Hill people resent panchayat office boycott call SNS, SILIGURI, 26 OCT: Common people in the Darjeeling Hills are feeling aggrieved with the indefinite panchayat office closure call from 7 November by the GJMM president, Mr Bimal Gurung. “The political leadership should devise some other means of continuing with the Gorkhaland crusade rather than paralyse normal official work, including the crucial panchayat functioning. Such indefinite closure call would land the common people in trouble affecting their day-to-day schedule,” is the common refrain. Addressing a rally in Darjeeling marking the closure of the month-long cultural movement, Mr Gurung said that all panchayat offices in the hills would remain closed indefinitely from 7 November as part of the statehood movement. Criticising the call, Mr Sukramoni Rasailli, a resident of Kalimpong, said that if enforced strictly, the panchayat closure call would incapacitate the people as far as collection of birth and death certificates were concerned. “Though the hills have no elected panchayat bodies for long, some semblance of work keeps continuing through the local administration. If the panchayat offices remain closed and that too for an indefinite period where would we go to register births and deaths? Though vehemently attached to the homeland cause we would appeal to the GJMM leadership to devise some out of the box ways through which the movement can be carried on while sparing the common people the trouble,” he said. Echoing the same grievances, a resident of Darjeeling, Mr Amar Rai said that the common rural people would suffer much as the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act would remain stuck in course of the contemplated pancahayat closure. “The rural part of the hills looks forward to the NREGA implementation as a means to poverty alleviation. The hundred days’ work scheme has a potential to transform the rural under-development. It is a pity that the work would remain in limbo for an unpredictable length of time,” he added. Another person from Kurseong said on conditions of anonymity that the GJMM leadership seems following the GNLF regarding lack of respect for the panchayat institution. “Mr Subash Ghising was against allowing the panchayat body to function independently. The same mind -set manifests in the GJMM diktats too,” he said. Asked to comment on the grievances, the GJMM general secretary, Mr Roshan Giri said that such a step was an indispensable part of the popular movement. “The common people are rather happy with the declared course of movement including the panchayat closure call,” he claimed. A museum that has a master... Romit Bagchi, SNS, SILIGURI, 26 OCT: History and that too in its glory come flooding when one approaches a heritage building just behind the world renowned promenade called Mall in Darjeeling. ‘Step Aside’ needs no introduction, standing as it for years as a living testament to the saga of self-effacement for a luminous cause. A favourite retreat of Desabandhu Chittaranjan Das, the one-storied house tells the story of the tumultuous chapters of the anti-colonial struggle. Das died here in 1925 at a time when the country was under the spell of the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The Mahatma came here a few months before Das passed away, to meet the ailing leader with whom he had vehemently disagreed regarding the pro-changer and no-changer line of debate. But to have an inside flavour of the historic house converted into Desabnadhu Museum a few years back is a matter of fortuitous chance, for its opening and closure depends absolutely on the sweet will of the gate-keeper under whose charge the heritage monument remains for years. According to the locals, shocked by the dilapidated condition of the heritage house, the state Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi had taken initiatives for its renovation. A childcare medical unit was also attached to it for its upkeep. Yet, it remains closed most time, as there is nobody to look after its upkeep, save for a “chowkidar.” One veteran resident of Darjeeling, Mr D B Bhutia said conversationally that the condition of a few other heritage buildings in the town was in worse condition. “Take for example, the house called Roy Villa near the Lebong Race Course on the outskirts of the town. That is where Sister Nivedita died in 1911. The celebrated scientist, Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose frequented the house in the company of Rabindranath Tagore as the owner happened to be his sister. Now it is housing the office of the Gorkhaland Personnel,” he said. Narrating the history of another such heritage house on Balen Villa Road, Mr Subhamoy Chatterjee, who is associated with the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha movement, said that Swami Vivekananda had stayed there for several days. “Most of the present day residents do not know the fact. Decaying fast with time, it might vanish from the face of the earth soon, leaving behind idle nostalgia,” he lamented. The Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council administrator, Mr B L Meena expressed his surprise over the existence of such heritage buildings in the town. “ I did not know. Nobody drew my attention so far. I would definitely look into this and allocate required funds for the preservation and renovation of these. No self- respecting country can be indifferent to the memory of the stalwarts who aroused us from the century- long stupor of self-oblivion,” Mr Meena said. Demand for principal spurs head teacher to resign

