Issue 266

22 13/09/2018 NEWS LITERATURE POLITICS FASHION ART & CULTURE KIDS RELIGION FILMS
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Detained for distributing leaflets in favour
of a law against Caste discrimination
On Wednesday, 5th September 2018,
the Hindu Forum of Britain held a meeting
at the House of Commons titled
'Dissolving Caste Consciousness 2
:moving forward'. It brought together
representatives from UK Hindutva and
UK's most pro-Israel spokespersons. It
was chaired by Tory MP Bob Blackman,
who is well-known for having previously
hosted Tapan Ghosh (a well-known
Islamophobe and Hindu supremacist
with links to neo-Nazi Stephen Yaxley-
Lennon aka Tommy Robinson) at the
House of Commons. Blackman is the
Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary
Group for British Hindus, and also an
office bearer of the Conservative
Friends of Israel Speakers included
Satish Sharma, general secretary of the
National Council of Hindu Temples
UK, Lord Jitesh Gadhia, banker and
Conservative Party donor, Jasdev Singh
Rai (representative of the Sikh Human
Rights Group) and PC Varsha Mistry
(from the Hindu Association in the
Metropolitan police). Also present was
Gideon Falter, who was called upon to
speak from the floor.
Falter is the Chairman of the
Campaign Against AntiSemitism which
was formed in August 2014 during a
major Israeli offensive against Gaza. It
has been described as a McCarthyite
Zionist propaganda organisation whose
aim is to smear and libel opponents of
Israel's apartheid regime. Falter said
that he and his supporters would do all
they could to support the Hindu Forum
Britain to eradicate the 'duty' on the
government to make Caste an aspect of
race in the Equality Act of 2010.
Lord Jitesh Gadhia and Bob
Blackman called for the need to learn
from the way the Campaign against
Antisemitism had got the International
Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition
of antisemitism passed in the
Labour Party and to strengthen links
with those who had achieved this. They
outlined the strategy of their group
which was to anticipate the issue to
come up next in Queens speech 2019,
then go to House of Commons and then
go to House of Lords and they urged
everyone to focus on lobbying their
MPs and getting them to remove this
duty. PC Varsha Mistry stated she was
relieved that there was no legislation to
outlaw caste as it would mean there
would be fewer hate crimes.
Sharma said he had approached
Corbyn multiple times to discuss the
topic and each time Corbyn failed to
reply. Implying to the room that Jeremy
Corbyn is a man that cannot be reasoned
with and is dangerous to Hindus and
Jews alike. Despite as we all know,
being the most prolific anti-racist member
of parliament for a generation.
Blackman warned of Corbyn to the
Hindutva lobby in room by reminding
them of Corbyn’s long-standing support
of the Dalit movement. Blackman and
Sharma went on to rally the room to
look to Jewish political success and
enter the Tory Party. Blackman even
wanted to remind the room that South
Asians were forcibly expelled from East
Africa during their independence struggles
because they failed to enter politics
despite "Indians running their
economies!”. The irony of Blackman’s
Colonial Settler mentality was lost in
the room. It was strange to witness the
main speakers state caste didn’t exist,
and that there is no meaning behind the
imported Portuguese word and it was an
invention in the 1800s when the British
conducted it census. That is despite
Sharma talking directly about Varnas
and explaining there were 4 - Brahmins,
Kshatriyas, Vaishya and Sudras.
Left to Right :Prabhakar Kaza (President of Indian Forum of British Media),
Trupti Patel, Laskshmi Vyas president of Hindu Forum of Europe, Bob Blackman
(MP, Harrow East, chair), Satish Sharma (General Secretary of National Council
of Hindu Temples), Jasdev Singh Rai (Sikh Human Rights Group)
Blackman even began the meeting by
asking 3 little children in the front row
what caste they were. When the children
replied “Goldsmiths” (a profession
within Vaishya), Blackman retorted
“great, you’re going to be rich”. He
spent the rest of his speech saying
Indian’s contributed more than any
ethnic group to the UK and were the
most law-abiding, receiving affirmative
nods from the Indians sitting
beside him. Sarbjit Johal from South
Asia Solidarity Group who attended
the meeting writes about her disturbing
experience inside the meeting
room and after she left: 'During the
discussion following the speakers I
was, after waiting a long time,
allowed to ask a question. I addressed
it to Mr Jasdev Singh Rai (representative
of the Sikh Human Rights Group)
.
"Why was there a Guru Ravidass
Gurdwara and a Singh Sabha
Gurdwara" I a sked him "when he
himself had said that there was no
such thing as caste discrimination?
And also why did some members of
my own family, and many other families,
use words such as Chamar and
Churi to abuse and denigrate people,
when he had just said there is no word
for caste in any Asian language
because it is all just a colonial construct?
". Then I addressed the audience
and said, "We are all Hindus,
Christians, Muslims and Sikhs and
that we know how hard the Asian
community has had to struggle in this
country, how much racism we have
had to face and fight. We of all people
know what it is like to be discriminated
against.' I went on to say that I
thought that we as the Asian community
would be the first to support people
facing inhuman discrimination. I
ended with saying how sad I felt to
hear the things the speakers had said
and how it made me lose all faith in
humanity. As I could see the speakers
smirking at me, I decided to leave. But
when I heard a few friendly words
from some of the audience I gave out
a few leaflets which gave details of a
Film Screening of Caste Aside and a
Public Discussion to be held on
Saturday 22nd September at the
Hounslow Council Chambers.
