The People's Paper - Tehelka eMagazine

RNI. NO. - DELENG - 2004/12605, Regd. No. KA/BGGPO/2508/18 - 06, Regd. No. G-9/DL(S)-01/3053/2005-2006 

UP CLOSE 

NEW PETROLEUM MINISTER 

MURLI DEORA 

IS KNOWN FOR HIS 

BACKROOM SKILLS BUT 

IS HE THE RIGHT MAN 

FOR THE JOB? 

‘I feel frustrated, angry, 

terrorised. If you are 

considered a Page 3 

person, it’s a 

liability socially’ 

FASHION DESIGNER 

SUNEET VERMA 

ON THE HOTPLATE 

Tehelka 

FREE. FAIR. FEARLESS. 

The People’s Paper 

NEW DELHI | SATURDAY FEBRUARY 18 2006 | VOL. 3 ISSUE 6 | INVITATION PRICE RS 10 

p9 

‘Perhaps the seed 

of my vision lies 

in the unhappiness 

of my childhood’ 

Barry John 

THE THEATRE LEGEND 

HAS TURNED SIXTY. 

STRANGELY SAD AND WITHDRAWN, 

HE TALKS ABOUT HIS 

p28 p26 

INVESTIGATION 

India’s Fastest 

Growing 

Weekly 

NEW TRILOGY AND MORE p23 

p12 

‘WANTED: FILMS WITH BETTER IQ’ 

Kamlesh Pandey 

Sachin Bhowmick 

Shibani Bathija 

Siddharth Anand 

Kamna Chandra 

Javed Akhtar 

Eminent screen writers on what’s right 

and wrong with Bollywood 

Starved. 

Beaten. 

Neglected. 

p16 

Why Delhi’s half-a-million homeless 

children pick the safety of streets 

over welfare shelters 

Current Affairs 

Sentinelese tribesmen kill two settlers but, unusually, 

do not eat them p7 

Is Dhar the beginning of a Gujarat-like experiment 

in Madhya Pradesh by the Sangh? p4 

Essays & Opinion 

Dilip D’Souza 

How the Sangh usurps traditional myths: a living story 

from the Dangs p14 

Amulya Ganguli 

The neocons are wrong. Iran will become a bigger 

and bloodier graveyard of civilisation than Iraq p15

ALL IN THE FAMILY 

Your story Father, Son And 

The Coalition Ghost (TEHELKA, 

February 4) finally pulled 

down Dharam Singh. 

Whatever Deve Gowda may 

say, looking at the circumstances 

and the speculations 

for a family plot, it might be 

difficult to believe him. If 

the son has taken the BJP route 

to become chief minister, what 

route is the father taking? Will 

the coalition ghosts have more 

victims? Or will they be careful 

about it? If the Congress is 

alert and works in unison, they 

might not get disappointed. 

A. JACOB SAHAYAM 

Thiruvananthapuram 

THE YOUTH ANTHEM 

This is with regard to Shoma 

Chaudhury’s review Bhagat 

Singh topless, waving in jeans 

(TEHELKA, February 4). The 

film deals with today’s youth 

who lack a clear vision of the 

future and are mostly interested 

in banal forms of consumption 

of wealth. Due to a faulty 

education system and bad social 

atmosphere the youth do 

not have a sense of belonging to 

the country and are unaware of 

their duties towards society. 

They shun the Indian culture 

and have scant respect for our 

freedom fighters. Rang De 

Basanti tries to deal with the 

problems of youth through different 

characters and situa- 

think 

you have 

something 

to prove? 

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE 

BOUQUETS&BRICKBATS 

‘CHAMCHAS OF TEFLON SARDAR’ 

BEING A regular reader of your paper, I am especially 

fascinated by Sankarshan Thakur’s treatment 

of our prime minister. Your paper may never 

stop bragging about its honesty and fearlessness, 

but when it comes to dealing with the scum under 

Manmohan Singh’s chair, your loyalties come to 

the fore. Manmohan Singh seems to be an extremist, 

just as dangerous for India’s fragile society 

as Praveen Togadia or Narendra Modi. The only 

difference being he’s not a Hindu Right fascist. He 

is a free-market fundamentalist, a Neo-liberal maniac. 

Market fundamentalism has wrecked the 

lives of billions of people around the globe. You 

tions. The film talks about the 

role of youth in today’s society 

and their tryst with the present 

day system in India. It refrains 

from providing solutions to 

their problems. This is a story 

of a group comprising students 

of diverse views on life. Starting 

with a jolly take on life, the 

pace of the film drastically 

changes with a tragic death. 

The youngsters then take up 

cudgels with the authorities 

and how they deal with the 

issue is the crux of the movie. 

The scenes of the Jallianwala 

Bagh massacre is replicated 

beautifully. The background 

score by AR Rahman is also 

very unusual and vibrant. The 

juxtaposition is used to pit the 

characters against various situations, 

with an excellent climax. 

director Rakeysh Mehra has 

presented stark truths about 

the system. The narrative is innovative 

and new, and has all 

the ingredients for a commercial 

movie with a clear message 

that goes beyond entertainment. 

Go for it folks! 

AMJAD K. MARUF 

Mumbai 

TEHELKA IS CALLING 

SUB-EDITORS WITH 

A YEN FOR THE PEN AND 

BRIGHT FEATURE WRITERS 

WITH A FEW YEARS ON THE 

JOB. NO NOVICES PLEASE. 

Informed people who can 

rewrite copy intelligently. 

Who have it in them 

to be part of hard work 

and excellence. 

If you think you fit the bill, 

send your resume to 

tehelkadesk@gmail.com 

have just seen what it has done to people in Latin 

America, Africa and rural India. It is this maniacal 

PM who started implementing a version of it in 

India in 1991. He has propagated it with even 

greater vigour in the last two years. Where does 

your investigative journalism go when it comes to 

examining Manmohan Singh’s beliefs, his practices, 

and its effect on poor people? How do you 

manage to give him a clean chit every time? How 

is he always above everything? He is the Teflon 

Sardar. You never said anything like it for 

Vajpayee who was rightly held responsible for 

every crime BJP committed when he was in power. 

It’s simply because the buck stops at the prime 

minister. Our present prime minister is turning 

India into a de facto client of the US. In an editorial 

of yours you took the Leftists to task, and made 

a noise about the Iranians. However, you support 

the PM’s stand on Iran. It’s a bit strange that you 

and your PM lecture Iranians about the NPT treaty 

while India itself refrains from signing it. Hoping 

for you to stop writing your ode to a man that history 

hopefully condemns. 

AJIT HEGDE 

Bangalore 

TEHELKA IMPACT 

This is with regard to the article 

by Basharat Peer, Metal workers 

in misery, take to streets 

(TEHELKA, December 10). I am 

very happy to inform you that 

the 20 exports workers, working 

for Michael Aram Exports 

along with Ramdev’s widow, 

Shibu Devi, were appointed as 

permanent employees this 

week in his new operational 

company, MA Design India at 

‘ The atrocities wreaked on Bant Singh have a 

lesson for the society and the state. Not for nothing 

is Naxalism sweeping half the nation. We have a 

choice: hear his song or bear these gunshots ’ 

ALEX PAPERWALA, Mumbai 

Okhla, New Delhi. They received 

appointment letters in 

hand, along with back wages, 

bonuses, allowance arrears, and 

other due payments, on 

January 25, 2006. Michael 

Aram is seeking to put these 

workers back to work ideally 

within a revitalised version of 

their former unit, or else at a 

proximate and as yet undeter- 

CONGRATULATIONS ON your 

second Anniversary Special 

issue. Your article on democracy 

Miracle train of myriad 

millions (TEHELKA, February 11) 

by Tarun Tejpal was fantastic. 

It highlighted the depths of 

thought and vision, and the 

picture of the smiling girl selling 

tricolours,simply summed 

it up. TEHELKA too is a symbol 

of democracy for it has displayed 

a similar resilience and 

determination to do what it 

considers right. 

Congratulations once again! 

JM MANCHANDA 

New Delhi 

Felicitations on your second 

anniversary. Your special issue 

on the occasion had an appro- 

mined factory site. May I express 

my deep thanks to all of 

you for your advice, empathy, 

support, and blessings throughout 

this struggle. 

SHANKAR RAMASWAMI 

University of Chicago 

GOD’S WORD? 

One is reading about the acts 

of violence against Christians 

and missionaries almost everyday. 

This rising spate of anti- 

Christian violence is extremely 

disturbing. These occurrences 

are more so in BJP-ruled states. 

The aim of this violence seems 

to be to intimidate the missionaries 

to stop their work in 

the field of education, which 

has the potential of empowering 

the adivasis, which will be 

detrimental to the land grabbers, 

traders and contractors. 

One also hears that a Shabari 

Kumbh is being organised in 

Dangs of Gujarat with the aim 

of “saving Hindu society from 

the Ravana- like forces of foreign 

religions”, meaning 

Christianity and Islam. Similar 

violence had visited the Dangs 

district in 1998 and went on to 

burn Pastor Graham Staines 

on the pretext of Christian 

missionaries converting 

Hindus. However, as per the 

census figures the percentage 

of Christian population is 

declining. It is imperative that 

the Centre intervenes and 

warns the state government to 

put a check on these attacks. 

Also a social audit of the RSS 

affiliates, like Vanvasi Kalyan 

Ashram and Vishwa Hindu 

Parishad, which are responsible 

for spreading hate against 

Christian minorities in these 

areas, is urgently called for. 

RAM PUNIYANI 

Mumbai 

TWO FOR JOY 

OOPS! 

The picture used on the cover of 

TEHELKA’s second anniversary 

special is from the film Rang De 

Basanti. We must thank 

Director Rakeysh Mehra. 

All essay portraits in the issue 

were done by Dipankar 

Bhattacharya. 

priately chosen theme What’s 

Right About India (TEHELKA, 

February ll). In the midst of ‘a 

million mutinies’ born out of 

millions of problems of stark 

poverty, social injustice, communal 

bigotry, the Left and 

Right lunacy and urban chaos it 

has become easy to be pessimistic 

about the future of 

India. Yet, most of your contributors 

hailed the Indian democracy 

for its resilience and pluralism. 

As a world where the 

so-called lower castes or the 

bottom layers of society have 

risen to the top without bloodshed 

through the power of the 

ballot. All in all, a positive portrait 

of India on the march. 

M. RATAN 

New Delhi 

Tehelka 

The People’s Paper 

Editor-in-Chief Tarun J Tejpal 

Executive Editor Sankarshan Thakur 

Editor-Features Shoma Chaudhury 

Editor-Investigations Harinder Baweja 

Editor-Analysis & Commentary Amit Sengupta 

Associate Editors Nitin A. Gokhale, 

Chitra Padmanabhan, 

Naresh Minocha (Business) 

Chief of Bureau Hartosh Singh Bal 

Senior Writer Vijay Simha 

Copy Editor Vikram Kilpady 

Principal Correspondent Basharat Peer 

Senior Correspondent Vineet Khare 

Correspondents Mihir Srivastava, Anjali Wason, 

Avinash Dutt 

MUMBAI: Assistant Editor Sonia Faleiro 

CHENNAI: Principal Correspondent PC Vinoj Kumar 

BANGALORE: Correspondent M. Radhika 

CHANDIGARH: Special Correspondent 

Vikram Jit Singh 

LONDON: Correspondent Priyanka Gill 

COPY DESK 

Sub Editors Abdus Salam, Praveen Kumar, 

Tanaz K. Noble, Divashri Sinha 

ART 

Assistant Art Director Girish Arora 

Design Team Ajoy Sen, Raju Kohli 

Associate Photo Editor Sharad Saxena 

Photographers NEW DELHI: Lakshman Anand, 

K. Satheesh, Dharmender Ruhil 

BANGALORE: S. Radhakrishna 

Production Piyush Srivastava 

Systems Prawal Srivastava, Jagannath Tripathy, 

Vijay Vardhan 

Accounts Brij Sharma, Subodh Mishra 

Publisher Tarun J Tejpal 

Director (HR) Neena T Sharma 

Executive Vice President Pradeep Mohan 

MEDIA MARKETING 

MUMBAI: AGM Sonia Desai (022 34406031) 

BANGALORE: Sr. Manager Satheesh Kumar 

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CIRCULATION 

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Bharat Bhushan 

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Volume 3, Issue 6; 

For the week February 18, 2006 

released on February 10, 2006 

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Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 

news&analysis 

Everywhere, 

Nowhere 

Who will the government 

talk to when the next 

Naxal attack comes? 

BY VIJAY SIMHA 

FOR THE last few weeks 

there has been no news 

from Hyderabad on the 

Naxal front. That is odd, considering 

that Andhra Pradesh is a 

hotbed of Maoist activity. The 

negotiators between the state 

and the Maoists, SR Sankaran, 

KG Kannabiran, Gadar, and 

Kalyan Rao, have little to do. The 

government is busy working out 

better coordination among the 

13 affected states and the Centre. 

And the top Naxal leadership has 

moved from Andhra Pradesh to 

Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and 

Bihar. The result: a lull. 

This is eerie. When things go 

quiet on the Naxals, it usually 

suggests that something big is on 

the way. There are many experts 

on Naxalism in the administration 

who can feel it. The 

negotiators can feel it as well. 

So why is nothing happening? 

Why are they not talking? 

Simple, the government doesn’t 

know who to talk to. 

Muppala Lakshman Rao, better 

known as Ganapathy, the 

general secretary of the CPI 

(Maoist), is in his late 70s. Once 

an active Naxal leader, he is not 

in full control now. Most planning 

and field activity is 

happening under the stewardship 

of a man known as Kishan, 

former chief of Bihar’s Maoist 

Coordination Committee, who is 

officially number two in the 

Maoist party. Intelligence officials 

don’t know much about 

Kishan. Sleuths from Andhra 

Pradesh, adept in sniffing out information 

about guerillas in 

their state, are not too clued on 

about Naxals from Bihar, 

Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh. 

Gadar, once the public face of 

Naxalism in India, is virtually 

incommunicado. He is getting on 

in age, and his health is not 

holding up too well. Kannabiran 

is in his early 80s, active but 

slowing down. There’s been no 

attempt to build a credible second 

rung of civil rights champions 

www.tehelka.com 

trusted by the Maoists and the 

government. Things are worse in 

Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, 

where many top Naxal leaders 

have moved base. Governments 

in these states are still learning 

about the Maoists. All this means 

that a vital link is vanishing. 

In the midst of all this, the 

Centre hauled up state governments 

for not implementing 

development projects in Naxalaffected 

districts. A decision has 

been taken that the Centre will 

now monitor the states on 

programmes undertaken by the 

tribal affairs, panchayati raj and 

rural development ministries. 

There will be a separate wing to 

deal with Maoists and there will 

be two intelligence command 

centres, one each in Andhra 

Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. 

There already is a joint task 

force that does nothing because 

it doesn’t get adequate 

intelligence inputs from the 

states. This could hamper fresh 

moves as well. 

Flying Left, 

Flying Low 

The airports strike was 

an entirely avoidable 

Red shenanigan 

BY HARTOSH SINGH BAL 

THE LEFT in this country 

can sometimes claim with 

some justification that it is 

always held to a higher standard 

in politics. No one for example 

ever quite holds the BJP or the 

Congress to the same scrutiny. 

The argument of political expediency 

justifies the BJP’s flip-flops 

on hindutva and the Congress 

has always tried to be all things 

to all voters. So let us grant the 

Left the same concession — it 

also has a constituency, it also 

operates in a democracy and it 

also needs votes to sustain itself 

in politics. But even then, the airports 

strike makes little sense. 

Clearly the Left believes that 

people who fly in this country are 

not part of its constituency. 

Whether this was true or not, 

post-strike that is the case. More 

to the point, if indeed the airport 

workers on strike are a Left constituency, 

what exactly have they 

gained? What the government 

conceded was nothing but a facesaving 

deal for the unions, it 

came nowhere close to a review 

of the modernisation of Delhi 

and Mumbai airports. The government 

has now agreed to “look 

into the issues and proposals of 

modernising airports by the 

Airports Authority of India (AAI) 

and employee issues including 

their job security”. If this is what 

THE EDITOR 

RECOMMENDS 

THE TRIALS of Orhan Pamuk. 

When Ayatollah Khomeini issued 

a fatwa on Salman 

Rushdie, Turkish writer Orhan 

would have satisfied the Left, the 

least Prakash Karat and his 

compatriots could have ensured 

was that the possibility was 

discussed with the government 

before the strike. 

Clearly the strike and its aftermath 

make no sense even from 

the point of political expediency. 

The Left could argue that the 

symbolic value of the strike was 

that it went some way toward 

assuaging its constituency. But 

even that argument is difficult to 

buy. It cannot be the case that 

the entire support to the Left 

comes from people blinded by 

The Left could argue 

that the symbolic value 

of the strike was that 

it went some way 

toward assuaging its 

constituency. But even 

that argument is 

difficult to buy 

ideology. At the end of this 

episode the Left has emerged 

looking foolish while tens of 

thousands of passengers have 

suffered for no reason. 

From the very beginning the 

Left has wanted to play it both 

ways in the UPA alliance. It wanted 

power without responsibility, 

it wanted to evade difficult choices. 

As their own chief minister in 

Kolkata said, governance is 

about reasonable compromises. 

At the Centre, Karat and his 

party often seem to agree but are 

all too keen to distance themselves 

from any negative fallout. 

The least Karat can ensure is that 

if the Left is not going to share 

the burden of running a government, 

at least it should examine 

the battles it wants to wage 

with some care. 

CUT TO SIZE 

When it became 

fashionable to cry 

BY SONIA FALEIRO 

WHEN RAVENOUS bulldozers 

of the MCD 

carved 1 and 2 MG 

Road, Delhi’s high fashion street, 

it became clear that no violator, 

however well dressed, or apparently 

clueless to his crimes, 

would be spared. Never mind the 

teary faces of Delhi designers filling 

TV screens, it’s the greater 

good a city must first and always 

concern itself with. The sins of 

18,000 cannot be allowed to curdle 

the lives and living space of 15 

million. While the designers may 

insist they’re not “Big Fish” an at- 

Pamuk was one of the first to defend 

his right to free speech. Is 

there anyone defending Pamuk? 

An argument that the end of the 

Pamuk trial isn’t really a reprieve, 

at http://tls.timesonline.co.uk 

The East was Red. 

Justice 

Under Trial 

Judicial activism 

should look itself 

up in the mirror 

BY SANKARSHAN THAKUR 

THEY OCCUPY, if at all, filler 

spaces in the inside pages 

of newspapers. Once in a 

long, long way, one among these 

might make you sit up and 

wonder whether anything 

orders the world you live in. Like 

Boka Thakur or Rudal Shah. 

Both were in for murder in Bihar. 

Their trial was never completed. 

Thakur spent 25 years in prison, 

Shah 30-odd. They were never 

convicted, but had they been, 

each would have spent 14 years 

behind bars, no more. Last 

week we were face to face with 

another ghoul of our system — 

Jagjivan Ram Yadav of Faizabad, 

undertrial and languishing in 

prison for 38 years. He was 

arrested in 1968 allegedly for 

murdering a neighbour’s wife. 

The case never went to trial 

because the police claimed it did 

not have “enough details”. He 

never got bail because nobody 

bothered and he probably didn’t 

know the law. Then everybody 

forgot him. 

The Supreme Court has now 

called Yadav’s long and inhuman 

incarceration into question and 

he will probably be a free man 

soon. But imagine a life ruined, 

imagine nobody there to pay for 

ruining it. Again, had Yadav been 

convicted of murder, he would 

have got a 14-year sentence, he 

would have been out in 1982 or 

thereabouts, ready to begin life 

anew. The man has been made to 

serve three life sentences without 

being convicted of any crime! 

For a people that make such 

tack on privilege reassures us 

that on the rare occasion, the law 

is equal for all. 

None of this, however, obscures 

the primary need for the 

demolitions — the involvement 

of the MCD in the construction of 

illegal structures. Unless this 

CURRENT AFFAIRS 

03 

The fast fading of Pankaj 

Mishra’s romantic Red dream, 

at http://books.guardian.co.uk. 

Strike Iran but not with bombs. 

Sanctions might work better 

against Ahmadinejad. A case at, 

www.washingtonpost.com 

noises about democracy and 

freedom, we scarcely pay heed to 

that most fundamental of human 

rights — justice. As of today, 

there are in excess of 300,000 

undertrials in India, most of 

whom are unaware of their rights 

and lack legal assistance. They 

make up 70 percent of the jail 

population; only 30 percent are 

people actually convicted and 

imprisoned. Of the undertrials, 

nearly two-thirds, roughly about 

200,000 inmates, have been in 

jail for several years, essentially 

because of delays in the justice 

delivery system. But there is a 

bigger reason: all round apathy. 

Nobody is bothered bringing 

justice to a poor man rotting in 

jail, not the police, not the jail 

authorities, not the courts. In 

most cases, as in Yadav’s, the 

police, having made arrests, is 

not ready with a case or simply 

does not have a case. In a whole 

lot of cases, the crimes for which 

people have been thrown into jail 

are petty in nature — minor 

theft, drunken violence, public 

disorder. Most will end up 

spending much more time in 

jails as undertrails than sentences 

they would have been 

awarded post-conviction. Justice 

delayed far too long is not 

merely justice denied, it is 

justice defied. 

chain of corruption strangling 

Delhi’s development is destroyed, 

an endless battle 

against the symptoms will rage. 

Ultimately, businesses generate 

revenue, employment and taxes. 

If the best option for legitimate 

businesses is illegitimate stores, 

it reiterates that Delhi’s law 

enforcement and economy are 

distorted. Entrepreneurs should 

be encouraged and rewarded, 

not strangled by red tape 

and bribery. 

The law must take its course, 

and those enforcing it should be 

commended. However, for every 

homeowner, business-owner 

and developer that broke the law, 

their silent accomplices in government 

should face equal or 

greater repercussions. 

FREE. FAIR. FEARLESS 

ILLUSTRATIONS BY DIPANKAR BHATTACHARYA

04 CURRENT AFFAIRS 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

SHOUTS AND MURMURS 

Babbar roars for Congress 

Bollywood actor and Samajwadi Party’s Agra MP 

Raj Babbar is all set to join the Congress. 

Worked on by UPCC chief Salman Khursheed and 

Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel, 

Babbar did what was scripted out. He rubbished 

Amar Singh and made Mulayam Singh angry. 

The wait is for the Samajwadi Party to expel him 

following which Babbar is slated to make an appearance 

at 24, Akbar Road — the Congress 

headquarters. The Congress plan is to wean people 

off the Samajwadi Party, and Babbar is the 

first MP to join aboard. Babbar hopes it will 

make him a minister at the Centre eventually. 

At Their Majesty’s Service 

In Davos, Union ministers P. Chidambaram and 

Kamal Nath impressed several attendees at the 

World Economic Forum by leaving pashmina 

shawls and iPods in their hotel rooms. Their soaring 

spirits quickly came down on return. The 

doctor at 7 Race Course Road was not ready to 

clear a single major proposal of the finance minister. 

Similarly, Nath was shackled by the presence 

of Jairam Ramesh in his ministry as MoS. 

Now both Davos-returned ministers must be 

thinking of leaving pashminas at the doors of 

Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. 

Blame it on the moon 

Arun Jaitley is smarting these days on account of 

the surge of archrival Pramod Mahajan. Under 

Mahajan’s influence, a comparatively lightweight 

Ravi Shankar Prasad was nominated as BJP cospokesman. 

To rub it in, Mahajan acolyte Prakash 

Javadekar was also promoted from junior 

spokesman. A senior scribe suggested that maybe 

the Sahasra Chandra (1,000 full moon days) celebration 

of Advani can balance the scales after 

Mahajan’s megabash for former Prime Minister 

Atal Behari Vajpayee. The legal eagle aptly 

quipped, “Earlier in the BJP we used to count Aayu 

and Sangh Aayu (years since one went to an RSS 

shakha for the first time). Now it seems we should 

also keep the Chandra Aayu of our senior leaders 

in mind to remain in the reckoning.” 

On the Amar Chitra Katha 

Newshounds are wondering as to why the reportedly 

colourful taped conversations of Amar Singh 

haven’t leaked out. When a scribe asked India’s 

most rich-and-famous friendly socialist leader if 

he has an issue with making them public, he 

replied, “I don’t, but Prakash Karat may have, as I 

use to talk to him too.” When a few days later the 

vociferous CPI (M) boss emerged from a meeting 

with the PM on the issues of Iran and airport privatisation, 

he was unusually restrained. When the 

Cabinet sealed the fate of the airports with newfound 

gusto, Doubting Thomases were left guessing 

if it has anything to do with the tapes. 

Another Gujarat in the making? 

The Dhar episode is only the latest in a series of Sangh interventions in MP 

AVINASH DUTT 

New Delhi 

WHILE ALL eyes are fixed on the 

communally sensitive Dangs 

district of Gujarat where 

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliated 

organisations have been holding 

‘Shabari Kumbh’ to make tribals aware 

of the evangelical Christian agenda, 

similar developments in neighbouring 

Madhya Pradesh have hitherto gone 

unnoticed . 

On February 3, Vishwa Hindu 

Parishad (VHP) members pelted stones 

at policemen when they tried to get 

them out from the controversial 11th 

century Bhojshala-Kamal Maula 

Mosque in Dhar after their allotted 

time was over. The Archaeological 

Survey of India, which looks after the 

monument, had set a timetable giving 

Hindus time from sunrise to 12.30pm 

and 3.30pm till sunset for Basant 

Panchami pooja and to Muslims between 

1pm and 3pm for offering Friday 

namaz. The VHP and Bajrang Dal 

members refused to vacate the complex 

in time for the namaz and hurled abuses 

on a handful of Muslims before challenging 

the police and pelting stones. A 

curfew was subsequently clamped. 

While RSS spokesman Ram Madhav, 

VHP’S Praveen Togadia and former MP 

CM Uma Bharti hailed the “peaceful 

and harmonious celebrations in Dhar”, 

Ashish Basu of the Hindu Jagran 

Manch claimed victory. “We did succeed 

in creating awareness which was 

our main objective,” he said. 

The attacks on minorities that started 

in Bharti’s tenure grew worse in successor 

Babulal Gaur’s dispensation. 

Clashes between Hindus and Muslims 

in Indore have become routine. The 

spark could be anything from the 

elopement of a girl with a boy from the 

other community to ‘foreign festivals’ 

like Valentine’s Day. On one occasion, 

curfew had to be imposed in the town 

of Burhanpur in October 2004 after 

riots broke out over a stolen goat. 

The situation of Christians is even 

more precarious. The findings of the 

one-man Narendra Prasad Commission 

appointed to inquire into the 

Jhabua killings in January 2004 were 

leaked to a Bhopal newspaper last July. 

Prasad’s report stated that the decadal 

growth of the Christian population in 

Jhabua district was 80 percent. He 

suggested more stringent laws against 

conversion. The existing law — 

Madhya Pradesh Dharma Swatantrya 

Adhiniyam 1968 — has a provision of 

imprisonment upto a year and/or fine 

upto Rs 5,000. Though the law stipulated 

that no conversions could take 

DIPANKAR BHATTACHARYA 

Frenzied Madness: police beat back a crowd after they clashed at the Bhojshala AP PHOTO 

place without intimating the district 

collector, it was rarely observed. 

However, the picture painted by the 

commission remains seriously challenged. 

Between 1999 and 2003, only 

three cases of violation were registered. 

The BJP attributed the low figure to the 

laxity of the then Congress government 

in implementing the law. But in its own 

rule of about two-and-a-half years only 

seven such cases have been registered. 

There have been instances of missionaries 

arrested on complaints of unlawful 

conversions and later released in the 

absence of evidence. 

Now under Shivraj Singh Chauhan, 

the fringe Rightwing aggression has assumed 

a dangerous pattern. Prior to 

the Dhar clash, on January 31 VHP and 

Bajrang Dal activists roughed up several 

policemen in Gwalior during a 

bandh. In July last, their activists 

barged into Indore airport and halted a 

plane. When the police arrested a few, 

The Bhojshala-Kamal Maula Mosque 

hundreds attacked a city police station. 

“Christians today fear stepping out of 

their homes,” says Father Anand 

Muttungal, spokesman for the Catholic 

church in MP. “The police is under 

pressure from the government. A news 

report in a local Hindi daily three days 

after the January 28 attack by ‘unknown 

miscreants’ on a prayer meeting 

in progress in Bhopal said ‘police arrested 

the culprit after getting permission 

from the government’. Since when 

has permission become mandatory for 

arresting an accused,” he fumed. 

Since January 27, nine incidents of 

violence against Christian missionaries 

alone — from attempts to torch places 

of worship to attacks on religious assemblies 

— have been reported. 

In most of the incidents arrest cases 

were registered, often against unidentified 

people, and a few arrests made 

after a few days but the accused 

promptly secured bails with the prosecution 

not opposing. 