Darjeeling Government College: Head-less TT, Darjeeling, Oct. 26: A teacher who has been acting as officer-in-charge of Darjeeling Government College has written to the state government to release her from the additional responsibility. The Gorkha Janmukti Vidyarthi Morcha, which has been demanding a full-fledged principal for the college, had sealed the chamber of officer-in-charge Lalita Ahmed Rai on Friday and had called a strike on the campus today demanding her “resignation”. Darjeeling district magistrate Surendra Gupta said Rai has written to the Director of Public Instruction (DPI), asking to be relieved from the additional responsibility — she is also a teacher of the college, the head of the Nepali department — of officer-in-charge. “A copy of the letter has also been forwarded to my office,” he said. It is not yet known if her appeal has been accepted by the state government. Rai’s letter has not solved the problem as the students’ union has been insisting that it will only allow a full-fledged principal to take charge. “We will not allow anyone to be the officer-in-charge. We do not want any interim arrangements as the seven-year-old demand for a full-fledged principal has not yet been met,” said Keshav Raj Pokhrel, the general secretary of the Vidyarthi Morcha, the student front of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha. The immediate problem of the college going without an officer-in-charge is that the answer scripts of the post-graduate exams that are on will not have any stamp of the head of the institution, a college source said. “We have told the district magistrate that he could be the signing authority for a few days until the principal is posted. Except for the DM or his officers, we will not allow anyone to be the signing authority,” said Pokhrel. The district magistrate, who is the chairman of the college governing body, however, said he could not take charge unless the higher education department asks him to. The Morcha leaders said the state government would be responsible if any of the examinees faced any problem. “The entire hills are with us and they will take to the streets if the students are made to suffer. We had written to the state government on the issue and had also given them a deadline of September 7 to fulfill our demand. We have waited for seven years,” said Pokhrel. “Today, we allowed Lalita Rai Ahmed to open her office for three hours to sign the answer scripts. We will, however, not allow her or other lecturers to sign those papers from tomorrow,” the student leader added. Rai could not be contacted. Treasury bar on pension loans TT, Kalimpong, Oct. 26: The GNLF (C) and CPM have alleged that pensioners here are not getting loans from the local branch of the State Bank of India — thanks to a treasury office notice. Quoting state government rules, the notice sent to the Kalimpong branch of the SBI instructs the bank “not to sanction loan against pension account/not to deduct any loan EMI from pension account as the pension account is a single purpose savings account…” The parties have urged Kalimpong treasury officer Joyasish Ghosh to reconsider his order since most of the pensioners meet their unforeseen expenses from the personal loan sanctioned by banks. Col (retd) D.K. Pradhan, the GNLF (C) president, and Tara Sundas, the CPM’s Kalimpong unit secretary, met Ghosh today. Pradhan said the treasury officer seemed to have taken the step on the basis of an incident in which a bank continued to deduct EMIs for a loan from a pensioner’s account months after his death. “His death was apparently not intimated to the bank or to the treasury office,” Pradhan said. The local unit of the state employees pensioners’ association has 400 members. The treasury officer, however, denied that he had instructed the bank to stop sanctioning loans to pensioners. “The banks can offer loans to pensioners at their own discretion. What we have said is that the bank should not sanction loans against pension accounts,” Ghosh said. The treasury notice also asked the bank not to issue ATM/Debit cards to pension account holders. Ghosh said recently a grandson of a pensioner withdrew all his money from the pension account with an ATM card. “In such a situation, we are helpless.” Ansari visit TT, Gangtok: Vice-President Hamid Ansari will arrive here on Wednesday on a three-day visit. He will lay the foundation stone for a railway link from Rangpo to Sevoke. He will also inaugurate a seminar on “right to education with special reference to Sikkim and its impact on legal awareness campaign” and visit the Namgyal Institute of Tibetology. SWINE FLUE TALLY 447 DEATH New Delhi, Oct 26 (IANS) Three swine flu deaths, including two in Maharashtra, were reported Monday, taking the total number of Influenza A (H1N1) virus deaths in the country to 447, health authorities said here. With the two deaths, the number of people who have died due to the contagious virus in Maharashtra has gone up to 194 - the highest in the country. One death was also reported from Haryana. It has taken the total toll in the state to five. Also, 68 new cases were recorded Monday, pushing the total number of people affected with the deadly flu virus to 13,441, a health official said here. “Till date, samples from 71,086 people have been tested for Influenza A (H1N1) in government