Raz Kr

VOLUME 33

ASSE M B L Y E L E C T I O N S
Tamil Nadu: Battle lines
25
Kerala: Old rivals
and a new front
30
West Bengal:
Mixed prospects
34
Assam: Polling record
38
CONT R O V E R S Y

NUMBER 08

APRIL 16-29, 2016

ISSN 0970-1710

WWW.FRONTLINE.IN

I N TE R VI E W

C O V ER S T O RY

War in Bastar
The Chhattisgarh governments all-out
attack on tribal residents of the mineral-rich region in the guise of combating
Maoists is more to facilitate corporateled mining and push the Sangh Parivars agenda. 4

Unrest in Hyderabad
Central University
41
Interview: Appa Rao Podile,
Vice Chancellor
44

AR C H A E O L O G Y

In Karnataka, a doorway
to Jaina history
Bahubali of Artipura

107
112

LE G A L I S S UE S
Madras High Court
suspends magistrate over
granite cases
116

WOR L D A F F A I R S

AWAR D S
Abel Prize in Mathematics
for Andrew Wiles
62

CINEMA
Oscar-winning Hungarian
movie about the Holocaust 100
National awards:
Celebrating commerce
103
Honour for P. Susheela
106
ESSAY
Nationalism vs Hindutva
Genesis of Bharat Mata

E CON O MI C O F F E N C E S
Vijay Mallya:
Truant at large
47
Behind the
Panama Papers
125

Myanmar:
Troubled transition
53
Pakistan: Terror in Lahore 56
Human Rights Council turns
gaze on caste, globally
59

T.M. Krishna on widening the

appeal of Carnatic music 91

C OLUM N
C.P. Chandrasekhar:
A setback for Tatas

50

Sashi Kumar:
Crime as punishment

122

RELA T ED S T O RI ES

Deadly strike 8
Interview: Chief Minister Raman Singh 10
Targeting women 12
Police state 15
Persecuted minority 19
Journalists under re 20
Interview: Manish Kunjam, CPI 22
Datacard: Battle for minerals 118

S CI E N CE N OTE BOOK 120

BOOKS

83

LE TTE R S

129

On the Cover
Security forces in the Bastar region, a digitally imaged photograph.

67
78

COVER DESIGN: V. SRINIVASAN

PHOTOGRAPH:PAVAN DAHAT
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APRIL 29, 2016

FRONTLINE

Raz Kr

COVER STORY

WAR ON BASTAR
The Chhattisgarh governments all-out attack on the poor tribal residents
of the mineral-rich region and all sources of support for them, in the guise
of combating the Maoists, actually has the twin objectives of crushing
opposition to corporate-led mining and pushing the Sangh Parivars
Hindutva agenda. B Y D I V Y A T R I VE D I AND VE N KI TE S H R AM A KR I S HN AN
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

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CR P F P E R S ON N E L at Chintalnar village in Sukma

district. The area is only a few kilometres from the site of

the Maoist ambush in which 76 security personnel were
killed in 2010.
sion 2016 has charted new levels of barbarity. Adivasis
and politically neutral activists seeking to support the
marginalised sections of the population are among those
specially targeted by the police state.
Second, in political and ideological terms, Mission
2016 signies yet another calibrated nuance in the Hindutva project of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the
Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS)-led Sangh Parivar
to capture and perpetuate power. The self-professed
Hindutva laboratories of the Sangh Parivar have taken
different political and ideological shapes and hues in the
exercises relating to power politics and statecraft. While
the tactic was all-out aggression against Muslims in Gujarat, which manifested itself in the form of the bestial
genocide of the minority community in 2002, in Odisha
it took the form of rampant attacks against Christians.
After 2010, the main product of the laboratory was
neoliberal Hindutva, which combined Hindutva communalism with a corporate-driven development agenda.
Narendra Modi emerged as the ultimate individual icon
of this agenda in 2014. Following the dismal track record
of the Modi-led Union government in the 2014-15 period, the Sangh Parivar constituents generated a nationalism versus sedition debate as a concomitant of the
pursuit of neoliberal Hindutva. What is being played out
in Chhattisgarh through Mission 2016 is primarily this
political and ideological pursuit, but with the creation of
a police state, where a calculated and strategic suspension of the rule of law has been imposed to oppress and
suppress all voices of dissent that question the socioeconomic machinations of the corporate-Hindutva politics nexus.
PAVAN DAHAT

MULTIPRONGED STATE OPPRESSION

The presence of Maoist insurgents and the LWE threat

posed by them is, of course, the principal instrument of
the Raman Singh-led BJP government in Chhattisgarh
in advancing this multipronged state oppression. Indeed,
Chhattisgarh is a key part of the Maoist red corridor
identied by the security agencies, which is spread across
the 10 States of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. Security
operations of varying scales have been undertaken in the
State to counter LWE in the past decade and a half,
especially since 2004, the year the Communist Party of
India (Maoist) was formally announced following the
merger of the Peoples War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre. Through this period, the armed tussle
between the Maoists and the state forces had, time and
again, captured attention on account of inhuman assaults and counter-assaults from both sides. Innocent
people were repeatedly affected in these assaults. A case
in point is Operation Greenhunt, which took aggressive

THE MASSIVE STATE-SPONSORED REPRESSION

in Chhattisgarh, especially the Bastar region, over the
past few months under the informally named Mission
2016 campaign marks new history on two important
counts. First, the manoeuvres employed by the government in general and the security agencies in particular in
the name of protecting the national interest and tackling
Maoist Left Wing Extremism (LWE) have acquired unprecedented dimensions in terms of vicious and brutal
interference in the everyday lives of common people. The
wars waged by the Indian state over many decades
against perceived and real threats to the countrys sovereignty in places ranging from Nagaland to Kashmir have
often been ruthless, but even by those standards the
contemporary experience of Chhattisgarh through Mis5

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Raz Kr

DIVYA TRIVEDI

attackers warned her not to raise the

Salwa Judum and the new vigilante
issue of the encounter in Mardum
groups. The excesses of the state
and told her to stop complaining
forces also swelled the ranks of the
against Kalluri; otherwise her
Maoists. Political parties working in
daughters would be attacked. A man
the region failed to become as popcalled Hadma was accused of being
ular as the Maoists because they
a rewardee naxalite, with Rs.1 lakh
would not communicate with Adivaon his head. Paramilitary forces
sis in their language or work for the
killed him in Mardum. His wife and
villagers like them. The armed group
other villagers insisted that he was
of naxalites lived in forests, but there
not a naxalite and produced docuwere other groups like the Sangham
ments such as an Aadhaar card, a
that mingled with the residents and
voter ID and a bank account passhelped out with whatever work was
book to prove it. He had earlier been
required, from building of bunds
picked up and spent two years in
and fences to agriculture.
prison. Soni Sori visited the area and
An objective of Mission 2016,
took the family to the Mardum pothough not formally stated, is to
lice station in an attempt to lodge an
crack down on the urban network of
FIR. Kalluri had often given statethe CPI (Maoist) and demolish it.
ments against her in press conferThis network, according to the secuences, ordering her ostracisation,
rity machinery behind Mission
and Soni Sori had unsuccessfully
2016, consists of overground
tried to le an FIR against him unMaoists and Maoist sympathisers.
der the Scheduled Caste and SchedAsides made by the people in the
uled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities)
security forces hint at cutting the
Act.
oxygen of the CPI (Maoist) by nUnder pressure from the nationishing off the urban Maoist sympa- S O N I S O RI in Raipur. The tribal activist
al media and civil society, the govthisers and thus asphyxiating the has been subjected to brutal
ernment constituted a special team
Maoists. The problem with this harassment.
to investigate the attack on Soni Sopremise is that anybody who disagrees with the states version of democracy or national- ri, but she said the team was harassing her instead in
ism, or who raises questions about human rights mundane ways, like giving an appointment to record her
violations by the paramilitary forces or simply refuses to testimony but making her wait for hours or changing the
take sides in the unfolding war is branded a Maoist. venue and the time of the appointment at the last minute
Reporters, researchers, activists, lawyers and students and then not turning up at all. Meanwhile, her sister
easily t into this simple denition of a Maoist sympa- Dhaneshwari and brother-in-law Ajay Markam were
thiser who deserves to be exterminated. Under this new picked up for questioning. Her nephew Lingaram Kodostrategy, an atmosphere of insider versus outsider is also pi, who was also arrested earlier, said that attempts were
being created in Chhattisgarh, where journalists, lawyers being made to frame the family members for the attack
and activists from outside the State are seen as potential on Soni Sori. They have been living under severe pressure
threats to be barred from the State. Local people, espe- for several years. He was a journalist but was not being
cially in the big towns and cities, are being instigated allowed to work, and frustrated with this last attempt to
against this category of people. In a sense, the docu- break them, Lingaram Kodopi declared that he would
mentation of truth is being prevented by removing inde- end his life if these tactics did not stop. These were
attempts to intimidate and destroy the support system
pendent witnesses.
that was rallying behind her and the movement, said Soni
Sori. They want to drive me out of Bastar. But I will not
HARASSMENT OF ADIVASI LEADERS
Adivasi leaders with considerable outside support are go. After all that has happened to me, I have stopped
also subjected to brutal harassmentfor instance, the feeling pain. If Kalluri has a problem with me, he should
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Soni Sori. After surviving face me directly and not go after other people. When she
physical and mental abuse of the worst kind while in was attacked, the framing of Jawaharlal Nehru Uniprison on charges of being a naxal courier, she became a versity (JNU) as an anti-national university had just
fearless tribal activist and leader. In February, she was started and Kanhaiya Kumar had just been arrested.
attacked with an acid-like substance that burnt her face Kalluri lashed out at the JNU student Umar Khalid in a
and she had to be shifted to Delhi for treatment. When statement, accusing him of being a part of the conspiracy
AAP member Arvind Gupta led a rst information behind the attack on Soni Sori since he had mentioned
report (FIR) on her behalf over the incident, parchas Soni Sori and the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group (JagLAG)
(handbills) were thrown at his house, threatening him in his speech on the campus. This statement, coming
and his family members. According to Soni Sori, her from a person with the rank of an I.G., not only was seen
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RANJEET KUMAR

vocates and threatened, said Isha Khandelas ridiculous but also exposed the way in
wal, another lawyer with JagLAG. They
which he made baseless statements and actold her to get out and had she stayed a
cused people without proof.
minute longer she would have been atWhen Soni Sori was attacked, she was
tacked for sure.
returning from Jagdalpur after taking leave
of a team of women lawyers who were
hounded out of Bastar. JagLAG has been
ACTIVIST TARGETED
working there since July 2013, and was haThe way JagLAG was hounded out seemed
rassed for more than a year and accused of
to be part of a modus operandi, which was
being a naxalite front by the police and the
also used against the independent human
SEM. A resolution was passed by the Chhatrights activist and researcher Bela Bhatia.
tisgarh State Bar Council challenging its
Bela Bhatia has been visiting Bastar since
right to practise in the State as it was regis- T H E EC ON OM I S T Jean 2006, and in January 2015 she decided to
tered elsewhere, but JagLAG received an Dreze, who, along with
move there full time. In October 2015, her
interim order that enabled it to continue to his partner Bela Bhatia,
landlady, a tailor who made clothing for
practise. When the police started putting has been accused of
the Central Reserve Police Force (CPRF),
pressure on its landlord, a driver, by im- being a naxalite.
asked her to vacate the house on imsy
pounding his car, the team was forced to
grounds. They wanted me to move out
leave. After some days, when Shalini Gera, one of the because of Somari, my dog, even though we had lived all
lawyers of JagLAG, went back to the Jagdalpur court to those months without any trouble. For a minute, I wonmeet a lawyer, she was gheraoed by around 100 ad- dered if they were under pressure of some kind, but I

Deadly strike
THE explosion, near Malewara on the Sukma-Dantewada road, created a crater some two metres deep and
more than three and a half metres wide. It was so
powerful that a tank could not have survived it. The mini
truck that passed over it was thrown high into the air
and blown to pieces. The bodies of seven Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawans were found 100 to 150
metres away. They must have died instantaneously. The
wire that presumably connected the trigger to the explosive was 120 metres long.
It was 3 p.m. on March 30. The sun had a long time
to go before it would set. So, barely 120 metres away,
hidden behind trees, 15 to 20 insurgents of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) were waiting. They probably
belonged to the Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army, a
structured and trained armed force of the CPI (Maoist)
which undertakes small-scale military operations
against State and Central police forces. It is probably big
enough to make an impact but not big enough to invite
mass deployment of retaliatory State forces against it.
After a while, they emerged from the bushes to
ensure that the CRPF men were deadthey red at
some bodies. Local sources later told the police that
some of them were carrying traditional weapons. Perhaps they wanted to take the weapons of the dead CRPF
men. But there were no weapons on them. It was not an
armoured vehicle and the men were travelling in plainclothes. The jawans killed were Sub-Inspector D. Vijay
Raj, constables Pradeep Tirkey, Rupnarayan Das, Devendra Chourasia, Ranjan Dash and Mritunjoy Mukharjee, and driver Saindane Nana Usesing. They were
non-combat staff of the CRPFs 230th battalion, and
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

were from the Ghusaras camp in Dantewada. Some of

them were returning after having taken leave for Holi.
For at least two of them, it was their rst posting. Their
vehicle was alone; it was not accompanied by a support
party, or a road opening party which is sometimes sent
rst as a decoy.
Meetings were called to gure out what had gone
wrong. Chief Minister Raman Singh said a probe would
be conducted to nd out whether or not norms were
followed. A special meeting of the anti-naxalite wing
was called at the residence of the officiating Home
Minister, Ajay Chandrakar. The Maoists carried out
the attack out of frustration. We make sure we take
extreme precautions, but some mistakes happen. New
instructions will be issued as per the situation. The
Maoists are on the back foot and are targeting the
innocent now, Chandrakar reportedly said.
Conjectures were made. The Maoists could have dug
a secret tunnel to plant the explosives, said the police.
The Maoists had paid off a corrupt contractor to place
the explosives while the road was being built, said reporters. In all probability, information was leaked from
the inside, said insiders. A surprise movement was
under way. I dont know how the news got leaked. The
way the incident happened, it is clear that someone gave
specic inputs. We will investigate to nd out what went
wrong, K. Durga Prasad, Director General of the CRPF,
told reporters after paying homage to the deceased.
One of the men was carrying an air cooler for Scout,
a sniffer dog who had fallen ill. For the media, an
emotional tale could be woven around a Maoist ambush
after a long time and they made the most of it. Headlines
screamed: 7 men lost lives to save sick dog.
The jawans had stopped at a marketplace on their
way to the Ghusaras camp. Maybe they should not have,

Raz Kr

ment published in the local media (and also in Catchnews). My own views and activities are an open book.
Had the agitators bothered to nd out about them, they
would have thought twice about levelling these charges. I
am a development economist associated with Ranchi
University and the Delhi School of Economics. I live in
Ranchi, but I come to Bastar from time to time to spend
time with Bela. Most of my work is concerned with
hunger, poverty, education, health and other aspects of
social policy. I am a close colleague of Amartya Sen,
Angus Deaton, Nicholas Stern and other economists who
should be sent to jail if I am a naxalite, according to the
Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act.
Bela Bhatia was part of the team that had helped
Adivasi women le FIRs when there were instances of
gang rapes by security forces personnel in the interior
villages, and her harassment could be because of that,
among other reasons. When Bela Bhatia was asked why
she only raised questions about violence on the part of the
police but never about violence from the naxals, she said:
There is a signicant constitution of people who are

PTI

wanted to live in the village anyway, so I moved to Parpa,

she told Frontline. Once the police found out where she
had moved to, pressure started building on her landlord,
who is a peon in a government office. He was called to the
police station. He is a Gondi Adivasi and, despite the
pressure, did not ask Bela Bhatia to move out. The police
have visited the village several times and questioned
people. They have also videographed her house. Members of the Mahila Ekta Manch took out a rally against
her, calling her a naxali dalal and asking her and her
videshi pati (foreign husband), Jean Dreze (the wellknown economist), to stop collaborating with naxalites.
In an open letter, Jean Dreze said: I was surprised to
hear yesterday that some people had come to my partner
Belas house near Jagdalpur and instigated her neighbours against her. They took out a procession in the
neighbourhood, shouting slogans like Bela Bhatia murdabad and Bela Bhatia Bastar chodo.... Anyone who
thinks that Bela and I are naxalites is seriously out of
touch with reality. Bela has already refuted these charges
and claried the nature of her work in Bastar in a state-