The MP Police denies this. “I don’t 

feel that the problem is going out of 

hand. It is just that the VHP and 

Bajrang Dal members are acting on 

The Narendra Prasad 

Commission appointed to 

inquire into the Jhabua 

killings suggested more 

stringent measures against 

conversion, stating that 

the Christian population in 

Jhabua district grew 

80 percent in a decade 

their own when they see so-called anti- 

Hindu things,” Additional DGP SK 

Rout told TEHELKA over the phone 

from Bhopal. They are intervening in 

three types of cases in the main: cow 

slaughter, conversions and obscenity, 

the ADGP said. Rout went on to claim 

that the administration is handling 

fringe elements adequately. � 

Look Who’s Talking! 

My government has been pursuing a 

pro-tribal policy for the past six years 

Orissa CM Naveen Patnaik 

His government’s actions in recent weeks certainly bear that out. Tribals 

have been displaced from wherever MNCs and big industry have wanted 

them out. Their land and resources have been parceled off. Twelve adivasis 

have been killed in police firing. Hundreds have been arrested. Thousands 

are still out in protest. That’s what you’d call a pro-tribal policy. 


This is the ADD Page.

06 

CURRENT AFFAIRS 

Elixir of Death? brown water flows from the pumps of Jai Bheem Nagar PHOTOS K. SATHEESH 

Meerut’s Government Medical College leaves a dalit village reeling 

sick, its homes abandoned for lack of water, reports TANAZ K. NOBLE 

IF NOT FOR the 124 deaths over 

the last five years, it is sweet 

irony. Residents of Jai Bheem 

Nagar, a slum in Meerut, Uttar 

Pradesh, allege that the nearby 

Government Medical College 

(GMC) is the reason for the deaths. 

The slumdwellers say most of 

the deaths were due to diseases 

like asthma, cancer, diarrhoea. 

Results of a study conducted by 

the Janhit Foundation, an NGO for 

environment protection, water 

conservation and organic farming, 

show that water from the GMC 

pond has 12 times the permissible 

mercury content. 

“Meerut’s entire sewage is 

dumped into the Kali. So its toxicity 

is being leached into the 

groundwater which is used by the 

residents through handpumps,” 

says Prabhat Kumar from Janhit. 

Here, “a family has to travel a long 

distance for access to potable 

drinking water,” says Anil Rana, 

director of Janhit, “because the 

groundwater flowing out of the 

handpumps in the village is contaminated 

with fatal levels of 

heavy metals like chromium, cadmium, 

lead, iron and mercury.” 

Chromium and lead were found 

to be five times above permissible 

limits in the pond that doubles as 

the open septic tank. “The water is 

so bad we can’t even bathe with it. 

And I’m not talking about this 

water,” Prembatti, a resident, says 

pointing to the pond in question, 

“I’m talking about the yellow 

water that comes out of our handpumps.” 

Collect the water in a vessel 

and it looks like lemon tea with 

a foul smell. “These handpumps 

are being regularly used by the 

community,” says Rana, “their only 

alternative is to steal water from 

the medical college by breaking 

parts of the college boundary wall.” 

The handpumps draw groundwater 

severely contaminated by 

the GMC sewage. But this hasn’t de- 

FINDINGS OF THE JANHIT STUDY 

IRON 

MPL: 0.3 mg/litre 

GMC pond level: 0.41 mg/litre 

Handpump near Kali: 3.86 mg/litre 

WHERE’S ERIN 

BROCKOVICH? 

terred the residents from using it. 

“Hamara paani bahut saaf hai, 

we not only drink but also bathe 

and cook with this water,” says 

Munni Devi, a resident of the village. 

She lost her 45-year-old son 

to “swollen lungs”. She has three 

grandchildren between the ages of 

seven and 11, “Hum sab yahi 

paani peetey hain (It is very safe),” 

she insists, hiding her cataractclouded 

eyes. 

The pond usually infects the 

groundwater, silently killing those 

too weak to trek to the closest 

source of clean water. But things 

get worse in the monsoon. 

“During the rains, water enters 

houses, it even enters schools. 

Many houses have collapsed because 

of the flooding,” says Ram 

Gopal, as he watches the pipe 

pouring out the college’s sewage 

into the pond, “yahan ek bhi macchhar 

nahin milega (You won’t 

find any mosquito.)” That’s not 

surprising considering the 

groundwater analysis report of the 

water from the GMC pond as well 

as the water from a handpump 

near the Kali. (refer to box) 

“One gram of mercury in a twoacre 

pond is enough to destroy 

every fish and lifeform in the 

pond,” informs Rana. “No effluent 

treatment plants are being used. 

Neither are common sewage 

treatment plants. In five to six 

years, thousands of villagers will 

have to be shifted. Today, while 

1,967 lakh litres of water a day is 

required, only 1,530 lakh litres is 

provided daily. Having the Ganga, 

Yamuna and Kali to support us is 

Koi Kuch Karo: Shimla, a resident 

of no help, in fact they are the 

cause of the problem.” 

When Janhit wrote to the UP 

Pollution Control Board about the 

pollution in Kali early in 2003, it 

promptly replied that the Indian 

government did not have the required 

Rs 88 crore to clean the 

river and therefore there would be 

no further progress on it. 

The Pollutant: sewage being pumped from the GMC into the pond 

CHROMIUM 

MPL: 50µ/litre 

GMC pond level: 196 µ/litre 

Handpump near Kali: 78 µ/litre 

CADMIUM 

MPL: 10 µ/litre 

GMC pond level: 62 µ/litre 

Handpump near Kali: 116 µ/litre 

“We pay Rs 8,000 annually per 

house as tax. But we are not provided 

with any water by the municipality. 

Our children work as 

labourers…on some days they 

don’t get work, but we still pay,” 

says Prembatti, who has been living 

in Jai Bheem Nagar for six 

years. Her husband has been suffering 

epileptic fits lately. “Before 

we came here there was nothing 

wrong.” She also says her children 

suffer from vomiting, fever, pneumonia 

and diarrhoea. “We have 

to pay the doctors just for some 

slip of paper and then buy the 

medicines ourselves.” Hope 

seems distant, and the locals appear 

to have accepted that, “Abhi 

election aayenge. Mantri log aa 

kar bahut kuch boltey hain, par 

kuch nahin karte hain.” 

There are about 462 handpumps 

abandoned by the people. 

Umesh Kumar Verma whose 

house is adjacent to the contaminated 

pond broke the handle of 

his handpump after his father 

died. “He died of stones. Gandagi 

bahut hai,” he says pointing to the 

pond. Did the medical college 

help? “No, I didn’t take him there. 

I hired a private doctor. Private 

doctors are better and smarter 

than those.” He clearly wants 

nothing to do with the medical 

From 1999 to 2005 

AILMENTS DEATHS 

Cancer 17 

Asthma 13 

Diarrhoea 13 

Fever 13 

Heart Attacks 8 

Neurosis 4 

Kidney Failure 3 

Gastroenteritis 53 

college staff. “They have even 

closed the emergency gate (a tiny 

hole in the wall surrounding the 

college) and built an open sewage 

drain surrounding it like a fort. 

They create trouble even when we 

try to take water. A campus theft 

in 2004 prompted the college to 

stop us from taking water. 

Everyone got angry and there was 

a demonstration. Police came and 

started shooting at us. So many 

people have just abandoned their 

houses. They are fed up. They 

don’t want any more death.” 

But the college denies being responsible 

for the plight. “No, no, 

we provide free treatment to the 

poor. But they have no business 

coming into the college premises. 

They have created nuisance for us. 

Every time we build the wall they 

break it. We have spent over Rs 10 

lakh in maintenance of the wall. 

We have written many complaints 

to the administration. This problem 

has been created by them,” 

says Dr Usha Sharma, principal of 

the GMC. “The oxidation pond has 

been around since 1968, when this 

college was built,” says Dr Sharma. 

Many, like Ram Gopal who 

18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

lived in the village for over a 

decade, have moved out of the 

diseased mire. He now lives in 

his new sarkari apartment. 

Janhit records show that about 

90 families have already locked 

their homes and left in search of 

cleaner water. 

Shimla is the woman in the photograph. 

She doesn’t know what 

she’s suffering from, “Doctor aatey 

hain, koi kuch boltey hain, yeh 

dawain detey hain aur paise leke 

jaatey hain (Neither do the doctors 

tell me what’s wrong nor do 

they do anything about it.)” But 

she’s sure it’s because of the handpump 

which they continue to use. 

Sandwiched between the Kali and 

the waste-water collection pond, 

the village is getting desperate. 

In June 1999, a report released 

by the Central Water Board titled 

Pollution in the Kali Nadi found 

chromium 140 times above the 

maximum permissible limit, cadmium 

333.30 times over and iron 

33,340 times over. It said that 

“samples collected from the handpumps 

at Ajhauta, Jalalpur, 

Ulashpur, Bachaula mandir and 

Gesupur villages of Meerut were 

found light to dark brownish in 

colour, turbid and with some peculiar 

smell… It is evident that 

groundwater is being contaminated 

with waste-water.” The report, 

published under the auspices of 

the Union ministry of water resources, 

stressed that ‘pollution of 

groundwater has already set 

in…which needs to be restricted 

immediately.’ This was six years 

ago. The report also recommended 

that ‘alternative arrangements 

for potable water supply to the inhabitants 

of the affected areas be 

made immediately.’ 

The inhabitants of the affected 

area are still using the same 

handpumps because no such alternative 

arrangements for 

potable water supply has been 

made till date. The government 

report was the last of its kind 

until Janhit submitted the findings 

of its own study which was 

sent to the People’s Science 

Institute (PSI), Dehradun for 

analysis and confirmation. 

Janhit is currently in the process 

of filing a public interest litigation 

suit (PIL) with the Supreme Court 

to ensure industries located on the 

banks of the Kali install common 

effluent treatment plants and 

sewage treatment plants. “The UP 

health department should also organise 

health camps and provide 

free medical aid to the suffering 

community. Every handpump of 

the area should be completely 

abandoned. Slum people are paying 

tax, yet they are not provided 

with water. They should be provided 

with overhead tanks. Stop 

factories and hospitals from discharging 

untreated water. There 

should be a water treatment plant 

for the Kali river. Compensation to 

the affected families must be provided,” 

says Rana. � 

LEAD 

MERCURY 

MPL: 50 µ/litre MPL: 1 µ/litre 

GMC pond level: 280 µ/litre GMC pond level: 12 µ/litre 

Handpump near Kali: 152 µ/litre Handpump near Kali: 2.5 µ/litre 

µ - micrograms; MPL - Maximum Permissible Limit 


Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 CURRENT AFFAIRS 

TWONAMI SCARE IN ANDAMANS: 

TRIBESMEN KILL CASTAWAYS 

But it’s an anthropological sensation. The Sentinelese aren’t cannibals after all 

Ready and Waiting: Sentinelese aim at the copter PHOTOS COAST GUARD 

VIJAY SIMHA 

New Delhi 

TWO MEN who became friends 

while serving jail terms in the 

Andamans died together when 

they were slain by members of the aboriginal 

Sentinelese tribe in a dramatic 

incident involving settlers, tribesmen, 

and the Coast Guard. 

Sundar Raj and Kishore Prasad 

Tiwari were murdered in frenzy sometime 

on January 25. Thus began a story 

that both delighted and upset people 

across the Andamans. Raj was serving 

time for killing his wife. While in jail, 

he met Tiwari, in for petty offences. 

Port Blair officials say they got along famously. 

Both were released in 2002. 

Tiwari’s parents, legal immigrants 

and vegetable growers, are understood 

to have disowned him. Raj was an illegal 

migrant with a notorious reputation. 

The two settled down in Wandoor, 

one of the many islands in Andaman 

and Nicobar. Raj took to fishing as a vocation 

since the money was better. One 

such venture took Raj and Tiwari to 

North Sentinel, a remote island inhabited 

by the feared Sentinelese. 

The Sentinelese are a well-built 

Negrito tribe who live on the island, 

west of Port Blair. They are aggressive 

and there is no known contact between 

them and the civilised world for long. 

Settlers are scared of them and even the 

authorities venture near the island only 

when necessary. The Sentinelese take 

attempts at establishing contact as acts 

of aggression, and have in the past shot 

arrows at Coast Guard helicopters 

dropping relief material after the 

December 2004 tsunami. 

Little is known about their culture. 

Inner huts on the Sentinelese island 

have never been visited, while the huts 

near the beach serve as windbreakers. 

Their main weapons are bows and arrows, 

which they are known to pull out 

of bodies for reuse. They are believed to 

be the only people on earth to retain 

and defend their pristine lifestyle and 

territory. The sea around the island has 

been declared a tribal reserve. 

But poachers frequent the place and 

the Coast Guard often picks up Thai 

and Myanmarese poachers who come 

looking for crabs, lobsters, fish and sea 

cucumber. The dinghy they use is too 

small to be caught on radar and has to 


be physically spotted during a sortie, 

and that makes it easy for poachers. 

Raj and Tiwari ventured towards 

North Sentinel island in a dinghy originally 

given as compensation to tsunami-hit 

fishermen. It is not known how 

Raj laid his hand on one. Two or three 

friends followed in another dinghy. 

Raj and Tiwari are believed to have 

dropped anchor off shore on the night 

of January 24. Sources say they had 

plenty of liquor with them. The next 

morning, people in the second dinghy 

wanted to return to Wandoor. They 

hollered but Raj and Tiwari didn’t respond. 

“Perhaps they had drunk too 

much,” said an official. So their friends 

left believing that Raj and Tiwari 

would follow when ready. 

It’s possible that the anchor came 

undone, taking the vessel to the shores 

of North Sentinel island, say officials. 

The Sentinelese dragged the dinghy 

North Sentinel Island 

Run Aground: the victims’ dinghy 

Port Blair 

onto the beach, and set upon the duo. 

Details are not available on how Raj 

and Tiwari were killed but sources say 

the Sentinelese didn’t eat them. Parts of 

their dinghy were ripped apart and the 

Coast Guard found litter on the beach 

when they made sorties on January 27 

and January 28. 

When Raj and Tiwari didn’t return 

on January 25, Chanchala, Raj’s second 

wife, went to the local pradhan for help. 

The pradhan reported them missing at 

the local police station. The police 

sought Coast Guard assistance which 

came only by January 27. 

The Coast Guard described later 

events thus: “On January 27, a Coast 

Guard Dornier aircraft on routine sortie 

reported sighting of an unmanned 

dinghy on North Sentinel island. The 

Wandoor Fishermen Welfare 

Association also reported that one 

dinghy with two fishermen was missing 

since January 25. 

“The description was matching. 

Consequently, on January 28, the Coast 

Guard helicopter located and identified 

the dinghy. The aircraft diverted the attention 

of the hostile Sentinelese and 

located the bodies of the missing fishermen 

at a nearby location. 

“The matter was reported to all concerned 

authorities. Aerial photographs 

of the boat were also taken in subsequent 

sortie. This report of the 

Sentinelese not eating the deceased is 

in contradiction to the common belief 

that these tribals are cannibals.” 

In the first sortie, the Coast Guard 

found the bodies of Raj and Tiwari on 

the beach surrounded by armed 

Sentinelese, who shot arrows at the aircraft. 

It made another sortie a little 

later but by this time, the bodies had 

vanished. The helicopter went low, 

slowly moving to the other side of the 

island with the furious Sentinelese in 

chase. The helicopter then dashed back 

to where the killings took place. 

As the helicopter was flying low, the 

suction from the rotor blades blew off 

the top layer of the sand on the beach. 

“They found the bodies. The 

Sentinelese had buried them. This is 

their custom. They believe the evil spirit 

of the aggressor is buried along with 

him,” said Samir Acharya, head of the 

Society for Andaman and Nicobar 

Ecology, the oldest and most effective 

NGO in the islands. 

Raj’s wife insisted on seeing the body, 

which was not possible. The Coast 

Guard took her to the spot where she 

identified it. Getting the bodies from 

the Sentinelese and conducting an autopsy 

could have triggered 

a major incident, officials 

said. So the local commissioner 

waived the necessity 

of a death certificate. 

That’s where the story is. 

The bodies are with the 

tribesmen. 

Anthropologists are 

thrilled at the evidence of 

the Sentinelese being fit 

and fighting. The incident 

is also being seen as proof 

that they are not cannibals. 

But all inferences rest on 

the Coast Guard’s version. 

The settlers have a different view. 

They see it as an assault on them. For 

some time the settlers wanted revenge, 

sources said, adding that tempers are 

cooling now. Acharya, though, is upbeat. 

“This time I am appreciative of 

the way in which the Coast Guard and 

the police acted. They displayed a commendable 

level of sensitivity, courage, 

and respect for tribal culture. They 

were under immense public pressure 

despite which they did not try to land 

or take the bodies away.” � 

Navy Commodore wins 

promotion through court 

IN ANOTHER instance of uniformed officers seeking 

refuge in civil courts and getting due justice, the 

Delhi High Court has upheld Indian Navy Commodore 

FH Dubash’s plea that he was arbitrarily denied his 

promotion to the post of a Rear Admiral. 

A 2004 Vishist Sewa Medal awardee, Dubash 

knocked on the doors of the court because he actually 

ranked second in merit. Dubash moved the court in 

August 2004, alleging he was being wrongly denied 

the promotion. 

In its order last week, the HC agreed that “two vacancies 

were available when the promotion board 

was convened on June 18, 2004, for consideration of 

promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral”, “that in spite 

of the availability of two vacancies, the petitioner 

who was eligible, being placed at No2 in the merit list 

was thus denied promotion wrongly,” and that “the 

policy of equitable distribution of vacancies was 

utilised by the Navy as the reason to deny promotion 

to the petitioner cannot override the government’s 

directive dated September 25, 2000 according to 

which the selection is to be based on the actual vacancies 

available during the period of one year following 

the boards held 

in August each year. The 

government’s directive 

dated September 25 

was applicable in 

Dubash’s case.” 

Promotions from the 

rank of Commodore to 

07 

Rear Admiral are awarded 

twice a year, once be- 

Commodore Dubash tween January 1 and 

June 30, and again between 

July 1 and December 31. However, this is subject 

to availability of vacancies. In 2002, there was 

just one vacancy for the post of Rear Admiral, for 

which a promotion board was convened. Dubash was 

considered but spared promotion and another officer, 

Dubash contended the board had 

considered only one vacancy, 

though two were available. The 

Delhi High Court upheld his plea 

K. SATHEESH 

Commodore Ramsay, was promoted as Rear Admiral. 

In 2003, the promotion board was not convened due 

to the absence of any vacancy. 

On June 18, 2004, the first promotion board met to 

consider candidates. Although, keeping in view, the 

usual methodology adopted while calculating vacancies, 

two posts in the rank of Rear Admiral were available. 

Selection was held on the basis that only one 

vacancy was available. Thus, it seems vital facts were 

“suppressed” from the 2004 promotion board to deprive 

Dubash of his promotion. Commodore Dubash 

was placed at number 2 in the merit list, but one 

Commodore K. Raina was promoted to Rear Admiral, 

denying Dubash the promotion. Dubash went to court 

only after his representations to the Navy went unheeded. 

He contended that the board dated June 18, 

2004, had considered only one vacancy on a wrong 

premise, although two vacancies were available and, 

therefore, the action of the defence ministry and the 

Navy were contrary to law. 

What is intriguing is that Commodore Raina, one of 

the promotees, was indicted in what’s called the 

Chillers Case. In 1996, a board of inquiry was ordered 

to inquire into the purchase of substandard chillers 

for an air-conditioning plant of INS Gomati by 

Materials Superintendent, Mumbai and Controller of 

Procurement and their officers. Raina was then the 

controller of procurement and indicted by the board 

of inquiry. 

The Navy now has the option of going to the 

Supreme Court in appeal against the HC order before 

March 10, the date given by the court to promote him 

as Rear Admiral. But Dubash’s lawyer Meet Malhotra 

says, “The Navy may certainly appeal in a mindless 

manner. I am happy that justice has been done.” 

VINEET KHARE 

FREE. FAIR. FEARLESS

08 CURRENT AFFAIRS 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

BASHARAT PEER 

New Delhi 

OMAR SIDDIQUI has returned home 

from Narendra Modi’s jail. The 

32-year-old Delhi-based HR manager 

was arrested by the Gujarat Police’s 

Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) from his residence 

in Hauz Rani area of south Delhi 

last week. 

“We heard a car stop outside his house at 

night but did not dare check what happened,” 

said Waseem Ahmed, Siddiqui’s 

neighbour. The next morning, television 

crews and neighbours had gathered outside 

the Siddiqui residence. The ATS had 

arrested Omar Siddiqui allegedly for sending 

an e-mail to the Gujarat CM “abusing 

and threatening him”. 

His father, Irfan Siddiqui, a retired director 

of the Union food and civil supplies department, 

and sister Farah rushed to 

Gujarat to hire legal help to defend Omar, 

who was tried at a court in Gandhinagar. 

ATS officers told the media they had proof 

that Omar had used his computer to write 

the “threatening e-mail” in response to 

spam mail advertising “Vibrant Gujarat” 

sent from the Gujarat CM’s official website. If 

the charge was proven in court, Siddiqui’s 

alleged e-mail could have cost him more 

than five years in prison and would have 

ended a potentially promising career. 

PC VINOJ KUMAR 

Chennai 

AHIGH-VOLTAGE DRAMA 

awaits Tamil Nadu as the 

state prepares for 

Assembly polls. Broad hints are 

being dropped of a political realignment, 

as parties prepare to 

extract their pound of flesh from 

the DMK and the AIADMK who have 

ruled the state between them for 

nearly four decades. 

DMK has come under great pressure 

from Democratic Progressive 

Alliance (DPA) allies — Congress, 

Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra 

Kazhagam (MDMK), Pattali Makkal 

Katchi (PMK), CPI, CPM, and the 

Indian Union Muslim League — 

over seat sharing. CPM and PMK 

leaders have demanded more 

seats. Both were part of the 

AIADMK alliance in 2001 and got 

eight and 27 seats respectively. 

The Congress is also expected 

to demand at least the same number 

of seats it got in the last elections 

when Tamil Maanila 

Congress (TMC) leader late GK 

Moopanar negotiated with the 

AIADMK and got 47 seats — 

Congress 15 and TMC 32. (The TMC 

later merged with the Congress). 

Some Congress leaders have demanded 

that DMK should form a 

coalition government if the DPA 

wins. Union Minister for State 

EVKS Elangovan first made the demand 

last year. Now, other leaders 

have renewed the demand. 

OMAR ‘SHARIF’, DECIDES MODI 

The Gujarat chief minister has granted feudal pardon to a hate e-mail writer. 

But is there an excessive state behind his magnanimity? 

Benevolent Big Bro? Narendra Modi 

Modi ‘pardoned’ Siddiqui but 

returning to a life of normalcy is 

a long haul for the man. What is 

disconcerting is the promptness 

authorities show in dealing with 

high-profile cases while letting 

others gather dust 

Siddiqui, who works at Delhi’s 

Advanced Technology Support, has a 

Masters in human resource and organisational 

development from the Delhi School 

of Economics. But even before the legal 

Kingmaker Vaiko wants a new deal for MDMK 

The run-up to Assembly polls might see realignments, with allies of the Dravidian parties keen on a bigger slice 

Muscle Flexing: Vaiko is keeping everyone guessing PHOTO SHARAD SAXENA 

SCREEN IDOLS DOT POLL CANVAS 

THE UPCOMING elections in Tamil Nadu will have its usual share of 

silver screen heroes. Actors Vijaykanth and Karthik are drawing large 

crowds, though no one is sure how that would translate into votes. 

Vijaykanth, who launched the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam 

last year, plans to contest in all 234 seats. Invoking MGR often, 

‘Captain’ Vijaykanth promises to root out corruption. But he is said to 

be in a dilemma whether to follow his heart’s desire and contest 

alone or follow ‘practical advice’ to strike an alliance with the AIADMK. 

Karthik, who joined the All-India Forward Bloc recently and was appointed 

state president, is not averse to an alliance with either the 

DMK or AIADMK. He called on DMK chief M. Karunanidhi and plans to 

meet Jayalalithaa. The actor, who enjoys the support of his Thevar 

community, has left the decision to the national leadership. 

battle could be fought or the contents 

of the e-mail examined under cyber crime 

laws, Modi, in a much-publicised gesture, 

announced that he had pardoned 

Siddiqui. He told the media that Omar 

had given vent to his emotions and was 

not an “anti-social” element. A few 

days after Modi’s “pardon” and the withdrawal 

of the case, he was released and 

returned to Delhi. 

But visitors are not welcome at the 

Siddiqui residence. Siddiqui is “not at 

home”. “We don’t want to talk about anything. 

Omar is safe but he is not staying 

here,” said his sister, standing behind the 

slightly ajar gate. “Our father is suffering 

from hypertension and mother is worried. 

Please let us be, we don’t want to talk to anyone. 

We want to leave it behind us,” she said. 

Omar Siddiqui has not rejoined work 

yet. His sister believes he will take a week 

or so. Fortunately, the Gujarat ATS has not 

tortured Siddiqui. “But he’s disturbed and 

needs some time to recuperate,” she added. 

But returning to normalcy might not be 

easy for Siddiqui. He was not the first 

Indian Muslim to have allegedly sent an email 

threat to Modi after the Gujarat carnage. 

In December 2002, Razaq Nasir 

Karim, an employee of Mumbai-based IT 

firm Sonali Infotech, was arrested for 

sending an e-mail threat to the Gujarat 

CM. Under the media glare, Modi, who 

MDMK has opened a link with 

the AIADMK as part of its strategy. 

Vaiko’s remarks that the party 

was like ‘O Positive’ blood group 

(compatible with all) set off speculations 

of his exit from the DPA. 

MDMK leaders hint that the party 

still has the trump card of joining 

the AIADMK. In 2001, MDMK had 

walked out of the DMK-led front 

and went alone, polling over 13.4 

lakh votes — about 4.65 percent. 

“In 40 constituencies, MDMK 

votes would have altered the ver- 

MDMK has the option of 

joining the AIADMK. In 

2001, it walked out of 

the DMK-led front and 

went alone, polling 4.65 

percent of the vote 

dict, if it had been part of either 

the DMK or AIADMK alliance,” says 

an MDMK leader. 

To add to the DMK’s worries, 

AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalithaa 

has announced that her party is 

open for alliance. DPA leaders have 

alleged that the AIADMK has been 

using the intelligence wing of the 

police to drive a wedge. In 

January, three PMK legislators — 

S. Vincent, K. Murugavel Rajan, 

R. Krishnan — joined the AIADMK. 

For the AIADMK, breaking the 

DPA, even if it means drawing out 

just the MDMK, would be handy. Its 

popularity has grown recently, as 

was facing immense criticism for the 

Gujarat riots, “pardoned” Karim and told 

the media that he would ensure that 

Karim can return to normal life and not 

lose his job. 

He returned to his job in Mumbai. “He 

was not sacked outright but told to join for 

a few days and then leave to find another 

job. “I have no news of Karim now. He left 

soon after he was released and found a job 

somewhere in Chennai. That is all we 

know,” said an official at Sonali Infotech. 

There is no other information on where 

Karim, who hailed from Tamil Nadu, is in 

Chennai or what turn his life has taken. 

“The laws of cyber crime exist and are 

implemented only when it comes to people 

like Narendra Modi,” says Zafar-ul- 

Islam, the editor of The Milli Gazette, a 

newspaper that focusses on Indian 

Muslims. He has reason to question the 

application of cyber crime laws to citizens 

irrespective of caste and creed. He has received 

death threats and abusive e-mails 

from pro-RSS men. On May 17, 2004, The 

Milli Gazette received two e-mails from a 

person identifying himself as Dharmesh 

Agravat. Islam sent the two e-mails with 

their complete headers to Cyber Crime 

Investigation Cell of the CBI at New Delhi. 

“It has been around two years but no action 

has been taken against people threatening 

me,” he complained. � 

reflected in a Loyola College survey. 

While 38.4 percent respondents 

supported the DMK, 33.7 

percent supported the AIADMK. 

“If the CM continues to announce 

popular schemes, the 

AIADMK’s popularity is bound to 

rise,” says P. Radhakrishnan, a sociologist 

and political commentator. 

The AIADMK is also believed to 

be holding talks with smaller 

Vanniyar parties in order to make 

a dent in PMK strongholds. 

A senior state CPM leader told 

TEHELKA that barring the MDMK, 

no party in the DPA is likely to respond 

to overtures from AIADMK, 

though they would exert maximum 

pressure on DMK for more 

seats. “All of us are clear that we 

want to defeat the AIADMK government. 

The Congress high command 

is also fully behind DPA.” 

What is baffling DPA leaders is 

whether Vaiko’s posturing is to get 

more seats or a mere ploy to cross 

over to AIADMK. DPA sources inform 

that DMK is willing to offer 

the 21 seats that MDMK demanded 

last time. But if Jayalalithaa offers 

more, MDMK is expected to take a 

final decision after weighing the 

pros and cons of joining the 

AIADMK, which detained its leader 

under POTA for 19 months. 