laboratories and a few private laboratories across the country, and 13,441 of them have been found positive,” the official said. Of the 68 new cases, 25 alone were reported from Kerala. Kerala was followed by the Indian capital. Ten new cases were reported Monday, taking the total number of people affected with the virus to 3,374 - the second highest in the country. Sixteen deaths have occurred in the national capital. In Maharashtra, as many as 3,590 people have been infected with the virus, the highest in the country. On Monday, five more people tested positive for the flu in the state. New cases were also reported from Andhra Pradesh (5), Haryana (2), Goa (1), Uttarakhand (1), Gujarat (1) and Bihar (1). Operation Saffron Hunt? Satya Sagar, Countercurrents.org, 25 October, 2009: As the UPA government embarks on its ‘Operation Green Hunt’ against the Maoists maybe what it should really be carrying out is an ‘Operation Saffron Hunt’ - against Hindu extremists who pose a far greater threat to the internal security of India. Truth is, despite all the official and media hype about the spread of Maoists and their dramatic attacks against state forces in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and parts of West Bengal, they are simply no match for what the shadowy network Hindu fundamentalists have been doing or are capable of doing. Let us compare the overall threat to the Indian nation from these two movements, one fighting for a ‘New Democratic Revolution’ and the other for a ‘Hindu Rashtra’: a) The claim is that Maoists are spreading rapidly in different parts of the country and operating in 180 districts of India. They are further said to be building a Red Corridor through the forested tracts of central India from Telangana all the way to the Indian border with Nepal. Once they establish their bases here it is feared they will launch an armed assault to take over power in the country. First of all the Maoists are not really as strong as they are made out to be by both State as well as Maoist propaganda. Even if they capture the entire forest belt of central India this is not going to help them come to power in rest of the country as they have no presence anywhere else at all. They are not to be found among the peasantry, unorganised or organised workers, the urban poor or even among students who used to be their ardent supporters once upon a time. Taking over a country as large and diverse as India with a powerful state machinery in command is simply not on the cards. In contrast Hindutva extremists are there everywhere around the country and their political front the BJP has already been in power at the national level and still controls several state governments around the country. The RSS, the fountainhead of Hindutva, has a presence in all districts of India and runs dozens of front organisations and institutions. The VHP and various other extremist Hindu outfits even more to the right of the RSS too have a presence in most parts of the country and carry out attacks on religious minorities, others who oppose them and on all democratic institutions with impunity. Even more disturbingly extreme Hindutva elements have penetrated the Indian army as the case of Lt.Col. Purohit, arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) for his role in the Malegaon blast case, showed. There is no doubt they are also well entrenched within the bureaucracy all over the country and have a presence even within sections of the judiciary. The simple fact is while the Maoists are still struggling to build their Red Corridor the Hindu extremists have already completed construction of the Saffron Scaffold all over the nation for takeover of power anytime they want b) Yes, the Maoists don’t believe in the Indian Constitution, call for a boycott of elections and are waging an armed struggle to overthrow the Indian state. In recent years they have also acquired modern weaponry and collect substantial funds through taxes on businesses, contractors and companies operating in the areas under their control. Hindutva extremists are more dangerous as they are sophisticatedly using both Constitutional as well as extra-Constitutional means to establish a ‘Hindu Rashtra’. So they put up candidates to fight elections wherever possible and even if they lose continue to subvert Indian democracy by setting up a parallel state within the country. What’s more, the Hindutva fanatics are far better armed than the Maoists with military training schools of their own, bomb and gun making factories and have been carrying out terrorist attacks in different parts of the country for at least the past two decades. They are also better funded than any non-governmental force in India with money pouring in from both within and outside India. c) It is claimed if the Maoists ever come to power they will establish a brutal dictatorship. That could well be true as there is little indication that the Maoists believe in democratic processes of any kind in dealing with even dissidents within their fold leave alone their opponents. If they do come to power at all there is bound to be a frightening arbitrariness to their rule. However, if the Hindu extremists come to power there will be nothing short of a fascist dictatorship along with a genocide of religious minorities and the end of every democratic institution in the country. Members of the Abhinav Bharat, as mentioned in the chargesheet filed against them by the Maharashtra ATS, had