TH E R E M A I N S of the CRPF vehicle blown up by

naxalites.
said some police officers. Maybe that is where the trail
began. There was a school barely 100 metres away.
There were a few houses. There was an entire village on
the Sukma-Dantewada road. The Malewara market was
nearby. It was a populated area. The explosion was not
only powerful but also sophisticated and well planned.
Perhaps it was intended for another target, not CRPF
men in plainclothes.
Maybe, the Maoists were waiting for some other
party, and this particular CRPF party came early and got
hit because of some confusion, Dinesh Pratap Upadhyay, Deputy Inspector General of the CRPF, Dantewada range, told reporters.
This is not the rst, or the deadliest, of attacks
against paramilitary forces by naxalites in Chhattisgarh.
Although anti-insurgency action usually involves mixed

forces, the maximum casualty is reported from the

ranks of the CRPF because it is not equipped or trained
effectively for jungle warfare, say experts. They are also
soft targets.
Janardan Sonawane, a jawan of the CRPFs 111th
battalion, was injured when an improvised explosive
device (IED) exploded near Sameli village of Dantewada. He was providing security for road construction.
Head Constable Ranga Raghavan was also on similar
duty when he was killed, and four others from the 217th
battalion of the CRPF were injured on the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border near Muraliguda village.
There have also been encounter deaths. Two Border
Security Force jawans were killed and four others were
critically injured in an encounter with the Maoists in the
Becha forests of Kanker district. Two jawans of the
CRPFs special unit, the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), were killed and more than 12
others injured in an encounter with the Maoists in
Sukma district.
There is no clear collated data shared by the forces
on the number of CRPF men killed, but they do have
data on the number of Maoists apprehended: 208, of
whom eight were rewardees in 2015. According to the
Chhattisgarh Home Ministry, Maoist surrenders have
gone up multifold: 39 in 2013, 327 in 2015, and 368
until March 2016. As far as encounters go, there were 46
in 2015 and 46 until March 2016. S.R.P. Kalluri, Inspector General, Bastar range, has time and again quoted these gures to claim that the forces are gaining
ground against the Maoists. He claims that under Mission 2016, naxalism will be stamped out from Bastar.
But attacks by the Maoists, like the recent one, give the
lie to such tall claims.
Divya Trivedi
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We are working to reduce isolation of Bastar

Interview with Raman Singh, Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh. B Y P A V A N D A H A T
RAMAN SINGH has headed the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) government in Chhattisgarh continuously since December 2003.
In this e-mail interview to Frontline, the
three-time Chief Minister speaks about the
challenges facing the State and the issues
that are still being addressed. Excerpts:
How do you view these 12 years in power?
It was a great opportunity and a big
challenge to lead a State that has tremendous potential and also faces pressing problems. At the end of the 12th year and in my third tenure,
some of that potential is still untapped and some of the
issues are still being addressed. However, I must say
that at the end of the day I sleep with the satisfaction
that everyone in this State is getting two square meals a
day. The State, once known for starvation deaths, malnutrition and a high infant mortality rate [IMR], is now
ranked far higher and has been praised even by our
opponents. The State has been appreciated by no less
than the Supreme Court of India.
But the BJP government under your leadership has
not been able to resolve the Maoist insurgency in the
southern belt of the State. With the BJP in power at
the Centre, can a xed time frame be expected to
completely end the insurgency?
We are moving strategically and systematically.
There is no silver bullet to the problem. As I said in the
Budget speech, naxalism will be wiped out through a
two-pronged effortdevelopment and security mea-

APRIL 29, 2016

In the past six months, four journalists have been

arrested by the police in Bastar. One journalist was
forced to leave Jagdalpur. A recent report of the
Editors Guild of India says that the media work under
tremendous pressure in Chhattisgarh. Why are the
media not being allowed to work in a free and fair
manner in the State?

na Sarkar, taking up and solving the issues of the most

marginalised people of the country, the state suddenly
woke up to their existence and launched a full-blown war
against the most disadvantaged people. It is to be recalled
that the Maoists became popular amongst Adivasis when
they rescued them from the clutches of forest and police
officials who used to harass them for cultivating land in
the reserve forests and put an end to the domination of
Adivasis by the Patel-patwari. The price an Adivasi could
obtain for tendu leaves was substantially raised, and it
became instrumental in bettering their lives.
Another observation about the anti-Maoist operation
of the security forces is founded upon the existence of rich
natural resources in Chhattisgarh, particularly the areas
where the tribal people live. It has been repeatedly observed that corporate interests have directed the government policy and security drives in such a manner as to
evict tribal people from their homeland and occupy those

called naxal peedit [victim] and to a certain extent I think

it is a valid question to the human rights movement of
this country as to what is our stand regarding the excesses
or atrocities happening from that side. They are like
sitting ducks. As they are under the protection of the
police, they are targeted by the Maoists and therefore in
some ways they are available constituency that the state
can mobilise for its own purposes.
It is an accepted fact that the Maoists occupied and
became strong in areas where there already was an absence of governance. For decades, neither development
nor administrative agendas of the Indian state acknowledged or ventured into these villages inside the forests.
No electricity or irrigation or ration shop or school or any
of the other structures associated with modernity was
taken to these areas by the state. These were the forgotten
people of the country. When the Maoists from Andhra
Pradesh entered these zones and set up their own JanataFRONTLINE .

sures. Our approach is for holistic development in the tribal areas, with special
focus on education, health, nutrition and
agriculture. We provide food and nutrition
security to all tribal people. We have established Livelihood Colleges in naxalite-affected districts, namely, Sukma, Bijapur,
Narayanpur, Dantewada, Kondagaon,
Kanker and Bastar [Jagdalpur]. A large
number of tribal youths and surrendered
naxalites are undergoing vocational training in these colleges and enhancing their
employability. The government is running Prayas residential schools in ve divisional headquarters of the
naxalite-affected areas where students of Classes 11 and
12 are given special coaching to appear for engineering
and medical entrance examinations. Chhattisgarh
spends 36 per cent of its budget on tribal-populated
areas; tribal people constitute 32 per cent of the States
population. In other words, Chhattisgarh spends a
greater part of its budget on tribal areas in comparison
to its population ratio. Additionally, we are working to
reduce the isolation of Bastar by improving road, rail
and air connectivity and the telecom network there.

10

Raz Kr

We are committed to ensuring the freedom of the

press and we will never allow any attempt to suppress
any dissenting voice. Freedom of the press is very close
to my heart. The moment this incident came to my
notice, I held discussions with several senior editors. If
there has been any aberration, I am committed to setting it right.
I would like to underline that there is a huge battle
raging in Bastar. There is a sense of anger among the
people against the naxalites and the way they are not
allowing development and denying even basic facilities.
There is a rise in the number of people killed by the
naxalites. The development on the economic and industrial fronts in the rest of Chhattisgarh has increased our
resolve to empower the tribal people of Bastar. We will
do everything possible, within our powers, to deliver
food security, dependable health care, and equal educational opportunity to every tribal family of Bastar.
The moment the unfortunate attack on Soni Sori
[Adivasi leader] took place, a rst information report
was led and a special team was constituted to investigate the incident. I personally directed our Resident Commissioner in Delhi to visit her at the Apollo
Hospital there. The Principal Secretary [Home], along
with the Collector and the Superintendent of Police,
also visited her home at Gidam to reassure her family
members about their safety, and security was immediately provided to them. Soni Sori was given Y category
security. She contested the last Assembly elections on
the Aam Aadmi Party ticket.
Politics and elections have their own dynamics,
hence we provide security to MLAs and politicians
whenever necessary. But she declined the offer. We are
committed to providing Soni Sori the security she wants
and needs at all times. We have also offered security to
Bela Bhatia [activist] so that she can do her work [in
Chhattisgarh] unhindered. I condemn the attack on the
Central Reserve Police Force personnel in the strongest

terms. This dastardly act shows the desperation of the

naxalites as they are rapidly losing ground.
Chhattisgarh was recently in the news for farmers
suicides. The National Crime Records Bureau report
ranked the State fourth among the States with high
rates of farmers suicides. Has your government not
been able to full the needs of the agricultural sector?
We have taken decisive, coherent and concrete steps
for the welfare of the farmers. Chhattisgarh is known as
the rice bowl of the country. During my tenure, the State
government has ensured that each and every grain of
paddy is procured from farmers, paying the minimum
support price. We have taken effective steps to provide
remunerative prices to farmers against paddy procurement and we have also been providing bonus for the
same.
The various irrigation projects and schemes implemented by the BJP government has helped increase the
area under irrigation from 22 per cent to 34 per cent.
About 3.62 lakh irrigation pumps have been electried
in the past 12 years. In view of the scanty rainfall last
year, 117 of the 146 tehsils have been declared droughthit. We have spent nearly Rs.450 crore by way of relief
to farmers. In the upcoming kharif season, we will be
distributing a maximum of one quintal of paddy seeds
free of cost to farmers of drought-hit areas. We have
waived off land revenue in the drought-hit areas, and
we have also doubled the nancial aid under the Mukhyamantri Kanya Vivaah Yojana, that is, we are providing Rs.30,000 for the marriage of each daughter of a
drought-hit farmer.
Chhattisgarh ranks fourth in the country in terms of
paddy production. The State has received the National
Krishi Karman Award three times for rice production
and once for pulses production. The credit of this
achievement goes to our hardworking farmers and our
farmer-friendly policies.

This is indeed a nuanced product from the Hindutva

laboratory which has already become a model at the
national level for the Sangh Parivar. The manner in
which the BJP and other Sangh Parivar constituents have
latched on to the nationalism versus sedition debate and
advanced it underscores this. After all, several top BJP
leaders, including party president Amit Shah, Home
Minister Rajnath Singh and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, have repeatedly claimed that ghting Maoist and
jehadist tendencies is the contemporary form of upholding nationalism and countering sedition. Branding people Maoists and jehadists in the name of nationalism was
what happened at JNU in Delhi and Hyderabad Central
University in Hyderabad. Chhattisgarh has shown how
this can be run as a state terror project.

lands. There are, apparently, a number of senior security

officials who boast that no amount of criticism against
them in the media would work as they have been specically sent to the region to help set up big projects for big
corporates. On the ground, one can see increasing militarisation where new mines are found. Whenever a corporate sets up shop, forces would surround it to protect it
from the so-called naxal violence and clear the area of
Adivasis. There are several instances where those who
refused to vacate have been branded naxalites and harassed. Until a decade ago, non-governmental organisations could work in these areas in the elds of education,
womens welfare or malnutrition. But any organisation
that works sincerely is being hounded now. A case in
point is the renowned Ramakrishna Mission, which used
to help with the public distribution system and health
care earlier. Evidently, the perpetrators of Mission 2016
do not want any witnesses to talk about their operation.

Datacard: Battle for minerals on page 118.

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COVER STORY

Targeting
women
The southern districts of
Chhattisgarh are in a war zone
where the state apparently uses
brutal sexual assault of Adivasi
women as a deliberate intimidation
strategy. BY DIVYA TRIVEDI IN NENDRA, BIJAPUR
In Nendra, a fact-nding team from the Women Against
Sexual Violence and State Repression (WSS) and the
Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations
(CDRO), which reached the village later, listed the items
taken away or consumed by the forces: 200 birds, 40
goats, gold and silver jewellery, oil cans, sacks of rice, dal,
vegetables and a music system for the tractor that was
bought by several villagers collectively. Anyone who tried
to stop them was severely beaten up. They stayed for four
days and nights. They sucked that tree there dry for
alcohol, said a villager, pointing to a tree whose bark
releases a local form of liquor. It is not unusual for the
forces to heap abuse on the women or threaten them with
rape, but this time they crossed all limits.
During the day, they were out in the forests on combing operations, but by night and morning converted the
village into their private efdom, sexually abusing over 15
women. The women were stripped, abused and raped at
gunpoint, even when they tried to resist the theft of their
livestock, a woman who was raped told Frontline. Two or
more men would hold a woman down and cover her face
with a cloth while one or more proceeded to rape her,
sometimes in front of her children. All rapes were gang
rapes. According to the WSS report: At any given point
in time, the women reported, there may have been four
people in one house, three in another, and ve in the
third, so the acts of sexual abuse occurred simultaneouslyeven perhaps, in synchronicity. This effectively discredits the notion that a specic group of four or ve men
may be the culprits. When the women protested, they
were threatened with dire consequences.
Residents also complained that they were held ac-

THE SO-CALLED LIBERATED ZONES IN

Bastar are best understood while travelling on the newly
built 42-kilometre road that cuts through forest land
between Bijapur, the district headquarters, and Basaguda. The entire stretch is under the constant watch of
seven fortied Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
camps and three police stations, all located strategically.
Platoons of mixed forces on combing operations marching close to anti-landmine vehicles every few kilometres
leave no one in doubt that this is a war zone. The villages
inside the forests cannot be accessed without the direct
supervision of the nearest CRPF camp. Behind one such
CRPF camp in Timapura, 5 km inside the forest and
connected by a dirt track accessible only on foot or by
tractor or motorcycle, is the village of Nendra, officially
known as Bellam Lendra.
The people of Nendra recalled with chilling detail the
horric events that lasted four days from January 11.
According to them, hundreds of men from paramilitary
forces such as CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action), CRPF, District Reserve Group (a small but
effective counter-insurgency force of handpicked Adivasis and former special police officers who know the terrain and the language well) and the local police stormed
into Nendra and red several rounds of ammunition
indiscriminately in the air. This is not unusual. Whenever this happens, the men of the village, in fear of being
beaten up, shot dead, or picked up by the forces, run for
their lives and hide in the forests. The women, the children and the elderly are left behind. The forces then
proceed to devour the entire food ration, consume the
chicken and steal goats or anything else that they fancy.
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DIVYA TRIVEDI

SOM E O F T H E R E S I D EN T S of Nendra village. The security forces suspect every resident to be in cahoots with the
Maoists. (Right) A blockade by the Maoists, for whom road is a symbol of state oppression.

men in these areas. A resident said: The Maoists and the

security forces demand to be fed at gunpoint. Do we have
a choice in either case?
Nendra has been on the radar of the state and the
Maoists for quite some time. In 2007, the entire village
was burnt down by Salwa Judum. Not once, but twice.
The women of Nendra are not new to sexual violence
either, having been subjected to it during the Judum
days. Since 2001, 20 men from the village have been
illegally detained or arrested, and have spent long terms
in jails, sometimes six to seven years, before being acquitted.
The one house that was untouched during the four
days of siege belongs to Rahul Madkam. He was a naxallite for 10 years, but he surrendered later and is now with
CoBRA. Yogesh, Pandu, Mangesh and Motu are the
others accused by the women as perpetrators. They too
used to work with the naxalites but later surrendered and
now work for the police. Surrendered Maoists are important informants for the state in the ght against naxalites.
The sequence of events in Nendra is chillingly similar
to other incidents spread across half a dozen villages over
several days. A team from the WSS documented some of
these incidents and the local media reported them. In
October last year, paramilitary forces stormed into Pedagellur, where they wreaked similar havoc: raping women and looting homes. They did not stop with Pedagellur,
but proceeded to nearby Chinagellur, Burgicheru, Gundam and Pegdapalli. A 14-year-old girl and a pregnant

countable for incidents involving naxal violence even

when the police had no evidence against them. A testimony in the WSS report states: One of the men from the
security forces even issued a warning: Once we get our
orders from Narendra Modi, we will come back and wipe
out everything; we will put you and your children inside
the houses and burn you all down. When she was asked
who Narendra Modi is, she said she didnt know. When
the paramilitary forces left after four days, all the ration
had been depleted, the cattle destroyed and the women
humiliated and in pain and distress. The combing operation was declared a success. Only one house in the entire
village was untouched, a resident told Frontline.
Nendra falls in the Hirapur panchayat in Usur block
and, like many tribal villages, is an interior village inside a
forest area and has less than 100 Muria Adivasi houses.
One has to rely on pag dandis (tracks) and trees which
serve as signposts and it can be a challenge for outsiders
to reach the village. It is believed that it is one of the
villages that falls in the Maoists movement patterns and
is visited by them. For the state and the armed forces, the
entire village, then, becomes suspect, and no proof is
required. The forces see every resident as a sangham
member (unarmed worker or member of a Maoist front
who helps villagers with sundry odd jobs in agriculture
like bund building) who is in cahoots with the Maoists
and nd it difficult to distinguish between a Maoist and a
resident. But that does not justify the looting, the harassment and rape of women, or the beating and killing of
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away, and many were caught, beaten and arrested.