For the moment, Karunanidhi 

has managed to postpone the inevitable 

stating that he would 

begin seat-sharing talks only after 

the Election Commission announces 

the poll schedule. � 


Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 CURRENT AFFAIRS 

COOKIE PUSHER COMES TO TOWN 

With his amazing negotiating credentials and seniority, Murli Deora is probably the man who can blunt the Left’s 

anti-US edge. Murli might yet play Krishna in the UPA mahabharat, writes VIJAY SIMHA 

THERE’S Astory about Murli Deora 

that pretty much sums up the kind 

of person he is. There was a time 

when Dhirubhai Ambani was a struggler. 

He was just starting out, and didn’t have 

the kind of contacts he later developed. 

Deora was one of the few friends with contacts 

in Delhi. Each time Ambani came to 

Delhi, Deora would put him up in Ashok 

Hotel. Dhirubhai often had to extend his 

stay but there was not enough money to 

pay for the hotel bills. So Dhirubhai would 

check out, and Deora would pull strings to 

ensure that Dhirubhai’s luggage was taken 

care of by the hotel till he left Delhi. 

Today, Deora is senior to all, barring 

three or four Congress ministers, in the 

Murlibhai, as friends call him, 

can be found poring over his 

cards at the bridge table every 

Sunday. Those who know him 

say that only a tsunami might 

get him off bridge on a Sunday. 

There’s no family, no politics, 

and no business that day 

Manmohan Singh ministry. And 

Dhirubhai has left behind an empire. 

Such is the nature of most of Deora’s relationships. 

There’s something in it for both 

parties, and that makes Deora one of 

Mumbai’s popular citizens. Murlibhai, as 

friends call him, can be found poring over 

his cards at the bridge table every Sunday. 

Those who know him say that only a 

tsunami might get him off bridge on a 

Sunday. There’s no family, no politics, and 

no business that day. Addiction to bridge 

apart, there is no known fondness that 

Deora, 69, exhibits. 

But he can nurse a grudge. The one senior 

Congressman who Deora couldn’t get 

along with was Sharad Pawar. For some 

reason, Deora didn’t like Pawar’s growth 

in Maharashtra and his run-ins with 

Vasantdada Patil and Shankarrao Chavan. 

Deora believed that Pawar may have 

seriously weakened the Congress with his 

attitude. Things got so bad that Deora 

even refused to back Pawar’s supporters 

when they came seeking help for a 

Congress ticket. On a couple of occasions, 

Deora’s no nixed the chances of Pawar’s 

men. Talk is that Deora’s induction is a 

key element of the plans to nullify Pawar 

in Maharashtra. 

While Deora is not known for strong 

political leanings, preferring to have 

friends in all parties, he does take a very 

strong anti-smoking stance. In 1998, 

Deora filed a petition against smoking 

that, he says, led to the growing campaign 

on that issue in India and, now the ban on 

smoking scenes in new Hindi films. He 

once had a full-fledged office going only to 

deal with his anti-smoking campaign. 

Deora has said in the past that if even one 

person gives up smoking because of him, 

his life would be justified. 

Deora spent 21 years as president of the 

Mumbai Congress unit, a record in the 

party. With such a phenomenal record, he 

still lost to the BJP’s Jayawantiben Mehta 

from South Mumbai in the 1998 election. 

Deora took his defeat to heart, the only 

time he got bitter with a city he loves. He 

moved away from active politics, and spoke 

angrily of how the voter doesn’t recognise 

hard work. Deora now believes that elections 

are a matter of hype, and anyone who 

can swing it wins. He gives hard work bare- 

UP CLOSE 

His basic job as Petroleum Minister will be to keep opposition to 

US-sponsored plans down. In his early years, Deora was very 

good at negotiating. This instinct was again on display when 

Deora called CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury for a 

meeting, before any other politician, after taking over as minister 

ly 10 percent influence on an election. 

Having reached this conclusion, Deora 

took full-time to business and high profile 

breakfasts at the White House. He holds 

that politics is today a haven for people who 

have nothing else to do. So he keeps off. 

And his favourite quote on politics comes 

from Dhirubhai who once told Deora that 

politics is like swimming the English 

Channel every day. 

He shares an amazing chemistry with 

the Nehru-Gandhi family beginning from 

Indira for whom he hosted a famous tea 

party in Mumbai after she quit the 

Congress in the 1960s. Deora organised 

huge public meetings for Indira including 

one at Shivaji Park, later to become a Shiv 

Sena hotspot. Indira Gandhi was so impressed 

that she made him Mumbai 

DIPANKAR BHATTACHARYA 

09 

Congress president in place of Rajni Patel. 

That’s where Deora stayed until he lost the 

1998 election, and gave up his post in fury. 

In private conversations, Deora tells people 

that he often told Indira and Rajiv 

where they were wrong, and that this honesty 

worked for him always. 

There is another incident where Deora 

was with Madhavrao Scindia and Najma 

Heptulla in Mumbai. Apparently the 

three of them had reached Deora’s car, 

and Scindia suddenly looked at Heptulla 

and asked Deora if she was junior to him. 

Heptulla, ever ambitious, didn’t say anything 

provoking Deora to say that she was 

like an intern in school while he had a 

Master’s degree. This was when Heptulla 

Deora spent 21 years as 

president of the Mumbai 

Congress unit, a record in the 

party. He stayed there till he 

lost the 1998 elections. He now 

believes that elections are a 

matter of hype, and anyone 

who can swing it, wins 

was eyeing the Vice-President’s post, and 

the incident has been recounted a few 

times as proof of Deora’s sharp tongue 

should he want to use it. It may have led 

Deora to say that there wasn’t a single occasion 

when his recommendation was 

overridden for the ticket distribution in 

Mumbai. But for all that, he has only now 

taken on a minister’s post at the Centre 

while his bete noire Pawar is way ahead as 

prime ministerial material. 

His basic job as petroleum minister will 

be to keep opposition to US-sponsored 

plans down. In his earlier years, Deora was 

very good at negotiating. Even at the height 

of their battle, Dhirubhai and Ramnath 

Goenka, who founded The Indian Express, 

would meet at Deora’s house. At one such 

meeting, Deora got them to patch up over 

Bridge. Even when Goenka was fighting 

Rajiv Gandhi, he made it a point to see 

Deora at his house periodically. This instinct 

was on display again when Deora 

called CPM Politburo member Sitaram 

Yechury for a meeting, before any other 

politician, after taking over as minister. 

He met his wife Hema at an auditioning 

in 1968 where the American Peace 

Corporation was looking for volunteers to 

teach their staff Marathi so they could 

work in the villages of Maharashtra. 

Deora was one of the selectors, and Hema 

was an aspirant. Deora chose her, not just 

for the job. He wooed her, and made her 

his wife. Dale Carnegie is not Deora’s 

favourite author for nothing. �

10 AGENDA 02/10/04 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

THE RECKLESS 

Volcker report that led 

to the resignation of 

the foreign minister, 

the CBI and the 

Quattrocchi fiasco; 

some unwanted 

needling by the Left; 

preparations for the Budget; stock-taking and 

future-planning at the Congress plenary session 

in Hyderabad; the Saudi King’s visit; 

Republic Day celebrations; and the innocuous 

reshuffle of the Cabinet, are a few incidents 

that have undoubtedly kept Prime Minister 

Manmohan Singh and his government on tenterhooks, 

but even these are poor excuses for 

the complete stagnation of the peace process 

with Pakistan. Nevertheless, there are some 

‘controlled leaks to the press’ that seem like 

some secret-but-slow confabulations are moving 

away from the spotlight. Even if some 

meetings have taken place with a few Hurriyat 

leaders or Farooq Kathwari from the United 

States, no significant progress is foreshadowed. 

On the contrary, the dialogue between 

the two countries is getting harsher, showing 

signs of unfriendliness and hostility. 

India made unfriendly comments about the 

happenings in Baluchistan, and Pakistan retorted 

with ‘mind your own business’. If there 

were basic friendliness between the two countries 

India would have been justified in politely 

advising more accommodation of Baluchi 

dissent and the futility of suppressing it by 

force. Equally, Pakistan could have either 

changed India’s perception of the happenings 

in Baluchistan or taken a friend’s advice in 

good grace and used it for its own benefit. 

Those of us who have a deep and abiding interest 

in peace and friendship between the two 

nations are truly disappointed and dismayed. 

However, we have never interfered in the forlorn 

hope that some day, shamed by failure, 

the government may turn to well-meaning 

friends to help resume the process. 

Some valuable messages from across the 

border genuinely clamouring for progress — 

some even displaying desperation — invited a 

few concrete steps forward by us. Meanwhile, 

General Pervez Musharraf continues to outsmart 

us with his ardent appeals and proposals 

for early settlement. One gets the impression 

he earnestly wants peace but India is stalling 

and being hypocritical. Two friends, Karan 

Thapar and Tavleen Singh have written powerful 

pieces urging constructive response to the 

General’s smart and impressive overtures. 

Only last week, Tavleen wrote that she met 

the General at Davos just before she sat down 

to write her piece. She frankly asked the 

General to explain what he calls his out-ofthe-box 

solution. The General patiently explained 

to her what he had in mind. Tavleen 

distinctly remembers that nothing in the 

General’s proposals meant independence or 

redrawing the borders but it only translates to 

self-governance for Kashmir with security 

guaranteed by a Managing Council consisting 

of Indians, Pakistanis and Kashmiris. 

Tavleen seems convinced that the General 

has realised that wastage of national resources 

on a futile conflict must end in order to make 

Pakistan prosperous. The General definitely 

wishes to terminate the Kashmir Jehad. 

Karan and Tavleen are not alone, I share their 

conviction and so do many others. 

It is out of this widely dragged conviction 

that I am attempting an expansion and refinement 

of the General’s proposals. They should 

be easily acceptable to both India and 

Pakistan. Both sides need to understand the 

dynamics of a peaceful solution. 

We in India must seriously ponder over the 

EIGHT POINTS ACROSS THE LOC 

The peace process between India and Pakistan keeps nodding into siestas. A slothy government isn’t helping. 

RAM JETHMALANI attempts a peace proposal for Gen Musharraf 

Constitutional implications of Article 370. 

This Article is non-amendable. The power and 

procedure of amendment of the Constitution 

is contained in Article 368. In its application 

to the State of Jammu and Kashmir the following 

proviso has been added to Clause (2) of 

Article 368: ‘Provided further that no such 

amendment shall have an effect in relation to 

the State of Jammu and Kashmir unless applied 

by order of the President under Clause 

(1) of Article 370’. 

Therefore Article 368 itself cannot be 

amended without the concurrence of the state 

government. Subsequently Article 370 and 

Article 368 read together enable the inhabitants 

of Jammu and Kashmir through their 

elected representatives to veto any amendment 

of the Constitution in its application to 

Jammu and Kashmir. 

The provision converts India into what is 

called a pluri-national state. 

The Indian Constitution is already federal 

Lost in Translation? Kashmiris await peace AP PHOTO 

Musharraf outsmarts us with 

his ardent appeals and 

proposals for early settlement. 

One imagines he earnestly 

wants peace but India is stalling 

and being hypocritical 

in character in which internal sovereignty is 

divided between the Centre and the states. For 

external purposes they may be a single undivided 

sovereignty, but internally the situation 

is different. Where, however, a regional group 

enjoys a power to veto on the exercise of sovereign 

power amending the Constitution, India 

is not only a federation but pluri-national. 

England, Canada and Spain are examples of 

pluri-national states. The Scots, the Quebecois 

and the Catalonians are examples of sub-nations. 

The sub-state nations everywhere are 

asking for improved constitutional accommodation, 

failing which they threaten secession. 

The case of Canada and Quebec is extremely 

instructive. Quebec is nearly an extension of 

France. Its dominant language and culture is 

French. The Legislature of Quebec organised a 

referendum of sovereignty in 1995. The votes 

cast in favour of secession were enormous, an 

affirmative vote was avoided only by a small 

and insignificant margin. A nationalist lawyer 

challenged the validity of the referendum proceedings 

with a litigation launched in 

Canadian courts. The Federal Government 

then made a reference to the Supreme 

Court of Canada and the judgement is 

now reported in 1998 (2) SCR 217. 

Three issues referred to the Court are: 

� Can the Legislature or Government of 

Quebec secede unilaterally against Canada? 

� Does international law create any such right 

of any sub-national group to secede and commence 

a separate independent existence? 

� How can a possible conflict between domestic 

law and international law be resolved? 

The Supreme Court was fully conscious of 

the task to which the ongoing disagreement 

over Quebec threatened the constitutional coexistence 

of Quebec and the rest of Canada. 

The court decided to articulate the unwritten 

norms and values which underpin Canada as a 

diverse and constitutional democracy. These 

according to the court must inform the interpretation 

of the constitution’s meaning and 

help to determine the boundaries within 

which the court itself must remain when it engages 

on a highly controversial constitutional 

adjudication. The court realised that secession 

raises serious difficulties for a court because 

the validity of the existing constitutional order, 

which the judges are bound by their oath to 

uphold, is being challenged. 

The court’s finding on the first was that the 

constitution does not recognise secession. But 

its underlying principle of democracy and 

freedom of speech legitimises the initiative 

and justifies negotiations. Federalism, democracy, 

constitutionalism and the rule of law are 

its normative values. None of these can trump 

the others. Constitutionalism eliminates the 

idea of unilateral secession. 

On issue 2, the court examined the Universal 

Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. While 

it enumerates the rights of individuals like 

Part-III of the Indian Constitution, no right of 

secession of a sub-nation arises from it. 

The court then examined the UN Charter 

and noticed ‘self-determination of peoples’ in 

Article 1(2). It had no difficulty in holding selfdetermination 

as the right of a State and not of 

any individual or a group within the State. The 

State can free itself from colonial rule but no 

one can secede from the State. Its analysis of 

the International Covenant on Civil and 

Political Rights, 1966, led to the same conclusion. 

Its articles outlaw forcible destruction of 

the rights of others. Secession does just that. It 

relied strongly on Article 27 which confers on 

ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities; the 

right in community with other members of the 

group to enjoy their own culture, to profess 

and practice their own religion and to use their 

own language. Nothing in the covenant justifies 

secession or terrorism. 

Similarly, the court examined the 1992 

Declaration on the Rights of Persons 

Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious 

and Linguistic Minorities. It did create an obligation 

on the government of every state to 

ensure that national policies and programmes 

shall be planned and implemented with due 

regard for the legitimate interests of persons 

belonging to minorities. Even this did not 

sustain any claim to secession. 

Having answered issue 2 in negative, issue 3 

became redundant and called for no answer. 

This judgment should be an eye-opener to the 

secessionists in Jammu and Kashmir. 

I am sure General Musharraf knows that 

the strength of a movement can only be judged 

by participation in free elections. The secessionists 

have never put their electoral strength 

to democratic tests. On the other hand both 

the ruling coalition and the opposition parties 

are against secession and abide by the 

Constitution enacted by the Constituent 

Assembly of Kashmir and the provisions of 

India’s Constitution which have been by voluntary 

consent confirmed and ratified by the 

relevant state authorities. 

A careful reading of modern constitutional 

and international law puts the right to participate 

in governance at the apex of the citizen’s 

panoply of basic rights. This is what is understood 

as self-determination. General 

Musharraf is absolutely right that the inhabitants 

of the state must enjoy their basic right. 

Our proposal to General Musharraf must be 

on the following lines: 

(1) India and Pakistan must ensure self-determination 

on both sides of the LOC in other 

words a secular democracy in which religious, 

ethnic and linguistic minorities enjoy the full 

packet of civil and political rights. The governments 

on both sides must owe their legitimacy 

to free elections and adult franchise. 

(2) Governments on both sides must fully protect 

the basic rights of citizens, which in the 

final analysis must be declared and enforced 

by a wholly independent judiciary. 

(3) Both governments must have full legislative 

and executive control over all subjects, except 

the two Central governments will exercise 

jurisdiction and authority only in respect of 

those subjects which strictly and directly are 

related to the subjects of foreign relations, defence, 

communications and currency. 

(4) The continued existence of democratic 

governments and rule of law on both sides will 

be guaranteed by the United Nations as if 

there is a treaty to that effect between India 

and Pakistan. 

(5) A committee, the composition of which 

will be settled by agreement and will comprise 

of the representatives of India, Pakistan, and 

the two state governments shall ensure that 

Central authority is not used in the state in a 

manner directly or indirectly amounting to 

colonial exploitation of any kind. The suggestion 

of this prestigious body shall be implemented 

in good faith by the two governments. 

Any dispute between the two governments 

will be settled by arbitration, mediation or judicial 

adjudication but never by force. 

(6) For this purpose the Government of India 

and the Government of Pakistan will set up 

consulates in Muzaffarabad and Srinagar respectively, 

which will be charged specifically 

with the duty of encouraging free movement 

of citizens, goods and services. 

(7) Any attempt, overt or covert, by the 

Government of India or the Government of 

Pakistan to alter this arrangement shall be 

considered aggression as defined in international 

law and would compulsorily attract the 

intervention by the Security Council. 

(8) It shall be the obligation of the 

Government of India and the Government of 

Pakistan to protect the two state governments 

from external aggression and internal rebellion 

and disorder. The details of this proposal 

can be worked out by experts acting in good 

faith and commitment to peace and friendship 

of the two nations. � 

FREE. FREE. FAIR. FEARLESS www.tehelka.com

Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 BUSINESS 

business&economy 

The Tata giant is keen to enter pharmaceuticals and 

telecommunications to diversify its product portfolio 

Titan’s new tunes: 

perfumes, gold... 

Tehelka Bureau 

New Delhi 

TITAN INDUSTRIES Limited (TIL) is 

exploring new business opportunities 

such as servicing mobile 

telephones and cameras, marketing fast 

moving consumer goods and producing 

precision-engineered equipment for 

pharmaceuticals and electronics companies. 

TIL is simultaneously lining up 

new initiatives to widen and deepen its 

presence in its core area of manufacture 

and retailing of watches and jewellery. 

The company has grown from being a 

manufacturer of quartz watches in 1987 

into a lifestyle major with multiple 

brands and products. 

TIL is perhaps the best success story in 

the joint sector. It is the world’s sixth 

largest integrated watch manufacturer 

and India’s largest. The company is also 

the first and largest branded player in 

the jewellery sector. 

The joint sector lost its relevance with 

the dismantling of the controls raj in 

mid-1991. Later, several joint sector 

companies either became sick or moved 

completely into the control of the private 

sector. TIL has remained a joint 

sector company. The Tata Group holds 

25.01 percent equity in TIL and Tamil 

Nadu Industrial Development Corporation 

Limited (TIDCO) holds 27.88 

percent stake. Different retail, institu- 

Titan made a beginning in 

the licensing arena through 

an agreement with global 

fashion major Tommy 

Hilfiger to market its fashion 

watches in India 

tional and corporate investors hold the 

remaining shares. 

Titan wants to use its watch-servicing 

network across the country as a springboard 

for an entry into the servicing 

business that would repair mobile 

phones, high-end Swiss watches, cameras 

etc. The company is also testing the 

market for fast-moving consumer 

goods with its recent low-key entry into 

the perfume business. It has already 

leveraged its core competency in the 

manufacture of components and assembly 

of watches to produce precisionengineered 

products ranging from 

dashboard clocks to robotised production 

systems for automobile majors. It 

also supplies components to aerospace 

companies. The company is keen to 

enter into pharmaceuticals, electronics 

and telecommunications. The existing 

products include dies and moulds for 

precision pressed parts and injection 

moulded plastic components, automo- 


tive sub-assemblies such as pointers 

and gauges and automatic assembly 

lines for tiny and precision-engineered 

parts. The assembly lines comprise linear 

transfer mechanisms, optical sensing 

gear, robotic equipment, test rigs 

and pick-and-serve gear. According to a 

company official, the precision engineering 

division (PED) has already established 

itself as a profitable revenue 

stream. The global market opportunity 

for such products addressable by TIL is 

Rs 135,000 crore. 

The company has decided to upgrade 

its PED manufacturing facilities at 

Hosur in Tamil Nadu and 

Bommasandra in Karnataka at a cost of 

Rs 35 crore. It is also striving to achieve 

industry-specific quality standards to 

strengthen its credentials. TIL is also resorting 

to brand extensions to expand 

its product portfolio. In 1998, it 

launched Fastrack as a separate brand 

for watches with trendy and bold designs 

targeting the youth. In 2002, the 

brand was extended to outsourced sunglasses 

that the sub-contractors produce 

in accordance with TIL’s designs 

and specifications. “We propose to enter 

into commercial arrangements with respect 

to prescription eyewear retailing 

as an extension of our Fastrack sunglasses,” 

the company says. 

The company wants to cash in on its 

brand equity to market more outsourced 

accessories. Similarly, it intends 

to leverage its retailing capability and 

capacity by marketing certain imported 

products of global majors under licensing 

arrangements with them. It made a 

beginning in the licensing arena by entering 

into such an agreement with 

Hong Kong-based global fashion major 

Tommy Hilfiger Corporation to market 

its fashion watches in India in 2004. TIL 

is weighing prospects of entering into 

more such arrangements for marketing 

imported products targeted at niche 

segments of the market such as premium 

category watches. At present, it 

markets its own premium watches 

priced at Rs 10,000 and above under 

the brand Nebula. Similarly, it markets 

watches in the price range of Rs 395- 

Rs 1,995 under the brand Sonata for 

budget-conscious customers. TIL serves 

the mid-market for watches priced between 

Rs 1,000-Rs 8,000 under the 

umbrella brand Titan and sub-brands 

such as Regalia and Edge, aimed at the 

middle and upper middle classes. 

In the jewellery business, the company 

is weighing customers’ response to 

its pilot scale marketing of pure gold 

items under a new brand, Gold Plus. 

The brand and the associated new retail 

format have been conceived with an eye 

Not Just Time: Titan wants to move into precision engineering as well PHOTO LAKSHMAN ANAND 

on prospective customers in semiurban 

and rural areas. Two Gold Plus 

stores are currently operating at Ratlam 

in Madhya Pradesh and Erode in Tamil 

Nadu. The company is simultaneously 

expanding its Tanishq chain of jewellery 

showrooms. Such showrooms have also 

been set up in the Middle East and 

Singapore. It intends to enhance the 

sale of diamond-studded jewellery in 

overseas markets as these products offer 

a higher profit margin than plain gold 

jewellery. The company is also set to 

enter the American jewellery market. 

It’s also expanding its watch showrooms 

and outlets that operate under 

World of Titan and Timezone. In the 

overseas markets, TIL has positioned 

Titan as a “value for money” brand. It 

wants to step up exports from the current 

five lakh watches by entering or 

expanding into Latin America and East 

Europe and focussing on the Middle 

East and Southeast Asia. � 

NARESH MINOCHA 

fireworks 

Whistleblowing Without 

Political Will 

11 

THE COUNTRY’S half-hearted, half-baked attempt 

to embrace the whistleblowing culture is back on 

the national agenda following an announcement by 

the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on the topic. RBI has 

drafted a scheme for private and foreign banks to encourage 

their employees to lodge confidential (and 

genuine) complaints against frauds and other whitecollar 

crimes with it. 

RBI and the public sector banks are already covered 

by the Centre’s resolution on public interest disclosure 

and the protection of informers notified in April 

2004. Under this, the Central Vigilance Commission 

(CVC) is the designated entity for the receipt and investigation 

of staff complaints about corruption and misuse 

of office in the government and its organs. RBI 

says that all private and foreign banks may frame 

their respective whistleblower policies (WBP) on the 

basis of the draft scheme. 

Like RBI, the Securities and Exchange Board of India 

(SEBI) had made it a non-mandatory requirement for 

stock exchange-listed companies to frame their own 

WBPs for their respective employees. This option fig- 

A prospective whistleblower would 

think a thousand times before 

risking his job, peace and life 

ures in an annexure to SEBI’s 18-page circular titled 

‘Corporate Governance in Listed Companies — Clause 

49 of the Listing Agreement’ issued in October 2004. 

The revised Clause 49 was belatedly made effective 

on January 1, 2006. 

As the WBP guideline is optional, neither SEBI nor the 

companies have bothered to disclose that most of the 

companies have not complied with this requirement. 

All this shows that both the regulators and the firms 

have scant regard for the paramount need for employees 

to press the alarm bell against in-house whitecollar 

crimes. With an all-pervasive half-heartedness, 

a prospective whistleblower would think a thousand 

times before risking his job, peace of mind and life. 

The chief accounts officer of the Akola Municipal 

Corporation (AMC) in Maharashtra drove home this bitter 

truth in December 2005. He committed suicide 

after waging a losing battle against corruption in the 

AMC. The blame for this laxity lies at the door of the 

Centre, which has been sitting on the Law 

Commission’s recommendation on the issue in its 

197th report submitted in December 2001. The 

Commission recommended the enactment of the law 

titled Public Interest Disclosure (Protection of 

Informers) Act, 2002. It not only provides for protection 

to the whistleblower but also the ground for proceeding 

against the corrupt, including ministers. The 

report has not only dealt with laws in other countries 

but also listed various anti-corruption initiatives that 

have remained unimplemented like the Lok Pal Bill 

that was drafted way back in 1966! 

It’s here apt to cite a quote with which the 

commission began its report — “Whistleblowers’ 

protection is a policy that all government leaders 

support in public but few in power tolerate in private.” 

India must learn from South Africa, which 

enacted a whistleblowers’ protection law within a 

year of drafting the bill. 


12 TOP SECRET 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

investigations 

“The department 

of social welfare 

provides welfare 

programmes and 

services to the 

women in need 

and distress, the 

handicapped persons, neglected street 

children, social security for the aged and 

destitute through the network of residential 

care homes and non-institutional 

services…Treatment, Prevention and 

Rehabilitation through the implementation 

of the social Legislations pertaining 

to the welfare of children, women…” 

The Juvenile Justice (Care & 

Protection of Children) Act, 2000 is the 

social legislation for children. The act imposes 

the State with the primary responsibility 

of ensuring that all the needs of 

children are met and that their basic 

human rights are fully protected. 

THE DEPARTMENT of Social Welfare, 

however, is faithful only in letter. Its 

website states what it should be 

doing, but what they do in practice is heartwrenching. 

Young children, only seven to 

thirteen years old have abandoned welfare 

homes where it is the Delhi government’s 

business to ensure that they don’t feel ‘neglected’. 

Where they are supposed to get shel- 

ter so they are no longer ‘street children.’ 

The reality is quite the opposite. It is cold 

and it is callous. 

Raju, a 13-year-old boy from Katihar, 

Bihar, ran away from his Kingsway Camp 

children’s home. Why? “I was beaten by the 

care taker. I will never go there, they might 

kill me this time,” he says. To earn a few 

bucks, he is now working in a hotel in trans- 

Yamuna colony in East Delhi. 

Eight-year-old Vishal from Holambi, a 

village near Delhi, who also ran for his life 

has now made the New Delhi railway station 

his home. “They treated me badly, 

I had to run away. I am poor. My parents 

are labourers and I have a six-month 

old brother…” 

On the night of December 28, 2004, 14 

boys between the ages of seven and 13, similarly 

ran away from their children’s home in 

a desperate search for their parents. “We 

took this step due to the pathetic condition 

prevalent in the homes,” they confessed 

later, after being caught. 

At any given point in time there are about 

half a million homeless children on Delhi’s 

roads. With an annual approved outlay of 

Rs 8,721 lakh, and a budget of approximately 

Rs 40 to 50 lakh per home, the department 

of social welfare has been able to provide 

only 14 statutory institutions housing 

about 1200 children, with nine for boys and 

OFFICIAL 

SECRETS 

A Joke? Hardly: “The training 

camp in Pakistan turned the 

Indian cricketers into a suicide 

squad,’’ was an SMS sent out by a 

Pakistani. It could have been a 

joke and taken for one but it 

came from the Pakistan High 

Commission in New Delhi. From a 

senior diplomat in fact. 

FEEDING OFF CHILDREN 

Corrupt and unscrupulous officials of the child welfare department are not sparing even vulnerable street children. 

Hungry and underclad, and with no roof over their heads, they are running away from welfare homes in the Capital. 

MIHIR SRIVASTAVA unravels their sordid modus operandi 

Hi I am Tinkerbell: Far from the safety of family and a home, she would rather spend the night under a subway than a children’s home PHOTOS K. SATHEESH 

HOME ALONE 

The department of social welfare and the 

Juvenile Justice Act are responsible for 

ensuring the safety and well being of all 

homeless children in the state 

With a budget of Rs 8,721 lakh per annum 

and Rs 50 lakh per home, there are only 14 

shelters in the state of Delhi housing 

about 1,200 children 

From faking quotations to swindling 

payments, everyone gets a cut. The head 

of home gets 15 percent, and the 

sanctioning authorities get 10 percent 

Issuing receipts without actual purchases 

between the Homes and the patronised 

agents is rampant. Often officials who 

quote figures also sanction the amount 

Information sought through RTI elicited no 

satisfactory response and large sums of 

funds remain unaccounted for. No further 

clarifications were given 

An audit report records a purchase of 

clothing in 2001 from a wholesaler without 

essential formalities like floating an open 

tender for an amount over Rs 2 lakh 

five for girls. The conditions that prevail in 

these homes are anyone’s nightmare. It 

comes as no surprise that hundreds of children 

run away from these homes everyday, 

desperately hunting for a safer more comfortable 

refuge. 