already drawn up a new Constitution that would make all religious minorities into second-class citizens. It would be truly back to the Dark Ages as far as Indian democracy is concerned. What all the sensational media and state focus on Maoist activities is really obscuring is the fact that all around South Asia the biggest internal security threat to each country in the region comes from religious fundamentalist movements from within the majority communities. This is only too obvious in Pakistan right now where the same military establishment that encouraged and used Islamic fundamentalists for various purposes over the decades is engaged in a life and death struggle against them. In Bangladesh the rising tide of religious fundamentalism has been barely stemmed by the military there through a coup and at the cost of the country’s nascent democratic institutions. In Sri Lanka the Buddhist fundamentalists have actually won power by annihilating the LTTE along with some 20,000 Tamil civilians, while another 300,000 Tamils are interned in concentration camps reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The Mahinda Rajapakse regime in Colombo is a glimpse of what would happen in other South Asian countries if the religious fundamentalists come to power. In India too it is Hindu extremists who really pose the biggest threat to the Indian republic, its secular and democratic Constitution. Turning a blind eye to their subversive activities and even worse- pampering them as successive governments and state agencies have done could well result in their becoming for India what the home-grown Taliban have become for Pakistan. The main reason why the Maoists are being targeted by both the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister P.Chidambaram is because their presence in the forested tracts of central India is an obstacle to domestic and foreign corporations trying to grab land and resources in these areas. Nobody was really interested in what the Maoists were doing in these forests through the eighties and nineties but when global and domestic corporations started signing MoUs for mining operations the Indian ruling class has woken up to the ‘Maoist Menace’! In fact, a better name for the planned mobilisation of army and paramilitary troops against them by the Indian government would be ‘Operation Mineral Hunt’. A hunt that will only result in a horrific bloodbath of innocent tribal people doing further injustice to the indigenous people of the country who have been pushed around for centuries and treated like dirt by ‘Aryan’ India. Satya Sagar is a writer, journalist and video-maker based in New Delhi. He can be contacted at sagarnama@gmail.com Is It Not Time For The Minorities To Become The Majority? Dr.K.Vidyasagar Reddy Countercurrents.org14 October, 2009 Of late the religious minorities in India have been subjected to discrimination, harassment and atrocities of all kinds. Not many such incidents are brought to the notice of the law-enforcing authorities, for; those at the helm of affairs by and large belong to majority-community, otherwise known as Hindu community. Even those incidents that are highlighted are either manipulated or hushed up somehow. The incidents that are marked by anti-minority attitude of the government employees are being set aside for want of follow-up from the minorities. At times, such incidents are diluted and portrayed as those that stem from the individual rivalry on account of trespass and civil tort. Attempts are also made to show them as such incidents which are not smacked of any communal bias. But then, there are innumerable incidents, be they apparent or latent, speak volumes to vindicate the point that it is communal angle that is predominant in all of them. Again, it is minorities who are at the receiving end in most of the cases. Gujarat killings are still fresh in our memory. Suffice it to cite a case of a naked atrocity to secure forcible migration of a 70-year old minority community widow, Mrs Ahmadi Khan in the village of Jassipur of Mayurbhanj district in the state of Orissa on January 28, 2009. More than the agony that the old lady suffered due to the atrocity of Anil Modak and others on another occasion (May11, 2009) also, the criminal role of local VHP/Bajrangdal activists with the connivance of local police that caused her depression added injury to the insult. Despite her request to the Mayurbhanj SP, the FIR was not filed till date. In contrast, a false case was foisted against her, courtesy another police official in the district. There were attempts to approach the National Human Rights Commission, the Minorities Commission, besides the PIL in the Cuttack Court. But no significant remedy is available to the aggrieved party, the old lady. It seems that the Orissa High Court had directed the CB-CID last week to conduct enquiry and submit status report within a week, but in vain. There are several such incidents that are marked by communal colour seemed to be happening in various parts of the country. The society is so polarised that such cases are being viewed as communal ones, and thus justified if that victims does not belong to them. Sensitivity to such heinous crimes is lost and humanity has become a casualty. While it is unfair to brand all Hindus as communal, it is also unfair to paint all minorities, be they Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, jains etc., as fundamentalist. In other words, it is