A systematic pattern of brutal sexual assault and rape
by paramilitary forces stationed in the southern districts
of Chhattisgarh is emerging as a new weapon of terrorising Adivasis under the guise of ghting naxalites. In the
past six months, three incidents of mass gang rapes and
sexual assault on entire villages by paramilitary forces
have been reported, but activists in the area say there may
be more incidents that have not been reported for two
reasons: the distance between far-ung villages where
word travels slow, and the fear of further terror. What is
happening is a conscious process of intimidation by
which all men and women are kept in a constant state of
fear. The scale and frequency of the human rights violations and the large number of paramilitary forces that
have actively participated in them show that they are
common knowledge in the State administration. The
absence of official reprimands or punishment implies the
tacit approval of these attacks.
Such attacks are also openly justied as these interior
villages are considered Maoist liberated zones. Construction of roads in these zones has been a problem between
the Maoists and the state, which the latter seems to have
won for now. Motorable roads going up to Sarkeguja
have been built in the past two years, enabling military
activity and the capture of erstwhile naxal areas. Most of
the villages there do not have any schools or health
centres; people have never heard about the Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act
(MGNREGA); they do not have Aadhaar numbers, bank
accounts or electricity. The only time they get to see the
face of the government is before the elections when
politicians arrive to arrange feasts in exchange for votes.
Government officials often use the g leaf of Maoist
opposition to justify the lack of implementation of government schemes. The only other face of the government
visible to Adivasis is that of the security forces who arrive
with guns to threaten, rape, abuse, steal their animals
and kill their people. Adivasis exposed only to vote-bank
politics or virulent paramilitary force would nd it difficult to trust the government to do right by them.

woman were gang-raped. The pregnant woman was

stripped and repeatedly dunked in a stream and gangraped. Many women reported being stripped, beaten on
their thighs and buttocks, their lower clothing lifted up
and being threatened with further sexual violence.
The women travelled several kilometres to the police
station to give testimonies and le a rst information
report (FIR), but the police were unsympathetic, contending that rape was unconscionable but inevitable given the threat of naxalism in the area. The Superintendent
of Police nally relented and led an FIR against unnamed persons after several days because of pressure
from civil society groups and the arrival of members of
the State Womens Commission. The FIR charged the
perpetrators under Section 376 (2) of the Indian Penal
Code, which pertains to rape by a policeman or a public
servant. The demand to le cases under the Scheduled
Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act
was not heeded to on the grounds that while the victims
were S.Ts the community of the perpetrators remained
unknown. After news of the operation became widely
known, several other organisations, such as the local
branch of the Congress Party and the Sarva Adivasi
Samaj, the Adivasi Mahasabha, and the National Human
Rights Commission took cognisance but nothing came of
it. But many more instances of gang rape by the security
forces came to light.
A PATTERN OF VIOLENCE

Around the same time as the Nendra incident, Kunna in

Sukma district also witnessed similar sexual and physical
violence and looting. A WSS report on the incidents said
that breasts were squeezed and nipples pinched, with the
assumption that if they were not lactating mothers, they
would be naxalites. In Chotegadam, a 21-year-old boy,
Lalu Sodi, was beaten up so badly that he succumbed to
his injuries. Girls were disrobed, dragged to the school
grounds and paraded for long distances while being
abused and mocked by members of the security forces.
According to the report, the attacks were so timed in
these villages that the men of the village could not run
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DIVYA TRIVEDI

I N N E N D R A VI LLA G E .

COVER STORY

Police state
Loosely formed vigilante groups are terrorising anyone speaking out
against police atrocities in Bastar, with the ulterior motive of forcing
people to part with their lands and migrate to other areas. BY PAVAN DAHAT
mob neared our convoy, stone throwing began. The mob
was not even ready to listen to a senior police officer who
was sitting inside the vehicle of Swami Agnivesh. I tried
to lm the attack with my small camera but soon realised
that some of the protesters were coming after me with big
stones. I can still feel the terror of that day. One of them
carried a big stone and walked alongside me, abusing. I
could see death in front of me but did not react and kept
walking back slowly to our vehicles which were moving
back towards Sukma. Luckily, he did not throw the stone
and I managed to get into the vehicle and got back to
Sukma.

PAVAN DAHAT

IN MARCH 2011, A GROUP OF SPECIAL POLICE

officers (SPOs) and members of the anti-Maoist vigilante
group, Salwa Judum, attacked the convoy of social activist Swami Agnivesh at Dornapal town in Sukma district,
when he was trying to fetch help to three villages allegedly attacked and ransacked by security forces and SPOs. A
Jagdalpur-based television news reporter who accompanied Swami Agnivesh that day recounted the horror
many years later, when he was the bureau chief of a
regional news channel. A huge mob, armed with lathis,
stones and traditional weapons, was marching towards
us. Some of them were hiding AK-47s and SLRs. As the

TH E PE O PL E O F C H I N T A GU F A , the most troubled village in Bastar range. They accuse CRPF men from the nearby
camp of atrocities. The security forces say the villagers are Maoist supporters and that there have been instances of ring at
the camp from the village.
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PAVAN DAHAT

Soon after, in what appeared to be a coordinated

move, the landlords of Malini Subramaniam and Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group (JagLAG), a team of lawyers providing free legal help to undertrials in Chhattisgarh, asked
them to vacate their houses and forced them to leave
Bastar, diminishing the last ray of hope for thousands of
tribal people locked up in different overcrowded jails of
Bastar. This was followed by an attack on tribal activist
and Aam Aadmi Party leader Soni Sori with an acid-like
substance on February 20. Some self-proclaimed journalists and leaders, close to senior police officers posted
in Jagdalpur, formed various WhatsApp groups and began a scurrilous campaign against everyone raising the
issue of alleged fake Maoist surrenders and alleged fake
encounters. Those who questioned the police version
were branded as Maoist sympathisers. Journalists and
activists speaking out against the atrocities on Bastars
tribal people were forcibly added to these WhatsApp
groups and abused.
The self-proclaimed vigilantes were successful in
trapping a fearless journalist from Dantewada named
Prabhat Singh. Prabhat Singh had been critical of S.R.P.
Kalluri, Inspector General (I.G.) of Police for Bastar
range, and had reported many police atrocities in Dantewada. He was arrested for a sentence he posted on a
WhatsApp group about someone sitting in the lap of
mama. A complaint was registered under Section 67 of
the Information Technology Act, and according to
Singhs brother, he was abducted by some plainclothes
policemen in a Scorpio vehicle. According his lawyer,
Singh was tortured all night in police custody.
Next day, Dantewada and Jagdalpur police suddenly
realised that there were grave offences registered
against Singh a year ago. He was produced in court with
four cases against him and was sent to judicial remand.
On March 26, Deepak Jaiswal, a journalist with the local
Hindi daily Dainik Divyashakti and a close associate of
Singh, went to the Dantewada court to witness the proceedings in his case. The Dantewada police woke up to a
case led against Jaiswal in 2015 and swiftly arrested him
and sent him to jail. The fault of these two journalists was
that they wrote and reported independently and did not
buckle under police pressure. With the arrest of Singh,
every journalist based in Bastar is scared to write even a
sentence against the police.
On March 26, Bela Bhatia, a social activist and researcher and the partner of well-known economist Jean
Dreze, who resides in a village eight kilometres from
Jagdalpur, was told to leave Bastar by members of a
vigilante group and policemen.
Meanwhile, a rumour of the possibility of a journalist getting killed in cross-ring is being spread in Bastar
these days, apparently to scare the national media from
coming to Bastar and reporting from the ground. Almost
every human rights group, lawyer, journalist and political worker who questions the police version of the happenings in Bastar is either out of the district or in jail.
When asked about the current situation of Bastar, a
senior politician from the region said: This is just the

S.R .P. K A L L UR I , the Inspector General of Police for

Bastar range.
Such excesses were common during the heyday of
Salwa Judum and they were well documented and reported by the English press, which led to petitions in the
Supreme Court and the subsequent ban on Salwa Judum
and SPOs in 2011.
In January this year, four Jagdalpur-based journalists were visibly worried when they told this correspondent in Raipur that the situation was going from bad to
worse. What used to happen in Dornapal, Bijapur and
Karkeli during Judum days will now happen in major
towns like Jagdalpur, Dantewada and Bijapur.
When asked for reasons for the worry, one of them
replied: The entire Salwa Judum network, its leaders
and SPOs have been given a new lease of life by some
officers heading the Bastar police, and the former Judum
guys are back with their self-proclaimed anti-Maoist
armies under different names.
The reporters fears came true in less than a month. A
police team asked the freelance journalist and former
head of the International Committee of Red Cross in
Chhattisgarh Malini Subramaniam why she was visiting
the forests and writing about tribal issues.
On February 7, a group of around 20 men gathered
outside Malini Subramaniams house in Jagdalpur where
she lived with her 14-year-old daughter. The group was
furious over her reports regarding fake Maoist surrenders, fake encounters and alleged atrocities on tribal
women by the security forces, and chanted slogans. Next
day, her house was pelted with stones and her car was
damaged. The police took two days to register a complaint. According to Chhattisgarh Home Minister Ajay
Chandrakar, a complaint was registered against unknown assailants and investigation was on. The Home
Minister used the words unknown assailants despite
Malini Subramaniam identifying three people belonging
to a self-proclaimed anti-Maoist vigilante group active in
Jagdalpur, called the Samajik Ekta Manch (SEM), one of
them a nephew of the local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
MLA.
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K. SRINIVAS REDDY

the most controversial officer in the State, was unceremoniously removed after the two incidents. He has been
Inspector General of Police of Bastar range since July
2014 and openly supports Salwa Judum, calls himself the
biggest enemy of the Maoists and their urban network of
sympathisers and speaks only to nationalist media.
With Kalluri as the Bastar police chief, former members of the banned Salwa Judum have formed a Vikas
Sangharsh Samiti (VSS) termed as Salwa Judum 2, led
by Chavindra Karma, son of Mahendra Karma, the Congress leader who played the main role in organising
Salwa Judum in 2005 and was killed by the Maoists in
2013.
When national media started reporting on it, Kalluri
said: When we speak to the Maoists or their supporters
and NGO intellectuals about the killings carried out by
the Maoists, they ask you to look into the history of
political vacuum. The Maoists have more supporters
than opponents. The VSS is an effort to ll that vacuum,
but the national media termed it as Judum 2. This ght
does not mean killing and raping. Its a big initiative. The
media from outside is hell-bent on defaming us. My
personal opinion is that the VSS is not wrong.
At a press conference organised outside the house of
Mahendra Karma, Kalluri shared his thoughts on the
group. Even Salwa Judum was not wrong. It was also an
attempt to bring peace [to Bastar] by peaceful means.
Unless the VSS doesnt do any wrong, they have full
rights to work here. What wrong did Salwa Judum do?
What was Salwa Judum? All the tribal people and leaders
of this area who were exploited got together against
Maoist exploitation. Outsider Maoists are coming here
and exploiting people. The people of Bastar never asked
for Maoism. When the case on Salwa Judum was going
on in the Supreme Court, our people could not present
our case properly. I wasnt posted in Bastar then. But if
someone goes against the VSS in the court now, I will
answer.
Reacting to the eviction of JagLAG, Kalluri said in a
press conference in Raipur: I am not calling them
Maoists but if you verify the jail records, just see how
many times they [JagLAG] have gone to meet people and
who the people they met were. The local people of Bastar
were agitated over [JagLAG] and the law and order
situation could have been threatened. When asked
about the eviction of Malini Subramaniam, he said,
There is the PLGA [Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army]
and there is also an overground Maoist structure. I am
beating their PLGA inside the forest, so why should I
worry about Malini Subramaniam and JagLAG?
Kalluri controls everything in Bastar now, from the
administration to the Police Department, and has been
involved in confrontations with almost every human
rights activist and journalist in Bastar in the last six
months. He shares a good rapport with all former Salwa
Judum leaders, including P. Vijay, Sattar Ali, Madhukar
Rao and the family members of Mahendra Karma.
Officers who had been critical of him were removed
from the anti-naxal wing of Chhattisgarh one by one. The

A FIL E photograph of Mahendra Karma, the Congress

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

leader who played the main role in organising Salwa

Judum in 2005. He was killed by the Maoists in 2013.
(Below) His son, Chavindra Karma, with his bodyguards.
He is the leader of the Vikas Sangharsh Samiti, formed by
members of the banned Salwa Judum.

continuation of Salwa Judum or you can call it Salwa

Judum 2. But this time you wont nd anything on paper.
No registered organisation but loosely formed vigilante
groups in order to have an escape route if the case comes
up in the higher judiciary.
There is a common link to the 2011 attack on Swami
Agniveshs convoy near Dornapal, the ransacking of
three villages in Sukma and the current crackdown on
social activists, independent journalists and human
rights lawyers in Bastar: Shiv Ram Prasad Kalluri. In
March 2011, as Special Superintendent of Police (SSP) of
the then undivided Dantewada district, Kalluri, who was
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asked to come to the police station for some programme

or the other and a propaganda is made out of large-scale
Maoist surrenders.
Since Kalluri took over as Bastar I.G., more than 700
Maoists have been shown as surrendered Maoists. But
most of them have gone back to their villages in the
interior parts of Bastar and are living in fear of the
Maoists. Many are migrating to neighbouring States. The
rule is clear: If you are not with the police then you are a
Maoist. Unlike in the time of Salwa Judum, when people
were forced to join rehabilitation camps, an atmosphere
is being created in Bastar to force people to give up their
land and migrate to other parts. Huge claims are made
about construction of roads and other infrastructure, but
extremely slow development can be witnessed on the
ground, with unaccountable funds shown as having been
spent on Bastar.
According to a senior editor of a Hindi daily in the
State, Kalluris openness to willingly accept all the negative publicity is benecial for the government. Kalluri
openly tells people that he has been directly appointed
by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and enjoys the full
backing of National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval.
But the fact is that his own Police Department is against
him. Three powerful bureaucrats, Home Secretary
B.V.R. Subramaniam, Chief Secretary Vivek Dhand and
Director General of Police A.N. Upadhyay, are shielding
him for their own benet. These three have managed to
inuence the Chief Minister about the great work Kalluri
is doing in Bastar. The Chief Minister has been told that
Kalluri is being unfairly targeted because he is going after
the Maoists. But if you look at the Maoist insurgency in
the national context, it is losing its sheen in every State
and not just Chhattisgarh, said the senior editor, requesting anonymity.
Despite having his entire department against him,
Kalluri is thriving in Bastar because no other I.G. wants
the posting. According to an I.G.-level officer posted in
Chhattisgarh, Kalluri is more active against people like
Soni Sori and against JagLAG than in carrying out antiMaoist operations. The recent Maoist attack on a Central
Reserve Police Force (CRPF) team in a civil locality of
Dantewada district of Bastar, which resulted in the killing of seven CRPF men, puts a big question mark on
Kalluris claims of controlling and conning Maoists to a
relatively small area.
According to a bureaucrat, the Chief Minister will
nd it difficult to continue with Kalluri for a long time.
The State is one of the nancially better-managed ones
in India. There have been no communal incidents since
the formation of the State. Except the Maoist insurgency
in Bastar, Chhattisgarh is perceived to be a start-up-and
investor-friendly State. However, the government of the
day cant afford to have negative publicity for a long
time, he said. But a senior leader from Bastar, who is no
more active in politics, said: Officers will come and go,
but what about some monsters who have been set free
now? Can they be controlled even after those who created
them leave Bastar for good?

list includes former Anti Naxal Operation (ANO) I.G.

Deepanshu Kabra, former ANO Additional Director
General R.K. Vij and former Bastar Superintendent of
Police Ajay Yadav. Another pet project of Kalluri is the
SEM. According to the Editors Guild of Indias recent
fact-nding report from Bastar, the SEM is an informal
but controversial organisation in Jagdalpur.

BE L A B H A T I A , a social activist and researcher, who

was told to leave Bastar by members of a vigilante group
and policemen.

The report says: The administration calls it a citizens forum and claims that people from all walks of life
are members of this organisation. The Collector of Jagdalpur, Amit Kataria, said that many religious organisations are also part of it and they are against the
Maoists. But many journalists call it the urban version of
Salwa Judum. They, however, did not want to oppose it
openly. They said off the record that the Manch is sponsored by the police and it takes its orders from the police
headquarters. The fact-nding team met one of the coordinators of this organisation, Subba Rao, to understand
the working of the SEM. He introduced himself as editor
of two dailies, one morning and the other published in
the evening. When asked whether his main occupation is
journalism, Subba Rao was candid enough to explain
that he is basically a civil contractor and he is working on
some government contracts. The fact-nding team met
more than a dozen journalists in Jagdalpur, but he was
the only (so-called) journalist who claimed that he had
never experienced any pressure from the administration.
His statements about the arrested journalists were the
same as the administrations. He termed Santosh Yadav
and Somaru Nag as informers for the Maoists. He said
that what Malini Subramaniam was reporting was very
biased and was glorifying Maoists and painting a picture
of the police as exploiters. He denied that SEM was
behind the attack at Malinis residence.
The main focus of Salwa Judum was on evicting
people from their villages to clear the land for projects.
Now a different policy is being applied. Entire villages are
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Persecuted minority

practised in those areas. Prasad Rao countered that if the

missionaries work was forced
religious conversion, so was
the work of the Bajrang Dal,
the Shiv Sena and the VHP
cadre, all of whom have been
active in the region for 15 years
or more. Adivasis are Dravidians and have their own deities, but the VHP says that
Adivasis are Hindus and
V. N . P R AS AD R A O,
brands their deities as avatars
State coordinator of
of Hindu gods and goddesses.
the Chhattisgarh
Over the years, the Adivasi god
Christian Fellowship.
Buda Deva has become an avatar of Siva. The madar drum of the Adivasis is being
replaced with manjeera and dholak. The Bhagavad
Gita and Hanuman chalisa are translated into indigenous languages and distributed amongst Adivasis. So
is that not forced conversion? he asked.
Several cases of economic and social boycott of
Christians have been reported. In 2013, the Peoples
Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), the All India Secular
Forum and the Chhattisgarh Christian Fellowship recorded testimonies of communal tension in various
places in Chhattisgarh. Relatives of Christians in the
same village were asked to excommunicate them or
face dire consequences themselves.
According to the PUCL, in the village of Sonai
Dongri, when houses were ransacked and symbols of
Christianity attacked, people who complained at a
public hearing were told by Vibha Rao, head of the
Chhattisgarhs Womens Commission: You have
changed your religion and society and yet you continue to live amongst these people, so this is bound to
happen. In Chirmiri, a case has been going on against
the principal of a Christian girls residential hostel.
New angles are being added to the case at each stage.
The truth is that there is a Saraswati Shishu Mandir
next door, and if our hostel is shut down, it will benet
that institution. The reason is never purely religious,
said Father A.P. Joshi, legal adviser to the Raipur
Catholic diocese. In 2014, the PUCL wrote to the
National Minorities Commission requesting intervention in the repeated attacks on the Christian community in Madhota village.
Another issue which has taken a communal colour is misuse of the State cow slaughter law. In Raigarh, when cattle were electrocuted along the railway
line and members of the Dalit community were summoned by the Railway authorities to remove them,
Hindutva organisations got these Dalits arrested under false claims of cow slaughter, says a PUCL statement.
Divya Trivedi
DIVYA TRIVEDI