The Juvenile Justice Principal Magistrate 

Santosh Snehi Maan spells out his disgust 

and painfully claims, “My judicial conscience 

is pricked about the manner in 

which the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) 

under the social welfare department of the 

Delhi Government appears to be functioning. 

Restoration of neglected children is 

supposed to be their prime objective. This 

could just be the tip of the iceberg. There 

could be hundreds languishing in the 

cramped children homes, being treated like 

animal stock, with no effort made to reunite 

them with their parents.” The court was 

shocked to hear the testimonies of children 

when they revealed that the authorities did 

not even bother to ask them about their 

families. The court discovered the CWC to 

merely record “addresses of the boys could 

not be traced” in its official records. The 

Juvenile Justice court in this case slammed 

the department of social welfare, for its inability 

to trace the parents of the children 

living in welfare homes. Maan has now 

brought the matter to the attention of the 

High Court under which the CWC functions. 


Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 TOP SECRET 

Khalistani Cops: Though the chairman of 

the Anti-Terrorist Front Maninderjit S. Bitta 

has not named the police officers he accuses 

of promoting Khalistani elements to further 

CM Amarinder Singh’s politics, it is 

learnt that they include a DGP-level cop and 

another sleuth who is not only a permanent 

fixture in the Intelligence Wing but also is an 

expert at unauthorised phone tapping. 

The deplorable conditions of the already 

abused and underprivileged children are 

ironically accentuated by the very agencies 

they look up to for help and security. A 

shocking find brought to light the modus 

operandi for the institutionalised financial 

bungling and misappropriation of funds, 

rampant in all agencies of the department. 

The department and its corrupt functioning 

follows a hierarchical structure. The institutions 

and homes all over the city are run 

by superintendents and come under the district 

level jurisdiction controlled by district 

officers. The district level functioning is 

then administered by the social welfare department 

at the centre, where the director, 

joint director take charge. 

Corruption is practised through a very 

well established pattern that has been mastered 

over the years. The department shortlists 

a set of favoured agents and contractors 

who are registered with select cooperatives 

patronised by the department. They supply 

provisions for various institutes under the 

department, and large amounts of money 

are made through fake quotations. The 

prices quoted are whimsically high, at times 

twice or thrice the market price. 

The comparative statements of account 

of the care home for boys, Khadi Bhawab 

in Narela shows pants being procured for 

approximately Rs 780 each, a shirt for 

Rs 400 and underwear for Rs 80 a piece 

for the boys. This was year 2001. “If you 

The Juvenile Justice Principal 

Magistrate painfully claims that 

his conscience pricks at the 

manner in which the welfare 

committee deals with children 

see the clothes they wear, this financial 

statement appears as a cruel joke,” says an 

employee of the home. 

Quotations then need to be approved 

from the headquarters. “In the bulk purchase 

cases, the agent carries the file to the 

headquarters, and strikingly is not routed 

through the departmental channels. How 

can private parties carry government files 

from one place to the other? But shockingly, 

the agent just takes possession of 

the file from the homes and carries it to 

the head office to expedite approval,” says 

a deputy director. 

Each tier of the hierarchy is very clear on 

their cut of the booty they make through 

these deals. The official explains: “The 

Superintendent gets 15 percent of the total 

bill and keeps the king share. The remaining 

is distributed amongst the rest of the 

staff. The file is made.” 

In the year 2002-2003, the malfunctioning 

department had to take the rap from the 

government when the financial powers of 

the institution superintendent was withdrawn 

and handed over to the headquarters 

for a more centralised control of funds. But 

the consistency in corruption remains the 

same. Progressing to the next level, the district 

officer keeps five percent. 

Then the file moves to the headquarters 

where the sanctioning authority takes ten 

percent, and two percent goes to the accounts 

department. And when the money is 

released against these fake, inflated bills, 

two percent is paid to the local accounts of- 


Building Blocks: The Delhi administration 

hasn’t dared to touch any politician’s illicit 

constructions. Sources say the demolition of 

MG I and MG II was merely a diversionary tactic. 

The bureaucrats are working overtime to 

kick up a row to buy time. The focus on highprofile 

schools is another ace. By the time 

the dust settles on schools, an ordinance 

would save the skin of errant politicians. 

The Firing Ring: When it comes to Sahara 

and its patron Amar Singh, there is always 

an official ring. Sources say a list of 216 persons 

from Sahara Samay earning Rs 50,000 

and above, would be shown the door in the 

next few days. The group is said to be turning 

its focus to the property business, although 

there are just a handful of takers for 

its much flaunted Amby Valley project. 

Miserable But Alive: Ruthless life, ruthless city, yet their faces seem peaceful as these children catch a nap in a dirty corner 

fice in the homes. This entire transaction 

siphons off at least 50 percent of the money 

that is released, informs an insider. 

To facilitate the financial-swindlingnexus 

in an unhindered manner, few prime 

suppliers have been partronised by the department. 

TEHELKA is in possession of documents 

that show the same person preparing 

fake quotations for different suppliers and 

again preparing the comparative statement. 

This unambiguously indicates that the 

same employees who prepare fake quotations 

and seek orders, are also the ones who 

prepare documents that finalise the deals. 

To give an example: the same person prepared 

the quotations for the suppliers for 

the Delhi Khadi and Village Industries 

Board, Super Bazar Cooperative Board, and 

the Delhi Consumer’s Cooperative 

Wholesale Store for the Home for Old and 

Infirm Beggars (HOIB), Lampur, Delhi. The 

comparative statement for this purchase is 

again prepared in the same handwriting. In 

addition, the quotations do not have serial 

numbers or dispatch numbers, further 

proving that they are forged. 

THE STORY gets sinister as one discovers 

the route the payments of these fake 

bills follow. There are numerous occasions 

where the payment is released on the fake 

bills without the receipt of the supplies. In 

such cases simple all the money gets wiped 

away. “There are so many occasions when a 

particular set of quilts is shown to be rejected 

and destroyed; and a replacement is 

shown to be purchased. But the children 

continue to use the same old quilt,” says a 

senior department official. “The case is no 

different with the purchase of clothes, towels 

and others toiletries,” says an accountant 

in a beggar home. 

TEHELKA has a letter dated 15 

September 2005 written by Mandan Lal 

Bhandari, store keeper of the Reception 

and Classification Centre (RCC), Kingsway 

Camp, Delhi to his District officer NW II, 

Model Town, Delhi stating a complaint. 

“Rajeshwari Chauhan (a senior official in 

the home) got the bill made by National 

Agricultural Cooperative Marketing 

Federation of India (NAFED) and Delhi 

Consumer’s Cooperative Wholesale Store 

without me sending in the requirement 

for those goods. He further stated: “I was 

intimidated to sign the bill without having 

received the supplies in the store so far,” he 

wrote in Hindi. Bhandari attached the 

aforementioned fake challan with his letter. 

No action was taken on his complaint. 

He was later transferred out of the home. 

The Association for Development (AFD) is 

a Delhi based NGO, working with children in 

need of care and protection, and has been 

following up on the proceedings. Their findings 

also confirm a serious money fraud. 

They have in the past year or so filed ten applications 

under the Right to Information 

Act. “They promptly supply general information 

with no financial implications,” recounts 

Raj Mangal Prasad, head of AFD. In 

one RTI application, AFD sought quotations 

of the last three years for the supply of dietary, 

bedding and office expenses. After 

three months, even after critical observations 

were made by the public grievance 

commission, information for only two institutions, 

Lajpat Nagar I and II, were provided. 

A deputy director in the department informed 

TEHELKA that the department cannot 

provide quotation for the rest of the 

homes because the payment is made on fake 

quotations. “Usually the practice is that the 

payments are approved on the basis of 

Deplorable conditions of the 

already abused children are 

ironically heightened by the 

very agencies they look up to 

for help and security 

forged quotations, and once the payment is 

made the quotation is summarily destroyed,” 

he explains. 

An audit report validates the findings. “A 

test check on the records of paid vouchers 

for the year 2000-2001 revealed that the 

department had purchased bedding and 

clothing worth Rs 2,49,275 from Delhi 

Consumers Cooperative Wholesale Store 

(Bill No. 6406, dated 13.12.2000),” states 

the audit report. Further: “On demand by 

audit, the file relating to purchase of bedding 

and other items was not made available 

to the audit till the last date.” The audit 

report pointed that essential formalities 

were not completed for this purchase. To list 

13 

Babbar’s Brigade: Amar Singh might have 

emerged victorious against Raj Babbar, who 

has been suspended, but the UP bureaucracy 

views this as the beginning of the end for 

Singh. His proximity to Mulayam has alienated 

MPs, MLAS and bureaucrats, alike. At least 

five more MPS are likely to join Babbar’s 

brigade in their common pursuit to keep ‘fixers 

and middlemen’ out of favour. 

a few: no purchase committee was constituted; 

open-tender was not floated as required 

for any purchase above Rs two lakh. 

And, glaringly, this purchase was made for 

the house with the strength of 100; but the 

clothing items were purchased for 150 children, 

whereas only 20 percent extra purchases 

are allowed. 

When TEHELKA tried to contact Narendra 

Kumar, director and secretary of the department 

of social welfare, it was communicated 

that he is too busy to answer to such 

pressing questions. TEHELKA then sent a detailed 

letter seeking response on these grave 

issues. The reply is still awaited. 

Bureaucratic apathy is the last thing such 

children need, especially from a department 

which is paid to ease their pain. Street children 

are probably the most deprived section 

of society with a weak if not nonexistent 

family base and a dire need for work to survive 

on the city’s streets. Starting at an average 

age of five, they can be found doing 

everything from cleaning shoes, to being 

vendors or runners for tea stalls and dhabas, 

to helpers in mechanic shops or cleaning 

dustbins and picking plastics from dumping 

grounds. According to a study within 

Delhi, 48 percent worked as rag pickers and 

31 percent as porters. Exposed to health 

hazards at a tender age, they are found to 

carry a dangerous level of infections and 

sexually transmitted diseases. They are also 

prone to injuries caused by violence, substance 

abuse and accidents. “Tuberculosis is 

known to be among the first symptoms AIDS 

victims in India display. Twenty percent of 

street children at the New Delhi railway station 

have TB,” says Dr Bitra George, a physician 

with the ‘Salam Balak Trust’, an NGO 

working with street children. Another study 

points to the fact that almost 90 percent of 

the street children are addicted to smoking, 

chewing tobacco and gutka, with ganja 

(marijuana) being the second most common 

addiction. 

The state of affairs as projected by the 

blatant corruption and gross insensitivity 

demonstrated by officials of the social welfare 

department is simply saddening. 

With over half a million children homeless 

on the ruthless roads of New Delhi 

every night, is this the best the government 

can do? � 


14 COMMENTARY 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

editorial 

SANKARSHAN THAKUR 

THE TEHELKA VIEW 

BLUNDER IN WONDERLAND 

AREN’T WE in the throes of unbelievable thrilling? 

Isn’t this an exhilarating striptease of unprecedentedness? 

7000…8000…8750…9500…10 mighty thousand! 

Up, up and up, keep looking, the Sensitive Index 

hasn’t reached its apogee quite yet. But it has spiralled 

high enough to launch a few of us into orbit. Dalal Street 

can’t control its chortling. Its giddy subscribers are at a 

loss for words; they’ve turned to onomatopoeia and invention 

— oooh and aaah and wham and whammy! 

Tensex!! Prudent experts inform us there could be cause 

for future worry in this lightning run on the Bombay 

bourse, a burgeoned bubble that could burst. But 

doomsdayers be damned, grant them their celebrations. 

This is reality, not hyper-reality. Look at GDP growth 

rate, projected now at a never-before eight-plus percent. 

This is a genuine boom. This isn’t about to bust. And 

well that might be. There is little doubting our transition- 

It’s a chiaroscuro 

economy, 

one rearing, 

the other reeling 

al economy is in gallop 

mode. But in a critically 

diverse country like India, 

the question to always 

ask is: who is it for? In 

this case, it is essential to 

ask who’s astride that 

galloping horse. What percentage of our population do 

stock surges and GDP growth rates actually touch? 

Perhaps not even ten. To the dispossessed tribal of 

Kalinga Nagar it won’t matter were the Sensex to leap 

into stratosphere tomorrow. A two-digit appreciation in 

the GDP growth rate barely touches the debt-ridden, and 

consequently suicidal farmer of Vidarbha. Or the landless 

of Bihar. Or the jobless in the defunct mills of 

Ahmedabad and Kolkata and Mumbai. 

Metro India lives in its own cocoon, submerged in its 

own preoccupations. It is barely even aware of the daily 

realities of the majority. Incipient dangers lurk on the 

faultlines of this disjunct. There will come a stage when 

democracy is unable to sustain the burden of a 

chiaroscuro economy, one rearing, the other reeling. 

Perhaps we already have the intimations of alarm 

among us. What else are we to make of the expanding 

Naxal influence on our more uncared-for flanks? To celebrate 

the triumph of the few at the expense of ignoring 

the requirements of the many is a recipe for disaster. 

The metros and the markets enjoy the freedoms of their 

ignorance; the government owes to more than merely 

those who populate new-found oases of opulence. Or 

shall we begin to talk about an insensitive index now? 

MUSLIMS BELIEVE there were 

124,000 prophets before Prophet 

Mohammad. We are told one of 

them was Jesus Christ. Recently, a western 

TV channel discussed an obscure research 

about the purported real gender of Jesus. 

There were arguments that Jesus may have 

been a woman. Did we hear of any riots 

breaking out over the programme? None. 

Therefore, the protest by so many 

Muslims against the provocative and possibly 

tasteless cartoon in a western newspaper 

about Prophet Mohammad suggests 

that the issue is more important to them 

than the slur on all the other prophets. Or 

else, they should have protested against the 

discussion on the gender of Christ. 

The answer to this strange problem may 

have its roots in a Persian (not Arabic or 

Quranic) saying: “Ba Khuda diwana 

baashad, ba Mohammad hoshiyar.” In 

other words, you may take liberties with 

God if you like, but with Mohammad you 

THE ROAD to Ahwa gets worse as 

we get closer to the little town. 

We can tell as much by the light 

of a full Sankrant moon, playing peekaboo 

as we wind through the hills; 

brilliant burnt orange when we first 

see it low on the horizon, gleaming silver 

high into the sky as the night 

wears on. Though really, I don’t need 

the moon to tell me how bad the road 

is. The bumps suffice. 

On the right along one stretch, 

there’s nothing between us and the 

dull gleam of a river. But wait, what 

are those flickers of orange just 

beyond the road’s edge? Small fires. 

We’ve seen plenty of those, clumps of 

people huddled around them warding 

off the January Dangs chill. But here 

the fires seem...well, constricted. 

These are fires inside small shacks. 

These are labourers working on the 

road, living beside it for the duration, 

as migrant labour does. Labourers, 

come ‘home’ for the night. Shacks like 

these, all over the Dangs. 

So what’s cooking here? The 

Shabari Kumbh mela, 500,000 

pilgrims expected. Roads are being 

improved, but there’s more. Long 

tracts of empty fields have sprouted 

poles, by the thousands, for tents to 

house pilgrims. Troughs have been 

dug and lined with multi-coloured 

toilets. Large plastic water tanks 

stand on concrete platforms. Electricity 

is making its way all over the 

district. The Purna river has had 22 

check dams built on it to form 

Pampasarovar, where pilgrims are 

supposed to bathe. 

All this, because for years, tribals in 

the Dangs have quietly venerated a 

spot on top of a hill near dusty Subir. 

Kumbh organisers say this is where 

Shabari sat Ram and Lakshman while 

she fed them berries. So they are 

building a temple here, and decided to 

hold this celebration. 

February 11, 12, 13, 2006: likely the 

most crowded days the Dangs will 

ever see. Yet, if faith is to be served, if 

pilgrims are to find spiritual fulfillment 

in the gentle waters of manmade 

Pampasarovar — why the 

things you hear about the event? An 

JAWED NAQVI 

have to be watchful.” 

Even before the Rushdie affair there were 

abusive writings about practically every religious 

leader by other religious leaders or 

their self-proclaimed representatives. Has 

there ever been any fuss about them? 

Muslims are coping today with a stepped 

up hold of the clergy on their lives. This has 

its roots in the American-sponsored 

anti-communist jehad in 

Afghanistan of the 80s. 

Similarly, many, if not all, 

Rightwing, obscurantist 

Hindu groups are equally 

Why this hostility around an inspirational story from a great epic? 

When It Comes To Power 

The RSS Knows Its Gods 

RSS activist at the mela office, Mahesh 

Daga said, “The main objective is to 

put a full stop to conversion of tribals.” 

The Kumbh mela’s website, 

shabarikumbh.org, has a section, 

‘About Kumbh’. The second paragraph 

there is a denunciation of the 

Christian church. You learn that the 

slogan Hindu jagao, Christi bhagao 

has become ‘popular’ in the Dangs. 

You learn that Swami Aseemananda, 

one of the moving spirits behind the 

mela, told Christians here, “I have 

DILIP 

D’SOUZA 

Jesus Christ, a woman? 

You may take 

liberties with 

God, but not 

with the Prophet 

Hyper-reality: Shabari Kumbh poster 

Witness this inscription: 

We will remove 

conversions and jehadi 

mentality from this 

world...What does such 

hostility have to do with 

a tender story from a 

great epic? 

come here to drive away those who 

have come here to serve.” 

What does such hostility have to do 

with a tender story from a great epic? 

‘About Kumbh’ has more of interest. 

“Organising a Kumbh in a remote, 

heavily forested area is a nightmare,” it 

says. “The 352 villages in Dang district 

had no electricity or roads ... 

There are no medical facilities or 

eateries in the vicinity. ... Realizing the 

touchy about religious matters. They too 

owe their clout to American patronage via 

the NRI circuit. The RSS-BJP-VHP remain a 

prime example of US indulgence. India’s 

Jamaat-i-Islami, Sikh and Christian groups, 

the Hamas in Palestine are preferred to liberal, 

secular groups, say those close to 

Edward Said’s ideals. Ayatollah Sistani is 

created against Saddam 

Hussein. Khomeini was chosen 

as a better option than 

Iran’s pro-Soviet communist 

leader Nuruddin Kianouri who 

led the 1979 revolution. The 

importance of (the Kumbh) the state 

government of Shri Narendra Modi 

has extended full cooperation (and) 

has undertaken construction of roads 

on a war footing. All the 352 villages of 

Dang have got electrification.” 

Good. But consider: if the state 

government has done so much since 

the idea for the Kumbh, why was 

the Dangs deprived before? After 

all, Modi has been in power for 

several years. Why did it need a 

Kumbh for his government to bring 

electricity here, to construct roads “on 

a war footing”? 

The irony goes deeper. We drove between 

the Navsari border and Ahwa 

one night, between Pampasarovar 

and Ahwa the next night. If you discount 

Ahwa, the number of electric 

lights we saw could be numbered on 

two hands. Oh, but plenty of village 

homes were lit by fires and oil lamps. 

Some families used to have electricity 

and meters but could not pay their 

bills. Why? One farmer told us that 

bills only came once in two years, thus 

for large amounts like Rs 12,000. 

Unable to pay — they could have managed 

smaller monthly bills — their 

meters and supply were taken away. 

So I have no idea what shabarikumbh.org 

means by claiming that all 

352 villages have been electrified. 

What is electrified, of course, is the 

temple. Sited on top of a hill with a 

magnificent view of forested slopes, 

the Shabari Dham temple promises to 

be a spectacular tribute to a charming 

story. Yet here too, there is hostility. To 

one side is a large concrete water tank, 

with this inscription: Dharmantran 

aur jehad ke vichaar ko vishwa se nirmool 

karenge (We will remove conversions 

and the jehadi mentality from 

this world). 

And later, as we drive past dark 

villages like Mukhammal and Jarsol 

where meters were installed, then 

ripped out, we can see brightness on 

that hill. Yes, the not-yet-finished 

temple has lights at night. The 

villages don’t. Welcome to the 

Kumbh mela. 

The writer is a Mumbai-based 

journalist 

secular communists in Iran were massacred 

in a pact between the mullahs and the US. 

The two were doing business even while 

hurling abuses at each other. 

Ghazi Ilam Din Shaheed killed authorpublisher 

Raj Pal on April 16, 1929. He was 

sent to the gallows in Mianwali on October 

31, 1929. But a social mobilisation was preempted 

by none other than Allama Iqbal. 

This happened when the millat urged the 

revered Muslim poet to intervene with the 

British government to save the life of the 

condemned Pathan. The Allama is believed 

to have replied: “If the man wants to go to 

heaven, who am I to come in his way?” 

Today as some Muslims go wild over an 

offensive cartoon, it is difficult not to see a 

conspiracy to keep them perpetually off balance. 

It helps avoid a discussion on more serious 

issues such as American neo-liberal 

policies. It aims to show them as less tolerant 

than, say, the followers of Christ. 

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist 


Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 COMMENTARY 

AMULYA 

GANGULI 

IF THE odds were considered on the 

possibility of an American and/or 

Israeli air strike on Iran’s nuclear installations, 

then the balance can be 

said to be slowly tilting towards the 

horrendous event. Till now, most people 

have drawn satisfaction from the belief that 

although both Washington and Tel Aviv 

have said that they haven’t ruled out the 

military option, the chances of the two allies 

using the holocaust weapons against their 

perceived common enemy are minimal. 

The reason for the hesitancy is not any 

moral qualm, but the often cited explanation 

that the US is currently so embroiled in 

Iraq that it won’t have the stomach for another 

messy confrontation in which it may 

not have the support of even its ever faithful 

‘poodle’, Britain’s Tony Blair. Another reason 

that has been advanced is that the US and 

Israel will be wary of further inflaming 

Muslim opinion all over the world. These 

calculations do not seem to have deterred 

those in the US who favour a repeat of 

George W. Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive 

attacks on countries in the “axis of evil”. Iraq 

has already been subjected to the American 

‘shock and awe’ tactics, which have claimed 

100,000 Iraqi lives, according to the reputed 

medical journal, The Lancet. Now, Iran is 

expected to be the next. 

Among those arguing for such a strike is 

Republican Senator and possible presidential 

candidate John McCain, whose claim to 

fame is to have piloted a measure through 

the Senate prohibiting the use of torture by 

US forces. President Bush had initially 

opposed the move, but finally endorsed it, 

though with qualifications. Now, perhaps to 

demonstrate that despite the anti-torture 

initiative, he is not a wimp and that his heart 

remains truly Republican, McCain has said 

that “there is only one thing worse than the 

US exercising a military option. That is a 

nuclear-armed Iran”. 

His Democratic colleague in the US 

Congress, Joe Lieberman, is also with him. 

This pro-Iraq war Democrat has said that “if 

we have learned one thing from 9/11 … it is 

that when somebody says over and over 

again, as Osama bin Laden did during the 

90s, ‘I hate you and give me a chance, I will 

kill you’, they mean it and try to do it.” 

But the most forthright has been the proempire 

historian Niall Ferguson, who has 

argued in his book, Colossus, on the 

American empire, that the US should rule 

certain parts of the world. In his column in 

The Los Angeles Times, Ferguson has written 

a fictional account of what a historian of 

a mythical 2007-11 Great Gulf War involving 

thermonuclear weapons might say 

about the run-up to the conflagration. 

“As in the 1930s, an anti-Semitic demagogue 

broke his country’s treaty obligations 

and armed for war,” writes the putative 

historian. “Only one man might have 

stiffened President Bush’s resolve in the 

crisis. But Ariel Sharon had been struck 

down by a stroke just as the Iranian crisis 

came to a head. With Israel leaderless, 

Ahmadinejad had a free hand.” After the 

“2007-11 war”, the historian wrote that it 

vindicated “the Bush administration’s 

principle of pre-emption. For if that principle 

had only been adhered to in 2006, 

Iran’s nuclear aspiration might have been 

thwarted at minimal cost. And the Great 

Gulf War might never have happened”. 


LITTLE BOY AND FAT MAN 

In 1990, neocon big mouth Charles Krauthammer said the US must seize the unipolar 

moment. 9/11 came as a miracle. Is the hegemonic radioactivity set to destroy Iran now? 

Why Can’t We? Iranian women at the Isfahan nuclear facility, August 2005 AP PHOTO 

What is curious about these dire prognostications 

is that there is no assessment about 

the after-effects of the attack on Iran. The 

attitude is no different from America’s blind 

foray into Iraq, based on the assumption 

that the “liberated” Iraqis would welcome 

the American troops with flowers. Similarly, 

those favouring the military solution seem 

to believe that the world, and Iran, would 

accept the air strikes as fait accompli even if 

they are squeamish about it. 

The pro-war lobby also seems to believe 

that even if there is widespread condemnation 

of the US/Israeli action, Washington 

and Tel Aviv will be able to ignore it, as they 

have ignored the criticism of the Iraq conflict. 

Perhaps they also believe that once the 

deed is done, the international community, 

and especially the European countries, will 

be secretly grateful that the looming menace 

of a nuclear-armed Iran has been eliminated. 

Before the attacks, the nature of the 

threat will be magnified with references to 

the appearance of a ‘Hamastan’ in the 

Palestinian territories with its supposed 

links to Iran, as has been mentioned by the 

Likud’s candidate for the Israeli prime minister’s 

post, Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Apart from the threat posed by Iran to 

“world peace”, there may be another reason 

why the US, and particularly the Bush administration, 

may opt for so drastic a step 

since it carries the possibility of raising the 

president’s falling approval ratings. A war 

always boosts a leader’s stature — at least 

initially — as the country rallies round him 

in a patriotic gesture. As the pro-war positions 

of McCain and Lieberman show, the 

US Congress will go along with the preemptive 

strikes. So will many of the Rightwing 

commentators like Charles 

Krauthammer of The New York Times and 

the pro-Republican TV and radio stations 

like Rupert Murdoch’s Fox. In fact, 

Krauthammer had wondered not long ago 

whether Iraq was the “wrong war” and 

15 

whether the US would have been better 

served by attacking Iran instead. Now he 

might say that it is better late than never. 

The new firestorm in Iran will divert attention 

from America’s failure in Iraq, at 

least till the fateful repercussions of the new 

battlefront become evident. Since the US 

will not have to commit ground forces to 

Iran, its badly stretched army will not face 

any immediate problems. In fact, the new 

exercise of overwhelming power is likely to 

embolden the American forces in Iraq to be 

even more ruthless in their operations. 

If there is little debate in the US about the 

fallout from this new pre-emptive adventure, 

the reason probably is that the 

Americans (and the Israelis) have generally 

got away with such acts of blatancy, with the 

rest of the world generally keeping quiet. 

Israel’s decimation of the Iraqi nuclear reactor 

at Osirak in 1981 is a case in point. But 

even more relevant is the dropping of Little 

Boy and Fat Man on Hiroshima and 

Nagasaki. Instead of any sense of outrage, 

this first use of the holocaust weapons on innocent 

citizens has faded into history, ex- 

The aftermath of the American 

attack on Iran will not be the 

silence of the grave even if 

another 100,000 people die, as 

in Iraq — minimal losses, as 

Niall Ferguson might say. It 

will be a long war in West Asia 

cept for the ritualistic observation of 

Hiroshima Day on August 6. 

The Americans may not use nuclear 

weapons in Iran, but the effect of blasting 

nuclear establishments cannot be predicted. 

Nor can the response of the Iranians 

with their Shiite tradition of martyrdom. 

Ferguson’s “historian” has written about the 

firing of Teheran’s nuclear-tipped missiles at 

Tel Aviv and Israel’s at Teheran. Even if 

these accounts are the result of a heated 

imagination, the aftermath of the American 

attack will not be the silence of the grave 

even if another 100,000 die in Iran, as in 

Iraq — “minimal” losses, as Ferguson might 

say. Even if Iran cannot retaliate directly 

against the US, it will ensure that Israeli and 

American forces in Iraq and elsewhere in 

West Asia are engaged in a prolonged war. 

The element of racism in this doomsday 

scenario cannot be discounted. It is unlikely 

if Washington and Tel Aviv would have been 

so casual about a unilateral offensive against 

a sovereign country if its citizens were 

White. The Browns, however, are a different 

matter, just as the Yellows were during 

World War II. It is also customary for the 

Americans to describe the Browns as uncivilised, 

as was routinely done during the 

1979 hostage crisis in Iran. 

