Setalvad, Sreekumar's Real 'Crime' Was Raising the Question of Modi's Command Responsibility

It is, perhaps, not a coincidence that Teesta Setalvad and former Gujarat police officer R.B. Sreekumar were arrested on June 25, 2022, the anniversary of the Emergency.

Another former police officer Sanjeev Bhatt, who is already in jail, has also been charged in the alleged common conspiracy to tarnish the image of Gujarat’s administration. They have been booked under Sections 468, 471 (forgery), 194 (fabricating false evidence), 211 (instituting criminal proceedings to cause injury), 218 (public servant making incorrect record or writing with intent to save person from punishment), and 120B (criminal conspiracy). On July 2, they were remanded to 14 days of judicial custody, after four days of police custody. 

As a tit-for-tat gesture for their ‘audacity’ in getting the Special Investigative Team (SIT) to question Prime Minister Modi – even such a friendly SIT as the one headed by formerCBI chief R.K. Raghavan – the Gujarat Police has now set up its own SIT to investigate Setalvad, Sreekumar and Bhatt, alleging that they were aided by foreign funds and opposition politicians in their purported enterprise. 

The clear signal being sent out by the courts, police and ruling political dispensation alike is that we are in a de facto Emergency, in which a legal fight for constitutional rights or calling the administration to account, is a crime.

Seeking Truth and Reconciliation in Chhattisgarh

The Indian government claims it is slowly but surely winning the war against Maoist guerillas in India’s resource rich forested regions, and has consistently dismissed widespread accusations of human rights violations as propaganda by Maoists or their urban supporters. It has also acted to preempt future accusations by jailing human rights activists and lawyers working in these areas. But as a recent report by a government appointed enquiry commission shows, these accusations are credible and need to be addressed.

Five Acres in Lieu of Citizenship: Parsing the Ayodhya Verdict

The Muslims of India approached the Supreme Court for affirmation of their citizenship.  Instead, they were given five acres of land.

In their verdict on the Ayodhya dispute, the bench recognised “it is necessary to provide restitution to the Muslim community for the unlawful destruction of their place of worship.” But in sharp contrast to their lengthy exegesis on other issues – like the indubitability of faith, the archaeological evidence for a temple below the mosque, the way that historical texts must be read – there is absolutely no discussion of what ‘restitution’ means, and more importantly, what it might involve in this specific context.

From Kathua and Unnao to Chintagufa

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently provided the media with another photo-op by helping an Adivasi woman in Bijapur wear her new slippers. But like much else in his government, the gesture is tokenistic – only one person per family of tendu leaf collectors gets the grand gift of slippers. In the meantime, not one person has been compensated for their houses and all their belongings – including slippers –  being burnt during the time of the Salwa Judum.

Saying ‘Jai Bhim’ in Chhattisgarh counts for little if one cannot implement Babasaheb’s vision in practice. Would Ambedkar have been happy to see the constitution subverted by a government that cannot protect its young daughters, a party whose MLAs are accused of rape and whose ministers support rapists? The day the adivasis of Bastar who have been gangraped, whose relatives have been killed and whose houses have been burnt get justice is the day the government’s demand that the Maoists lay down arms will have some chance of being heard.

This is a story from exactly a year ago, April 2017, when security forces in Chintagufa village of Sukma district allegedly raped a minor girl. On April 2, at around 4 am, the girl and her mother were sleeping in the courtyard of their house when CRPF personnel came looking for her elder brother, who was supposedly a sangham member, or a village-level Maoist sympathiser. Her brother wasn’t there. Three men dragged her to a distance, and two of them took turns raping her, she said later. The other police/CRPF personnel stayed back, beat her mother and pushed her younger sisters inside the house and locked it. The victim was injured on the neck during the rape as photos taken at the time reveal. Due to the darkness, she could not identify the men who raped her.

The matter was first reported by a villager on April 3 last year and published in Nai Duniya on April 4 morning. That same article quoted the DIG, P. Sunder Raj, saying the allegations were false, mala fide and intended by ‘white-collar Naxals’ to tarnish the image of the police. All this before any police investigation, even though at first reporting, the reported rape clearly came under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offcences (POCSO) Act.. Instead, the journalist who reported the matter was questioned.

A little memory can go a long way

A little memory can go a long way

It is the silences that attend media coverage of Yakub Memon’s impending execution and not the Shiv Sena’s aggressive calls for his hanging that hold a mirror to Indian democracy most clearly. Leading national dailies carry photos of mangled bomb blast sites and interview those affected, as if to justify the imposition of the death penalty; none ask why other victims must continue to suffer silently the indignity of watching their attackers go scot-free.

Vigilantism, culpability and moral dilemmas.

The recent resurgence of vigilantism in India connects both to the
neo-liberal project of outsourcing security, as well as to a longer history of porous
boundaries between states and powerful elements in society. When practiced by
subaltern groups, it also reflects the failure of the judicial system. This article
explores the moral plurality evoked by different forms of vigilantism and their
relationship to the state, as well as the different types of culpability they imply.

Keywords ■ India ■ Hindu Right ■ justice ■ Maoists ■ outsourcing ■ security

This article was published in Critique of Anthropology, 30 (1), March 2010, pp. 1-9. The full text is available at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46103054/Vigilantism-Culpability-Moral-Dilemmas

Toward an Anthropology of Culpability.

“Toward an Anthropology of Culpability.” In American Ethnologist, 31 (2), 2004, 145-163.

Anthropologists concerned with political violence and justice must engage in a comparative examination of culpability for past and ongoing crimes. When powerful states use reparations, truth commissions, or war crime tribunals to attribute culpability to others, including their past selves, they often, paradoxically, legitimize ongoing injustices. As against culturalist explanations for mass violence, which set up a hierarchy of cultures, we need to look at the institutional sites through which public morality is constructed. This approach is illustrated with reference to the killing of Muslims in Gujarat, India, in 2002 and to the invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003. 

keywords: culpability, comparative anthropology, reparations, genocide, war, India, United States

The full text of the article is available at: 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46103046/Towards-an-Anthropology-of-Culpability

Divining Evil: The State and Witchcraft in Bastar

“Divining Evil: The State and Witchcraft in Bastar”. In Journal of Gender, Technology and Development, 5 (3), 2001, 425-448.

This article examines witchcraft accusations in Bastar, a predominantly adivasi or ‘tribal’ area  in central India. In the European witch crazes of the 16th and 17th centuries, which set the tone for much work on witchcraft, witches were predominantly women. In other Indian adivasi areas like Jharkhand or the Dangs, witch accusations have effectively been used to dispossess women, often widows, of land. In Bastar, while belief in witchcraft and sorcery is widespread, as part of a wider cosmology in which all unnatural actions, whether good or bad, are attributed to the work of the earth, spirits or motivated humans, my evidence, albeit limited, suggests that both men and women are equally targets of suspicion. Suspected practitioners of the ‘occult’ need not fit any pattern of gender, age, dependency or kinship. However, all accusations appear to follow a series of illnesses. Accusations of occult malpractice therefore seem a way of coping with the uncertainties of human existence and attributing agency to local actors in a context where, in practice, people have little power.  While the state has concentrated on coercive measures like imprisonment for those who have killed practitioners of the occult, it has done little to redress the concerns that give rise to such violence -  such as abysmal health services or the lack of land or other means of livelihood. While those accused of being witches are no doubt victims, those who kill them are perhaps equally victims of state negligence.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46102975/Divining-Evil-The-State-and-Witchcraft-in-Bastar