LIKE on any other Sunday, on March 6, Pastor Ankush Bariyekar was preaching from the pulpit of the
Pentecostal church in Kachna, six kilometres from
Raipur, the State capital. Suddenly, 30 to 35 men
wearing saffron scarves barged in, chanting Jai Shri
Ram. They proceeded to break all the furniture and
musical instruments and took special care to destroy
the pulpit. They did not speak to anybody but systematically went around beating up and terrorising the
gathering of around 50 worshippers. As frantic calls
went out for help and a group of men along with the
police arrived, the mob ed, leaving behind three
bikes. A mobile phone video of the men vandalising
the church was picked up by the national media and it
created pressure on the police to act, resulting in the
arrest of 17 men.
But slowly, attempts were made to give a different
colour to the issue by terming it one of land dispute,
according to Pastor Ankush. The entire village is built
on government land and it has some temples too. If the
issue is indeed of illegal occupancy of government
land, then the Nagar Nigam should rst stop taking
taxes from us and then go about it in a proper manner,
he told Frontline. That a case was led against the
vandals was itself a rarity, according to him. Last year,
about 40 places of worship of Christians were attacked, but the police did not take any action, he said.
Usually, when such attacks were reported, countercases were slapped against the Christians, with charges of tampering with the Adivasi culture and forced
religious conversions under Section 129 (G) of the
Chhattisgarh Panchayat Raj Act. A month before the
attack on the church in Kachna, a Methodist church in
Korba was attacked in a similar fashion, but there was
no follow-up action by the police.
Around the same time, two pastors returning after
conducting a prayer meeting in Dhamtari were beaten
up by a gang of goons and then arrested under Section
129 (G). Scores of pastors have been arrested on imsy
grounds like this. V.N. Prasad Rao, State coordinator
of the Chhattisgarh Christian Fellowship, said that
persecution of their community was not new but the
precision with which the Bharatiya Janata Party government went about spreading hatred against the minorities was chilling. The saffron brigade under
government sponsorship has become emboldened
and are a law unto themselves. The government is
using the naxal bogey to nish off Adivasis in Bastar
and anybody else who does not belong to their ideology, he said.
Last year, close to 50 gram sabhas in Bastar, allegedly egged on by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP),
passed resolutions which stipulated that no other religion except Hinduism, especially Christianity, can be
19

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COVER STORY

No news is bad news

As the conict between the state and the Maoists escalates, journalists get
caught in the crossre and truth becomes a casualty. BY DIVYA TRIVEDI
routine. The ability to deal with intimidation tactics and
live under constant vigil seems to be a prerequisite for
journalists to work here. There are guns on the ready on
both sides, and journalists who stand in the middle are in
the direct line of re, said Shukla. The intimidation
tactics of the state, however, far surpassed those of the
Maoists, said a local journalist. Shukla, who is also the
general secretary of the Patrakar Suraksha Kanoon Sanyukta Sangharsh Samiti (Joint Committee to Struggle and

KAMAL SHUKLA, EDITOR OF THE WEEKLY

newspaper Bhumkal Samachar, apologised for being a
few hours late and said: Bas jaan bachake aa raha hun
(I just escaped with my life). En route to Raipur from
Dantewada, he was informed by well-wishers that some
people planned to gherao him in Jagdalpur and was
advised to either change cars or change the route.
Anywhere else, this kind of threat might sound fanciful but not in undivided Bastar, a conict zone where it is
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SUVOJIT BAGCHI

pertained to the alleged extortion of Rs.20 from villagers

for making Aadhaar cards. Another was based on a complaint led by the principal of a school in Geedam that
Prabhat Singh was investigating for allegedly allowing
large-scale cheating in examinations.
Colleagues in the eld, however, say that Prabhat
Singh is being victimised for asking Inspector General
S.R.P. Kalluri uncomfortable questions at a press meet
about an encounter killing in Modenar. Kalluri had reportedly said then: Tumhari kundali mere paas hai,
sudhar jao [Your horoscope is with me, you better mend
your ways]. Subsequently, the Patrika newspaper carried a full page report on its front page challenging the
police version of the events in Modenar. Prabhat Singh
was picked up by policemen in plainclothes and illegally
detained overnight at Parpa police station, where he was
allegedly physically and verbally abused. A few days later,
a co-accused in the Geedam school case, Deepak Jaiswal,
a reporter with Dainik Daindini, was also arrested outside the court premises while he was waiting with his
lawyer to le for anticipatory bail. Both their bail pleas
were rejected and they were sent to judicial custody.
Journalists in Chhattisgarh are extremely vulnerable
since most of them are stringers working in a conict
zone. It is a common practice to hire journalists for paltry
salaries on monthly contracts, and they do not enjoy
benets like Employees State Insurance (ESI) or Provident Fund. Reporters are used as messengers, and news
organisations often disown them at the slightest hint of
liability. Since their salaries are low, they are often forced
to undertake other jobs for sustenance, such as working
as an Aadhaar officer, a shopkeeper, or a contractor for
the State administration. There have been instances of
journalists accepting money and other incentives for
suppressing news. Those who are honest and independ-

JOU R N A L I S T S protesting at the spot where

Sai Reddy was killed in Basaguda in Chhattisgarh, in

December 2013.

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Demand Law for Protection of Journalists), for instance,

has been tailed, and threatened by senior police officers
with jail on charges of being a naxal conduit, and has had
his phone tapped. He has not been able to publish his
newspaper for months.
In the past eight months, four journalists have been
arrested, two killed in cold blood, and several framed in
false cases. Many families have been harassed. Several
journalists have been forced to leave the region and
scores have been driven out of the profession itself by the
high risk factor.
The latest in a series of incidents involving journalists
is the arrest of 31-year-old Prabhat Singh on March 22 in
Dantewada under Sections 67, 67(A) and 292 of the
Information Technology Act for allegedly posting an
obscene and objectionable message on the WhatsApp
group Bastar News. Three other cases from the past
were dug up and he was booked for those too. One

A D E M ON S TR ATI ON demanding the removal of the

Inspector General, Bastar.
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Hari Bhoomi, Nayi Duniya and Dainik Bhaskar. He was

accused of being a police informer. His colleagues deny
the accusation. According to a statement on the Committee to Protect Journalists website, Jains social activism
may have led to his murder. A week before his death,
Jain had been instrumental in helping free an individual

ent nd themselves targeted by both state and non-state

players.
Last year, Santosh Yadav and Somaru Nag were accused of being Maoist sympathisers and arrested under
the draconian Special Public Security Act, 2005, in separate cases. A stringer with Dainik Navbharat and Dainik Chhattisgarh, Santosh Yadav supplemented his
meagre monthly income by running a photocopy shop.
Being the rst reporter on the scene of a crime might be a
feather in the cap of journalists elsewhere, but not in
Chhattisgarh. As a resident of Darbha, he was the rst
reporter to reach the valley where Salwa Judum founder
Mahendra Karma was killed in a bloody ambush by the
Maoists in 2013. Ever since, he has been harassed by
policemen to turn informer, according to a representation made to the National Human Rights Commission by
the human rights organisation Alert India.
It is not unusual for the police to involve journalists in
anti-naxalite operations. For example, before entering a
village, they would ask a reporter to go and check if any
naxalites were present. If a jawan is killed, a reporter is
asked to bring the body from the village in his car. This
exposes the reporter to extreme danger from the Maoists,
who have killed journalists in the past, accusing them of
being police informers. Santosh Yadav refused to get
involved in these ways. For two years, he was harassed,
kept in custody for days and even stripped naked and
beaten. When Santosh told a police officer that he would
expose the fake surrenders arranged by them in a nearby
village, it was the last
straw. Within minutes of
making that statement, he
was picked up by the police
and three days later, Kalluri gave a press statement
saying that Santosh was a
hard-core naxalite. Subsequently, his name was
added to a list of 18 unknown persons accused in
an old case where a special
police officer was killed.
Somaru Nag, a strinP R A B H A T S I N G H , the
ger-cum-newspaper agent
journalist who was jailed.
for Rajasthan Patrika,
was similarly charged with acting as a lookout while a
group burnt a crusher plant in Chote Kadma. Villagers
often approached him for help and he would comply, but
the police warned him to not do so. Then there is Rajesh
Sahu, against whom four cases have been registered. He
used to actively investigate and report on corruption
cases in the State. Manish Soni used to be a Zee News
stringer, but the moment Zee News removed him, a
complaint was led against him for the reporting he had
done for the channel, said Kamal Shukla.
For the media in Bastar, 2013 may have been the
worst year, when Nemichand Jain and Sai Reddy, both
veterans with 20 years experience, were killed by the
Maoists. Jain was 43 and freelanced for the Hindi dailies
BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

MANISH KUNJAM is
busy working out strategies with his Communist Party of India (CPI)
comrades against the
backdrop of the setting
sun in Raipur. His relaxed demeanour belies
his predicament. This
two-time Member of the
Legislative
Assembly
from Sukma in the south M AN I S H KUN J A M .
Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, considered to be a Maoist stronghold, is no
novice to a conict situation. According to Kunjam, in February, the police tried to instigate the
naxalites against him and other CPI members in a
bid to have them killed so that there is no Adivasi
left to speak of Jal-Jangal-Jameen in Bastar. As
the president of the All India Adivasi Mahasabha,
Kunjam has been voicing the concerns of the tribal
people caught in the crossre in the state-Maoist
conict. Although he weighs his words as he fears
that a slip of the tongue can prove fatal, he does not
mince words in criticising the State government,
the Maoists and corporate houses for the plunder
of the regions natural resources. In 2005, a factnding mission of the CPI exposed the atrocities
committed by the civil militia Salwa Judum, mobilised for counter-insurgency operations. In
2007, Kunjam, along with others, petitioned
against the Salwa Judum. This resulted in the
Supreme Court ordering the disbanding of the
militia in 2011. Kunjam belongs to the Gondi Koya
tribe. Excerpts from an interview he gave
Frontline:

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

The CPI had a strong foothold in these areas.

If you look at the state of the Communist parties in
the country today, on the basis of media reports as
well as the enthusiasm they exude, they have become weak, and that is true of their position in
Chhattisgarh as well. Although the CPIs membership increased, its pockets of strength weakened
22

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DIVYA TRIVEDI

Our troubles
are endless

Under Kamal Shuklas leadership, journalists gathered at the spot where Sai Reddy was killed and protested
against naxalites targeting journalists. After a few days,
the naxalites apologised in a parcha (handbill) and since
then no journalist has been killed, said Tameshwar Sinha. Such violent tactics, used by both the state and the

allegedly held by Maoists, it said. Sai Reddy was 51 when

he was killed. He was declared a naxal sympathiser under
the Special Public Security Act of Chhattisgarh. When he
came out of jail, he was killed by the Maoists. His colleagues remember him as an independent reporter, critical of all sides.

after the Jan Jagran Abhiyan was started in the 1990s.

Today, the CPI is unable to win an election in Bastar, a
region where it was once strong. If you look at the areas
where the Salwa Judum used to be active, the Maoists
have gained considerably in Bastar, Bijapur and Sukma
[districts]. We are trying to gain lost ground. We believe in democracy and not the gun as is obvious from
our political participation, but yet we are accused of
being Maoist sympathisers. Had that been the case, we
would have won election after election with their support. The Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] and the Congress have always won from the region and the reason
for this has been the subject of media debate. Despite
the plain truth, the police brand us as naxalite sympathisers, spy on us and disrupt our rallies. They sneak
into our programmes and raise slogans that can land us
in trouble. The jails are packed with people from political parties. Many CPI cadres have been accused of
naxalite activities. The BJP, with the help of the police,
is trying to weaken the CPI politically because inside
Bastar, the CPI is the only party ghting for the rights of
Adivasis. We protested against the Salwa Judum and
got it banned. We protested against Tata and Essar and
they were compelled to ee from the region. They want
to loot the resources of Bastar but have realised that it
will be difficult to do so as long as the CPI is around.
According to them, the naxalites are already weak. So,
once they take care of the CPI, the oppressed and
abused Adivasis will be forced to run, leaving their land
for the Tatas, Jindals, Essars and Adanis. Once the
Adivasis leave, it will be a cakewalk for these corporates,
and even the Congress will support them obliquely in
this.
What do you think of the situation in Bastar?
The presence of paramilitary forces has increased substantially in Bastar and there are several front organisations. I will not go into whether they are Salwa
Judum II or III, but a big campaign is under way using
surrendered Maoists and local boys. Earlier, things
were operated through the barrel of the gun. The modus
operandi has changed now. There are also fake surrenders though the police, and the government will deny it
in public. No one can deny that Bastar has turned into a
police state. Typically, the head of a district is the
Collector, but it is fair to say this is not the case in
Bastar. Here, the head of the police is the chief administrator. The government is absent from many areas.
There are also instances of entire panchayats being
shifted out of villages to far-off places. In Konta, six to

seven PDS [public distribution system] shops meant to

cover several villages are lumped together. In Chintalnar, 17 fair price shops of 17 panchayats function from
one place. This is the case in Polampalli in Bijapur
district and in the Abujhmarh region. Villagers travel
several kilometres to collect rations after obtaining permission from the Maoists. In many areas, the Maoists
have instructed the people not to take rations from the
government but consume what they grow. I am not
saying anything that is not known.
How does the next generation view these events?
Boys and girls in the 12 to 20 age group are migrating to
Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa, Visakhapatnam
and Vijayawada. This trend is worrying for us. They face
many troubles in unfamiliar locations. Recently, we
brought back the body of a boy who was helping in the
construction of a borewell. Four boys died in a blast in a
chemical plant near Hyderabad. Seven girls from Salepal, near Jagdalpur, died when they were returning
from work elsewhere. When we hear about such instances, we intervene. But we have no clue about what is
happening to the residents of interior areas such as
Maad, Bijapur and Konta [Sukma district] since we are
unable to reach them. We are unable to save the honour
of our sisters and daughters. All this is traumatic for us.
This is also the governments responsibility, but does it
care? The Adivasis of Bastar do not occupy the mind
space of political leaders sitting in Raipur and elsewhere. When elections can be won by distributing money, blankets, clothes and liquor, what is the need to
think about the poor and Adivasis? Instances of corruption are mind-boggling in Chhattisgarh, if anybody
cares to investigate.
How do you see the future of Chhattisgarh and your
role in it?
When they say big businesses will bring development to
Chhattisgarh, I want to ask whose development? If 100
people get ruined by a project and 10 peoples lives
improve slightly because of it, will you call it development? Let us assume that one day naxalism will be
nished in Bastar. Will it bring peace? Will the simple
life of the tribal people be returned to them? Another
problem will raise its ugly head: the Tatas and the
Essars will arrive and drive us out of our lands. Our
troubles are endless. There are many things inside me,
which I will hopefully share one day, but right now a
wrong word here or there can cost us our lives.
Divya Trivedi
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DIVYA TRIVEDI

DIVYA TRIVEDI

ery single request for surveilMaoists, discouraged young relance and I can say this with
porters from getting out and reauthority that no government
porting from the eld and most
department has been authorof them have been reduced to
ised to tap phone calls of any of
copy-pasting press releases, he
the journalists.
said. When any journalist
The Collector of Bastar,
writes about any of Bastars
Amit Kataria, told Frontline
problems, say, the issue of roads
that phones were tapped and
not being built, then both the
call data records (CDR) actypes of governmentthe state
cessed by the state to track locaand the self-declared Janatana
tion only if the reporters were
Sarkarget angry. Both are one
suspected to be Maoist sympaand the same, united in corrup- K A M A L S H U K LA , editor of Bhumkal
thisers. The CDRs were useful
tion, and create trouble for jour- Samachar; (right) Tameshwar Sinha, journalist.
in tracking reporters movenalists who attempt to show the
ments as they helped in nding out who the reporters
truth of the matter, said Kamal Shukla.
were speaking to, when their phones were switched off,
and where they were switched on again, explained KataHOUNDED OUT
Early this year, Malini Subramaniam, who works for ria. In order for someone to be under surveillance or
Scroll.in, was attacked and hounded out of Jagdalpur by their phones to be tapped, permission has to be obtained
the Samajik Ekta Manch (SEM), a civil vigilante group, from the States Home Ministry. Location can be traced
widely believed to be another avatar of Salwa Judum. The from the CDR, which is shared by the phone company
subsequent police inaction, the intimidation of her do- once the police show incidence of a serious crime. An FIR
mestic help and the pressure on her landlord to evict her [rst information report] is required. But nowadays softforced her to leave Jagdalpur for good. She wrote widely ware is available online to track phones. Technology is
about Adivasi issues, exposing human rights violations used very effectively by the I.T. wing of the police for
by the security forces, and hence was disliked by the crime detection, he said. He conceded that the arrests of
police, who branded her a Maoist sympathiser. The Prabhat Singh and Deepak Jaiswal were on imsy chargBBCs Hindi correspondent Alok Putul, too, was asked to es and could have been avoided. These arrests have
created a perception that the media are strangulated in
leave the region or face the music.
Bastar, but that is not the case. We will be careful now
and we assure you nothing like this will happen again.
But in the case of Santosh Yadav and Somaru Nag, we are
sure they were involved with the Maoists and have witness testimonies and phone records as proof, he said.
Meanwhile, after Santosh Yadavs arrest, journalists,
coming together under the Patrakar Suraksha Kanoon
Sanyukta Sangharsh Samiti, demanded the enactment of
a law to protect journalists and their freedom to work
without pressure. The Chief Minister met the journalists
In March, a fact-nding team of the Editors Guild of and promised to enact a law, but since it needed to be
India visited Chhattisgarh and declared that journalists passed by the State Assembly and would take some time,
in the State worked under tremendous pressure. They he suggested forming a committee to look into their
met the Chief Minister, journalists, police officers, bu- issues. Hence, a high-level committee consisting of Rareaucrats, and members of the SEM and concluded that jesh Sukumar Toppo, Director, Chhattisgarh Public Rethere is pressure from the State administration, espe- lations Department; Vikas Sheel, Administration
cially the police, on journalists to write what they want or Department Secretary; Arundav Gautam, Secretary,
not to publish reports that the administration sees as Home Department; Rajeev Srivastava, Additional Direchostile. There is pressure from the Maoists as well on the tor General, CID; and senior journalists Ruchir Garg and
journalists working in the area. There is a general percep- Manikuntala Bose was formed in March.
As the state-Maoist conict escalated over ve dection that every single journalist is under the government
scanner and all their activities are under surveillance. ades in Bastar, telling the truth became a casualty. The
They hesitate to discuss anything over the phone be- past year saw independent observers being either sicause, as they say, the police is listening to every word we lenced or hounded out of the region. For those who
speak. They tried to meet Kalluri, but he refused to meet remained behind, neutrality was a curtailed option. With
the state and the police harassing journalists equally, a
the team.
The administration categorically denies charges of question that begs an answer is, Why does the state want
phone tapping, and Principal Secretary (Home) B.V.R. to remove authentic eyewitnesses from the region? What

Subramanian told the fact-nding team: I sanction ev- is it afraid of?