Besides, the American predatory 

instincts have been honed by the extermination 

of the Native Americans. It is 

possible that not only do these murderous 

habits guide the country’s behaviour 

today, but the US also believes, as General 

Westmoreland said in Vietnam, “The 

Oriental doesn’t put the same high price 

on life as does a Westerner. Life is plentiful. 

Life is cheap in the Orient.” 

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist 


16 COVER STORY 

Ghettoised Indians of 

the gutter society, 

eternally condemned. 

Not anymore, writes 

AMIT SENGUPTA. 

The uprising is not a 

revolution, but it is 

no less 

In the interiors of UP’s 

Bulandshahr, when 

Buddhist bhikshus walk 

down the street with 

dalits holding guns and 

hundreds reject the 

‘mental shackles’ of 

Brahmanic Hinduism’s 

metaphysical slavery, 

you can feel, see and hear 

this unimaginable 

resurrection and rising 

Buddham Sharanam Gacchami: November 4, 2001 

The sun of self-respect has burst into flame 

Let it burn up these castes! 

Smash, Break, Destroy 

These walls of hatred 

Crush to smithereens this aeons-old school of 

blindness 

Rise, O People! 

Marathi song, anti-caste 

movement, 1970s 

AS URBAN purists, untouched by the 

untouchables, these sleepwalking 

stereotypes are often unreal, almost 

hallucinatory, dream-like, 

quasi-mythical. While motionless 

modernity speeds to and fro, you can see him in 

the heart of the capital, his heart stable as the 

daily ritual of death, his eyes as pitch-dark as 

forest darkness. The bare-bodied man lifts the 

iron lid and enters the abyss of the black hole. 

No mask, no protective gear, no gloves, no constitutional 

self-dignity, fated in a futuristic superpower 

where the Sensex soars like simulated 

sex. Then, often with his bare hands, he 

works upon the filthy narrative of the underground, 

urban civilisation’s unseen, desanitised, 

unread autobiography. 

In the comparative literature of condemned 

social realism, Rani in Lucknow, is perhaps 

worse-off. Like all the manual scavengers 

across the country, who still pick up human excreta 

and carry it on their head, like a Vedic 

curse. Or those emaciated humans, 

who still skin dead cows 

and buffaloes, rub salt on them to 

kill the stink, and tentatively enter 

the primitive leather trade of one 

of the world’s fastest growing 

economies. In this fast forward 

rewind, when the ‘superior races’ 

of Manu’s varna system, lynched 

five of them in Haryana’s Jhajjar 

in 2002, VHP’s Acharya Giriraj 

Kishore proclaimed that cows are 

more valuable than dalits. 

Last month they burnt alive five 

dalits, including women and children, 

along with a buffalo in a 

thatched hut in rural Bihar. The 

revenge of the upper castes cen- 

Buddha Smiles: mass-conversion of dalits to Buddhism, November 4, 2001 Delhi 

tered on cattle. Nothing to be shocked and 

awed. In these killing fields of ancient slavery, 

it’s not only their hateful shadows, their 

women’s bodies and children’s limbs are often 

the chosen subject of how to teach them a subjective 

lesson in caste society’s objectivity. So 

they aren’t only geographically segregated, the 

water they drink is differently designed, their 

tea cups in the tea-shop are located in different 

time and space, and the shelter under the tree 

for a landless dalit is not really made of an 

equal summer. Try drinking a glass of water in 

a feudal village in Rajasthan, your social ostracism 

will be instant history. 

In other words, five thousand years and 

more after, almost 60 years after 

‘Independence’, dalits in India are a priori condemned, 

even before they are born. Even after 

they die when they are buried in separate village 

graveyards. Even when they become educated 

or employed, within or outside the politics 

of half-fake affirmative action. 

So have we lost our heads? Dalit Rising? 

Pray, where? In which rainbow uprising? In 

which constitutional amendment of the largest 

democracy where they constitute almost 170 

million of the population? In the village interiors 

of UP’s Bulandshahr, near Shikarpur, when 

Buddhist bhikshus walk on the street with dalits 

holding guns and hundreds reject the ‘mental 

shackles’ of Brahmanic Hinduism’s metaphysical 

slavery, you can see the resurrection 

and the rising: Buddhist chants in the twilight 

under the shadow of the gun. This is their territory, 

post-Mandal, post-Kanshiram and 

Mayawati, post-Uditraj, who is leading the 

campaign on conversions. “We don’t want their 

temples, but if they humiliate any dalit in the 

neighbourhood, they will have to cross this 

street,” says local leader Sudhir Kumar. It’s a 

threat, and it’s not hollow. 

Earlier, in 2001, ex-JNU student and dalit 

leader, Uditraj, led 50,000 dalits in a mass conversion 

to Buddhism at Ambedkar Bhavan in 

Delhi. He had promised a one million strong 

event, on the footsteps of Babasaheb 

Ambedkar’s neo-Buddhist mass conversion in 

Nagpur on October 14, 1956. But the BJP 


regime, backed by the RSS-VHP, scattered it 

using the armed might of the State: dalits were 

blocked, arrested, picked up, forced to return. 

Why? Is freedom of religion not a constitutional 

right? Or is it that the Hindutva forces don’t 

want, at any cost, the liberation of dalits? 

Uditraj’s Indian Justice Party is strong 

among SC/ST employees in 20 states. But it’s not 

a big electoral force. Can Buddhism mark a historical 

rupture? “No,” he says. “We want social 

reforms first, a renaissance of mental freedom, 

followed by political, economic freedom. This 

is an ideological struggle to unite the divided 

dalits. It’s not for political power.” 

Indeed, when Mayawati celebrates her opulent 

birthday parties or installs her own statue, 

she is sending a signal: Hinduism can go to 

hell, dalits have their own ‘living goddess’. Dalit 

scholars believe that this ‘vulgar’ symbolism 

can be politically potent, dalits can cock a 

snook at the caste society. But, finally, this will 

only lead to short-term goals in the power establishment 

— it can never truly liberate. That 

is why, Mayawati’s opportunism — she can 

align with Hindutva forces, anybody — can become 

self-defeating in the long run. Dalit politics 

can never be, hence, genuinely, radically, 

ideologically transformative. 

Unlike in Punjab, with plus 30 percent dalit 

population, many of them economically welloff, 

not dependent on land, where Kanshiram 

begun his first mobilisation. The dalit-sufi secular 

traditions (they control dargahs) are as 

strong here, as is the old Ghadarite-Leftist-radical 

traditions — be it during the freedom 

struggle, or in the great sacrifices made against 

terrorism. The Mansa and Talhan movements 

are examples of organised dalit reassertion: political 

and ideological (see story). 

In Bant Singh Inquilabi’s amputated limbs, 

lies the epic story of a nation defiled, like his 

raped daughter in Mansa. But the truth is that 

this ‘invisible nation’ is refusing to accept its fatedness 

anymore. As in Gohana in Haryana, in 

Bhojpur in Bihar, Ghatkopar in Mumbai, 

Talhan in Punjab, this rising is rising like a wave 

on a full moon night. It’s only that we only want 

to see the dark side of the moon. � 



One Day That Shook The Nation: Deepak Das holds a collage of the nationwide protests against the attack on dalits in Gohana PHOTOS K. SATHEESH 

D FOR DALIT, 

D FOR DEFIANCE 

The dalits of Haryana are redesigning a new universe, 

BASHARAT PEER reports from Gohana 

GOHANA IS a small, dusty town on the 

Sonepat-Rohtak highway of Haryana 

with billboards promising progress. 

Larger than life posters of Sourav Ganguly, 

Irfan Pathan and Kareena Kapoor selling mobile 

talk time and soft drinks stare from shop 

fronts near the statue of BR Ambedkar in the 

Gohana main market. But the answer given to 

a stranger seeking directions from a Jat shopkeeper 

rips off the façade of globalised progress 

and reveals the real Gohana: “Chamaron ki 

basti mein jaana hai ke?” 

Past the town square, Gohana’s largest dalit 

neighbourhood, Valmiki Colony, has risen 

from the ashes. On August 31, 2005, it was 

looted and burnt by a mob of Jats after a Jat 

youth was killed in a scuffle with some dalit 

youngsters. Dalits had fled their homes fearing 

attacks by Jats after the murder; the patrolling 

police had chosen not to stop the mobs from 

torching 54 dalit houses. “The arson was the 

Jats’ way of teaching the dalits a lesson,” said 

Vinod Kumar, whose house was burnt. “The 

police, administration and the government are 

dominated by Jats; they simply watched our 

houses burn.” 

Five months later, the burnt houses have 

been rebuilt, their facades painted in bright 

pink, red and green. Marble tiles with bright 

pictures of Valmiki adorn the facades of every 

house, asserting the dalit identity of the residents. 

“We had to return. It is our home,” said 

Kumar, sitting on a newly acquired sofa in the 

drawing room of his house painted blue. 

Kumar embodies the spirit of the dalits of 

Gohana. In his early 30s, he is not the scavenger 

the caste society ordered him to be. With 

a Masters in Political Science, he works as a 

senior assistant in New India Assurance’s 

Gohana branch. Most dalits have embraced education 

and stepped across the line of control 

of the caste system. “There are many of us who 

have a masters degree and work in private and 

government jobs. Most of our boys go to school 

and so do the girls,” he said. 

He saw his neighbourhood burn and he fled 

with his family. After many protests, when the 

compensation of Rs 1 lakh was awarded, 

Kumar rebuilt his house and moved back in 

January. “The compensation wasn’t enough. 

Most of our household goods were looted and 

not compensated for,” he said. For two months, 

he rented a place. 

“We were scared of moving around the Jat 

dominated parts in the first few weeks. Not 


any more,” said young Deepak Das, a Haryana 

Police constable. Das had taken leave after the 

arson and joined his community in rebuilding 

and mobilisation. In his drawing room, Das 

unrolls plastic sheets of scanned news articles 

and pictures with slogans on them. “We made 

these after the incident and hung them outside 

the Valmiki Ashram,” he said. He smiles 

proudly at the slogans written across the picture, 

which reads: Jaag Uthe Ab Soye Sher. He 

recounts numerous incidents when he and 

other dalit boys stood up against the powerful 

Jats backed by the police. “The Jats here have 

the power but we have always fought back,” 

said Das. 

Over the decades, the Jats 

continued migrating to Gohana. 

By 2001, the town of 40,000 had a 

Jat majority. ‘They were under the 

illusion that they could exploit us 

like they do to dalits in other 

villages. But we proved them 

wrong. It was that pent-up anger 

that actually led to the burning of 

our houses,’ explained Das 

Kumar, Das and the other young men of the 

Valmiki Colony are not the stereotyped, submissive, 

suffering dalits that one would traditionally 

expect to encounter. Dressed in imitations 

Nike shoes and Wrangler jeans, their 

body language is defiant. “We are like this because 

we were not used to caste domination,” 

said Vinod Kumar. In 1947, most residents here 

were dalits. Partition brought a few thousand 

refugees. The refugees, though upper castes, 

and the dalits lived in harmony. 

Over the decades, Jats continued migrating 

from the neighbouring villages to Gohana. By 

2001, the town of 40,000 had a Jat majority. 

“They were under the illusion that they could 

exploit us like they do to dalits in other villages. 

But we proved them wrong,” explained Das. 

The tales of their suffering and courage have 

spread throughout the dalit community of 

Haryana. “Gohana’s people are bold, progressive, 

educated and upwardly mobile. We all 

need to be like them,” said Satya Prakash 

Jarawata, Haryana unit president of the Indian 

Justice Party. Unlike, the dalits of Gohana, the 

Gurgaon-based Jarawata converted to 

Buddhism. But his life is evidence that mere 

conversion, without economics and education 

will not break entrenched prejudices. 

Long before he built a well-furnished house 

in Gurgaon, his father worked as a tailor in 

Lokra, 30 kilometres away. Growing up in 

Lokra, Jarawata could not visit the local temple 

built by upper caste Ahirs or drink 

water from their pond. After he passed 

his matriculation, Jarawata’s father casually 

told a few Jat shopkeepers that 

his son would become a tehsildar. 

“They taunted him — how can 

a chamar nurture such dreams,” 

said Jarawata. 

Jarawata joined the Gurgaon 

Grameen Bank as a clerk but the remarks 

from his colleagues about “uneducated 

dalits grabbing jobs” using 

reservations haunted him. He continued his 

education, got an MA, a degree in law and rose 

to be a senior insurance manager. Jarawata, 

who almost got a Congress ticket in the last 

Assembly elections, talks about his ancestral 

village with a smile: “Now the same upper 

castes who taunted my father offer me a chair 

and tea in their homes.” 

However, this journey of upward social mobility 

remains tough for the vast majority of 

landless dalits in Haryana. “Most boys drop out 

after high school because of acute poverty,” said 

Sudesh Kataria, an assistant engineer working 

for a multinational. Hailing from Siddhi 

Sikandarpur village, 20 kilometres from 

Gurgaon, he has a diploma in electrical engineering 

from Industrial Training Institute, 

Gurgaon. Kataria’s best friend at ITI, a Jat, once 

invited him to a family wedding but insisted 

that he shouldn’t reveal his identity. “At the 

wedding a guest asked me about my caste and 

I lied. Then he asked me about my village 

and I told him the truth. He knew 

my village was a dalit village.” A fight 

broke out between the hosts and the 

guests — how can they let a dalit in? 

“They washed the chair I sat on and 

threw me out,” Kataria recalls. 

Later, in his first job in a polymer 

company, Kataria found his upper 

caste colleagues shying away. “Things 

are better now but we need reservation 

in the private sector too,” he said, while 

stopping his Maruti Esteem. His 70-year-old 

father, once a peon in a government school, 

said, “The discrimination today is only 25 percent 

of what my generation faced.” 

Kataria wants a new life for the dalits: he 

campaigns throughout the villages of 

Gurgaon with other educated dalits. “Our 

people will rise, stronger and powerful. We 

need to unite. And once we unite and fight 

back, there will be no Gohanas or Jhajjars. 

Not any more.” 

COVER STORY 

17 

SATYAPRAKASH 

JARAWATA 

‘When I go back to my 

village, the upper castes 

who would taunt my father 

offer me a chair and tea’ 

Led the dalit movement against 

the 2002 murder of five dalit 

youth in Jhajjar for allegedly skinning 

a cow. Converted more than 

100 dalits to Buddhism in 

Gurgaon after the event. Taunted 

for being an ill-qualified dalit in 

his first bank clerk job, Jarawata 

got an MA and a law degree, and 

rose to be a senior insurance 

manager 

DEEPAK DAS 

‘If my Jat colleagues would 

be harsh on me, they know 

I could be harsh on their 

people when posted in a 

Jat neighbourhood’ 

This Haryana Police constable 

came on leave to rebuild his 

burnt house and mobilise the 

community. Das faces rare caste 

discrimination while on duty 



A Torso Flaming 

With Spirit 

Fight Till The Last: Bant Singh’s family in village Burj Jhabber in district Mansa 

After his daughter 

was raped, dalit 

singer Bant Singh 

fought back for 

justice. He now lies 

without his limbs in a 

Chandigarh hospital. 

But thousands of 

dalits are rallying in 

Punjab’s Mansa, in 

an unprecedented 

uprising against the 

Jat Sikhs, reports 

VIKRAM JIT SINGH 

FOR NEARLY 20 days, a stoic mother hid a 

horrific truth from the youngest of her 

eight children, eight-year-old Jagmeet 

Singh. But on January 25, 2006, at a massive 

rally of landless Dalit Sikhs and small landholding 

Jat Sikh farmers organised by the 

Left parties at Mansa, Jagmeet saw a caricature 

of what had once been a proud man. 

At a drama staged at the rally, a figure of 

Jagmeet’s father, Bant Singh lay on the stage 

with three of his limbs hacked. A victim of a 

brutal assault by Jat Sikh landowners on 

January 5, 2006, that led to gangrene and annihilation 

of both hands and a leg. 

When Jagmeet got back to his village that 

evening, he asked his mother, Harbans Kaur, a 

simple question: “Ma, will my papa be able to 

hold me in his arms again?’’ 

Nearly 200 km away from this village set in 

a semi-desert mosaic of wheat and mustard 

fields, a powerful symbol of the emerging war 

in Punjab lies in Chandigarh’s famous hospital, 

the PGIMER. Bant Singh’s spirit has not in 

the least been incapacitated but a twinge of 

bitterness against the vagaries of fate escapes 

INQUILAB! 

Kar Chale Hum Fida: Bant Singh at Chandigarh’s PGIMER 

Jithe khun hain meren veeriyan da 

Vishiya sadkan te haqan di luk banke 

Buchar khaneyan chon jithe lok mere 

Nittar rahe itihas di thuk banke 

Maa dhartiye sada suhagne ni 

Mere yaaran nu janam tu deyin uthe… 

WRITTEN BY Sant Ram Udasi, this Punjabi poem has 

now become Bant Singh Inquilabi’s beloved song. The 

poem talks about the pride of his ‘brave brothers’ struggle’ for 

their rights. He asks mother earth to give them birth again in 

his lips. Asked who is looking after his eight 

children, including favourite Jagmeet back 

home, Bant’s reply is cryptic as he clenches his 

jaw, “God.” Bant is a man made of sterner 

stuff, flashing smiles even as he vomits and 

his chest heaves with a rasping cough. 

Popularly known as Bant back home, the 

Mazbhi (dalit) Sikh, who eked out a living 

rearing pigs and mobilising the landless during 

spare time, has lost none of his defiance. 

“My entire fight was against the landlords. I 

used to organise my oppressed people and 

tell them to find self-employment, not to 

work as serfs with the landlords. Live with respect. 

Even after my physical incapacity, I will 

never do a ‘naukri’ for a landlord or allow any 

member of my family to work with them,’’ 

Bant told TEHELKA. 

In the late evening of January 5, 2006, Bant 

was cycling home from a neighbouring village 

after collecting memberships for the Mazdoor 

Mukti Morcha for which he had been appointed 

coordinator for 12 villages. Awaiting him 

were a group of youngsters who had a tiff with 

Bant previously. Bant threw his cycle and ran 

through the fields to give them the slip. But the 

youngsters used a scooter to catch up. That the 

attack was savage was evident from the fact 

that the weapons used were handpump handles. 

“The attack was planned in a manner that 

it doesn’t attract certain provisions of the IPC. 

So blunt instruments were used,’’ explains 

Mansa SSP Amit Prasad. 

The assailants first set about crushing Bant’s 

legs so that he could not run. Then his arms 

were mercilessly beaten. The assailants then 

fled but perhaps realised later that they had 

beaten up Bant too badly, endangering his 

life. One of the assailants, Navdeep Singh, 

then rang up former sarpanch, Beant Singh 

Sidhu of the Shiromani Akali Dal (Badal) to 

rush Bant to the hospital. “I took my 

farmhands and rushed to the spot. It was dark 

and we could not find him. Just as we were 

leaving I heard a cry in the darkness. It was 

Bant, who thought it was his assailants returning. 

He shouted, ‘Either kill me or take me to 

hospital.’ When we found him, his body was 

so mangled and bloodied that one of my 

farmhands fainted at the sight. As we rushed 

to the Mansa Civil Hospital, Bant’s blood 

seeped through the car. We got held up at a 

railway crossing, but the railways staff re- 

this land where they are “emerging from the 

slaughter houses where they were always 

the spit of history”. 

In the ‘trauma ward’ of the PGIMER at 

Chandigarh, it is more than just Bant 

Singh’s mangled, sun-burnt torso that has 

made him so popular among the patients, 

attendants and hospital staff. Every night, 

this revolutionary regales the ward with inquilabi 

songs and stories of his struggles. So 

hypnotic is the spirit of this piggery-owner 

from Mansa that attendants and patients 

ward off security guards and stick by Bant’s 

side till the early hours of the morning. One 

such admirer is young Balkar Singh from 

Kaithal in Haryana, who is attending upon 

a sick uncle on a nearby bed. Now, Balkar 

too wants to join the inquilabi movement 

like Bant, so inspired he has become. 

“I realise I have become a symbol for the 

oppressed to fight on. “I never will give up 

my struggle. I can still sing. I can still talk. 

Can they stop me from that? Never. I had 

decided I will always work on my own and 

never as a servant of the landlords. My wounds are grievous, I 

am physically helpless, but I will still work on my own,’’ says 

Bant, without a glimmer of self-pity. 

But why did they attack? For the first time, he breaks down. 

“They rape our women. They raped my daughter. I fought 

back. I made sure they were punished. In every village people 

were becoming members of the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha. 

They believed me. I told them they should stop working for 

the landlords. I was one of the 10 delegates from Punjab for 

the national conference on labour in Rajahmundry. All this, 

obviously, outraged the landlords.” 


fused to lift the barrier. I took matters into my 

own hands and lifted the barrier with the help 

of onlookers,’’ recounts Beant Singh. 

Though the local police at Joga initially let 

off the assailants on bail, the powerful agitation 

launched by the Leftists under the CPI (ML) 

Liberation, as also the decisive role played by 

the Mansa SSP, resulted in the arrest of seven 

persons, including the son and nephew of Burj 

sarpanch Jaswant Singh. In end-January, the 

Bant had been involved in three 

clashes with the same assailants 

who owed their patronage to 

Niranjan Sidhu and sarpanch 

Jaswant, backed by the Congress 

police, acting on the SSP’s orders, arrested former 

sarpanch Niranjan Singh Sidhu for conspiring 

in the attack. Niranjan is known as the 

de facto sarpanch of the village and is also a 

history-sheeter in police files. The brothers 

own upwards of 100 acres in the area. 

The savage assault marked a culmination of 

events, so to speak. Bant had challenged the 

age-hold hegemony of the landholding classes 

in league with the powerful Leftist movement 

in Mansa district mostly led by the overground 

CPI-ML (Liberation). The crippling assault by 

the Jat Sikhs was aimed at sending out a message 

to all those who dared assert themselves 

against the prevailing order. Ironically, Bant’s 

victimhood has emerged as a major rallying 

point for Leftist forces waging a fierce struggle 

across Punjab. 

Prior to January 5, Bant had been involved 

in three clashes with the same assailants who 

owed their patronage to Niranjan Sidhu and 

his brother, the sarpanch Jaswant, who are 

backed by the ruling Congress. Once, 

Navdeep’s motorcycle had banged into Bant’s 

pigs. “The police had taken preventive action 

against both sides. It was these clashes that 

formed the immediate backdrop of the savage 

assault on January 5. Bant used to give them 

back in equal measure what had traditionally 

been the right of the upper castes. 

Undoubtedly, the upper castes did harbour a 

bias against him,’’ explains SSP Prasad. 

The common spaces of the village delineated 

by the ruling castes/classes were also questioned 

by Bant. His children took pigs to the 

‘tobaa’ (pond) where the dominant communities 

bathed their buffaloes. “Bant took his 

pigs to the village ground where the fellows 

who later assaulted him used to play,’’ says 

Prasad. Niranjan Sidhu, who has since been 

arrested, told TEHELKA that it was the pig issue 

that invited the brutal attack. “Once he got the 

pigs to the clinic, against our advice. But Bant 

would just not listen. This was the only reason 

for the beating,’’ he claimed. 

Bant and the Leftists insist there was a bigger 

issue at hand. He had refused to compromise 

in pursuing a case for the conviction 

of three persons involved in the rape of his 

eldest daughter. The three included a Jat boy, 

Mandhir Singh, as also two Mazbhi Sikhs, 

Tarsem Singh and Gurmail Kaur. “The Jat 

Sikhs intensely disliked the fact that a downtrodden 

could dare to get them punished. In 

one of the clashes with Bant, the police had to 

arrest sarpanch Jaswant and put him in lockup. 

After this, the Jat Sikhs were out to punish 

him,’’ says CPI (ML) Liberation leader 

Sukhdarshan Singh Natt. 

Bant’s family confirms this. His wife 

Harbans Kaur, afflicted by paralysis, says that 

Niranjan and others often told their children 

not to bring the pigs to the village pond. “My 

children kept silent, shuddering in fear that 

their dear papa would be beaten up. We were 

also told many times to compromise on the 

rape case but I told them that our self-respect 

is dear to us. Once Niranjan cornered me and 

one of my daughters and intimidated us. 

I asked him to punish the guilty instead 

of asking us to withdraw the rape case,’’ 

says Harbans. 



Bant’s case casts the caste-class conundrum 

in stark relief. Two persons convicted 

for the rape of his daughter were from 

Bant’s caste. Yet again, it was Jat Sikh 

Beant Singh Sidhu who rushed Bant to hospital. 

At the massive rally organised by the 

Leftists at Mansa on January 25, an estimated 

2,000 of those turning up were Jat 

Sikhs with small landholdings, called 

kisans. “Both caste and class play a role in 

such conflicts in the agrarian sector. When 

it comes to harbouring a bias against the 

lower castes, even men like Beant Singh 

Sidhu side with their caste. But small Jat 

Sikh landholders have been part of our 

kisan movement for long and took part in 

the Mansa rally as a show of solidarity with 

Bant,’’ said Natt. 

What does put a strain on the theory of 

the rape having inspired the assault on 

January 5 is the fact that Bant had earlier 

never spoken about the rape in the previous 

three clashes with the assailants. “There 

was a feeling among the Jat Sikhs that Bant 

had foisted a false rape case. Mandhir had 

come out on parole and must have poisoned 

the mind of the assailants whom he 

played cricket with. The rape theory seems 

an afterthought. However, social realities 

cannot be ignored and somewhere the rape 

case could have played a role in conjunction 

with other irritants that led to the assault. 

That is why after taking down the 

additional statement of Bant Singh, we 

decided to charge the assailants with 

having caused grievous injury and 

violating sections of the Prevention of 

Atrocities against SC/ST Act,’’ the Mansa SSP 

told TEHELKA. 

As part of the larger Leftist movement in 

Mansa, Bant’s political activities to free the 

landless from the economic, social, political 

and sexual exploitation of the landlords had 

‘My entire fight was against the 

landlords. I organised my 

oppressed people and told them 

not to work as serfs with the 

landlords. Live with respect,’ says 

the dalit singer 

earned him the permanent ire of men like 

Niranjan. “Bant had made almost all the 

Mazbhi Sikhs in the village a member of the 

Mazdoor Mukti Morcha. He used to take up 

their police cases with the establishment 

and get them a better deal. Since the Mazbhi 

Sikh population in the village is almost double 

that of the Jat Sikhs, Bant was emerging 

as a distinct threat to men like Niranjan who 

want their vice-like grip on the sarpanch’s 

post for keeps,’’ Bant’s cousin, Mukhtiar 

Singh, explained. 

In that sense, this epic battle in an unequal 

village found a new terrain: a dalit’s 

body. And that’s why Bant Singh Inquilabi’s 

legend is today spreading across the landscape, 

like a red star over Punjab. 

SUDESH 

KATARIA 

‘India was colonised for 

100 years; dalits were 

under slavery for 2,500 

years. Quotas have helped’ 

Has a diploma in electrical engineering 

from Industrial Training 

Institute, Gurgaon. 

Was thrown out of an upper-caste 

friend’s family wedding after his 

dalit identity was revealed, a fight 

broke out and the chair he sat on 


TALHAN SCORES FOR 

It started with a gurdwara. It became an epic struggle, and 

ended in a great victory. VIKRAM JIT SINGH tells the story of 

Talhan’s resistance which can change the face of Punjab 

IN THE village square two massive black 

and white rams laze under an ancient 

peepul tree, bellies drooping after having 

ravaged the lush crop of a Talhan landlord. 

They are the most piquant of the symbols 

of dalit assertion that identify the community 

in this famous battleground of caste 

warfare. These two rams are the offerings of 

a grateful dalit community to the Pir 

Samadhi in the village square for having 

protected the lives of their men, women and 

children who waged an epic battle with Jat 

Sikh landlords and a heavy police contingent 

for six hours in June 2003. 

Talhan hit the headlines in 2003 when a 

forceful assertion of the majority dalit community 

of Chamars took on the Bains and 

Randhawa Jat Sikh landlords; they wanted a 

share on the governing committee of the 

samadhi of Shaheed Baba Nihal Singh, a 

local carpenter who died digging a well. The 

samadhi, which draws offerings of Rs 3-7 

crore annually, became a preserve of landlord 

families who gobbled up a substantial portion 

of the offerings. Though the dalits 

form more than 60 percent of Talhan’s 

5,000-strong population, local ‘traditions’ 

ensured that they were denied a share in 

the committee. 

The landlords, in league with radical Sikh 

organisations and the Shiromani Gurdwara 

Prabandhak Committee, attempted to keep 

out the dalits by razing the samadhi 

overnight and constructing a gurdwara on it, 

but the dalit quest for a say in the governing 

was washed. 

In his first job, his upper-caste 

colleagues refused to eat lunch 

on the table he sat on. 

Works in a company manufacturing 

parts for Mercedes Benz and 

drives a Maruti Esteem 

committee could not be eliminated. Today, 

two dalit Sikhs with flowing locks and beards 

represent the confidence of a community 

that has added social and political power to 

its long-acquired economic independence. 