pointless to generalise all the religious people as communal as there are only a handful of such people in any religion who, at times, become narrow-minded and chauvinistic. Their overt and covert actions of spontaneous nature might provoke reactions from the rival groups that tend to jeopardise the peace and tranquillity in the society. Sometimes such actions lead to the rise of communal riots, whereas at some other times, they might lead to the vertical division of the society on the basis of religion, as was the case with the partition of India in 1947! Besides, there are also times when mere doubts and apprehensions about the minority communities are raised and propagated in the public and private fora. Although such deliberate acts do not lead to any violent incidents these would certainly create mental agony and distress among the minorities. As a result, minorities feel humiliated and harassed even when they are not at fault. Meanwhile, the religious fundamentalists and communalists take this opportunity to their advantage and attribute malintentions and treachery to the minorities. In fact, there are occasions (International Sporting events etc.,) when the minorities are treated as traitors of the country and thus, abused as antinationalistic once for all! This sort of sectarian attitude in the majority community towards the minorities would keep them insecure. Thus, their apprehensions about lack of protection of right, liberty and property are understandable. It is time the governments implement the reports of Rajendra Sachar Committee that concern the overall development of minorities in the country. Thanks to the prevailing socio-economic conditions that are responsible for marginalising them would compel some such aggrieved persons to behave in an abnormal manner. In any democratic society it is numbers that matter. But it does not mean that minorities and their views are to be neglected nor undermined during the course of decision-making. Majority always does not represent common interest, leave alone rational interests. At times, it so happens that even minority would also represent the interest of majority, if not interests of all. Viewed in that perspective, one should be careful about the views of both majority and minority, and due recognition is to be paid to both the views invariably. As a matter of fact, majority has been viewed as ‘’mobocracy’ from the ancient times onwards. Sometimes, its practice would lead to development of perverted form of governance whereby reason and rationality become casualties. Incidentally, ancient philosophers like Socrates and Plato suffered during the regimes of democrats, for being truthful and straightforward. Even Lord Jesus Christ and Prophet Muhammad also faced the same wrath of mobs of their times. There were several such examples that can be traced in the history. Thus, democracy should not be treated as merely head-counting and thereby giving the reason, rationality and logic a go-bye! Meanwhile, the concept of minorities has been understood in many ways. It is not religion alone that could be the basis for categorizing people in terms of majority and minorities. Language, culture, geography, gender, colour, caste, sub-caste and other aspects could also to be taken as factors for categorization. For instance, in the case of Hinduism, all castes and sub-castes are further categorized as distinct communities that constitute different sizes of population. Given this sort of categorization, Hindus per se do not become the majority-community. It is a community of communities of different castes and sub-castes, whose interests clash each other and one another. In the recent past, Hindus are found to be engaged in acrimonious battles for sharing power, political and otherwise. Failed to inculcate the noble feelings of Dr.BRAmbedkar, father of Indian constitution, the upper caste Hindus are not treating the so-called lower castes as brothers and sisters. The social evil of untouchability has been practised though it is prohibited in the Constitution, the sacred document of India. The marginalised communities like Dalits, Adivasis, OBCs and women have been deprived of their constitutional rights on end. Obviously, the majority Vs minority controversy has taken a different turn with the spread of Ambedkar philosophy, and more so with popularisation of the concept of Bahujan Samaj of Manyasri kanshiramji! While the majority Hindus are polarised in terms of minority-Upper castes that constitute Brahmins, Kshatriyas and Vyshyas on the one hand, the majority-Lower castes that constitute the Shudras and Atishudras, on the other hand. Since the majority-Lower castes are found oppressed socially and otherwise at the hands of Upper castes, they wish to break the chains of Hinduism only to join the religious minorities of Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism as a larger entity. Since the idea is based on apprehensions of the marginalised communities, its implementation would certainly alter the social composition of the majority and minority notions. Ultimately, this larger entity would make them majority for political purpose that would ensure political power over a period of time. That alone would assure minimum rights for the minorities who are otherwise feel suffocating due to communal perpetuation. The author is a Research Associate, Dept. Of Political Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad,kvidyassagarr@gmail.com.