There are guns on the ready

on both sides, and journalists
are in the direct line of re.

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ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Battle lines
The election scene hots up in Tamil Nadu, with the AIADMK
announcing its candidates for 227 of the 234 seats and the DMK
springing a surprise by making the Congress its alliance partner.

PTI

BY T . S . S U B R A M A N I A N

ALTHOUGH Tamil Nadu voters will go to the polling booths only on May 16, the Assembly election scene
began to hot up on April 4 with a series of dramatic
developments. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa, who is the
general secretary of the ruling All India Anna Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), set the pace when she
announced that her party would contest 227 of the 234
seats and that the remaining seven had been set apart for
six minor allies. Signalling that she meant business, she
named the party candidates for the 227 constituencies.
Jayalalithaa will contest from R.K. Nagar, a working-

CON G R E S S LE A D E R Ghulam Nabi Azad (second, right)

addressing the media with DMK treasurer M.K. Stalin after

completing a seat-sharing agreement in Chennai on April 4.
State Congress president E.V.K.S. Elangovan and Rajya
Sabha member Kanimozhi are also seen.
class constituency in Chennai. What came as a big surprise was that she shut the door on the Tamil Maanila
Congress (TMC), headed by G.K. Vasan, which had been
aspiring to partner with the AIADMK in the Assembly
elections. (Vasan revived the TMC, a party started by his
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FRONTLINE .

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R. RAGU

father, G.K. Moopanar, in November 2014.) She also

kept out of the AIADMK alliance the Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi, founded by T. Velmurugan, who broke
away from the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK), a party with
Vanniyars, a predominant but backward caste in the
State, as its social base.
Jayalalithaa also named the party candidates for all
the 30 Assembly seats in the neighbouring Union Territory of Puducherry, sending the clear message that the
AIADMK would contest the elections there alone. For
the rst time, AIADMK candidates will contest in seven
Assembly constituencies in Kerala.
A few hours before the AIADMKs announcement,
the opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK),
with former Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi as its president, stitched up a partnership with the Congress. The
DMK conceded 41 seats to the Congress, more than
meeting the latters demand that it be allotted one seat for
each of the 39 Lok Sabha constituencies in the State. The
DMK is likely to contest about 175 seats. It has allotted
ve seats each to the Indian Union Muslim League
(IUML) and the Manithaneya Makkal Katchi and three
seats to three minor parties. On April 7, the DMK allotted
four seats to Puthiya Tamizhagam, a Dalit party headed
by Dr K. Krishnasamy.
It was the clinching of the DMK-Congress alliance
that compelled Jayalalithaa to nominate her partys candidates in what is seen as one-upmanship.
There is a design behind the DMKS decision to
concede 41 seats to the Congress. The party is condent
that the election rallies of Congress president Sonia
Gandhi and her son and vice president Rahul Gandhi in
the State will make an impact on the alliance. The newfound bonhomie between the DMK and the Congress
was evident when All India Congress Committee (AICC)
general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad, who signed the
agreement for the Congress, said: I have seen since the
past few decades in Tamil Nadu that it has always been
one term for the AIADMK and another for the DMK.
Now, it is the turn of the DMK-led government, and I am
sure we will be able to form the government. We will
work sincerely to ensure that we are victorious. Tamil
Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) president E.V.K.S.
Elangovan played an important role in reviving the alliance. Their relations turned bitter after the two parties
were defeated in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
On April 5, a revolt broke out in the Desiya Murpokku
Dravida Kazhagam (DMDK) when the old guard led by
three party legislators, ve district secretaries and two
other leaders demanded to know from the party founder
Vijayakanth why he did not enter into an alliance with
the DMK when, they claimed, the overwhelming mood in
the party was for an alliance with the latter. On March 30,
V. Yuvaraj, DMDK secretary for north Chennai and a
long-time lieutenant of Vijayakanth, joined the DMK. A
few days later, S. Dinesh, DMDK Kanyakumari west
district secretary, followed suit. Both were upset that
Vijayakanth had brushed aside the opinion of party leaders and cadres and had thrown in his lot with the Peoples

Welfare Front (PWF) comprising the Communist Party

of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (CPI),
the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam
(MDMK) and the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK),
a Dalit party.
In fact, the DMDK-PWF alliance was the rst to
burst out of the sprinters block on March 23 when their
leaders announced that they had formed a credible and
viable alternative to both the AIADMK and the DMK. It
was decided that Vijayakanth would be the captain of
the alliance and that the DMDK would contest 124 seats,
with the PWF contesting the remaining 110. Vaiko,
MDMK general secretary, is the alliances convener. The
DMDK-PWF alliance decided to project Vijayakanth as
the chief ministerial candidate. In a refreshing contrast
to the stand that the DMK and the AIADMK have always
taken, the fronts leaders announced that if the alliance
was voted to power, it would form a coalition government
(Frontline, April 15, 2016).
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the PMK
founded by Dr S. Ramadoss are going it alone and have
projected themselves as an alternative to both the DMK
and the AIADMK, the two parties that have alternately
ruled the State from 1967. While the BJP will contest 180
seats, its minor allies will be in the fray in 54 seats.
The PMK has projected Dr Anbumani Ramadoss,
son of Ramadoss, as its chief ministerial candidate. It is a
ght between Anbumani and Amma [Jayalalithaa] in
these elections. The hero of these elections is Anbumani
26

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sector reforms. He was able to speak to Jayalalithaa only

once in 22 months. She sent a team to meet him, but to
date they have not signed up for the power reforms, he
said. Goyal added: I made several attempts to contact
the leaders in the Jayalalithaa government. I have access
to 28 States in the country. But for the 29th State when I
want to talk to someone, I cant. I call up and talk to the
Power Minister of the State, and he says he will get back
to me after he speaks with Amma. Goyal said Tamil
Nadu is a part of the country where I cant even reach the
Chief Minister.... In Parliament, they [the AIADMK Lok
Sabha and Rajya Sabha members] cant open their
mouth... unless they have a script which has been sanitised and vetted in Chennai.
On February 28, Javadekar, Minister of State for
Environment and Forests and Climate Change, alleged
that the Tamil Nadu government was appropriating to
itself the credit for the distribution of ood relief when it
was the Centre that dispensed the money to the State
during the oods that ravaged most parts of the State in
November and December 2015. The ood relief amount
of Rs.5,000 crore, deposited in the bank accounts of
more than 14 lakh families, was the Centres money on
which some were putting their stamps, Javadekar said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi released Rs.2,000 crore
when he visited the State after the calamity. That the
BJPs central leadership decided to excoriate the
AIADMK government and that the Union Ministers
allegations were not one-off events became clear when
Javadekar unleashed a far more powerful broadside
against the AIADMK government on March 31 in Chennai. He said the BJP-led government at the Centre had
launched the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY)
to prevent theft of electricity, stem the loss in transmission and step up generation. UDAY is excepted to ensure
uninterrupted power supply for 24 hours a day and result
in a saving of Rs.1,80,000 crore to the Centre. Eighteen
States have already begun implementing the programme. But, he said, Tamil Nadu had not agreed to
implement UDAY and it had made the State power utility
lose Rs.12,000 crore in 2015. Lower interest rates and
other benets would have led to TANGEDCO coming
out of the red. Javadekar said: The Tamil Nadu government is not interested in helping honest electricity consumers but only the dishonest who use unauthorised
connections to steal electricity.
Despite the serious nature of these allegations, Jayalalithaa maintained a studied silence. Karunanidhi
promptly stepped in to sh in troubled waters. What is
the reply from Chief Minister Jayalalithaa when the
Union Power Minister says that he is unable to meet her
or Electricity Minister Natham R. Viswanathan? Karunanidhi asked. There was no reaction from Jayalalithaa
again, but State Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam
sprang to her defence by saying that not only Modi but his
Cabinet colleagues Arun Jaitley, M. Venkaiah Naidu and
Ashok Gajapathy Raju were able to have audience with
her.
Natham Viswanathan came up with a belated reply

L E AD E R S O F T H E PW F : (From right),
Thol. Thirumavalavan (VCK), Vaiko (MDMK),
G. Ramakrishnan (CPI(M)) and R. Mutharasan (CPI)
addressing the media in Chennai on April 6.

and the heroine is the PMK manifesto, declared Ramadoss. He accused the AIADMK and the DMK of opening
liquor shops in every street of the State, converting education into a saleable commodity, making medical treatment expensive and beyond the reach of the poor, and
rendering agriculture so unprotable that suicides and
irredeemable loans were the only gifts farmers received.
In this situation, how can the DMK be an alternative to
the AIADMK? Only the PMK can be an alternative to
both, the PMK founder said. Both Ramadoss and Anbumani have sworn to introduce prohibition in the State if
the PMK is voted to power.
BJP-AIADMK FEUD

Meanwhile, an unexpected feud broke out between the

BJP and the AIADMK, with Union Ministers Piyush
Goyal, Prakash Javadekar, Pon. Radhakrishnan and party leader Muralidhar Rao ring fusillades at Jayalalithaas inaccessibility and her governments reluctance to
introduce reforms in the electricity sector.
At a conference in New Delhi on March 25, Minister
of State for Power Piyush Goyal alleged that Tamil Nadu
had become a State within a State and that he was not
able to meet Jayalalithaa or her Minister to discuss power
27

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APRIL 29, 2016

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on March 29, arguing that the State had not joined

UDAY because the scheme was not people-friendly.
REBELLION IN THE DMDK

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

R SENTHIL KUMAR/PTI

What relegated the spat between the BJP and the

AIADMK to the background was the rebellion in the
DMDK against the decision of Vijayakanth and his wife,
Premalatha, who is the partys womens wing secretary,
to hitch the DMDK to the PWF bandwagon. Those aspiring for the DMDK ticket told Vijayakanth during interviews
that
they
were
sure
that
a
DMK-Congress-DMDK-IUML alliance could defeat the
AIADMK. However, at a party rally in Kancheepuram on
March 10, Vijayakanth announced that he would go it
alone because his cadres wanted him to become the
king and were not to be satised with him remaining a
kingmaker. Yet, on March 23, he announced that the
DMDK would combine with the PWF after the PWF
constituents agreed to project him as the chief ministerial candidate.
The revolt on April 5 by a section of the old guard
presaged a split in the party. Three Members of the
Legislative Assembly (MLAs), ve district secretaries
and two other leaders held a press conference and served
an ultimatum on Vijayakanth to reconsider his decision
to align himself with the PWF. The rebels were led by
V.C. Chandhirakumar, MLA and party propaganda secretary, who had stood by Vijayakanth through several
vicissitudes. The other two MLAs were S.R. Parthiban
and C.H. Sekar. Chandhirakumar recalled that Vijayakanth had declared at public meetings and demonstrations that he was prepared to make any sacrice to
achieve his aim of unseating Jayalalithaa in the coming
elections.
Vijayakanth acted decisively to quell the revolt. He
expelled all the rebels from the partys primary membership and appointed new office-bearers in place of the ve
district secretaries and the other two functionaries.
DMDK MLAs K. Nallathambi and Azhagapuram R.
Mohanraj alleged that the DMK was behind the rebellion. Nallathambi said: When Vaiko, Thirumavalavan
and the Left parties have accepted Vijayakanth as the
chief ministerial candidate, how can the DMDK men not
accept it? Mohanraj argued that the party cadres had
endorsed, with applause at the Kancheepuram rally, that
Vijayakanth should become the king. Those who had
left the party were enamoured of power (they want to
become legislators) and the DMK is operating in the
background, Mohanraj said. V. Muthukumar, another
DMDK legislator, was happy that the party was cleansed
with the expulsion of the traitors.
Leaders of the PWF constituents weighed the damage the rebellion might cause to the combine and decided
to help Vijayakanth out. When a conspiracy is under way
to break the DMDK, the PWF will not hesitate to stand
by it [the DMDK], they said. At a press conference on
April 6, Vaiko alleged that the DMK was behind the
revolt. It is in the nature of Karunanidhi to split and
break political parties. If Vijayakanth aligns with the

A I A D M K CA N D I D A TE S on their way to visit Chief

Minister and party general secretary Jayalalithaa at her

residence in Chennai on April 6.
DMK, he is a good man. Since he did not, his party is
being split, Vaiko said. He alleged that efforts were
under way to lure the DMDKs Tirunelveli district secretaries. The DMK and the AIADMK are in the habit of
splitting parties because they do not want any other party
or alliance to come to power in the State. We will weather
the crisis and emerge stronger, said R. Mutharasan,
State secretary of the CPI. CPI(M) leaders were sure that
the DMKs efforts to foment trouble in the DMDK would
lead to aversion towards the DMK.
DMK leader M.K. Stalin termed the rebellion in the
DMDK as its internal affair and charged that Vaiko was
making needless allegations against the DMK.
VASANS WOES

If Jayalalithaa had shut the door on the TMC, it was

because she had no use for Vasan as an ally after Vijayakanth decided to go with the PWF, informed sources
said. If Vijayakanth had decided to partner with the
DMK, she would have welcomed Vasan into the alliance
because a DMK-Congress-DMDK-IUML alliance would
have been formidable, the sources said. What went
28

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have become the norm at the Centre. A similar situation

should be brought about in Tamil Nadu... (Frontline,
June 26, 2015).
Thirumavalavan also pointed out the contradiction
in Stalins approach by saying that while the DMK needed allies to capture power in the State, it would not allow
them to share power with it. (Stalin had categorically
stated that the DMK would not form a coalition government even if the DMK-Congress alliance was voted to
power.) But the DMK is not averse to joining the Congress or the BJP-led governments at the Centre.
Although the DMDK-PWF alliance, the BJP and the
PMK are ghting the elections separately, they share a
common goal. They want to prevent the DMK and the
AIADMK from capturing power. As Premalatha said at a
public meeting in Tiruppur on April 2: A myth has been
created that there is no alternative either to the AIADMK
or to the DMK. When the AIADMK is in power, the
DMK is defeated in all byelections. When the DMK is the
ruling party, the AIADMK loses in all byelections. This
only means that both the AIADMK and the DMK can be
defeated.
The three-point agenda of the DMDK-PWF alliance
is to bring back prohibition, root out corruption and
provide an alternative to the DMK and the AIADMK.
Vaiko said that if the alliance was voted to power, it would
waive farm loans, block the entry of Walmart and foreign
capital and encourage local industry. In an interview
published in Theekkathir, the CPI(M) Tamil organ, on
September 6, 2015, Ramakrishnan said the PWF was
formed to ght the Congress, the BJP, the DMK and the
AIADMK. About 90 per cent of the working class in the
country belonged to the unorganised sector. Education,
housing, hygiene, medical treatment and permanent employment for them had become a question mark, he said.
The policies pursued by the DMK, the AIADMK, the
Congress and the BJP are responsible for this situation
and they cannot nd a solution to this problem. That is
why the PWF has been formed, to provide an alternative
to these parties, Ramakrishnan said. He asserted that
both the DMK and the AIADMK should be combated
simultaneously as there was no difference in their policies and approach.
The PWF campaign has already moved into high
gear. Its leaders released their common minimum programme on November 2, 2015, giving importance to
combating corruption, introducing prohibition, and focussing on areas such as social justice, industries, workers rights and education. They completed ve rounds of
intense campaigning as on March 31. The fth round
began on March 28 at Nagercoil in southern Tamil Nadu
and covered Kovilpatti, Palayamkottai, Sathur and Paramakudi. The BJP has coined the slogan, Let the lotus
bloom and the young generation grow. It has promised
the voters that it will boost electricity generation, agricultural output and industrial production in the State if it is
voted to power.
Jayalalithaa will address 15 public meetings and end
her campaign at Vellore on May 12.