Significantly, Talhan also has a dalit woman, 

Inderjit Kaur, as the village sarpanch. 

Talhan’s bloody caste clashes and the partisan 

role of the Jalandhar administration are 

well known, but what is remarkable is the 

transformation of a community whose profile 

does not fit into the stereotype woven by 

a prejudiced society. Silvery locks and bushy 

eyebrows distinguish Chanan Ram Pal, president, 

Talhan Dalit Action Committee. “We 

fought a war for swabhimaan (self-respect). 

The teachings of Guru Ravidas and the access 

to modern education inculcated in us 

this desire. We are an economically inde- 

pendent community, many of our people are 

NRIs who send money from Dubai, the West, 

etc. Here, we do not work for landlords, we 

are self-employed. Like any other caste, we 

too are the offspring of Punjab. We drink its 

water, we live on its food. We are as good as 

anybody,’’ says Pal, his serene voice betraying 

none of the fiery temperament he displayed 

COVER STORY 

MY LOT, 

MY CASTE 

DALIT RIGHTS WHILE FIGHTING for their constitutional 

rights, the dalits 

have stressed during conflict 

times that their cases should 

be registered under the sc/ST 

Act, 1997. Their life is a parallel 

reality between repeated 

atrocities and the struggle to 

live with self-respect. Indeed, 

what happened in Gohana in 

Haryana is happening in every 

corner of Punjab. 

That dalits wanted to assert 

their power in a democratic 

set-up was proved by the fact 

that they won panchayat elections 

(held in 2003) in a number 

of villages in Punjab after 

the caste clashes in Talhan in 

Jalandhar. Even in Talhan, the 

epicentre of the struggle, 

Look Where We Are: a dalit mansion in Talhan PHOTO NITIN KUMAR 

K. SATHEESH 

VINOD KUMAR 

‘The arson was the Jats’ 

way of teaching the dalits a 

lesson. Police, 

administration and the 

government were 

spectators. A CBI enquiry 

followed but Haryana’s 

Congress chief minister is a 

Jat. Why else hasn’t a 

single person been 

convicted yet?’ 

Bolstered by NRI money, rich dalit 

families and youth of Talhan drive 

around in Toyota Qualises and 

Maruti Zens, smoking King Size 

Filter cigarettes 

He refused to be the scavenger, 

the role Manu Smriti assigned 

him. After a Masters in political 

science, he works as an insurance 

officer. He has rebuilt the 

house burnt during the August 

31, 2005 inferno 

K. SATHEESH 

19 

today, a dalit woman is the 

sarpanch. Thousands of dalits 

assembled to support one of 

their comrades, Bant Singh 

of village Burj Jhabber in district 

Mansa, who was attacked 

recently by upper-caste 

landlords. 

To ensure that their right to 

political participation in mainstream 

democratic bodies is 

not denied, dalits have organised 

into a Dalit Action 

Committee, Punjab. Their 

‘symbol’ of purity and self-esteem 

is a ‘white jeep’ that you 

can often see on the streets of 

Punjab with activists mobilising 

dalits across the state. 

That’s how dalits are fighting 

for their captured land, which 

was provided to them under 

the Centre’s Indira Awas 

Yojana, or politically taking on 

the accused, and by filing police 

cases against them. 

It’s also amazing how literature 

in Punjab is becoming 

centred around the Dalit 

Rising. Dalit writers like Lal 

Singh Dil, Balbir Madhopuri, 

Prem Gorkhi, Mohan Lal 

Phillauria, Dr Sarbjit Singh, 

Bhagwant Rasulpuri, Makhan 

Mann, Madan Vira and Gurmit 

Kareyalvi are creating waves, 

not only in Punjab, but across 

literary circles in the country. 

Thisonlyprovesthatasin 

Maharashtra, radical dalit literature 

is getting rooted in the 

conflict zones of protracted 

struggles in the interiors of a 

prosperous state where the 

wretched have decisively and 

finally taken on the rich and 

powerful. 

The writer is a journalist with 

Punjabi paper, Nawa Zamana, 

Jalandhar 



RAVI KUMAR 

‘We, the Chamar youth, 

had only one thought. 

Let us bash the hell out of 

these guys’ 

Ravi Kumar was a ‘sweet 16’ 

when he took them on. He swells 

with machismo: ‘Had the police 

not been so partisan, we would 

have inflicted heavy casualties on 

the landlords’ 

JAGDISH KAUR 

‘I did not listen to my 

brother in the police, and 

he ran away screaming 

when I gave him a round of 

stones and bricks’ 

Kaur fought to save her children 

and seek revenge for the 

humiliations piled upon her 

community by the Jat Sikh 

landlords 


Hum Honge Kamyaab: dalit schoolgirls Neeru (right) and Amanjyot, who fought along with their elders against landlords and the police PHOTOS NITIN KUMAR 

when he wielded lathis in the great 

battle of 2003. 

This assertion of the Chamars is 

vindicated by Pal’s erstwhile opponent 

and leader of the landlords, 

Bhupinder Singh Bains ‘Bindi’, who 

is a village sarpanch and member of 

the Baba Nihal Singh Gurdwara 

Committee. 

“Those earlier notions of untouchability, 

which was a Brahmanical 

concept, no longer prevail. Earlier, poor 

Chamar families were dependent on us, for 

example, for taking the molasses’ waste. Now 

they stand equal to us, with many of their 

children becoming Class I officers earning fat 

salaries. While the sons of landlords refuse to 

work on the land, the children of the 

Chamars study and get good jobs. In contrast, 

our sons are getting hooked to drugs 

as they idle their time away,’’ explains Bains. 

Bains admits that the landlords dominating 

the committee of the samadhi were 

corrupt. “Every Sunday, the gulak was 

opened. Of the Rs 5-7 lakh in offerings, Rs 1- 

2 lakh was pilfered. The committee was 

against having Chamars as members as it 

was an old tradition. It is wrong to think like 

that. The dalits got very upset when they 

asked for some money to celebrate their festivals 

and the committee dominated by us 

doled out just Rs 10,000-Rs 15,000. The dalits 

wanted to become part of the 

committee; they fought a four-year 

battle in court. Today, with the dalits 

around, everyone keeps a watch and 

corruption in the shrine has been 

curbed,’’ says Bains. 

Not just the pesky rams, the dalits’ 

opulent houses are an eyesore for the 

landlords as well. Bolstered by NRI 

help, rich dalit families of Talhan 

drive around in Toyota Qualises and 

Maruti Zens, smoking King Size 

Filter cigarettes. 

So strong is the sense of dalit pride and solidarity 

that after winning the 2003 battle, 

dalit youngsters painted their homes and 

motorcycles with the slogan, Putt Chamar De 

(proud sons of Chamars) in retaliation to the 

Jat slogan, Putt Jattan De. 

A self-employed unit at Talhan sponsored 

by the Punjab government employs 80 dalit 

women, who sew soccer balls for a Jalandhar 

sports goods firm. 

Women, kids and youth recollect 

with great pride that historic day 

in June 2003 when they found they 

could fight back — and win. ‘I 

threw bricks at the zamindars and 

the police,’ says Neeru, a student 

Each woman earns Rs 2,400 per month. 

This self-employment for dalit women has 

meant that they no longer undertake menial 

chores in the landlords’ houses, where sexual 

exploitation was common 

in the past. 

“Our educated youngsters 

saw the TV programme on the 

government scheme. We met 

the officials. The soccer ball 

sewing unit was also set up, 

where we teach the women to 

sew. It has given us so much independence,” 

explains Ram 

Lubhaya, member, Action 

Committee and the driving 

force behind the sewing unit. 

Women, kids and youths recollect 

with great pride that historic 

day in June 2003 when 

they found they could fight 

back — and win. 

“I threw bricks at the zamindars 

and the oppressive police. 

Our enemies cut the power supply 

to ensure our tubewells didn’t 

work and we didn’t get water 

in the battlefield. But children 

rushed buckets of water using 

our handpumps and salt for 

the fighting youth to combat 

teargas shells. I just wanted to 

give them back what they had 

given us all these years,’’ says 

Neeru, a petite Class VII student 

with pigtails and a toothy grin. 

Housewife Jagdish Kaur, too, was in the 

thick of things. “I realised when all hell broke 

loose that my children were also in the fight. 

I picked up a tawa and joined the fight, 

blocking bricks. I threw back soda bottles 

and bricks. I did not listen to my brother in 

the police, and he ran away screaming when 

I gave him a round of stones. I was taking out 

my anger on them. For three-four years before 

the 2003 fight, the landlords had been 

taunting us in the fields when we went to 

defecate or get fodder for our cattle. I am 

proud to say that not for once did I lose my 

nerve in the battle,’’ says Kaur. 

Ravi Kumar was a ‘sweet 16’ when he took 

them on. He swells with machismo: “We, the 

Chamar youth, had only one thought. Let us 

bash the hell out of these guys. Had the police 

not been so partisan, we would have inflicted 

heavy casualties on the landlords.” 

Though Pal and the dalit elders stress that 

the village is peaceful, it is evident that the 

rift runs deep. The spark of revenge is still 

Dalits Must Have Their Rights: landlord Bhupinder Singh Bains 

nurtured in many a heart. “The landlords still 

nurture their humiliation. They use every opportunity 

to provoke us,’’ says Lubhaya. 

But Talhan remains a precious landmark 

in the historical victory of a protracted struggle, 

not so rare anymore in the rural hinterland 

of unequal, prosperous and boisterous 

Punjab, where dalit assertion is becoming as 

real as dalit power. This is the rising which is 

refusing to end. 


Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 PUBLIC INTEREST 

engaged circle 

THE PREAMBLE of The Communal 

Violence (Prevention, Control and 

Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005 

makes it clear that the enactment is being 

done with a view to empower the government 

to take measures. The focus is not on 

how civil society is empowered to initiate and 

control prosecutions when communal 

crimes occur. Given that it is the government 

that is the principal wrongdoer, the thrust of 

the legislation is misplaced. 

The core sections of the bill, from chapter 

II to chapter VI, relating to the prevention of 

communal violence, the investigation of 

communal crimes and the establishment of 

special courts will only come into effect if the 

state government issues a notification. All 

opposition governments could ignore this 

statute completely. A state government may 

issue a notification bringing the statute into 

force and yet render it sterile by not issuing 

notifications declaring certain areas to be 

communally disturbed areas. 

The Act can be invoked only in extreme 

circumstances where there is criminal violence 

resulting in death or destruction of 

property and there is danger to the unity or 

internal security of India. There are many serious 

communal crimes, which may not result 

in death such as rape. Similarly, social 

and economic boycotts, forced segregation 

and discrimination will not fall within the 

ambit of the statute because they do not result 

in death or the destruction of property. 

Even in such extreme circumstances, the 

Act only prescribes that the government may 

act by issuing a notification. On the face of it, 

the duty to act is not mandatory. Apart from 

the IPC crimes, communal crimes are 

nowhere defined. Gender violence, including 

the insertion of objects in the genitals, social 

and economic boycotts, forcible evictions, restraint 

on access to public spaces, residential 

segregation, deprivation of access to food and 

medicines, enforced disappearances, interference 

with the right to education, using religious 

weapons and ceremonies to intimidate, 

interference with police work, advocating 

the destruction of religious structure, 

need to be specifically set out in the statute. 

A special section on communal crimes 

against women and children is solely needed 

covering sexual violence, penetrative assault, 

sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced 

pregnancies, enforced sterilisation and other 

forms of sexual violence. The rules of evidence 

need to be modified so that the victim 

is not victimised during the trial. 

Chapter III relates to the prevention of 

communal violence and appears to empower 

the district magistrate to prevent the breach 

of peace by, inter alia, curbing processions, 

externing persons, regulating the use of loudspeakers, 

seizing arms, detaining persons 

and conducting searches. This is a cosmetic 

section because the police have the powers to 

do all these things under the Criminal 

Procedure Code and various other criminal 

statutes in force today. 

Section 17 is the seemingly progressive section 

enabling the prosecution of police officers 

acting malafide. But the entire section is 


SOCIAL CONTRACT 

DN JHA 

Historian 

I THINK the role of a historian is very 

important in today’s society. I believe everybody 

is interested in knowing about his 

past. A historian’s job is to study the past by 

examining the sources available to him, 

and that is what I have done in my career as 

a historian. I have not read the history 

all that hot air 

The Centre is under no obligation to wait for a state’s consent in case of communal riots. But the new 

Communal Violence Prevention Bill might just betray its own agenda, writes COLIN GONSALVES 

State Sponsored Carnage: will justice ever catch up with Narendra Modi? K. SATHEESH 

negated by the requirement that no cognisance 

be taken unless the state government 

sanctions the prosecution. It is well known 

that hundreds of cases throughout the country 

are languishing because the state governments 

have refused to grant sanction for the 

prosecution of public servants. In any case, 

sections 217 to 223 of IPC cover offences by 

public servants such as the shielding of criminals, 

preparing false records, making false 

report in courts, initiating false prosecutions 

and allowing criminals to escape. 

Recognising the role of the police in communal 

riots, it is critical that the immunity 

granted under sections 195, 196 and 197 of 

the Criminal Procedure Code be omitted in 

any statute on communal crimes. No junior 

Gender violence, the insertion of 

objects in the genitals, social 

and economic boycotts, forcible 

evictions, residential 

segregation, deprivation of 

access to food and medicines, 

enforced disappearances and 

interference with police work 

need to be clearly defined in the 

new communalism statute 

officer should be allowed to take the defence 

that he was ordered by his superior to commit 

the crime. Nor should any commanding 

officer be allowed to take the defence that he 

was unaware of the crimes that were committed 

on his beat. 

The witness protection under Section 32 

has been drafted without application of 

mind as to the Law Commission’s recommendations. 

Modern day witness protection 

method, which shields the witness 

from the accused, compensates her for the 

trauma of the trial and helps create a new 

life of hope is totally missing. Genuine witness 

protection includes a substantial financial 

obligation of the state to take care of 

the witness and her family in secrecy, often 

for the rest of their lives. 

Chapter VII deals with relief and rehabilitation 

in a ceremonial manner. It calls for the 

setting up of national, state and district level 

‘Communal Disturbance Relief and 

Rehabilitation Councils’ — but nowhere in 

the statute does the right of the victim to relief, 

compensation and rehabilitation emerge 

as a right according to an acceptable international 

standard. When the State does not protect 

the lives and properties of the minorities 

during communal carnages, should the victim 

not have a right to compensation and alternative 

livelihoods at the cost of the state? 

Section XI deals with the special powers 

of the central government to act in circumstances 

where the state government does 

not take appropriate measures. But here 

too, Section 3(b) permits the Centre to deploy 

armed forces only on the request of the 

state government. This is a ridiculously retrogressive 

provision given the fact that even 

today the Centre is under no obligation to 

wait for consent when the situation goes out 

of control, as it did during the Sikh riots in 

1984, the Bombay pogrom in 1992 and the 

Gujarat genocide in 2002. 

Chapter XII, which grants immunity to the 

police and army, is particularly insensitive. 

Various commissions of enquiry, including 

the Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission 

(Delhi riots), the Justice Raghuvir Dayal 

Commission (Ahmednagar riots), the Justice 

Jagmohan Reddy Commission (Ahmedabad 

riots), the Justice DP Madan Commission 

(Bhiwandi riots), the Justice Joseph 

Vithyathil Commission (Tellicheri riots), the 

Justice J. Narain, SK Ghosh and SQ Rizvi 

Commission (Jamshedpur riots), the Justice 

RCP Sinha and SS Hasan Commission 

(Bhagalpur riots), and the Justice Srikrishna 

Commission (Bombay riots), have found the 

police and civil authorities passive or partisan 

and conniving with communal elements. 

And yet, the UPA government backed by the 

Left is dilly-dallying. Why? 

The writer is Executive Director, 

Human Rights Law Network 

21 

books which have caused the recent 

controversies, and would therefore not like 

to comment upon them, but what I would 

like to say is that history should not be 

trivialised. I think NCERT doesn’t include 

enough historical components in the 

school syllabus. 

Shadow 

Lines 

THE DALIT VOICE-I 

SKIN THE DEAD 

Sheoraj Singh 

Bechain 

Litterateur 

I WAS about fivesix 

years-old then. 

Kalawati, my eldest aunt, was 

married near Dibai in Bhimpur. 

Her younger sister, 

Maano, and the youngest, 

Choti, were married in Pali 

Mukimpur and Dhurra Premnagar, 

near Narora. Choti 

bua’s devar, Gangawaasi, was 

married to Gangasai’s only 

child, Maanti. As per the ties 

of caste and community, there 

were complex family relations 

in the family, including ‘tai’ 

Javitri, father, who was called 

chaacha, and amma Surajmukhi, 

who lived here and belonged 

to the same mohalla. 

To survive and study, 

my only option was 

to sell the skin of 

dead animals 

Since the last 30 years, 

Gangawaasi and Bighe, my 

uncles, have been in the 

‘trade’ of selling dead animals, 

fat and half-polished 

leather. Even today 

Gangwasi is still doing the 

same, living in the same 

‘kuchcha’ house, where our 

old family friend, the gardener 

of Rupi Bagh, breathed his 

last. They have managed to 

survive and the situation 

hasn’t changed since then. 

In the village, they had a 

make-shift mud hutment . 

They were surrounded by the 

solid, pucca houses of the jats 

with huge courtyards and gardens. 

When my uncles would 

strip the skin off the dead animals 

and bring it to the village, 

they would try to hide it. 

They would put it far away and 

put lot of salt on it, and rub it 

hard, till the dirty stink would 

go. They did this as the upper 

caste Hindus would object to 

the skinning of the dead animals 

in their vicinity. So they 

would leave the dry skins outside 

the village. Later, when I 

was a student in that village, I 

too would actively help 

Gangawaasi in this hard 

labour. I took on this contract 

to protect my stomach and my 

studies. This was the only real 

and hard option left for me. 

To be continued… 


22 OPINION 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

arts&culture 

THE CONTRARIAN 

We don’t 

need no 

revolution! 

Rakeysh Mehra’s bold film 

Rang De Basanti has taken 

audiences by storm, bearing a 

message of social awakening 

amongst the youth. But isn’t 

everyone getting carried away, 

asks HARTOSH SINGH BAL. Punching holes 

in the general mood, he raises questions 

about the film’s basic premise: can 

democracy be likened to colonialism? 

ITIS BEST not to take Bollywood seriously. Anyhow a 

movie that goes very wrong after a good first half is 

already more than one should expect. Mainstream 

cinema in this country entertains within its own 

context, its own set of codes. The problem arises 

when viewers and critics start partaking in the pretension 

to relevance that an occasional Bollywood filmmaker 

serves up as a marketing novelty. Rang De Basanti, it is 

being said, is a movie that speaks to the youth and it really 

doesn’t seem to matter that the grammar has gone horribly 

wrong or that no one quite knows what the movie is actually 

saying. 

The premise isn’t terribly complicated. The scriptwriter 

has been quoted as saying that ‘’the undercurrent’’ 

of Rang De Basanti is what Bhagat Singh would 

have done if he was alive today. Helping us discover this 

is a young English woman who lands up in Delhi determined 

to make a film on the Indian revolutionaries of 

the 1920s. Like so many raj grandchildren trawling 

India, she has her reasons, in this case a diary her 

grandfather wrote while in charge of the prison where 

the revolutionaries were jailed. 

For reasons not quite clear she seems to decide that a 

bunch of young men who drive dangerously after consuming 

prodigious amounts of beer are well qualified to play 

the characters of Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad. 

Even so this part of the movie is done well: the loitering 

aimlessness of the young men archetypal of any college in 

a big city; their failure to relate to the rhetoric of the revolutionaries. 

Even the sepia glimpses of the story of Bhagat 

Singh are better crafted than many of the movies Bollywood 

has recently churned out. 

The director, perhaps surprised that he has managed to 

craft such a good first half, then proceeds to undo what he 

has achieved. In seeking to connect the past the young 

men are reenacting to the lives they are now living, one 

character whose only purpose seems to be to die at a convenient 

moment does so in a MIG crash. From this point 

on, the entry of the archetypal Hindi movie ma and the 

corrupt politician leads to the young men suddenly discovering 

meaning in the context of the roles they are playing. 

A series of false notes ends in an equally false climax. 

The movie tries to draw a parallel between Bhagat Singh 

and Chandrashekhar Azad’s struggle against colonialism 

and these college men discovering themselves when facing 

up to a corrupt and brutal state. Given the context, the 

parallel is bizarre. If the director had the courage to transpose 

the setting to Kashmir or the northeast, we might 

actually have had occasion to examine the nature of the 

THE EDITOR RECOMMENDS 

Pepsi-Coke rebels?: Rang De Basanti 

Mark Twain by Ron 

Powers. A captivating 

new biography of 

the man who has 

been described as 

Indian State where it’s gone wrong. But that’s a film Bollywood 

will never make and viewers will never flock to see. 

As for the young men loitering around their college, the 

context couldn’t be more ridiculous. Their woes are of 

their own making. DJ, the character Aamir Khan plays, is 

a happy go lucky mona sardar who has lingered on in college 

five years after graduation because he can’t face the 

world outside. Others have their own woes. They have 

trouble getting along with their fathers but seem to have 

no problem spending family money to sustain their vacuous 

lives. It is not surprising that in large measure the middle-class 

has identified so strongly with the film. Such 

meaninglessness is born out of the affluence the State has 

helped create, so what better than to blame the State for 

fattening them up. This is standard Bollywood escapism 

and perfectly understandable but for the self-righteous 

pretension that accompanies the film. 

After Independence, youth movements 

have always seemed misdirected, if not 

stupid. If Mehra had set the film in 

Kashmir, we might’ve seen the nature of 

the Indian State where it’s gone wrong. 

That’s a film Bollywood will never make 

The critics have in large measure responded to the same 

nostalgia for meaning imposed by Rang De Basanti’s external 

circumstances. To look back with envy at the idealism 

of the freedom movement, to the meaning it gave to 

the lives of those involved in the struggle, is akin to the 

envy US intellectuals directed at Solzhenitsyn for the 

weight the tyranny of the Soviet Union gave to his words. 

The possibility of facing up to a colonising power is just 

not available for most Indians today. Instead we have a 

democracy that actually functions, most of the time. It is 

difficult to celebrate the compromises that such a system 

enforces, or its tendency to push the country to a middle 

path away from the extravagant gestures of the Left or the 

Right. But it has ensured that the country is today better 

off than it was a decade ago, and far better off than it was 

two decades ago. It’s worth remembering the 1980s when 

Punjab was on the boil and Rajiv Gandhi betrayed his 

mandate, or for that matter the 1990s, when the BJP 

seemed determined to rip the entire country apart. 

It is no wonder that after Independence, youth move- 

America’s first literary superstar. 

Of the iconoclastic writer, who 

was born in 1835, Powers says, 

“his way of seeing and hearing 

things changed America's way of 

seeing and hearing things, he 

was the Lincoln of American lit- 

erature”. The author pays great 

attention to historical detail, not 

just relaying the ins and outs of 

Twain’s life but examining the 

period and how this might have 

impacted Twain in his writings. 

A great read. 

ments have always seemed misdirected, if not stupid. The 

naxalites of the late 60s and early 70s played their game 

with borrowed ideas but real blood. Filled with theoretical 

notions that had no bearing to India’s reality, those who 

survived often did so at the intervention of the same wellconnected 

fathers they had set out to deride. The anti- 

Mandal movement had even less to recommend it, not just 

in its attempt to defend a privilege never really threatened, 

but also because the upper-caste movement could never 

even conceive that the only segment of the population who 

actually lost out due to Mandal was the dalits. 

Both movements have had little impact as democracy 

muddles along and the country has inched forward. 

Unlike colonialism or totalitarianism, democracy does not 

provide an emblem of authority to rebel against. In fact, 

the only time the involvement of the youth actually made 

an impact in independent India was during the Emergency 

era, precisely when democracy had been suspended. 

Unfortunately, in today’s context neither the acts of 

Bhagat Singh nor of Gandhi have any real relevance. What 

does have relevance is their engagement with the society 

around them, and their determination to seek their own 

answers. Democracy does not actually require much from 

the youth, or for that matter most people, except the exercise 

of the ballot and the ability to go about their business. 

In a recent interview, Rang De Basanti’s director, Raykesh 

Mehra begins by confessing that “unfortunately I’m 

not a great reader’’. Perhaps he might have at least read 

what Kuldip Nayar says of Bhagat Singh in a biography, 

“Study was the cry that reverberated through the corridors 

of Bhagat Singh’s mind, study to enable himself to face the 

arguments advanced by the opposition, study to arm himself 

with reasons in favour of his cult of revolution and 

study methods to change the system in India. Indeed 

Bhagat Singh’s passion since his childhood was books.’’ He 

read prodigiously, consuming books at a rapid pace even 

after he was sentenced to be hanged. When he was told 

that the time for the hanging had been brought forward by 

11 hours, he sought time to finish the first chapter of the 

book he had just started. 

This Bhagat Singh is forgotten in the movie, instead 

only his identification with violence is resurrected. Rang 

De Basanti ends in a predictable hail of bullets and platitudes. 

It’s perhaps not too presumptuous to imagine that 

faced with the vapidity of DJ and co., Bhagat Singh 

would have told them to drag their sorry arses back to 

class and get themselves an education. And as for defence 

ministers who go astray, democracy provides other 

means of redress. Just ask Mr Fernandes. � 



TAG, the theatre group you started, is legendary. 

Shahrukh Khan, Ravi Dubey, 

Siddhartha Basu, Lillete Dubey, Mira 

Nair, Manoj Bajpai all came through that... 

What was your vision of theatre? 

I first came to Delhi in the 70s with a group 

called Yatrik, which was doing fairly 

staid, conventional theatre. My livelihood 

was teaching drama in schools. Soon I 

began productions at in colleges as well. 

Here I came in touch with a new exciting 

pulse. St Stephens, Miranda House... they 

were all branded elitist, but the kids were 

keenly aware of the new counter culture 

movement. New music, theatre, Bob 

Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, drugs, 

modern dance. There was a sort 

of yearning in that direction 

and that is what I took up on. 

TAG was formed really to answer 

this need among the young to 

express something different in a 

different way. We were imbued 

with a sense of exploration. Our 

work in the first few years was 

really quite experimental, extraordinary. 

Very physical theatre, 

not naturalistic. Jesus 

Christ Superstar and Seneca’s 

Oedipus. Our music was concocted 

live, using human voices, 

lots of atmospherics. 

Was it only experimentation 

that set you apart? Why’s everyone 

so nostalgic about TAG? 

We were pouring ourselves out 

from the inside. Challenging 

each other. Theatre creates very 

intimate bonds, stronger than 

family ties. But the basis of my 

work has always been the role 

of theatre in education and 

therapy. That’s what distinguishes 

me from others. For 

me, doing a play is not just a 

matter of reproducing a script on stage, 

but what does the process do for the people 

who are involved. What opportunities of 

growth does it bring, for stretching the 

mind and body and heart and soul, as it 

were. Perhaps the seed of it all lies in my 

own unhappiness, my own fight for freedom 

that my childhood and adolescence 

was. To be an artist, to be a theatreperson, 

to be that which to so many people seems 

like a complete waste of time. Things have 

changed a bit now. But for many people, it’s 

still a struggle. It’s a fight for that right 

(sighs) to be the artist you think you are. So 

my bad experience was at the heart of the 

work. And the values accrued from that. 

Can you talk of an incident when TAG forged 

a personal breakthrough for someone? 

This is tricky ground. I am not sure I have 

the right to talk about individuals I know 

intimately and for whom the work has had 

value. But ultimately, it is a therapy. Which 

of us is completely healthy and 100 percent 

normal? We all have a lot to grapple with. 

Theatre is quite magical in confronting and 

dealing with that. People is theatre’s central 

issue. If you don’t have an interest in people 

and what makes them tick and do the 

strange and wonderful and dreadful things 

that they do, then why are you doing it? 

Very illustrious people apprenticed with 

you. Have they continued your vision? 

I wouldn’t expect so. I’d be disappointed if 

that were so. I am not bringing out people 

in any kind of mould with a Barry John 

stamp. The stamp is that they are who they 


INTERVIEW 

Barry John is a legendary name. He has ushered four generations of top-notch theatre and film personalities, but is himself oddly 

withdrawn. Turning 60 last week, strangely sad, he spoke to SHOMA CHAUDHURY about theatre, life, and his upcoming trilogy 

‘Billy Elliot is my story, only less happy’ 

are and will do things in their own way. Be 

sensitive, self aware, their creativity must 

be rooted in themselves. I can only help 

them pull it out. To let them know what it 

is and to work it through. You mentioned 

Shahrukh Khan. I am in some embarrassment 

about him. Because he is not the 

world’s greatest actor. He knows it. He 

knows I know. He even jokes about it. In 

most interviews he says, Barry John doesn’t 

think very much of me as an actor. But 

then what does he have? He has this great 

passion for what he does; he thoroughly 

enjoys being this entertainer. He is dedicated, 

works extremely hard, and is honest 

Genius Teacher, Brooding Muse: Barry John 

about what he is doing, even if you don’t 

agree with it. That pleases me. He is honest, 

open, down to earth. If that’s rubbed 

off from me, hell, that’s great. But what he’s 

doing is nothing to do with me. (Laughs) 

Manoj Bajpai is a very different kind of 

actor. He has also come through the same 

mill. He spent 9 or 10 years in Delhi, living 

frugally, teaching here and there. We used 

to do a workshop for Spastics Society. They 

used to pay us Rs 400 a month. But he 

sensed the importance of the work. It was 

not just about earning money. 