However as soon as I walked out of
the meeting room, a Security Guard of
Asian descent came rushing towards
me and shouted into my face "you
cannot distribute these leaflets here"
and then she went on to quickly snatch
back all the leaflets from everyone
who had taken one. As I moved away
and came across a crowd of South
Asian people who had come out of a
totally different meeting from another
committee room. Some of them
expressed an interest in my leaflets.
Seeing this, the guard again came and
snatched the leaflets from my hands
and from the hands of the others. Then
she forced me to stand outside
Committee Room 11 while she liaised
with Satish Sharma, Bob Blackman
and others inside Committee Room 11.
A number of police officers in the
House of Commons were contacted.
Eventually another Asian police officer
with at least four other officers behind
her, came to ‘talk’ to me and said. "I’m
going to give these leaflets back to you,
but you cannot distribute these leaflets
at this meeting". The Security Guard
rushed in to add "I saw you on CCTV
that you were distributing these leaflets
to those others too". So the Police was
called to reprimand me for distributing
leaflets on The Struggle against Caste
Discrimination in the UK at a House of
Commons meeting on Caste. I wonder
what are they so afraid of?
Protest in London to Stop the Witch-Hunt of Human Rights Activists in India!
Why we were protesting
The Modi government has unleashed a
massive witch hunt against a whole
range of dissenting voices targeting
some of India’s most credible and
respected human rights activists and
public intellectuals, using trumped up
charges and patently false allegations
to try to silence all opposition and terrorise
dissidents.
In raids on 28 August across the country,
a series of activists were arrested -
noted Chhattishgarh-based trade union
leader and tribal rights campaigner
Sudha Bharadwaj (arrested from
Faridabad), renowned writer Varavara
Rao (arrested from
Hyderabad),activists Arun Ferreira
(who has incidentally written a book
on his experience of being in prison
for five years on false charges) and
Vernon Gonsalves (picked up from
Mumbai) and long-standing human
rights campaigner Gautam Navlakha
(who was arrested from his residence
in Delhi but the High Court stayed his
remand to Pune).
Among those whose houses have been
raided are Ranchi-based Father Stan
Swamy (who has been opposing corporate
landgrab and Hindutva violence
in Jharkhand and has recently
been charged with ‘sedition’), journalist
Kranthi Tekula, lawyer Susan
Abraham who is defending Surendra
Gadling and others, Dalit writer and
academic Anand Teltumbde, and
Pavana and Prof. K. Satyanarayana
(daughter and son-in-law of Varavara
Rao). On 29 August, the Supreme
Court responded to a petition filed on
behalf of those arrested by ruling that
they should not be kept in police custody
but under house arrest until
September 6, noting that ‘Dissent is
the safety-valve of democracy’.
The BJP-led Maharashtra Government
and the Pune Police are using the
Bhima Koregaon violence of January
1 2018 as the pretext for planning this
witch hunt. The year 2018 started with
violence against Dalits in Bhima
Koregaon when thousands of Dalits
gathered there in a commemoration of
a historic victory. Hindutva thugs with
saffron flags in hand attacked the
Dalits. The main masterminds behind
the Bhima Korgaon anti-Dalit atrocity
are Shambhaji Bhide and Milind
Ekbote. Both of them are closely connected
with the BJP. Shambhaji Bhide
is the founder of the Shivpratisthan
Sangstha, which has incited several
communal riots in Maharashtra. Both
of them are roaming free while human
rights and Dalit rights activists are
being targeted.
The human rights movement which
emerged out of the experience of
resistance to the 1975-77 Emergency
is today being branded as an ‘Urban
Naxal’ project. An actual incident of
anti-Dalit violence is being manipulated
to persecute Dalit rights activists.
While Hindutva terrorist organisations
like Sanatan Sanstha are enjoying full
impunity to openly threaten people
and call for overturning the
Constitution, lawyers, writers, poets
and public intellectuals have been
framed with outlandish charges of
plotting an assassination of the Prime
Minister, in a move with striking parallels
with the history of Nazi
Germany. The fact that as K. Pavana
and Prof. K. Satyanarayanan have testified,
the police raiders asked questions
like ‘Why do you read books by
Mao and Marx?’ ‘Why do you have
pictures of Ambedkar and Phule and
not of
gods and goddesses?’ and ‘Why do
you not wear jewellery and sindoor as
a wife?’ indicates what are now considered
‘crimes’ in Modi’s India.
These raids and arrests, the slapping of
sedition charges and the invoking of
draconian laws like UAPA are all
aimed at reducing India to a republic
of fear. The Indian state is doing this in
partnership with the organized lynch
mobs murdering Muslims and Dalits
on a daily basis and the hired assassins
being deployed to kill dissidents. The
assassinations of Dabholkar, Pansare,
Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh, the
failed attempt on the life of Umar
Khalid, repeated attacks on Swami
Agnivesh and the continuing persecution
of human rights campaigners are
all part of the same strategy of silencing
dissent and subordinating democracy
to a fascist regime of fear and
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