wrong with the TMC strategy was that Vasan painted

himself into a corner by excessively trusting Jayalalithaa.
What made Vasan put all the eggs in Jayalalithaas
basket was that he was under the compulsion to get the
TMC recognised as a State political party by the Election
Commission. The criterion for recognising a party as a
registered political party is that the partys candidates
should together poll at least 6 per cent of the total valid
votes received by all the contesting candidates. This can
be accomplished only if at least 25 TMC candidates get
elected. So, as a rst step, the TMC applied to the Election
Commission and was allotted the poll symbol of coconut
tree farm. Besides, Vasan was desperate to prove that his
party commanded a bigger presence in the State than the
State Congress headed by E.V.K.S. Elangovan. So, the
TMC was keen that the AIADMK should allot about 30
seats to it. But the AIADMK said it would not spare more
than eight seats. As backchannel talks got under way, the
AIADMK said it would give the TMC a maximum of 12
seats.
The TMC was reluctant to accept this number. Worse
still, Jayalalithaa demanded that the TMC candidates
contest on the AIADMK symbol of two leaves. This was
a red rag to the TMC. Vasan announced on March 29 that
the Election Commission had allotted his party the symbol of coconut tree farm. (The AIADMKs six allies will
contest on the two leaves symbol.) This angered Jayalalithaa. On the morning of April 4, even as senior TMC
leaders told this correspondent that communication
was on between the AIADMK and the TMC, and that if
the TMC was allotted 25 seats it would be a respectable
number and if it was offered 18 seats it would be an
honourable number, news came that the AIADMK had
shut the door on the TMC.
REFERENDUM ON COALITION GOVERNMENT

Tamil Nadu will witness a complicated ve-cornered

contest with the AIADMK-led alliance, the DMK-Congress front, the DMDK-PWF alliance, the BJP and the
PMK in the fray. The performance of the DMDK-PWF
alliance will be watched keenly as it is the rst time ve
parties have come together to promise a coalition government. The Assembly elections will be a referendum on
whether the voters are prepared to endorse the idea of a
coalition government in the State. The DMK and the
AIADMK had always maintained that the States electorate favoured single-party rule as coalition governments
spelt instability.
The credit for sowing the idea of a coalition government in the State should go to Thirumavalavan. His
party, the VCK, organised a conference on June 9, 2015,
in Chennai on Forming Coalition Governments in Tamil
Nadu. Thirumavalavan met Vaiko, CPI(M) State secretary G. Ramakrishnan, Mutharasan and Vijayakanth, to
gather support for his idea. After meeting Ramakrishnan, he told reporters: For a long time in Tamil Nadu,
political parties representing marginalised communities
and the minorities and the Left parties are unable to
share power. For 20 years now, coalition governments
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Raz Kr

ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Old rivals and

a new front
In Kerala, the UDF, overcoming the inghting in the Congress, and the
LDF are ready with their lists of candidates to resume their age-old
electoral rivalry, but much depends on the performance of the
BJP-led third front. B Y R . K R I S H N A K U M A R

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

K.K. MUSTAFAH

PRACTICAL POLITICS is the dominant avour of

the elections to the Kerala Assembly this time, and principles, idealism and political propriety fade into the background as the two established coalitions led by the
Congress and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or
CPI(M), ght one of the keenest electoral battles of 2016.
The contest has been made complex by the efforts of the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to build a third alternative
in a State that has remained markedly bipolar thus far.
Even the idealist president of the State Congress,
V.M. Sudheeran, was forced to admit at the end of the
partys bitter candidate selection discussions that the
Congress high command may eventually nd his proposals to keep out ve corruption-tainted party MLAs impractical. His other proposal was to deny the party ticket
to those who had been representing a constituency more
than four times.
Sure enough, all the MLAs, including three State
Ministers, whom the Pradesh Congress Committee
(PCC) president especially wanted to be left out, found
their way into the nal list approved by the party high
command, except for Benny Behanan, a popular MLA
from Thrikkakkara, who opted out.
Thus, eventually, it was the pragmatic Chief Minister,
Oommen Chandy, who had his way, effectively checkmating the high command and his party rivals in the
State, by arguing that he too would have to step down if
unproven corruption allegations against people in public life were to be the criterion for denying them the ticket.
The State party and the United Democratic Front
(UDF) were horried when, just before the elections
were announced and even as Ministers went into overdrive inaugurating long-pending projects, the PCC president began a tooth-and-nail battle to make the
government withdraw a handful of controversial last-

I N P A LAKKA D on April 5, a CPI(M) worker wears a

poster of V.S. Achuthanandan and attempts to speak on
his mobile phone.
30

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PTI

minute notications permitting large-scale conversion of

wetlands and transfer of government land to private
hands. The notications, which smacked of blatant corruption by a government already immersed in bribery
scandals, were more than what the opposition had bargained for. But with elections round the corner, Sudheeran perhaps found in it the best opportunity to at least
try and improve the partys image by forcing the government to reconsider these decisions and then possibly
denying the ticket to some people.
The notications on the land deals were withdrawn,
but the decision, instead of improving the UDFs image,
only put renewed focus on the record of corruption of its
government and proved to be a godsend for the Left
Democratic Front (LDF). The dispute grew essentially
into one over allowing Ministers K. Babu, Adoor Prakash
and K.C. Joseph, representing Tripunithura, Konni and
Irikkur constituencies respectively, and MLAs Benny
Behanan and Dominic Presentation from Thrikkakkara
and Kochi respectively, to contest again.
Sudheerans solution proved to be a two-edged
sword, one that gave the opposition enough ground for
legitimising its allegations. If, as he proposed, some people were kept out of the list, that would be as good as
admitting that they were corrupt. If, on the other hand,
they were included after all the recent fuss in the party,
that would be seen as a move done with scant regard for
probity in public life.
CONGRESS POWER EQUATIONS

As the CPI(M) and the other parties in the LDF quietly

went ahead with their own troublesome candidate selection process, the UDF remained stuck for days over the
issue. The power equations within the State Congress
with two prominent groups led by Oommen Chandy
and Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala sharing most
of the spoils nowadays and Sudheeran, who became PCC
chief in February 2014, also gaining a few supporters
meant that the target of the corruption allegations
were Oommen Chandys close aides in the Cabinet and
the party.
At one stage the party high command had to choose
between its State president and the legislature party
leader. Oommen Chandy won with his argument that
denying the ticket to the MLAs would appear like an
admission of guilt and would be detrimental to the UDF
when the party was planning to approach the electorate
on the basis of the performance of his government. He
also put forth that the Ministers and MLAs concerned
were seasoned politicians with their own support base
and removing them without nding equally capable alternatives would be disastrous for the UDF. He also
insisted that the allegations were yet to be proved and
that if the high command took the decision to drop the
MLAs he too would have to step down from the leadership position.
That was an ultimatum the high command could not
ignore. Despite the allegations heaped on him personally
(Frontline, April 15, 2016), and on this government,

I N KOZHI KOD E , supporters paint a wall for the UDF

candidates campaign.

Oommen Chandy continued to be the most popular Congress leader in Kerala and a crowd-puller for UDF candidates. In the end, with the Muslim League, the second
most prominent UDF partner, too throwing its weight
behind him, the high command decided in the Chief
Ministers favour. There was a last-minute suggestion to
drop at least one MLA, Benny Behanan, in deference to
Sudheerans suggestions. But in a surprising move, Behanan said he was opting out of the race as he did not want
to go against the wishes of his party president or put the
Chief Minister or the party in a quandary.
Oommen Chandy again emerged triumphant within
his party, but is now left with the onus of seeing the UDF
through in this election. Though there were many who
agreed with Sudheerans suggestions and considered
them a lifeline for the discredited coalition, they also felt
that his idealistic position came too late in the day and
that it was silent on the issue of corruption involving
others in the party and the UDF. In the end, Sudheeran
withdrew, and said that though he still felt that his
proposals would have helped the party improve its image,
once the high command had decided the nal list every
party member should fall in line.
Even by the end of March, when the LDF announced
its rst list of 124 (out of a total 140) candidates, the
Congress and the UDF were struggling over the exercise,
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with the top leaders themselves leading the tussle that

eventually led to confusion and mini revolutions in several constituencies. By April 4, when the party announced
its rst list of 83 candidates, 33 of its 39 MLAs were in it;
two Ministers, Aryadan Muhammed (Nilambur) and
C.N. Balakrishnan (Wadakkanchery), opted out on their
own.
Soon the Congress saw even its feeder organisations,
such as the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC), rising in revolt over non-representation in the list.
In several crucial constituencies, such as Kollam, Palakkad, Thrissur and Ernakulam, those who were denied the
ticket threatened to contest as rebels.
HOUSE IN ORDER

The political drama within the Congress had Kerala

transxed during the early phase of the 2016 election
campaign and it gave the LDF an opportunity to steal a
march over its main rival and to quietly tackle the early
troubles within its own ranks.
There were controversial decisions in the CPI(M)s
candidate selection process, too, especially with regard to
its decision to eld outsiders, among them lm actors
KPAC Lalitha (who later withdrew as the candidate in
Wadakkanchery ) and Mukesh (in Kollam), in addition
to the controversial former UDF Minister and actor K.B.
Ganesh Kumar (of the Kerala Congress-B); media persons Veena George (in Aranmula) and Nikesh Kumar
(Communist Marxist Party leader M.V. Raghavans son,
in Azhikode); and some traders and businessmen in
Muslim League strongholds in Malappuram district. In
all, the CPI(M) list includes eight independents, among
them long-time associates K.T. Jaleel (Tavanur), who
defeated the League supremo K.P. Kunhalikutty in Kuttippuram in 2006, and the former MLA P.T.A. Rahim.
There was also an undercurrent of criticism that the
CPI(M)s candidates list had subtly excluded some V.S.
Achuthanandan camp followers, among them, for example, former Labour Minister P.K. Gurudasan (who represented Kollam) and former Fisheries Minister S. Sarma
(Vypeen).
But, in general, the CPI(M) was able to keep its house
in order at least outwardly. Most observers were expecting trouble within the Left camp, considering that in
previous elections factional rivalry within the CPI(M),
between its top leaders Pinarayi Vijayan and V.S.
Achuthanandan, had spoilt the chances of the coalition,
but it was the ruling UDF that was in such a situation this
time.

UDF, in check, with the CPI, the second biggest constituent of the Left front, alone getting to contest the seats it
had contested last time.
Thus, two of the three MLAs who switched over from
the UDF (K.B. Ganesh Kumar of the KC(B) and Kovoor
Kunjumon, formerly of the Revolutionary Socialist Party) made it to the list, but the third, the UDFs controversial former Chief Whip P.C. George (who won as a
Kerala Congress (Mani) candidate from Poonjar in
2006), did not. Similar disappointment awaited the Janathipatya Samrakshana Samiti (JSS) leader and former
CPI(M) rebrand, Gowri Amma. Yet, the CPI(M) gave
four key seats to a edgling party, the Democratic Kerala
Congress, formed by the latest group to leave the Kerala
Congress (Mani), the third most prominent party in the
UDF, on election eve. The CPI(M), perhaps, expects this
splinter group of the Kerala Congress (Mani) to help its
interests more in the Christian belt of central Kerala than
the other contenders: Kerala Congress (Scaria Thomas),
already an LDF constituent, which was offered only one
seat, and P.C. George, who is rumoured to have engineered the defection of a CPI(M) MLA soon after the
Oommen Chandy government came to power on a thin
majority in 2011.
The LDF was able to complete its candidates list by
early April, with the CPI(M) contesting in 92 of the 140
Assembly seats, which is one fewer than last time, and the
CPI in 27 seats. The share of the others are as follows:
Janata Dal (S) ve seats; the Nationalist Congress Party
(NCP) and the Democratic Kerala Congress four seats
each; the Indian National League (INL) three seats; and
all the rest, including the Congress (S), the Kerala Congress (B), the Kerala Congress (Scaria Thomas) and the
CMPs splinter group, one each.
The only prominent person to leave the LDF camp
was former Minister V. Surendran Pillai, who took the

REALIGNMENT OF FORCES

A gradual realignment of political forces has happened in

Kerala after the last Assembly elections, with a few UDF
constituents or prominent MLAs individually leaving the
ruling front in the past year or two and associating themselves with the CPI(M) and the LDF. But the CPI(M) has
offered seats only to those it sees as serving its interests
well in this election. The party was also able to keep its
allies, including those who had crossed over from the
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BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

and Kattakkada respectively (all four in Thiruvananthapuram district); another former State president P.S.
Sreedharan Pillai in Chengannur and general secretary
M.T. Ramesh in Aranmula (both in central Kerala);
former president C.K. Padmanabhan in Kunnamangalam in Thrissur district; State president of the Mahila
Morcha Shobha Surendran in Palakkad; and former
State general secretary K. Surendran in Manjeswaram in
Kasaragod district.
The partys main ally, the newly formed Bharat Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), is set to contest in 37 seats, and has
announced that it will have candidates in all the 14
districts of the State, except Kasaragod. The alliance is
part of the BJP Central leaderships strategy of changing
its image as a party of upper-caste groups. On April 6, the
rebrand tribal leader C.K. Janu announced the formation of a new party of Adivasis, the Scheduled Castes and
other marginalised sections, raising the hopes of the BJP,
which was yet to nalise the list of candidates or formally
inaugurate the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in
Kerala.
Janu announced after talks with BJP-BDJS leaders
and despite protests from her colleagues in the Adivasi
Gothra Mahasabha that her new party, the Janathipatya
Rashtriya Sabha (JRS), would be in the fray as an NDA
ally if they could meet her demands. She also said, in that
case, she would contest the election from Sulthan Bathery in Wayanad district (now held by the Congress) as an
NDA Independent.
In the UDF, which nally announced its nearly full
list by April 6, the Congress is contesting in 83 seats (one
more than in 2006), while the Muslim League and the
Kerala Congress (M) have candidates in 24 and 15 seats
respectively. Until the very end, the much-discredited
Kerala Congress (Mani) group was arguing for one seat
more but to no avail. The distribution of seats for the
other parties in the seven-party alliance is as follows:
Janata Dal (United) seven seats; RSP ve seats; Kerala
Congress (Jacob) two seats; and the CMP one seat. (A
decision on three more seats, Kalliyasseri, Kanjangad
and Payyannur, all Left strongholds, was yet to be announced at the time of ling this report.)
Even though they are now in an unlikely alliance in
West Bengal, the Congress and the CPI(M), leading the
ruling and opposition coalitions respectively, have a history of nasty rivalry in Kerala. Winning the Assembly
elections this time is crucial for both parties, given the
dearth of States where they have inuence. As the campaign begins in earnest, the LDF too, with all its advantages as a strong opposition coalition, cannot afford
to take it easy, even though all parties in the UDF (except
the Muslim League, which announced its candidates
before the elections were announced) have lost much
ground in the early phase of the campaign. But with more
than a month to make up, the main question in Kerala,
where a large number of seats are decided on thin victory
margins, is how far the new BJP-led third fronts share of
votes will affect the prospects of the two established
coalitions.

IN THI R UV A N A N T H A P U RA M , the BJP's candidate

S. Sreesanth on the campaign trail.

decision after his party, Kerala Congress (Scaria Thomas), was offered only one seat, Kaduthuruthy (a UDF
citadel), where Scaria Thomas, chairman of the party,
was the candidate. Surendran Pillai, co-chairman of the
party, had eyes on Thiruvananthapuram Central constituency for long, where he believed he had a ghting
chance against Health Minister V.S. Siva Kumar of the
Congress and, lately, the BJPs star candidate, the cricketer S. Sreesanth. But with the LDF giving that seat to the
Democratic Kerala Congress candidate Antony Raju,
who was until the other day a staunch K.M. Mani supporter, Surendran Pillai began discussions to join the
UDF and contest as the Janata Dal (United) candidate in
the neighbouring constituency of Nemom.
BJP HOPEFUL

Nemom, where the BJP has elded former Union Minister O. Rajagopal, is a miniature stage that embodies the
three-cornered ght that the partys new alliance hopes
to enact to its advantage in Kerala. The BJP traditionally
has a strong base in the constituency that includes parts
of Thiruvananthapuram city. But with both the LDF and
the UDF having a powerful presence, it could thus far be
only second best there. The constituency is currently
being represented by the CPI(M)s V. Sivankutty, a former Mayor of Thiruvananthapuram.
The BJP announced its list of candidates early without trouble, with all the top State leaders in the fray in key
constituencies where they believe they have a chance of
victory. They include, in addition to Rajagopal in Nemom, the new State president Kummanam Rajasekharan in Vattiyoorkavu, and former presidents V.
Muraleedharan and P.K. Krishna Das in Kazhakkoottam
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ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS

Mixed prospects
While the Trinamool Congress looks unstoppable in Jangalmahal, its
fate seems uncertain in north Bengal. In the next phase of polling a lot
will depend on the BJPs performance.

