. As per a nationally
representative study published in PLOS One journal in 2014, abortions account
for 10% of maternal deaths in India. The recent
round of the National Family Health Survey 2019-21, shows that 3% of all
pregnancies in India result in abortion. More than half (53%) of abortions in
India are performed in the private sector, whereas only 20% are performed in
the public sector – partly because public facilities often lack abortion
services. More than a quarter of abortions (27%) are performed by the woman
herself at home. In
another a fact-finding study published in The Lance in 2018, 73% of
all abortions in India in 2015 were medication abortions, and even though
these may have been safe – many of these are illegal as per the MTP Act, if
they occur without the approval of a registered medical practitioner. Another
5% of all abortions were outside of health facilities with methods other than
medication abortion. These risky abortions are performed by untrained people
under unhygienic conditions using damaging methods such as insertion of
objects, ingestion f various substances, abdominal pressure, etc. A recent
study found that sex-selective abortions in India could lead to 6.8 million
fewer girls being born between 2017 to 2030. Many may
be unaware of these disturbing statistics and facts. But we all know of at
least one adolescent girl among our family or friends or networks who had to
travel to another city in order to find a ‘non-judgmental’ obstetrician or
who had to arrange money to access abortion in the private sector. Or, we may
have heard of someone who has aborted a female foetus because the family wanted
a son; or know of a mother who escaped the pressure of such forced abortion
because she did not want to lose her pregnancy. Obstacles The MTP Act, first enacted in 1971 and then
amended in 2021, certainly makes ‘medical termination of pregnancy’ legal in
India under specific conditions. However, this Act is framed from a legal
stand-point to primarily protect medical practitioners because under the
Indian Penal Code, “induced miscarriage” is a criminal offence. This Premise
points to a lack of choice and bodily autonomy of women and rests the
decision of abortion solely on the doctor’s opinion. The MTP Act also only
mentions ‘pregnant woman’, thus failing to recognise that transgender persons
and others who do not identify as women can become pregnant. Moreover,
the acceptance of abortion in Indian society is situated in the context of
population control and family planning. But, most importantly, after more
than 50 years of the MTP Act, women and transgender persons face major
obstacles in accessing safe abortion care. These are
seven examples: First, they may not even be aware that abortion is legal or
know where to obtain one safely; second, since the MTP Act does not recognise
abortion as a choice, they need the approval of medical professionals even in
the first few weeks of the pregnancy; third, unmarried and transgender people
continue to face stigma and can be turned away from health facilities,
forcing them to resort to unsafe care; fourth, mandatory reporting
requirements under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill (POCSO),
2011 law against child sexual offences, impact privacy and hinder access of
adolescents to safe abortion services; fifth, many are still coerced into
agreeing to a permanent or long-term contraceptive method as a prerequisite
for getting abortion services; sixth, health-care providers may impose their
own morality by insisting on ‘husbands’ or ‘parental’ consent for abortion.
Even women seeking abortion care in health facilities are often mistreated
and not provided medications for pain relief; seventh, despite laws
prohibiting sex determination, the illegal practice persists. The mushrooming
of unregulated ultrasound clinics in India continues to facilitate the
illegal practice of sex determination, resulting in unsafe abortions and
female foeticide. It is a
testament to class and caste divides when netizens talk of being ‘progressive’
when, 50 years after the MTP Act, women continue to die due to unsafe
abortions. Passing one law and assuming the job is done is far from “progressive”
when so many face a lack of access, systemic barriers, social norms and
cultural preferences, and even criminal liability. One law is insufficient There is an urgent need in our country to shift
the discourse on abortions from just being a family planning and maternal
health issue to one of a sexual health and reproductive rights issue. The
situation in India shows that one law alone is insufficient and we must raise
the bar on reproductive justice. We must improve our health systems to ensure
good quality and respectful abortion care. As the focus on abortion rights in
the U.S. rages, we call upon all to self reflect and to stand in solidarity
with people in the U.S. and other places where reproductive rights are in
jeopardy. Reproductive injustice anywhere is a threat to the lives of people
everywhere. |