What do you think about the way English 

theatre has evolved? Why have you moved 

away from it so much? 

I’m 60, I’ve slowed down. We were churning 

out seven or eight major productions a 

year. I can’t work at that pace anymore. 

Also, for the last nine years, I’ve been running 

this theatre school, IMAGO. I feel like a 

shopkeeper sometimes. Unlike the Shiamak 

Davar dance schools where people 

who enroll rarely see him, I am here every 

day of the week, morning to evening. I 

want to write, I want to make films, I miss 

the freedom to freelance. But I feel I have 

to do right by the people who enroll. So 

that’s one reason. 

But yes, I have been one of those who say 

theatre in Delhi is dying. I even said Delhi 

doesn’t deserve any theatre in one mad 

moment. But because of my background, I 

do react badly to those who see theatre just 

as entertainment, just as commerce. They 

might make fine art in the process sometimes, 

but to either ignore or underrate the 

humanising value that it has for individuals 

and society… A healthy theatre scene 

lies in the ability, the bravery to look at 

yourself, to reflect on the way we live. I 

suppose everything is relative to who you 

are and where you’re standing. I came 

through the 70s. Delhi was a lot more active 

then. It was not just us. There were 

Theatre must stretch the mind and body and heart and soul. 

Perhaps the seed of my vision lies in the unhappiness of my 

childhood, the fight for freedom to be an artist 

people like Roshan Seth, Sushma Seth, 

Kulbhushan Kharbanda, BV Karanth, Om 

Shivpuri. They were brilliant. We all used 

our imagination, we did not need much 

money. Now we only have these ugly fads 

for festivals and awards. There is no sustained 

theatre. Lakhs and lakhs of money 

is spent on sets and costumes and fancy 

lights and hype, but there is no heart. 

London was such a centre of theatre. What 

brought you here? 

That was never an option for me. I came 

from a working class background in England. 

You know this film Billy Elliott? I was 

just gifted that on my birthday. So much of 

that is my story. It has such resonance for 

me, it makes me cry. My story doesn’t have 

Billy’s happy ending though. (Sighs) In the 

sense that I could not dream of being an 

actor, or going to London for that training. 

English theatre in the 60s was very class 

bound. Only those who went to the right 

kind of public schools and spoke English 

extremely well and confidently (mimicking) 

could get into acting schools. Things 

have changed since. All that has levelled 

out. But for me it was not an option. I remember 

being counselled by my drama 

teacher that you should not take acting 

that seriously. Think of teaching, that’s the 

23 

next best option. And that is what I did. 

Did your parents not believe in you? Or 

was it just inconceivable for them? 

I’d probably be fabricating. My memory is 

not that strong. I just know there was no 

support, no understanding, no interest. No 

matter how many performances I was in, 

in school or with groups outside, never 

once, not once did my parents come. They 

have never seen me on stage, never seen 

me as an actor. It just wasn’t a part of their 

way of life. I grew up in Coventry, middle 

England, near Birmingham, an industrial 

area. My father had arranged a job for me 

in the factory where he worked. Massey 

Ferguson — they make tractors. 

(Laughs ironically) He wanted 

me to leave school when I was 

16. I fought to stay on, to qualify 

to get into college. One reason 

was to study drama, become 

this teacher, but also to escape 

from home. (Laughs, sadly) I 

have never lived at home since, 

actually. During vacations, I 

used to work on a construction 

site, in a timber yard. One foul 

summer (sighs) was spent in a 

Wimpy’s kitchen making burgers 

and French fries. I seemed 

to be stinking of that cooking 

oil for years after that. Still 

haunts me now, that smell of 

cooking oil. But I’m grateful 

now that I did that. Claiming 

my independence, opening myself 

to the world, learning every 

step of the way. You do what is 

required to be done. You work 

hard, things will be achieved. 

How did you come to India? 

All roads led here. The Beatles, 

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, transcendental 

meditation. I was in 

such an emotional vacuum. 

There was nothing to keep me there. I responded 

to an advertisement. John 

Hodgson was my head of department. He 

was a pioneer, wrote books on theatre in 

education. I respected him very much. It 

was he who gave my final kick to come to 

India. He used to say things like, I don’t 

care whether you become an actor or 

teacher. That is not what it’s about. If you 

become a teacher, I expect you to be kicked 

out of your first three jobs because you will 

be doing something so new and revolutionary 

and controversial. You will get kicked 

out, that’s when I will be proud of you. I 

went to him with this proposal of coming 

to India. Everybody else thought I was 

mad. He said, go. He was right. this has 

been my home since. 

Can you talk about your new plays? 

There are three, The Honey Trilogy. It’s All 

About Money, Honey; All About God, 

Honey; All About Sex, Honey. The one on 

religion was ready two years ago, but we 

could not find a sponsor. It was our response 

to Gujarat. But you think anyone 

gives a damn? We’ve spent four years developing 

these scripts, living with them. 

Who are the stars, the sponsors ask. We 

still don’t have any money but we are determined 

to do these shows this April. 

Who would you pick as a promising voice? 

Roysten Abel is one. He has a good mind, 

he is doing new work. Someone like him 

should be given money that frees him up 

for five years — no depression, no worry, 

nothing like what happened with us. 

K. SATHEESH 


24 BOOKS 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

Weight Loss 

Upamanyu 

Chatterjee 

Penguin, 2006 

Rs 495 

“I AM not Sonu Nigam,” 

Upamanyu’s been telling 

flashbulbs, fans and hopeful 

talkshow producers. 

“My book is not an undie.” 

Be that as it may, 

the latest tangy fruit of 

his loins makes for some 

splendid sniggers. Mixing 

hormones and humour 

is hard to pull off 

with élan. But his character 

Bhola from first to 

last, or should I say lust, 

proves both willing and 

able. As he slides from 

bad to worse, he remains sharp-eyed, 

quick-witted, even-handed in his savagery. 

Sardonism and sodomy are bisexual Bhola’s 

weapons of choice; anus and armpit his 

preferred picaresque ports of call. 

Bhola (nickname Womanish) is like Agastya 

Sen, resident wanker and wag of English, 

August. His other books needed editorial 

tweaks in style (Last Burden got stilted) 

or shape (Mammaries Of The Welfare State 

rambled). Weight Loss takes Bhola’s order 

seriously: “Focus, you cow’s arse”: for it doesn’t 

have any obvious flaws. More chillingly, 

it doesn’t have any faith either. The gods 

and the author jointly decree that within its 

covers, the human spirit shall not prevail. 

We are scandalised not by Bhola’s lust — 

the forms it takes and the places it drags 

him to — but the absence of hope. There 

were points in Mammaries when an older 

Agastya puts his head down by his Ambassador, 

too full of despair to drive. At least 

Agastya had the venal, clueless civil services 

as a goad. In this book, the larger world 

is entirely without point or pity. True, Bhola 

contradictorily seeks out and sabotages 

all chances of happiness. His urgent urges 

for inappropriate people at inappropriate 

Who is a 

Hindu? 

Historian David N. Lorenzen 

takes an engaging and, at times, 

controversial look at Hinduism, 

writes UPINDER SINGH 

IF YOU’VE stopped reading historians because 

you’re fed up with jargon-laden 

sentences that don’t make sense — reconsider. 

Here is a scholar whose writing is 

scholarly but also lucid and engaging. 

What’s more, Lorenzen is not into political 

posturing, so he has no problem in taking 

controversial stands, if evidence demands. 

Over the last few decades, Lorenzen has 

had a special focus on popular and esoteric 

religious cults. His major works include a 

book on the history of two ‘lost’ Shaiva 

sects, the Kapalikas and Kalamukhas, and 

one on the Kabir Panth. Another area that 

engages his attention is the 18th century 

encounter between Italian missionaries 

and Hindu society. Many of the essays in 

this book revolve around such themes, but 

they also range over different terrain, such 

as the early history of Tantra, the basis of 

identity in Vedic texts and the religious ide- 

Market 

de Sade 

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s book 

sizzles with spite and humour, 

says NANDINI LAL. But that 

does not hide the desolation 

Faithless Vision: Chatterjee 

times careen him on a downward spiral. 

But we get the feeling there never was a 

fighting chance anyway. Like Moti’s bullet 

lodged inside Bhola, like the persistent 

sewer smell in Titli’s nether regions, his 

habit of failure refuses to go away. Like the 

red rope tied to a ring inserted in Moti’s 

foreskin by the quack Borkar, characters 

are yoked and tugged by reciprocal greed. 

Life is a luxury that nobody can afford — 

not just Bhola, loser and outsider, but even 

ology of the Gupta emperors. 

The first essay — ‘Who invented Hinduism?’ 

— is the most thought-provoking. It 

is a strong, reasoned stance that goes against 

those who argue that Hinduism existed 

from the beginning of time. It also goes 

against the argument that Hinduism was 

‘imagined’ or ‘invented’ by British scholars 

and administrators in the 19th century. 

(For the benefit of lay readers, these words 

are currently very fashionable in post-colonialist 

writings). Lorenzen argues that a 

Hindu religion took shape between c. 300- 

600 CE and that a sharper Hindu religious 

identity emerged during the period c. 

1200-1500 as a result of the interface between 

Hinduism and Islam. Key evidence 

comes from the writings of the nirguni 

poet Kabir, the Varkari poet Ekanath and 

the Krishna devotee Vidyapati. Lorenzen’s 

position on religious conflict in ancient and 

medieval India steers clear of both those 

who magnify it and those who deny it. 

But Lorenzen also 

recognises the internal 

divisions and diversity 

within Hinduism. The 

god of non-caste Hinduism 

tended to be nirguna 

(without attributes) 

in contrast to the saguna 

(with attributes) God 

of caste Hinduism. Karma and transmigration 

wasn’t particularly important in 

non-caste Hinduism, while bhakti was. 

Warrior ascetics or monks assumed a 

marked presence in India between the 15th 

to early 19th centuries, the Sannyasi Rebellion 

in Bengal being one of the better known 

episodes. Lorenzen suggests the ascetic 

movements can be divided into two types: 

those that were concerned with the 

protection of specific, local economic and 

social issues and the larger, more popular 

movements, which often took the form of 

K. SATHEESH 

the rest. The trysts that triumph are not of 

the expected sexual kind, but other trysts 

— of Dosto with drugs; Anin’s mother with 

Baygon; Bhola’s baby with a syringe; Moti 

with a pressure cooker, with a gun, with TB; 

Anin with cancer; Titli with diabetes; Bhola 

with herpes, and a knife. Upamanyu 

makes sure we don’t warm to a single character. 

The poor patently lack appeal and 

decency. Those in positions of power evoke 

no pity even in their ageing, defeated versions. 

Sex is exploitative and open to betrayal. 

Amis would approve. 

The only thing of tenderness is Bhola’s 

baby daughter: “Fatherhood lends a sense 

of duty, if not purpose.” But in a masterful 

scene of deception and violence, even this 

is shattered. “He has no future left to petrify 

him.” But more nasty surprises are in 

store. He is far from the end of his bleak 

voyage. The funny scenes overlay a childhood 

marked by cruelty in school and benign 

neglect at home. His obsessions and 

travels leave behind friends of his class like 

Dosto and pretty Anin: Titli is in turn vegetable 

vendor, hospital nurse, babysitter, 

battered homeless, blind well-off gym assistant. 

Upamanyu’s actors are thus often 

in flux. For each he builds a plausible case. 

Weight Loss has been likened to Portnoy’s 

Complaint. Critics might argue that 

while Roth moved on to “worthier” themes, 

Upamanyu hasn’t. Bhola himself 

feels “retarded” at 33 for his adolescent 

obsessions, but who cares if the laughs 

keep coming? Even the baldest dialogues 

(“…tea.” “With breast milk?” “Whose?”), 

situations (he opens doors with fingers 

and lips reeking of his landlady’s vagina 

to shake hands with prospective in-laws 

with sitars) and silly ads (“dowry strictly 

no no but negotiable”) sizzle with seediness 

and spite. All that sizzle doesn’t veil 

his desolation. � 

regional rebellions against central authority. 

The Sikhs represent the second type, but 

can they be called ‘warrior ascetics?’ 

Moving easily from the medieval to the 

ancient, Lorenzen looks at how the 

Rigvedic aryas differentiated themselves 

from the dasas and dasyus. This is a subject 

on which there has been much debate. 

The general trend in mainstream history 

writing has been to point to the fewness of 

references to the dark skin of the dasas and 

to suggest that the use of adjectives such as 

‘dark’ or ‘black’ may have been used in a 

figurative rather than a literal sense. Here 

again, Lorenzen swims against the tide and 

argues persuasively that the arya identity 

was based on religion, colour and language, 

in that order of importance. 

From ancient texts, Lorenzen takes a gigantic 

leap to the 18th century, to explore 

the ideas and activities of Italian missionaries 

in late Mughal times. These included 

Giuseppe Maria da Gargnano, who spent 

Who Invented 

Hinduism? 

David N. 

Lorenzen 

Yoda Press, 

Rs 495 

many years in Bihar, 

Lhasa and Nepal, and 

wrote an interesting dialogue 

(in Italian and 

Hindustani) between a 

Christian and a Hindu. 

Marco della Tomba 

spent many years living 

in Chandranagore, 

Patna, Bettiah and Bhagalpur. His writings, 

preserved in the Vatican Library, include 

two autobiographical essays, various 

writings about Hinduism, Italian translations 

of Hindu texts, and many letters. 

Lorenzen delves into this archival goldmine 

and weaves together a biography with 

a difference. He juxtaposes excerpts 

from Della Tomba’s writings with his own 

narrative written in the first person as 

though he was Marco. I’m not entirely 

sure whether it works, but it’s an interesting 

experiment. � 

RETREATING LITERATURE 

The ICCR literary jamboree at Neemrana 

fort 5 years ago had close to 70 participating 

writers, national and international. 

Inevitably, it has gone down in history 

more for its spats than its conversations. 

Amitav Ghosh telling Roberto 

Calasso where to get off, VS Naipaul 

calling Nayantara Sahgal a tedious bore, 

and various giants of regional writing 

weighing in against the self satisfactions 

of Indians writing in English. Five 

years later, the ICCR under Pavan K 

Varma is embarked on a much quieter 

enterprise. The Africa Asia Literary 

Conference slated over February 14 and 

15 is dauntingly titled Continents of 

Creation - Legacy Identity Assertion. 

Among the writers expected are Ben 

Okri, Vikram Seth and Arundhati Roy. 

But perhaps the most rare sighting will 

be Namdeo Dhasal, the maverick dalit 

poet born into Mumbai’s red light district, 

who now drives flashy cars and 

changes cell phone numbers in the fashion 

of the Mumbai underground, and is 

difficult to access even for friends. A 

confirmation from him means nothing: 

you believe him when you see him. 

THE NEXT GOD? 

Nine years ago, her debut book came 

upon us like a tectonic event. 

SHOMA CHAUDHURY 

Now, many journeys later, Arundhati Roy 

is ready to write fiction again. “My mind 

has got too complicated for non-fiction 

to express,” she says. She’s shutting 

down on the essays; she needs the 

craziness fiction allows. A lesser being 

would baulk at seconding The God of 

Small Things, but its preternatural success 

has freed Roy up in a strange way. 

She’s had it all, she says, she has nothing 

to lose. It’s true. Whatever she 

writes and however long it takes, her 

next book of fiction will most certainly 

register high on the Richter scale 

RANDOM VISION 

Penguin India sorely needs competition. 

Picador India is a slumbering affair. Roli 

is only just getting its fiction show off 

the ground. And HarperCollins looks in 

danger of falling flat before it has taken 

off. Given this stunningly robust scene, 

the entry of Random House into India 

should have been something to celebrate. 

But almost six months later, it has 

still not found a publisher. Shakti Bhatt, 

its sole editor, is valiantly trying to build 

its list, developing new authors and 

gamely trying to poach on the old. It 

can’t be easy. Random House has set itself 

an uninspiring mandate: non-fiction. 

Not in the mould of Sunil Khilnani’s 

Idea of India or Suketu Mehta’s 

Maximum City but business titles and 

self-help books. In an environment 

starved for competition, that’s as random 

as it can get! 


Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 SEXUALITY 

Birds And Bees 

Oh Damn! Sex, humour, and cartoons. It’s something 

of a first in India. Mintty Tejpaal talks to 

SONIA FALEIRO about his zany new comic book 

created with illustrator Andy Naorem 

Sex and cartoons is a combination 

which hasn’t been tried in India 

before. What inspired it? And did 

you have any reservation? 

That’s right — sex and cartoons 

are a new combination in India. 

The cartoons were inspired by a 

beautiful girl I met in TEHELKA, 

called Smita Bhavnani. She was 

inspiration enough that I even 

married her! No, there were no 

reservations. We had a great editor 

who encouraged us to extend 

the boundaries. For once we 

could create whatever we wanted, 

no matter how mad or edgy. It 

was great for Andy and me. 

What “research” went into Oh 

Damn! 

I’ve been researching Oh Damn! 

unconsciously for years — by observing 

people, their relation- 

ships, the body language as a man 

and woman get together. The rest 

of the time Andy and I spend trying 

to pick up women, but it has 

failed us thus far! 

A cartoonist usually writes his own 

tagline. What are the advantages of 

being part of a team? 

The advantages are great — we 

get a double input of ideas and 

split up the work. Specifically, 

Andy and I have a great understanding, 

almost karmic in 

nature. He understands my 

ideas perfectly and we work 

well as a team. 

What impact do you hope to have 

on cartooning in India with 

Oh Damn! 

We aim to encourage new cartoonists 

and hope that Indians 

can laugh and deal with sex 

more openly. 

The association of cartoons with 

condoms is unique. How did your 

relationship with KamaSutra condoms 

come about? 


Crowing Glory: Mintty (left), Andy 

As authors we went around to 

most of the big publishing houses 

— Penguin, Rupa, Harper Collins 

etc. — who were very encouraging, 

but kept demurring. Frustrated, 

and knowing well our work 

was distinctive and hot, I decided 

to target the corporates, who are 

always quicker to spot a new idea 

or trend. Liquor and condom 

brands were the obvious choice. 

Incredibly, KamaSutra was the 

first, and as it turned out only, 

brand we pitched to. Aniruddha 

Deshmukh, the CEO of JK Ansell, 

recognised the work immediately. 

We never had to hardsell it to 

him. Two weeks later we had signed 

a deal where we licensed the 

merchandising of the cartoons to 

KamaSutra for two years, while 

retaining the intellectual and publishing 

rights. In fact KamaSutra 

are keen to promote these in their 

international markets too! 

You’re currently working on a 

graphic novel. Can you tell us 

about it? 

Well the graphic novel is based on 

a film script I’ve written. It’s an 

edgy, gritty story which combusts 

between urban and rural India, 

with a murder mystery thrown in 

for fun. This should be published 

by May 2006. But before that 

Andy and I are going to publish 

Diaper Dad, a book, which I’ve 

written for my son Armaan, in 

March 2006. 

CIRCUS MAXIMUS 

International lad-mag Maxim made a noisy entry into India with a tasteless 

and unethical picture of actress Khushboo morphed onto a body in 

see-through lingerie. TEHELKA speaks to the actress and Sunil Mehra, 

the magazine’s Indian editor, about the debacle 

How did the Maxim picture affect you? 

They have depicted a woman in such an obscene 

manner. They may claim it is ‘100 per cent fake’, 

but they would never dare do this to women 

from their own family. This is not the first time 

Maxim has landed in a problem. They had 

earlier depicted Mahatma Gandhi in bad light. 

Is there space for a magazine like Maxim in India? 

I didn’t go through it fully. It didn’t make sense 

to read a magazine that projected a woman in 

such bad light. This isn’t the first time a 

men’s magazine is out in India. You have 

Gladrags and Debonair. But they don’t 

project women in an offensive manner. 

Is there space for legitimate adult porn 

magazines in India? 

Yes, we have a lot of 

men who would love 

to read porn. 

What content do you 

think a male magazine 

should have? 

I have no idea. I 

don’t read them. But 

whatever the content 

of a magazine, no 

media has the right 

to project a woman 

in a bad light. 

What about ‘naughty’ 

movie stills? 

Let Maxim produce a picture from any movie in 

any magazine that has shown an Indian actress 

standing in transparent lingerie with a bad caption 

like theirs. 

Where would you draw the line? 

We women draw the line where we feel comfortable. 

We have artistes who do expose to a 

Lingering Rage: Khushboo Faulty Lines: Sunil Mehra 

We women draw the line where we 

feel comfortable. Some expose more 

than others. But they aren’t morphed 

greater extent, but then they are comfortable 

with that. They know how to carry themselves. 

They are not morphed. It is not done without 

their knowledge. They perform in front of the 

camera. They know what they are doing. 

What if they had approached you for a shoot? 

I would definitely have not agreed. I have never 

posed in such an exposing manner in any of my 

movies too. I have been a glamour girl, but I 

have never crossed my limits. 

Your views on scantily-clad women in magazines? 

I am not against magazines carrying women in 

skimpy outfits if it is presented in a sensual and 

aesthetic manner and if the picture is real. 

Has India become more conservative? 

We are definitely not conservative. Or we would 

not have had magazines like Maxim, Gladrags 

and Debonair hitting Indian markets. 

Would you approve of a magazine that publishes 

nude pictures of women with their consent? 

Everything is approved. I don’t think you will 

come across models in India who would like to 

pose nude. But if a model wants to stand nude 

in front of the camera, she has the right to do it. 

If she feels comfortable with it, nobody has a 

right to say don’t do it. 

It’s two weeks since you planned to sue Maxim. Are 

you open to an out of court settlement? 

They’ve come forward with that offer. They keep 

saying that they are coming to Chennai to meet 

me. But they keep postponing it. 

What will you claim as damages? 

I wouldn’t like to reveal that. But I am planning 

to file the case this week and everybody will 

know my claims then. 

PC VINOJ KUMAR 

25 

The caption under Khushboo’s morphed picture 

read, ‘Of course, I’m a virgin if you don’t count from 

the behind.’ Did you really expect no reaction? 

We weren’t prepared for it actually. We had a 

strong disclaimer on the page which patently acknowledged 

the picture wasn’t for real. It read 

“Women you’ll never see in Maxim — 100 percent 

fake”. It was meant to be innocent, good fun. Having 

said that, we’ve apologised cravenly for the 

picture and caption. We ourselves are appalled 

that it passed through us. It taught us a lesson 

in caution. We didn’t mean to hurt, 

we’re in the business of celebrating women, 

not denigrating them. 

It’s hard to imagine that caption as a celebration 

of women. 

It was meant to be a 

spoofy, parodic page. 

The caption was 

most unfortunate. 

Although I don’t 

want to be reductive 

of Khushboo’s feelings, 

I want to add 

that in the west, this 

might have passed as 

humour. 

Why did you pick on 

Khushboo? Was it a 

We have apologised cravenly. But I 

do want to add, in the west this 

could have passed as humour 

calculated marketing gimmick? 

That’s a cynical and facile suggestion. 

Publications are not predicated on a single picture. 

We have not relished being part of this controversy. 

We picked her because she had been in 

the news for her remarks on premarital sex — a 

topic that would be of interest to our readers. 

You’ve put Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor 

on your covers. But their photos look like regular 

magazine shoots. There is nothing unusual there. 

We have to be culturally apposite. I believe a look 

in the eye, the slightly bared shoulder or cleavage 

can be as sensual and sexual, if not more, than a 

woman standing in the nude. These actresses have 

been shot in a way they are comfortable with. In 

the same issues there are much bolder photo 

shoots with two very beautiful models, Naina 

Dhaliwal and Moushumi Gogoi. 

What is Maxim’s mandate for itself ? 

The magazine is constructed for the male DNA: 

women, sport, humour, toys, cars, gizmos. We 

acknowledge that men love taking a good look 

at women. Maxim provides that in a way that 

allows men to take the magazine home. It’s much 

better than the titillating tit and ass that appears 

in many fashion and cine magazines, which 

is sleazy in intent and execution. I imagine 

readers would buy Maxim for its sassiness and 

fun, and because it’s an omnibus male product. 

How different is the Indian component? 

Aspiration levels in India are now fairly global. 

We are reaching out to the 20-40 age group of 

men who are earning enough money and want 

to talk sharp and sound good. We want to provide 

them with social and sexual ammunition — 

knowledge nuggets ranging from 10 things to do 

to get a woman to trivia on movies, gadgets, 

books — tidbits he can drop in his conversation 

in a lounge bar. Maxim also speaks to the upwardly 

mobile man in Jaipur and Meerut who’s 

rich enough but a tad unschooled and wants 

access. Women and glamour are only one component 

of the magazine. 

SHOMA CHAUDHURY 


26 CINEMA 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

FRAMES FROM A STORYTELLER’S LIFE 

They know they are at the heart of good cinema. Without them there would be no story, no film. Yet, screen writers feel slighted by 

Bollywood’s mindless churnings. TEHELKA sought responses from six reputed screen writers about the place of the writer in the industry 

TO THE INDUSTRY WE ARE ILLEGITIMATE OFFSPRINGS MOST WANTED — FILMS WITH BETTER IQ 

KAMLESH PANDEY 

RANG DE BASANTI, 

SAUDAGAR, JALWA 

What is your favourite 

film in terms of 

scriptwriting? 

In Hollywood, Citizen 

Kane was almost 

a miracle the 

way it was written. I 

still read its published 

screenplay 

once a month. In 

India, Gunga Jum- 

na is perhaps the most complete film I 

have seen in my life. Deewar was a remake 

of Gunga Jumna and Mother India. That 

is why Deewar is not so important for me. 

What makes a good script? 

At one level the art and craft of script writing 

is to tell the story in a way that the audience 

gets hooked to it. At the same time 

the viewers must take the film home. I believe 

films are not just popcorn; they must 

have substance. I grew up on the films of 

Raj Kapoor, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy, BR 

Chopra and V. Shantaram, among others. 

Which is why Rang De took five years to 

see the light of day. I have been completely 

surprised and overwhelmed at the kind of 

Classic Love: Bimal Roy’s Devdas 

response I have got for it. Which film in the 

last 15 years has got that kind of response? 

My faith in the audience has recovered in a 

big way. There is hope for me and for 

Indian cinema. 

Who has influenced your work? 

Anybody and everybody. I read a lot, fiction 

as well as non-fiction. I read screenplays of 

Hollywood and European cinema. We 

shamelessly claim to make the largest 

number of films globally, but we don’t have 

a system of publishing screenplays for students 

of cinema. The writer is at the heart 

of all things in film. In the US 10,000 indivdiduals 

emerge annually from workshops. 

What is your favourite 

film in terms 

of scriptwriting? 

I would say, Salim- 

Javed’s Deewar for 

its taut screenplay. 

It was also beautifully 

written. I also 

consider Hrishikesh 

Mukherjee’s Anand 

a masterpiece. The 

film is about a man who is dying but who 

makes other people happy. It was written 

in extremely good taste and was not morbid 

at all. 

Who makes your job harder than it is? 

I don’t think anybody can make it so. It’s 

up to me. I can say no and suffer my 

choice. My request to the film industry is 

to give us writers our freedom, recognition 

and remuneration. Give us what we 

deserve. Why does the industry feel so 

insecure? Anyone who asks, where are the 

scripts, please come to me. But people 

would rather go to a star’s house than 

come to a writer. 

In terms of scripts, how has Bollywood 

changed over the last decade? What are the 

new themes that are interesting? 

In the last decade, we have seen bankrupt 

scripts. Films were packaged beautifully 

but at heart were a complete zero. Apaharan 

was good till the interval but lost its 

focus in the second half. My expectations 

90 percent of Bollywood films 

flop. You rant about not 

getting an Oscar, but how can 

you when you don’t respect 

writers. That pisses me off 

are pegged high. Earlier 

we had such great filmmakers. 

Today we have 

mostly pretenders. I see 

hoardings announcing a 

so-and-so film, like a cinema 

great. What arrogance, 

when most probably 

it is a Hollywood lift. 

More importantly, have 

you ever seen a writer’s 

name figuring on a film 

banner? The lyricist and 

composer figure there. 

Song and dance is necessary 

— it’s our tradition 

— but ultimately it’s the 

story that matters. That’s what pisses me 

off. We don’t get pride or place in the industry. 