PHOTOGRAPHS: SUDHRID SHANKAR CHATTOPADYAY

BY S U H R I D S A N K A R C H A T T O P A D H Y A Y

CP I( M ) L E A D E R S Asok Bhattacharya and Jibesh Sarkar campaigning in Siliguri.

governments development work is likely to fetch electoral dividends in Jangalmahal, the organisational weaknesses of the ruling party in north Bengal is a cause for
concern for the Chief Minister. Moreover, with the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front and the
State unit of the Congress joining forces, the Trinamool
Congress is expecting stiff contest even in areas that are
considered its strongholds.
Behula Sabar of Lohamelia village in the Lodhasuli
region of Pashchim Medinipur remembers the Maoist
terror. Maoists used to take away the men of the villages
at night. During the day, they would come and pick up
the women and keep us standing in open elds under the
sun for hours. There would be regular abductions and
murders. Those days seem far away; now we live united
and peacefully, she told Frontline. Along with peace and

TWO of the biggest achievements of West Bengal

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee since assuming power
in 2011 are restoring peace in the Maoist strongholds of
Jangalmahal and ending, at least temporarily, the disturbance caused by the separatist Gorkhaland movement
in the Darjeeling Hills of north Bengal. In fact, Jangalmahal is laughing, Darjeeling Hills are smiling, has been
Mamata Banerjees catchphrase whenever the achievements of the Trinamool Congress government are trumpeted in public. However, the partys prospects in north
Bengal and the three districts of Pashchim Medinipur,
Bankura and Purulia, the forest areas of which constitute
Jangalmahal, where the rst phase (April 4 and 11) and
second phase (April 17) of elections to the State Assembly
are being held, do not appear to be that bright.
These two regions present contrasting pictures. If the
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is ahead in only two. It is nowhere in the reckoning in the

12 seats in Bankura, but the situation may not be as bleak
as it was in 2014.
In the past two years, the political situation and voter
perception have been witnessing a change. In Purulia,
where the Congress still enjoys substantial support and
the probability of transfer of votes between the two allies
is high, the opposition combine is expected to do well in
at least ve of the nine constituencies.
Bitter inghting in the Trinamool Congress and the
regrouping of the Left have given the Left-Congress combine a ghting chance in at least three seats in Bankura,
particularly in Taldangra where the CPI(M) has been
successfully resisting alleged persecution by the ruling
party.
One of the crucial seats in the Jangalmahal region is
the Narayangarh seat in Pashchim Medinipur, where
CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and Leader of the Opposition in the State Assembly Surjya Kanta Mishra is contesting. In the 2011 elections, Mishra won by a margin of
7,000-odd votes against the combined strength of the
Trinamool Congress and the Congress, defying a massive
anti-incumbency wave across the State.

security has come development. Behula Sabars family,

which earlier eked out a meagre living collecting rewood from the forests, feels it is far better off today than it
was before. There are better roads. We get more medicines at the health centre. We get assistance from the
panchayat and help from projects such as the Rashtriya
Krishi Vikas Yojana [RKVY]. We earn more through the
100 days work project [under the Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or
MGNREGA] and we get rice at Rs.2 a kilogram. [Mamata Banerjee has extended the provisions of the National
Food Security Act to the entire tribal population of Jangalmahal.] Thanks to didis ashirbad [blessings], we can
now educate our children, she said. Many of the State
government schemes, such as the Kanyashree (for the
uplift of the girl child), Sabuj Sathi (bicycle distribution
to girl students), and rural housing schemes, have found
favour with the people of the region.
Dukhi Mandi, 22, of Narda village works for the
RKVY project and plays football for a subdivisional club.
She remembers that when the Maoist movement was at
its peak between 2008 and 2011, young girls could not
think of venturing out of the house unescorted. Now, we
are free to do whatever we want, she said.
Even in regions where development has not reached
as promised, people are grateful to the government for
whatever little they have received. Satyabir Bain of Lalgarh, a region well known for the Maoist movement in
the State, said hardly any work was undertaken under the
MGNREGA and other schemes and the authorities made
it impossible to collect rewood. But those days of terror
are gone, and we are happy with the food didi is giving
us, he said.
Going by the reaction of the people, Jangalmahal
appears to be rmly behind Mamata Banerjee, although
it does seem a little ironic that the peace she is believed to
have brought about came after a lot of bloodshed. Maoist
extremists killed several workers, leaders and supporters
of the previous Left Front government at the height of
their movement. In 2010, Maoists killed 260 people
(civilians and security personnel) in Jangalmahal.
The Trinamool Congress lled the resulting political
vacuum. At the time, Mamata Banerjee, who was in the
opposition, protested against the deployment of Central
forces in Jangalmahal. She even shared the dais with
Chhatradhar Mahato, the leader of the Peoples Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), an alleged front of
the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). When
her political fortunes started soaring, she distanced herself from Maoists and after coming to power, used the
same Central forces to ruthlessly suppress the extremist
movement.
The Maoist stronghold of Pashchim Medinipur, Bankura and Purulia districts accounts for 13 seats. In the
rest of the seats in the three districts, going by party-wise
performance in the Assembly segments in the 2014 Lok
Sabha elections, the situation does not look promising for
the Left-Congress combine. Out of the 19 Assembly segments in Pashchim Medinipur, the opposition combine

B HA I CHUN G BHUTI A , the Trinamool Congress

candidate, campaigning in Siliguri.

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tea garden which has remained closed since February

2015.
Siliguri is a key constituency in Darjeeling district. It
can be said that it is here that the resistance to the ruling
partys sway began after the municipal elections, paving
the way for the Left-Congress alliance. Asok Bhattacharya, the architect of this resistance of the CPI(M) and
Mayor of the Siliguri Municipal Corporation, is contesting from the seat.
One thing that we have proved is that the Trinamool
Congress can be defeated, and if all opposition parties
stand united, we can give protection to the people when
the time comes to cast their votes, Bhattacharya told
Frontline. Bhaichung Bhutia, the Indian footballer who
is contesting on the Trinamool Congress ticket, is a complete outsider to Siliguri. In fact, it was only on March 7
that he got his name removed from the voter list in his
home State of Sikkim and applied to have his voter
identity transferred to Kolkata. Bhaichungs campaign
rallies appear tepid compared with the traffic-stopping
response to the processions taken out by the Congress
and the CPI(M).
In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, along with
the GJM, led in six of the seven Assembly segments in
Darjeeling, including the three hill seats of Darjeeling,
Kurseong and Kalimpong. Although it is unlikely that the
GJM, which is the strongest political force in the Darjeeling Hills, will lose its grip, it will for the rst time face
a strong challenge in the Kalimpong seat from the former
GJM heavyweight Harka Bahadur Chhetri, who recently
oated the Jan Andolan Party and has the tacit support of
the Trinamool Congress. It also remains to be seen how
far the GJMs considerably reduced inuence in the
plains will help the BJP.
The sudden increase in the percentage of votes for the
BJP from 6 to 17 all over the State in 2014 was attributed
to the Narendra Modi wave. It would have long died
down and is unlikely to resurface, at least not for this
election. A lot will depend on who will gain the most from
the BJPs loss. For example, in Dabgram-Phullbari in
Jalpaiguri district, where the Trinamool Congress Minister for North Bengal Development, Gautam Deb, is contesting, how the BJP fares will make a difference. In the
2011 Assembly elections, the Trinamool-Congress combine defeated the CPI(M) candidate by over 11,000 votes.
The BJP had secured only 10,623 votes. In the 2014 Lok
Sabha elections, the Trinamool Congress was in the lead
with 69,700 votes, the Left polled 51,562 votes and the

However, in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, even after

adding the Congress vote share to the Lefts tally, the
Trinamool Congress was ahead by over 22,000 votes.
The situation has changed in favour of the Left since
then, and Mishras personal popularity in the region still
makes him a favourite.
Biswanath Chakraborty, well-known psephologist
and social scientist, told Frontline: The fact that in spite
of the burden of being the State secretary of the party, and
against all odds in his own constituency, he has not
backed out of the contest has gone down well with the
people of Narayangarh.
On one occasion, while campaigning in his constituency, Mishra was stopped by a group of women supporters who told him: There is no need for you to campaign
here when we are around. You have more work to do in
other places. Mishra smiled and said: It is the love of the
people that actually keeps us going.
STIFF CHALLENGE IN NORTH BENGAL

The ruling party will be severely affected in north Bengal,

which goes to the polls on April 17, if the electoral understanding between the Left and the Congress results in
transfer of votes to either party. Organisationally, the
Trinamool Congress has never been strong in north Bengal. It could establish itself in the region by virtue of its
alliance in 2011 with the Congress and the Gorkha Janamukti Morcha (GJM), which was a crucial political factor
in the seven seats in Darjeeling. However, the ruling
partys position looks vulnerable in the region, with the
Left and the Congress joining forces and the GJM announcing that it will defeat the Trinamool Congress.
If the development plank will see Mamata Banerjee
through in Jangalmahal, the lack of it in north Bengal
particularly in the tea-growing belt of Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar and Darjeelingwill make the ght tough for
the ruling party. With the tea industry in the doldrums,
quite a few large tea gardens were closed or abandoned,
leaving very little scope for alternative means of livelihood for the people in the region. In the past ve years,
more than 200 tea garden workers have died of malnutrition and because of the lack of medical facilities.
The Killcott tea estate has not been operating since
last year. Its owners, the Duncan Group, have not officially closed it down, but it is an abandoned garden to all
intents and purposes. Politicians do not even come here
to ask for our votes. They dare not face our questions. No
rations, no payment, we are inching towards death, said
Basant Mahali, a worker in the garden. The residential
areas of the gardens wear a deserted look. Most of the
able-bodied men have migrated to other States in search
of work, some of them with their wives, leaving their
children in the care of their aged parents or others who
have chosen to stay back. The women of the closed and
abandoned gardens travel long distances on foot to work
in neighbouring gardens. The government gives us rice
at Rs.2 a kg. But you cannot feed children rice alone.
Where is the money for their education, clothes and other
things? said Gouri Oran, 40, a resident of the Bagrakote
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The Trinamool Congress

will have a tough ght in
at least six of the nine
seats in Bardhaman.
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put their long-standing animosity behind them in this

erstwhile CPI(M) bastion.
CONGRESS BASTIONS

The presence of the Left-Congress combine is likely to

scuttle the Trinamool Congress hopes of capturing the
Congress bastions of Malda and Murshidabad and Uttar
Dinajpur, provided there is a high rate of transfer of
votes. Out of the 12 seats in Malda, the Trinamool Congress can hope to win only four. While in Malatipur and
Harishchandrapur, where both the Congress and the
Left have elded candidates, the ruling party hopes to
gain by the division of votes, in English Bazar and Manikchak it is banking on its heavyweight candidates, Krishnendu Narayan Chowdhury and Sabitri Mitra. In the Lok
Sabha election, the BJP led in English Bazar by a huge
margin over its nearest rival, the Congress. According to
Pankaj Chaubey, a close aide of Mausam Benazir Noor,
the Congress MP from Uttar Malda, the Left-Congress
combine is sure to win at least 10 seats in the district.
Left and Congress workers have been working with such
unity that it is difficult to tell them apart, Chaubey said.
To make matters worse for Mamata Banerjee, a terrible tragedy struck Kolkata because of the alleged negligence of the State government: a large part of a yover
under construction in the heart of the city collapsed on
March 31, killing 27 people. The accident not only exposed a serious lapse on the part of the government and
its agency, the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, but also revealed an alleged nefarious connection
between some of the local bigwigs of the Trinamool
Congress and the subcontractors engaged in the construction.
Although the Trinamool Congress tried to put the
blame on the previous Left Front government, during
whose tenure the building of the yover was commissioned and the contract given to a Hyderabad-based
company, IVRCL, there was no denying that the bulk of
the work was done during the tenure of the Trinamool
Congress.
The accident, which came just three weeks after the
Narada News sting operation showed top Trinamool
Congress leaders, including its MPs and Cabinet Ministers, accepting cash on camera, has struck yet another
blow to the partys image and will no doubt affect its poll
prospects in Kolkata and its surrounding areas. When
the Mayor of Kolkata, Sovan Chatterjee (who was also
caught in the Narada sting), went to the accident site, a
crowd that had gathered there heckled him and shouted
chor, chor (thief, thief).
The tragedy gave the opposition fresh ammunition to
attack the Trinamool Congress. CPI(M) Polit Bureau
member Mohammad Salim said: Trinamool and corruption have become synonymous. The Narada sting and
the yover collapse prove that. With the Assembly elections stretching for over a month (April 4 to May 5), the
pressure is mounting on Mamata Banerjee and her party
as they nd it difficult to counter the allegations that
seem to be piling up.

R U R A L W E L F A R E schemes undertaken by the

Mamata Banerjee government have found favour with

the people of Jangalmahal.
Congress 9,413. The BJP secured 64,990 votes. The BJP
not losing its vote share to the Left-Congress alliance will
be crucial in Gautam Deb retaining his seat.
Another place where the BJPs performance may be a
crucial factor will be the nine seats in the industrial and
mining belt of Bardhaman district, which goes to the
polls on April 11. The BJP won two Lok Sabha seats in
2014, one from this region and the other from Darjeeling.
However, in the subsequent municipal elections, its performance in the relevant electoral segments was dismal.
According to Left sources, the Left-Congress combine
hopes to retrieve at least 5 per cent of the votes the BJP
got in the Lok Sabha election in Bardhaman. In such a
situation, the Trinamool Congress will have a tough ght
in at least six of the nine seats. Unlike the rural regions
where relief measures are there for agricultural workers,
industrial workers have received no such benets. The
Left has had a traditional support base here, and [Congress vice president] Rahul Gandhis rally on April 2
showed a strong united stand by the Left-Congress combine, said Biswanath Chakraborty. However, it remains
to be seen whether the Congress and the Left can actually
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Vigorous voting
Assam records a high voter turnout in the rst phase of polling as the
Congress ghts the anti-incumbency factor. B Y P R A B I R K U M A R T A L U K D A R
THE rst phase of polling in the Assam Legislative
Assembly elections on April 4 saw a voter turnout of over
80 per cent. A total of 539 candidates, including 46
women, were in the fray for 65 constituencies. The ruling
Congress contested all the 65 seats, while the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) contested 52. With the Congress
seeking its fourth straight term in office and therefore
inevitably facing anti-incumbency sentiments, the heavy
voter turnout in the rst phase seems to augur well for the
BJP.
The Barak valley, the hill districts and Upper Assam,
including Majuli and Titabor constituencies, went to the
polls in the rst phase. Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi of the
Congress contested from Titabor, and Sarbananda Sonowal, chief ministerial candidate of the BJP, contested
from Majuli.
Apart from the candidates from the two major parties, there were 70 other contestants from different political parties in the rst phase of polling. There were nine
candidates from the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP),
10 from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), 10 from
the Communist Party of India (CPI), 11 from the Asom
Gana Parishad (AGP), 27 from the All India United
Democratic Front (AIUDF) and three from the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF). A total of 12,190 polling
booths were set up; 3,739 polling stations were sensitive, including 1,992 marked as hypersensitive, apart
from 1,241 critical polling stations.
Speaking to reporters, Chief Electoral Officer Vijendra said: Critical voting stations are identied as
those where the last election saw 90 per cent polling and
where one candidate cornered around 70 per cent vote
share. Provision for webcasting and videography has
been made in these stations. Out of the total 24,888
polling stations in Assam, 3,663 have been marked as
hypersensitive and 7,629 as sensitive by the Election
Commission.
Referring to the share of polling stations across As-

M OR E T H A N 80 PE R C EN T O F V O T ERS turned out to

exercise their franchise in the rst phase of polling in Assam
on April 4. Here, at a polling booth in Silchar.
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ing) and 2011 (76.08 per cent polling).

