https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-burning-forest
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/nandini-sundar-the-burning-forest-indias-war-in/id427197319?i=1000676615790
https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-burning-forest
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/nandini-sundar-the-burning-forest-indias-war-in/id427197319?i=1000676615790
Terry was my dearly loved brother-in-law. I am reproducing the obituary notice
Terrance “Terry” Michael Maccagno
June 9, 1962 – August 25, 2024From the mid-20th century onwards, diverse groups – whether formerly enslaved populations or victims of mass atrocities – have demanded reparations as part of a wider struggle for justice. In the current global climate of right-wing resurgence, however, both the recognition of victimhood and demands for justice are in danger of being subverted and hijacked. These developments create additional obstacles in the way of genuine reparation demands. This happens in at least three ways. First, there is a new and selective application of victimhood status and recognition, often along old fault lines of race or religion, such that the oppression of some groups is no longer recognized as a legitimate object of reparations; indeed their demands for justice are seen as unfair claims against dominant groups. Second, we see the naked continuation of the very practices which the reparations movement has sought to establish as wrongs. Third, not content with negating existing demands for reparations from below, powerful groups are going a step further and claiming reparations for themselves as part of a supremacist project. In doing this, they use the language and moral claims of reparations and decolonization that have emerged through the global reparations movement. This essay seeks to illustrate this through the examples of India and Israel, including the demand for ‘restoration’ of sacred sites to Hindus and Jews.
Keywords: Reparations, Majoritarianism, Victimhood, India, Israel, Sacred Sites
Published in Development and Change, 17 April 2024
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/dech.12822
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3bJMToFInqW3i1on83g658?si=w9itQlH4QVqkkqoAy_rlFw
https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/all-indians-matter/id1527740349?i=1000645245455
Website: https://www.allindiansmatter.in/supreme-courts-flawed-reasoning-when-ruling-in-favour-of-govt-is-worrying/
In providing a guarantee for the preservation of the religious character of places of public worship as they existed on 15 August 1947 and against the conversion of places of public worship, Parliament determined that independence from colonial rule furnishes a constitutional basis for healing the injustices of the past by providing the confidence to every religious community that their places of worship will be preserved and that their character will not be altered. The law addresses itself to the State as much as to every citizen of the nation. Its norms bind those who govern the affairs of the nation at every level. Those norms implement the Fundamental Duties under Article 51A and are hence positive mandates to every citizen as well. The State, has by enacting the law, enforced a constitutional commitment and operationalized its constitutional obligations to uphold the equality of all religions and secularism which is a part of the basic features of the Constitution. The Places of Worship Act imposes a non-derogable obligation towards enforcing our commitment to secularism under the Indian Constitution. The law is hence a legislative instrument designed to protect the secular features of the Indian polity, which is one of the basic features of the Constitution. Non-retrogression is a foundational feature of the fundamental constitutional principles of which secularism is a core component. The Places of Worship Act is thus a legislative intervention which preserves non-retrogression as an essential feature of our secular values (para 82 of the 2019 Ayodhya judgement, M Siddiq (D) v. Mahant Suresh Das and ors, emphasis mine)
Muslims in India, somewhat like Adivasis, are always being told to ‘integrate’ and to join the ‘mainstream’. The difference with Muslims and Adivasis is that the former are seen as unwilling to be ‘mainstreamed’ and the latter as incapable of it. The assumption is always that the ‘main-stream’ is an upper-caste Hindu river, singularly flowing without any input from minority streams. At the same time, when Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis fill the jails disproportionately and are denied bail when others get it for the same offence, then there is no admission of how the mainstream has excluded them.
When a Muslim like Umar Khalid crosses boundaries, there is a further panic attack. A young articulate Muslim man who does not wear a skull cap, who is an atheist, who did his Phd from JNU in history on Adivasis in Singbhum is seen as an anomaly in the segregated world the RSS wants to create. The attempt is then to reduce him to just one aspect of his identity – so that whatever else he does or says or writes, in the end he must be seen merely as a Muslim, and by extension, violent, anti-national and a threat to the “Indian mainstream.” So dangerous that he has been in jail for three years without bail. It is not surprising that so many of the young people who were arrested for the anti-CAA protests were Muslim students at India’s leading universities.