That’s why 90 percent films flop. You 

rant about not getting an Oscar, but how 

can you do that when you don’t respect writers. 

We’re treated as illegimate offsprings 

of the industry. So when a film like Rang 

De comes along everyone goes mad. It’s a 

good film but not the end of the world. 

What has been your most exciting work? 

Rang De. I used a structure that goes back 

and forth in a seamless transition. The 

spirit of Bhagat Singh literally comes to haunt 

young India to awaken them. This one 

came from the heart. 

TODAY’S RICH MIDDLE-CLASS SAYS NO TO MELODRAMA 

SACHIN BHOWMICK 

KRRISH, KOI MIL GAYA, 

KISNA, TAAL 


There should be a good storyline and the 

characters should be three-dimensional. 

Being realistic is important as is pace. 

Earlier films used to be two-and-a-half 

hours long. Now we have two-hour films 

that are well paced. 

Most importantly, clichés must be avoided 

at all costs. By clichés I mean the wellworn 

amir garib (rich versus poor) story 

with which we get bored now. The heroine 

in distress who is saved by the hero is another 

cliché. Even a filmmaker like 

Ramesh Sippy fell prey to it in Shakti. 


JAVED AKHTAR 

DON (2006), LAKSHYA, 

MAIN AZAAD HOON, 

ARJUN, SHOLAY 

Which is your favourite 

film in terms 

of scriptwriting? 

I saw Guru Dutt’s 

Jaal at the age of 

12 during a rerun 

and it made a great 

impression on me. 

It had an extremely 

unusual story. The 

hero is totally unscrupulous 

and uses 

the women who fall in love with him, even 

the heroine. At the end, he realises he loves 

her and cannot kill her, even if it means 

falling into the hands of the law. That 

moment of realisation is where the film 

ends. This kind of radical story in the 50s 

was a great achievement. What interesting 

characters! One got totally fascinated 

by the hero’s viciousness. 

Films like Shri 420, Pyaasa, 

Mother India also had a deep 

impact on me. 


It’s like asking what makes a 

good narration of an incident. 

You have to be interesting and 

you should know when it is 

enough and move on. Kahani 

sunane ka dhang (the way of 

narrating a story) is what matters. 

Ultimately, it’s the narration 

of a story audio-visually. This 

sensibility of what will interest 

viewers and what won’t is strictly 

a matter of instinct. 


I joined the industry as an assistant director 

and spent a short while in editing. I am 

aware of film technique. When I saw films 

like Bimal Roy’s Devdas and Madhumati 

later, I found them to be extremely good. 

The establishment resists new 

ideas in society and in film. 

Deewar was not snapped up 

instantly. Initially, no hero was 

willing to do Zanjeer 


The whole system. Society goes by certain 

norms, like morality. In mainstream films 

there is a strict notion of what idea or story 

runs and what will not. If a scriptwriter 

tries to bring in something new the establishment 

resists it. But this goes for all 

walks of life. It is not as if Zanjeer, Deewar 

Billy Wilder, 

Akira Kurosawa 

and Satyajit Ray. 

Who makes your 

job harder 

than it is? 

A new writer has 

to write what the 

director wants. 

Honestly speaking, 

I have spent 

45 years as a 

writer! But a writer should be aware of 

what’s happening in the world. 


changed over the last decade? What are the 


or Sholay were snapped up instantly. 

Initially, no established hero was ready to 

do Zanjeer. This kind of resistance has lessened 

somewhat. As for the producer, he 

tells the writer, write something new which 

has happened before! 


changed in the last decade? What are the 


Once in a while the Bombay film industry 

gives films that surprise you. But by and 

large there is a dearth of solid content. I 

don’t blame the film director or the writer. 

There is a dearth of content in society. We 

have developed the form but content mein 

maar kha gaye (lost out). Look at our lives 

— we are in great form. We look better, 

have better gadgets and better malls. But 

somewhere the real content of life — our 

Frame of Greatness: Pyaasa 

beliefs, aspirations, collective consciousness 

— has been neglected. It’s the same 

with cinema which has advanced greatly in 

techniques of camerawork, editing, sound, 

special effects, but we can’t say the same 

thing about content. 

That said, some people are doing interesting 

experiments. Rang De Basanti is interesting. 

It is heartening that such films get 

made in the mainstream. Apaharan too 

was good but did not get the appreciation 

it deserves. I may be optimistic but I feel 

somewhere the realisation is creeping in, 

that films will have to have better IQ. 

As a matter of fact I do not look back. But 

since you ask, let me say that I don’t have 

so much of an emotional connect with the 

films that have done well, like Sholay, 

Deewar, Trishul, Don, or Zanjeer. I have 

compassion and feeling for the films that 

were good but did not run so much — Kala 

Pathar, Arjun, Main Azad Hoon or 

Lakshya. Arjun created a brand new hero 

on screen who spawned innumerable 

clones. I feel more for it. 

Our lives are changing. The Indian middleclass 

is richer and has no patience for oldfashioned 

melodramas. Recent films like 

Rang De Basanti speak of issues. They are 

realistic. There is less melodrama and less 

romance now. The theme of basic human 

relationships can be seen on TV now. 

There is more of special effects these days. 

Koi Mil Gaya was such a hit because the 

children liked it. Krissh will be the same. 

In your own work, what would you say has 

been your most exciting script? 

My work spans about 137 screenplays. Not 

even Salim-Javed have done that. Among 

the ones I found exciting were Aradhana, 

Brahmachari, Dost, Bemisaal, Karz, 

Vidhaata, Karan Arjun and Koi Mil Gaya. 


Tehelka The People’s Paper 18/02/06 CINEMA 

I’M SICK OF HEARING THERE ARE NO WRITERS IN BOLLYWOOD 

SHIBANI BATHIJA 

FANNAH, KIDNAP (YASHRAJ 

FILMS), CO-WRITER KARAN 

JOHAR’S KABHI ALVIDA 

NA KEHNA 

What is your favourite film in 

terms of scriptwriting? 

Chinatown. Robert Towne 

has pulled off a very intricate, 

complex and layered script. It 

is a personal story set in a highly 

politicised environment in 

Los Angeles and brilliantly blends 

intrigue, mystery, and a 

comment on humanity. It’s 

tough to work at many levels. 


We are very dialogue heavy in 

Bollywood. Good screenplay writing is about the unsaid. 

The trick is to understand the visual medium 

and drama writing in general, and blend the two. 

Who has most influenced your work? 

I don’t really have a guru. But I’ve read a great deal. I 

also have a masters in film and television from the US. 

I loved Godfather 1, but did not like Godfather 3. 

That’s the piecemeal way it works for me. 

In terms of scripts, how has Bollywood changed in the 

last decade? What are the new themes that are 

interesting? 

In Bollwood things change every year. Unfortunately, 

we suffer from a herd mentality. So if a film clicks, for 

a while everybody makes films in that genre: sex 

thrillers, horrors, sex comedies, romances. But 

Lagaan was quite a watershed. It pushed the frontiers 

of what was possible in terms of a mood or setting or 

genre. My greatest thrill with Rang De Basanti is what 

it means to Indian cinema. The next time a producer 

hesitates about a film saying, pata nahi commercial 

hoga ki nahi (not sure if it will work as a commercial 

film) one can just hold up Rang De Basanti! It’s doing 

What is your favourite film in 


Prem Rog. I consider it an 

encyclopedia in all departments 

of filmmaking. 


There’s no particular fixed 

SIDDHARTH ANAND element, just the requirement 

SALAAM NAMASTE of the story setting you are in. 

You can’t learn it; it’s natural. 

The ground rules: keep it interesting, don’t stray from 

the point, do not extend unnecessary scenes. 


Mostly Subhash Ghai and Raj Kapoor. Basically every 

budding filmmaker grows up watching a particular 

kind of film. The films of these directors were my 

school. I used to watch in awe at the way 

they presented a story 


Which is your favourite film in 


I still remember KL Saigal’s 

Devdas, Acchut Kanya, Raj 

Kapoor’s Aag and Barsaat, 

Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam. 


A good script is one that touches 

the audience emotionally. 

People have problems and might 

as well get entertained, but 

utlimately I would want the most commercial filmmaker 

to give a message. 


Literature. My father was a teacher. At 10 I was reading 

Jaishankar Prasad and Nirala. Chandrashar Sharma 

Guleri wrote one story in his lifetime — Usne 

Kaha Tha — which gives me goosebumps every time I 

read it. Somewere, a child widow’s story, seen by my 

mother in a village, influenced me to write Prem Rog. 


A film writer has to stick to her guns but sometimes 

cannot. So much money is invested in a venture and 

the producer wants his money back. 

In terms of scripts, how has Bollywood changed in the 

last decade. What are the new interesting themes? 


well, the masses have understood it. In fact, it’s some 

among the elite and critics who have not got it. Those 

films have made a big difference. Other films I’ve liked 

in a completely different idiom are Kuch Kuch Hota 

Hai and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge. I even 

enjoyed Murder. It did what it set out to do. Munnabhai 

MBBS by Raju Hirani was also a sparkling idea, 

out of the norm, done with integrity and heart. 


It can really be anybody. I think as a rule the phenomenon 

of writer-director is not very healthy. But the 

key issue is how much respect you get as a scriptwriter. 

I am sick of people saying there are no writers 

in Bollywood after producers have browbeaten 

writers into writing to a format. You have to nurture 

a voice and encourage it to have a view and perspective 

in life. I’ve been very 

fortunate with both my 

producers so far. 

In your own work, what 

would you say has been 

your most exciting 

script? 

I would have to 

say Kidnap. It’s a 

human drama in a 

thriller format. I 

enjoy playing 

with genres. 

It is essential that the sensibilities 

of the director 

and writer match completely. 

Mostly writers 

write for themselves and 

become directors. It is also 

true that we have a 

dearth of writers in the 

industry at present. 

In terms of scripts, how 

has Bollywood changed 

in the last decade? What 

are the new themes that 

are interesting? 

The industry is becoming more open to experimenting. 

Multiplexes are now enabling filmmakers to 

make different films. Witness Page 3 and Iqbal. 

What has been your most exciting script? 

Every script I write. 

It has changed greatly. Some new directors go for sleaze 

in the name of reality. But some are making rooted 

films like Haasil and Maqbool and Page 3. 

What has been your most exciting script? 

Prem Rog, 1942: A Love Story, Bhairavi . In the five 

films I have written I have tried to show women 

whose hearts may break but not their spirit. Prem Rog 

was special. Even after 50 years of independence, widows 

are children of a lesser god. I wrote the story over 

100 foolscap pages and Raj Kapoor heard it for hours. 

That film is most dear to me. 

Love’s Labour: Barsaat 

The Innovator: Lagaan 

BOLLYWOOD IS NOW OPEN TO EXPERIMENTS, LIKE IQBAL, PAGE 3 

I SHOW WOMEN WHOSE HEARTS MAY BREAK BUT NOT THEIR SPIRIT 

KAMNA CHANDRA 

KAREEB, 1942: A LOVE 

STORY, CHANDNI, 

PREM ROG 

A fantasy not fantastic enough 

FILM: THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE 

DIRECTOR: ANDREW ADAMSON 

STARRING: TILDA SWINTON, GEORGIE HENLEY, SKANDAR KEYNES, KIRAN 

SHAH, WILLIAM MOSELEY, ANNA POPPLEWELL, JIM BROADBENT 

THE TROUBLE with films in the fantasy genre is that they 

make the fantastic seem so plausible. Post-Harry 

Potter, LOTR and now The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, 

The Witch & The Wardrobe, we can watch trolls chatting 

and centaurs sauntering around without even recognising 

the leap of faith it involves. The magic of imagination is 

surrendered to the abilities of computer graphics. Of course, 

sometimes the depiction outdoes our imagination. 

Sometimes, as in the case of Narnia, the results are mixed. 

The Chronicles of Narnia is a pleasant film. It tells about 

four children who are sent off to live with a stranger in wartorn 

England. The youngest, Lucy (Henley), discovers that 

the mysterious wardrobe in a room opens into a magical 

land called Narnia, which is home to a large number of 

creatures fluent in English. Narnia is ruled with an icy grip 

by an evil witch, played with delicious stridency by Tilda 

Swinton, and awaits the return of Aslan the wise lion. The 

children get embroiled in this world, largely on account of 

being betrayed by Edmund (Keynes), one of their own, who 

gets seduced by the witch’s offer of sweets and future 

glory. The film shows us how he learns his lesson and how 

In the book, we can imagine Narnia in our own 

way. Once that pleasure is taken away, we 

realise the story’s pretty unimaginative 

the four help Aslan and his warriors win back Narnia. 

In the course of the film, lessons about the value of kinship, 

family and the power of faith are emphasised. Narnia 

follows the classical structure of fantasy tales. We have the 

secret passage to a parallel universe, the myth of children, 

powerless in the real world acquiring enormous power with 

the help of strange friends and some divine assistance, the 

overcoming of the dark side within oneself and the passage 

to becoming a man. 

Where Narnia works is in telling a simple story. It avoids 

the temptations of loading the film with too many cute allusions 

and references. The key elements of the cast — 

Henley’s Lucy and Swinton’s witch — are exceptional. The 

young Henley, in particular, has eyes that melt with curiosity 

and draw us in effortlessly. The scenes involving Aslan 

are powerful and keep you involved in spite of their predictability. 

Where Narnia fails is in the thinness of the material it 

has to work with. As a book, The Chronicles of Narnia 

works because we are allowed to imagine Narnia in our 

own way and that is a pleasurable exercise by itself. 

However, once that pleasure gets taken away, we realise 

the story is pretty unimaginative. The fantasy is simply not 

fantastic enough; replace the beavers and centaurs with 

human beings and nothing would change. There is little by 

way of deep allegory here; we are left to enjoy the story primarily 

as a story. There are some lessons about life, but 

these are of the quality of chapters in a moral science 

book. This is a thin morality fable disguised as a textured 

fantasy and the deception is not quite carried off. 

Apart from Lucy, the other kids tend to be drips and carry 

the burden of their discovered greatness awkwardly. The 

battle scenes are enjoyable but insubstantial. See The Chronicles 

of Narnia with your children as I did and enjoy it through 

their enjoyment. But if you’re on your own, you might 

as well see Rang De Basanti once more. 

27 


28 CONTROVERSY 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

The MCD just mowed down their poshest shops 

in Delhi. The fashion frat calls it their 9/11. 

MIHIR SRIVASTAVA asks one of them tough questions 

The MCD demolished fashion 

malls MG-1 and MG-2. What do 

you have to say? 

It is grossly unfair. We were not 

given enough notice. A sense of 

civil behaviour was completely 

missing. I do not blame anyone, 

I understand that the law 

is the same for everyone and I 

have to live within this system. 

Weren’t you aware these buildings 

were not authorised? 

I was not aware. If I was aware 

I would not be stupid enough 

to open another store in MG-2. 

I have two stores, one each in 

MG-1 and MG-2. I have bought 

these spaces. I have a sale deed. 

I pay sales tax and have 

electricity and water bills. 

Why was I allowed to buy 

these places? I paid revenue 

to the government for this. 

So you feel cheated? 

I feel frustrated, angry, 

terrorised. Vindictive, 

to be honest. This is 

because I don’t have 

a political connection, 

I don’t have a 

police connection, and 

no MLA is my brother. 

And unfortunately, I’m 

considered a Page 

3 person. 

What is so 

unfortunate 

about being 

a Page 3 

person? 

If you are considered 

a Page 3 

person, it’s a liability 

socially. You are 

invited everywheredeliberately. 

Then 

you are structured 

in a fashion 

that you 

have to behave 

like a Page 3 

person. And if you 

happen to have a dream, 

it’s terrible. 

Do you have any idea how 

many slum dwellers have been 

evicted on the same pretext? 

I have a very clear idea. I am 

extremely well informed. I have 

a very good idea of what is 

going on in the city. 

Are you part of the MCD’S ‘big 

fish’ list? 

Believe me, designers are not 

part of the ‘big fish’ list. All of 

us are entrepreneurs who have 

spent 18 to 20 years building 

up businesses. The true big fish 

has amassed crores of wealth 

and is living in some palatial 

bungalow, but the MCD will 

never attack them. 

What do you plan to do? Are 

you going to forget about this, 

look ahead, sit back? 

I am not going to sit back at all. 

I am going to speak out. One 

thing I really want to say is that 

I am not speaking in favour of a 

few designers. I am talking about 

the acceptance and credit 

SUNEET VARMA 

On fashion and the demolitions 

People think fashion is 

about smooching Page 3 

people. I have 250 people 

working in this building. 

I don’t pay their salaries 

by smooching on Page 3 

due to the business of fashion. 

They allot so much land to techno-parks, 

why can’t they allot 

some land for the development 

of the business of fashion? 

What is the fashion business 

considered, if not an industry? 

Most people think it’s smooching 

of Page 3 people. You must 

understand that 250 people 

work in this building and I 

don’t pay them salaries by smooching 

on Page 3. It’s a serious 

business. They’re only worried 

about the glamour side and 

aren’t willing to accept the 

business side of fashion. 

Has there been a trickle down 

effect? Has your success benefited 

your workers in any way? 

You cannot imagine the trickle 

down effect. Collections I made 

eleven years ago are still selling 

in Lajpat Nagar market. 

Everybody, from a shop 

in Lajpat Nagar to 

South Extension to 

Karol Bagh, is openly 

selling clothes as my 

collection or that of 

my contemporaries. 

Do you realise the 

amount of business 

they are generating? 

There is a tremendous 

integration of 

what we design 

and what is 

sold in the 

market. This is 

the influence 

of fashion. 

The spillover 

effect is much, 

much wider. 

What’s your 

concept of 

beauty? 

At this point 

I have to say: 

a completely 

non-corrupt, 

civil nation 

that lets you live and let live. 

How relevant is your work 

here? Your designs seem to 

cater to typical western, thin 

body-types, not voluptuous 

Indian ones. 

If I designed clothes for thin, 

NRI bodies, I would not have a 

quarter of my business. This is 

nonsense and rubbish. There is 

a size set: two-small, two-medium 

and four-large. We have 

ready-to-wear lines that sell in 

32 outlets all over the country. I 

have no clue who are the people 

who end up buying it. 

The fashion fraternity gets extensive 

media coverage. There’s 

such hue and cry over you. What 

do you give back to society? 

There is not a single function 

today, at a national or international 

level, where fashion is 

not included. We were there 

when funds had to be raised for 

the tsunami, or AIDS awareness. 

Fashion all over the world is 

used as a forum for raising 

awareness, civil issues and collection 

of donations. 

PHOTOS DHARMENDER RUHIL 

FRICTION FASHION 

The Fashion Design Council of India was set up to “foster the growth of the 

fashion industry”. As it swims in controversy, ANJALI WASON finds out it 

is very far from doing that. A disgruntled community speaks, scissors out 

UNFOLDING LIKE the plot of a sub-standard 

soap opera, the current fracas 

to hit the Indian fashion industry is 

a sordid tale of money and backstabbing. 

Hugely hyped in the media, India Fashion 

Week was a moneymaking ménage-a-trois 

for partners, Fashion Design Council of 

India (FDCI), Lakme and IMG for five 

years strong. 

But following the close of India 

Fashion Week (IFW) 2005, the FDCI, 

launched in 1998, chose not to renew 

its contract with Lakme. Seeking more 

money, the FDCI opened up the bidding 

and invited new sponsors to vie for its 

hand. Percept, a UK based event management 

company, bid Rs 22 crore, Rs 

7 crore more than IMG, and was subsequently 

awarded the contract, leaving 

IMG and Lakme out in the cold. 

Not to be out-done, Lakme and IMG 

joined forces against FDCI and announced 

its own fashion week to be held in 

Mumbai, one week before IFW. 

Lakme claims the FDCI demanded 

three times the amount of money that was 

committed in previous years in 2006 and 

this prevented them from entering into 

a contract. “We could not reach a 

common ground with FDCI on the 

commercial viability of the event,” 

says Anil Chopra, Vice President 

at Lakme Lever. In addition, 

Lakme and IMG felt that holding 

the fashion show only in 

Delhi “was not in the best 

interest of designers, who 

are spread across the 

country.” 

FDCI acknowledges 

asking for more money 

from Lakme but adds 

this is because they intended 

to hold an additional 

fashion show in 

2006. Rathi Vinay Jha, 

Director-General of 

FDCI, balancing ten, albeit 

imaginary, books on her head, sits poker 

straight in the windowed conference room of her 

Gurgaon office. Flanked by Preeta Singh, the deepvoiced 

CEO of Percept and Wolter Dammers, CEO of 

S2, another London-based event management 

company, Jha leans over the glass table and locks 

eye contact. “Our new sponsor will be announced 

later this week,” she says steelily. “Lakme was supposed 

to come back to us with a bid on November 

22. On the 30th, they announced their own fashion 

show in partnership with IMG. Let’s get something 

straight, the press created the issue and I 

will be taking them to task.” 

To make matters worse, the FDCI 

now faces allegations that they 

attempted to restrict their 

members from showcasing 

collections anywhere else 

three months prior to the 

IFW. Bobby Grover of 

Manju and Bobby Grover 

Designs was one of the 

founding members of 

FDCI and served on 

the board for three years. 

He is appalled by the way 

FDCI has handled the 

whole affair adding that 

had they had “a better 

team of managers” they 

may not have “messed 

up.” He received a letter 

stating he could not dis- 

Although hyped in the media, 

the India Fashion Week is at the 

centre of a sordid tale of money 

and backstabbing 

play his designs anywhere for a three-month period 

before the IFW. “I don’t like being restricted,” 

he adds. “Telling us what to do sets a precedent. 

The FDCI threatened to expel anyone who 

wanted to participate in both shows. I prepared 

for both shows but then withdrew 

my draft for the Lakme one.” 

Sabyasachi Mukherjee, a Calcuttabased 

designer, enunciates his anger 

at the FDCI’s outlandish demands for 

loyalty. “(This is) irresponsible of 

both parties and the designer is 

caught in the middle. You cannot 

ask a designer to stop business,” 

he says. “FDCI has no business 

stopping a designer. I’ll carry on on 

my own if I have to.” 

According to its mission statement, 

FDCI was founded “to foster the 

growth of the Indian fashion industry…with 

the aim of promoting the 

business of fashion in India and 

overseas”. Surely, many indignant 

designers assert, having two India 

fashion shows — like in fashion 

hubs USA and Brazil — will do 

wonders for the fashion industry 

and help FDCI achieve its 

stated goals. Ironically 

though, FDCI’s resistance to 

the establishment of an 

additional fashion week will 

deliver a serious blow to the 

growth of the Indian fashion 

community. 

Mumbai-based designer, 

Narendra Kumar 

Ahmad sent a letter to 

the FDCI asking for a 

clarification on the re- 

striction. He wishes to 

showcase a men’s collection 

in Delhi and a 

distinct women’s collection 

in Mumbai. He 

feels that the “warning” 

not to parade his line 

anywhere else went 

against “the basic idea of the FDCI” which was 

“created to help designers.” Ahmad awaits a reply 

to his letter. 

Bobby Grover believes that the lack of communication 

from the FDCI has helped to create a sense of 

insecurity and distrust among its members. Probed 

on the dissatisfaction of her members, Jha responds 

with “I can’t call every designer to explain 

what’s going on all the time. We’ ve not banned designers 

from taking part in other (fashion) weeks. 

We have only advised them to stay with the IFW.” 

This “advice” has sparked the interest of the 

Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices 

Commission, which has ordered a preliminary investigation 

into the organisation. Jha snorts a “this 

is routine” in response to the order issued by the 

MRTPC. “We have been asked to submit some documents. 

But it is an enquiry not an investigation,” 

she reprimands. 

Disgruntled designer Jattinn Kochhar says that 

he isn’t quite sure why the FDCI exists at all. 

“They started as a platform for designers, to formalise 

the industry but I haven’t gained much 

from the Rs 10,000 annual membership fee. 

There are huge communication problems between 

the members and the Board.” The Delhibased 

designer feels that the Rs 2.5 lakhs he paid 

to participate in the IFW goes to “wine and dine 

the buyers who show up every year and never buy 

anything.” Jha pauses before responding, “The 

person who said this must have bad designs,” she 

says. “I can’t guarantee them sales then. This person 

must just have bad designs.” � 


This is the ADD Page.

30 TRENDS 18/02/06 Tehelka The People’s Paper 

THE DOGMATIC DANES 

Writer Hari Kunzru has taken a stand on the cartoon- 

Jyllands-Posten controversy. According to an interview on 

the website Asians in Media. “On my press trip (to Denmark) 

I found myself answering a lot of questions about 

race. Denmark appears to be discovering a strong and previously 

latent streak of xenophobia. I remember being in 

an interview with a female journalist when a woman 

wearing hijab walked past. She went into a surprisinglyvehement 

diatribe about how angry it made her because as 

a feminist she felt it was evidence of subjugation and that 

an alien patriarchy was importing its prejudices into her 

country.” Sounds like good material for another novel. 

HOLLYWOOD OR BUST 

Four years after Devdas, Aishwarya Rai will return to Cannes this May to 

promote her new film Provoked, based on the real-life story of battered wife, 

Jasmeet Ahluwalia. Says producer, J. Murli Manohar, “Provoked is being 

distributed by the same company that distributed the Halle Berry-starrer, 

Monster’s Ball. In fact there are striking similarities between the two housewives 

played by Aishwarya and Halle Berry. Both films are about a woman’s 

struggle for dignity. My director Jagmohan Mundhra and I are hoping that 

Provoked gets a response similar to Monster’s Ball in the West.” No one associated 

with Rai can be accused of not having Hollywood aspirations! 

BON JOUR INDIA! 

In line with being voted Cultural Capital of Europe, the 

city of Lille in France is planning to hold a festival every 

two years dedicated to a world culture. In 2006, Lille 

plans to celebrate India in a festival called Bombaysers 

de Lille 3000. Scheduled for October, a committee will 

recreate life-size Bollywood sets, poster-making workshops 

throughout the city and decorate buses and taxis 

with Indian-style designs. According to the website, one 

aspect of the festival will explore “Indian kitsch, the 

Indian fairytale, femininity, contorting bodies, lascivious 

singers.” Nothing like a bit of masala with your escargots. 

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MAXIMUM FEMINISM 

Naomi Wolfe is indisputably beautiful, a Rhodes scholar, married 

to New York Times editor, David Shipley, and the unquestioned 

leader of Gen X feminism. But she isn’t exactly what one would consider 

intellectual heavyweight. She once advised presidential candidate 

Al Gore to be more “alpha male”. (How gleefully her critics 

sharpened their knives!) And her books are more geared for educated, 

middle-class women who love their husbands and are doing well 

for themselves than for those picketing against rape and abortion. 

As Camille Paglia once said derisively, she is the “yuppie feminist — 

the pretty airhead who has gotten any profile whatsoever only because 

of her hair.” Little wonder then that writer Suketu Mehta is 

more than a little bemused to have been invited by India Today to 

speak at its conclave in March as a co-panelist with Ms Wolfe. The 

subject? ‘Can Power Feminism Talk to Power Machismo?’ Cherub 

faced, mild-mannered Mehta is wondering about that one. Wolfe 

and him? Power machismo and him? Have his hosts got him right? 

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ENLIGHTENED 

Peter Weir, legendary 

director of films like 

Picnic at Hanging Rock, 

Witness, The Truman 

Show and The Dead 

Poet’s Society, is currently 

in Mumbai discussing 

his next film Shantaram 

with author Gregory 

Roberts. He has apparently 

picked Havelock 

Islands in the Andamans 

as one of his locations. 

The film, starring 

Johnny Depp and Russell 

Crowe, is scheduled 

to go on the floor this November. This being his first trip 

to India, the soft-spoken Weir had an interesting take on 

global travel. He told a journalist, “I’ve always wanted to 

come to India. But I did not want to consume it like a 

cake. I wanted a deeper relationship with it, and the best 

way to engage with a country and understand it, is to 

work in it.” He added, “These days, with international 

travel becoming so easy, often the treat is not to visit 

places, but to save them for a special treat, put off visiting 

them until one can savour and truly understand them.” 

That’s an unusual perspective for global souls! 

LOVE AND LONGING IN INDIA 

It’s no news that Bryan Adams is here on tour. What’s 

news is that Adams it seems is a bit of a closet- 

Indophile. “There is a great energy in this country. I 

used to dream about going to India as a boy. It’s incredible 

that I can perform 

here now.” The devout 

vegetarian has also 

confessed to having a 

thing for 

Anoushka 

Shankar 

and her 

dad, Ravi 

Shankar. 

“I love the 

Shankar 

family. 

Ravi and 

Anoushka 

are brilliant 

musicians. 

I’d like 

Anoushka 

to come and 

do a song 

with me.” 

He could be 

in luck. 

Anoushka’s 

still doing 

singles! 

M-76, 2nd Floor, M-Block Market 

Greater Kailash Part II, 

New Delhi 110048 

Phone / Fax No. 011-41638750

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