The BJPs chief election plank is illegal immigration,
which is also its most important weapon against the
ruling Congress. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley visited
Guwahati on March 25 to release the BJPs Vision Document. Picking on the issue of immigrants crossing over
illegally from Bangladesh, he accused the Congress of
being complicit in efforts to change the States demography.
The Congress tried to destroy and change the demography of the State by encouraging inltration, he
said. He promised that Assam would get 148 per cent
more funds under the 14th Finance Commission (20152020) compared with what it got under the 13th Finance
Commission (2010-2015) because of higher tax devaluation of 42 per cent against the 32 per cent earlier. He
said that this time tax devaluation for Assam would be
Rs.1,43,239 crore against the earlier Rs.57,850 crore.
Sarbananda Sonowal said that the BJPs Vision Document had been created by a participatory process. Its a
unique way to connect with the people and address the
problems of Assam, Sonowal said.
Gogoi released his partys election manifesto with the
promise of speeding up development. He also promised a
Rs.500-crore package for Majuli island, which is facing
rapid erosion. A special package for tea farmers, who
form the Congress core constituency, and upliftment of
the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes were
among the other promises of Gogoi.

sam, Vijendra said that only 12 per cent polling stations

are based in the urban areas. The remaining 88 per cent
are in the rural areas. There are around 1.98 crore voters
in the State, and 95 lakh of them are women. Around 6.78
lakh voters are in the 18-19 age group. The heavy turnout
of young voters lends credence to the theory that people
are looking for a change.
The 1985 Assembly election recorded 79.12 per cent
polling and resulted in the AGP sweeping to power. In
1991, 74.61 per cent voter turnout was recorded and the
Congress came back to power. The AGP was elected to
power in 1996, when 78.92 per cent polling was recorded.
The Congress won all the elections that followed, in
2001(75.05 per cent polling), 2006 (75.77 per cent poll-

CAMPAIGN

PTI

There was aggressive campaigning by both the Congress

and the BJP in the latter half of March. Prime Minister
Narendra Modi visited Tinsukia and Jorhat in upper
Assam and also Majuli. Majuli is a Congress stronghold,
but this is where Sarbananda Sonowal is in the fray
against Rajib Lochan Pegu of the Congress. Modi urged
the people of Assam to give the BJP a chance to correct 60
years of Congress misrule but did not harp on illegal
immigration. Not unexpectedly, he used his own background as a tea-seller to connect with voters, especially
the tea tribes. In one rally he said: 'I have three agendas.
Development, fast development, and all-round
development.
BJP president Amit Shah campaigned vigorously in
the State, lacing his speeches with anecdotes and sloganeering. He stressed that the BJP was the only party that
could ush out illegal immigrants from the State.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke on similar lines
in election rallies in Mahmora, Thowra and Moran constituencies. He asserted that the National Democratic
Alliance (NDA) government would completely seal the
border with Bangladesh within a reasonable time frame
and questioned the Congress governments failure to do
so in the last 15 years. He added that the largest number
of riots in Assam and in the rest of India had taken place
under Congress rule and referred to the Nellie killings of
1983 in Assam and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 in Delhi.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi was not slow to
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Operation All Clear.

2. Sarbananda Sonowal, who was with the AGP before he joined the BJP in 2011, is accused of not chanting
Joi Aai Axom in the land of Assam and instead shouting
Bharat Mata Ki Jai.
3. The AGP should clear its position on the secret
killings.
4. Taking exception to the nomination of Bhaskar
Sarma from Margherita constituency, a former member
of the insurgent group, Paresh Baruah has warned voters
that there will be grave consequences if the voting goes in
favour of the BJP and its allies.

counter the BJPs claims. Those working in the tea

gardens as well as the tea tribes are still waiting anxiously
for achhe din [the BJPs election promise ahead of the
2014 Lok Sabha election]. But its been two years since
Modi promised, and nothing happened, she said at an
election rally at Amguri constituency in Sivsagar district
in the State. Accusing Modi of insulting Assam and its
people by not keeping his election promises, she said that
the era of peace and development that the Congress had
brought to this State would be completely erased if the
BJP-AGP-BPF came to power'. She added: When they
[the AGP, ghting this election as an ally of the BJP]
ruled the State, it was known as a State of anarchy and
insurgency. Fifteen years of sparkling Congress rule
crushed the insurgency and brought peace to the whole
State.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi termed the
2016 Assembly elections in Assam as a ght between two
ideologies. He campaigned aggressively for the second
phase of the elections due on April 11. On the one hand
there is an ideology that fought against the British,
brought the Constitution, and respects the citizens of the
country, which goes by the name of Congress. And then
there is this second ideology which believes in breaking
things apart, imparts communal hatred, the name of
which is Narendra Modi, BJP and RSS [Rashtriya
Swayamsewak Sangh], he said at a rally in Goalpara on
April 4.

TEA TRIBES

There are around 820 tea gardens spread across the

seven districts of Jorhat, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Sivsagar, Dhemaji, Tinsukia and Golaghat. The workers of
these tea gardens constitute 17 per cent of the States
population. Their votes are therefore potentially decisive
in about 35 constituencies in Upper Assam. The BJP won
just one of these seats in the 2011 Assembly elections,
while the Congress won 26. In the 2014 Lok Sabha
elections, however, tea garden workers voted for the BJP
in large numbers and pushed up the partys vote share in
the region from a meagre 13 per cent to a staggering 45
per cent.
In the two years that the Modi government has held
power at the Centre, communities hoping for S.T. status
seem no closer to getting it; free rations for tea garden
workers have been stopped; a long-standing demand for
the raising of the minimum wage from Rs.130 to Rs.250
remains unfullled.
The Congress, of course, does not let go of any chance
to point out that the BJPs election promises have not
been honoured. It will be interesting to see how the
people of this region vote this time.
The All Adivasi Students Association of Assam (AASAA) has declared its support for the BJP and its allies,
accusing the Congress of neglecting the AASAAs interests. The Assam Tea Tribes Students Association has
also sided with the BJP in this election. This is no surprise
because Kamakhya Prasad Tasa, belonging to a tea tribe
and the BJPs candidate against Gogoi in Titabor constituency, was a member of the Tea Tribe Students Association.

ULFA

The United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was created on April 7, 1979, with the aim of forming a sovereign state of Assam through an armed struggle. The
groups blood-splattered history and internal conicts
have left it fractured into two camps. The ULFA (I) was
formed by Paresh Baruah after his parting of ways with
the pro-dialogue insurgents. Paresh Baruah reportedly
has 300 armed cadres in his group. The BJP was keen on
coming to an understanding with the ULFA, given its
importance in Assam politics and especially after the
ULFA general secretary, Anup Chetia, was extradited
from Bangladesh where he had been serving a life sentence. But its hopes of securing an understanding with
the ULFA were stalled by the election code of conduct.
The ULFAs present demands include Scheduled Tribe
(S.T.) status for six more communities in Assam, which
would render it a tribal-majority State. The six communities collectively form more than 40 per cent of the States
population.
Unsurprisingly, the ULFA is not happy with the BJPAGP alliance. It sees the AGP as the mastermind of the
secret killings that took place in the State between 1998
and 2001. Seeking clarications on a number of points,
the group has appealed to the people of Assam not to vote
for the BJP and its allies. The group led by the fugitive
Paresh Baruah has asked for clarications on the following issues.
1. The BJP needs to come clean about the whereabouts of 16 ULFA cadres who went missing during
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

APPEAL BY INTELLECTUALS

On April 2, at a meeting with the media in Guwahati by a

group of 42 people, former Gauhati University professor
Dr Hiren Gohain, who led the group, appealed to voters
not to vote for the BJP. He accused the BJP of exploiting
Assam by stoking communal tensions.
Former college principals such as Udayaditya Bharali, Dinesh Baishya, the noted poets Nilamoni Phukan and
Nalinidhar Bhattacharyya, the writers Nirupama Bargohain and Anima Guha, and the activist Loknath Goswami were part of the group. The groups appeal has been
criticised as anti-democratic in some quarters, coming
as it did just before the rst phase of polling.

40

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CONTROVERSY

Caught in a trap

G. RAMAKRISHNA

The sudden return of HCU Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile from long
leave sparking violence and arrests on the campus shifts public
attention away from the debate on discrimination in universities that
followed Rohith Vemulas suicide in January. B Y K U N A L S H A N K A R

STU D E N T S staging an agitation outside the University of Hyderabad on April 6.

THE resumption of work by Professor Appa Rao Podile, the embattled Vice Chancellor of the
University of Hyderabad, or Hyderabad Central University (HCU), has
sidetracked the national debate following the suicide by the PhD scholar Rohith Vemula on the campus on
January 17 on the silent but pervasive
discrimination based on caste in institutions of higher education across
India. It has instead shifted the focus

to police brutality and the detrimental effects of violence on campus life.

Several observers feel that this was
the real purpose of the return of Appa Rao after his indenite leave of
two months.
Appa Rao said he was not resuming charge under instructions from
higher-ups, meaning the Ministry of
Human Resource Development
(MHRD). Many academics refuse to
buy into that story. Former Universi41

ty Grants Commission (UGC) Chairman Sukhadeo Thorat said: The

leave has to be taken from the Chancellor. Whether in this case the
MHRD did intervene, I dont know.
At the expiry of the leave, he returns
to work. He cannot go on leave for
that long a period without any permission. Another section maintained that in the case of a Central
institution like the HCU, the Visitor
(the President of India) had the nal
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APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

say, but it would be customary for all

decisions to be routed through the
MHRD. Appa Rao claimed: There
are no prescribed rules on how a Vice
Chancellor takes leave and whom he
must keep informed. There are only
established practices (interview on
page 43).
Appa Raos return seems to have
been scripted carefully. Three sheets
of paper the protesting students
could lay their hands on after they
forcefully entered the Vice Chancellors lodge testify to this. The sheets,
titled Tasks for Appa Rao, Tasks
for Krishna Ram, his personal secretary, and Tasks for Faculty Colleagues, listed various tasks for
each. These included the quantity of
milk and water to be bought for the
meeting Appa Rao had called, whom
among the faculty and staff he would
meet, and a standby security beef-up
plan if there is any law and order
problem. The Vice Chancellor
seems to have anticipated violence.
He paid extra attention to law and
order by deputing the Dean of students welfare (DSW) to follow up on
it. Tasks for Appa Rao mentions a
6:45 a.m. phone call to the DSW on
police matters. Another sheet
names three police personnel at the
local police station who should be
informed of his return. Appa Rao
also chose to use the Vice Chancellors official residence for the rst
time since his appointment in September last year, indicating that he
was there to stay.
Telanganas Home Minister Naini Narasimha Reddy told Frontline
that Appa Rao met him a month after Rohith Vemulas suicide. He said:
Appa Rao informed me that he
would like to join duty. I sought the
Police Commissioners opinion, who
suggested against it. The Commissioner said things could get ugly as
the students were agitating. I advised
him not to join duty. Then, we come
to know that he has rejoined, only
after the incident [of violence].
It is rather odd that someone like
Appa Rao, who is known for his meticulousness, did not inform the incharge Vice Chancellor, Dr M. Periyasamy, of his return. Periyasamy,
who has been widely praised for his
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

work, told Frontline that he was

caught unawares when Appa Rao
walked into his hilltop bungalow on
the campus. This has led to accusations that Appa Rao approached only
staff and students who are loyal to
him and, in the process, attempted to
divide the university community.
One of the Deans who attended the
10 a.m. meeting called by Appa Rao
on March 22 conrmed receiving a
call just a few minutes before we reached the venue. Not wishing to be
named, he said: Usually, his personal secretary informs through telephone as well as SMS. That is the
practice. After he [Appa Rao] took
over, every fortnight there used to be
a meeting, and the dates were predecided, mostly with the Deans and
the Executive Council members. But
it was not the case this time.
One non-teaching staff member,
who reached the Vice Chancellors
lodge at 9:30 a.m., claimed that an
office-bearer of the students union
was the rst to arrive at the location
at 10:15 a.m. as soon as news of the
Vice Chancellors return spread. He
said this person got down from his
bike and called someone. As he was
talking on the phone, the staff member heard another voice say, if they
are not allowing you inside, tell them
that we will burn the university. A
few minutes later 20 to 25 students
reached the spot. They demanded
entry through the gate of the Vice
Chancellors residence. When the security officers resisted, they climbed
over the gate and rushed towards the
main door. They began throwing
stones and broke several glass
panes.
THE STAND-OFF

The protesting students said several

members of the right-wing Akhil
Bharatiya
Vidyarthi
Parishad
(ABVP) were kept abreast of Appa
Raos return. They said the ABVP
students were waiting in the backyard of the house to provide the Vice
Chancellor cover and retaliate if violence broke out. A senior member of
the ABVP at the HCU said at least
three ABVP members were present
at the meeting called by Appa Rao,
but that they were there as his stu-

dents from the Life Sciences Department. Some members of the

umbrella students group, the Joint
Action Committee for Social Justice,
admitted to initiating the violence
but said they had walked into a
trap. The JAC was formed in response to the universitys harsh measure of a semesters suspension from
common facilities to ve Dalit research scholars, one of whom was
Rohith Vemula. They said not a single incident of violence was reported
since Rohith Vemulas death, but
this single instance was being used to
show that they had a history of violent behaviour. The stand-off lasted
for about 45 minutes, after which a
massive scale-up of police personnel
was used to calm down tempers.
Subsequently, hundreds of students held peaceful protests on the
lawns of the Vice Chancellors residence. The police urged the students
to disperse. Around 4:30 p.m., the
police began to use force to remove
the students. Several of them were
beaten. Some women students complained of being molested, others
were threatened with rape. Avipsha
Sengupta, a student from West Bengal, said: It didnt matter that we
were women. We were being handled by women police officers. I was
still pulled and kicked in the abdomen, beaten up and dragged out of
the scene.
A police complaint led by the
administration named nine students
and others for the violence. But the
police rounded up just about anyone
who either spoke up or was lming
the incident or was a name they
could recognise from the list of troublemakers provided by the university. Those rounded up included two
faculty members, a young assistant
professor of mathematics and a senior faculty member who heads the
Centre for Ambedkar Studies. Both
were not part of that mornings violence.
In fact, going by the universitys
complaint only three of those arrested caused damage to public property.
Gowtham Uyalla, a postgraduate diploma student at the Centre for Human Rights who was arrested, went
to the Vice Chancellors residence

42

Raz Kr

G. RAMAKRISHNA

U NIVER S I T Y O F H YD ERA B A D students after they were released from

Cherlapalli Central Prison on March 29.

around 4:30 p.m. when he heard announcements over the public address system warning students of
action. Within minutes there was
mayhem. When Gowtham began
lming the incident, an officer who
spotted him swiftly bundled him into
a police vehicle. The bus quickly lled up with 16 others. As the van
neared the university gate, Prasanna
Choudhury, who was lming the arrest, was also picked up. The arrested
were thrashed and abused using the
choicest of epithets, which lasted until the van reached a police station.
The abuse reserved for Muslims and
for those eating beef was heard several times.
Md. Hasanujjaman, an MPhil
student from West Bengal who had
no role in the violence, said: About
six policemen started beating us with
their hands. They didnt spare any
body part. They snatched away my
glasses and when I protested, they
beat me further. They accused me of
being a Pakistani agent and asked
me to go back to Pakistan. They
asked us why we held a candlelight
vigil for Rohith and said that he was a
spoilt child. I am still on painkillers.
An independent lm-maker who
followed the van exiting the university was also arrested. The mobile
phones of those who were arrested
were seized and returned only a week
later when they were released. Evidence of police violence recorded in
the phones was deleted and some of
the phones were even reformatted.
Around 9 p.m. on March 23, after
the outdoor broadcasting vans of
news channels had left, and well over

24 hours after the violence, news

spread of the return of Rohith Vemulas mother, Radhika, and his
brother Raja to the main gate of the
university. Radhika and Raja were
not allowed to enter the university
earlier that evening when they had
come with Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union president
Kanhaiya Kumar. Students who
were protesting inside the campus
rushed to the gate to stage a sit-in in a
show of solidarity with those arrested the previous day. A couple of
media persons, including this correspondent, managed to sneak into the
campus. The university had barred
the entry of media persons following
the violence. Politicians were also
not allowed inside. Students lawyers, led by the Delhi-based Human
Rights Law Network, were not allowed to meet the JAC members.
In a curious turn of events, the
non-teaching staff, who had backed
the students who were protesting after Rohith Vemulas death and kept
the university running for weeks
even when the administration was
closed, struck work on March 22 alleging that the students had used
lthy language against them during the protests. Students were
forced to get food and water from
outside the campus. Allegations of
sweet deals between the Vice Chancellor and the non-teaching staff began to y thick and fast. But a senior
member of the non-teaching staff
said: This is a matter of our selfrespect. We went to protect the Vice
Chancellor and other members only
because of our loyalty to this institu43

tion. We built this institution with

our time, energy, blood and sweat,
and not by showing loyalty to the
Vice Chancellor alone. Had there
been any other professor in Appa
Raos place, we would have done the
same.
The arrested students were produced before the magistrate at her
residence close to midnight that day,
well past the 24 hours required by
the law if the prosecution wished to
seek judicial remand. First information report no. 113 led on the complaint by the university states the
time of the arrest as 6:30 p.m. while
the remand case diaries before the
magistrate says 9 p.m. The judge
granted remand for 15 days and listed the case for further hearing the
next day, when the prosecution
sought time to le a counter. In other
words, the police decided to appeal
against the arrested students bail
petitions. The judge once again
granted time until March 28, a whole
week after the arrests.
Narasimha Reddy admitted to
police violence. He said: Six hours
were given to the students to leave
the Vice Chancellors lodge. The students did not listen. It is only after
that the police resorted to baton
charge. If the police were not there
Appa Rao would have got killed. We
would have been blamed for that later. We had a neutral policythis is a
Central government issue. Just stop
any violence if it takes place. On the
delay in producing the students before a magistrate, he said: The judge
did not give us an earlier time. The
time she gave us is when we produced them. The students were
moved from one police station to another to prevent family and friends
from meeting them and for fear of
attacks on stations from protesting
students, he said.
The Ministers response came
following an embarrassing opposition uproar both inside the Assembly
and outside, bringing the HCU much
closer to Telangana politics than
Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhara
Rao would have liked. Asaduddin
Owaisi, leader of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), met the students at the citys
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APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Complaint wont
stand legal scrutiny
Interview with Appa Rao Podile,
Vice Chancellor, Hyderabad Central University.
BY K U N A L S H A N K A R

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

central jail and expressed concern

over the police high-handedness.
Owaisis brother Akbaruddin said on
the oor of the House four days after
the arrest: I do not want my Chief
Minister and my State to get a bad
name. I am saying this as a supporter
of the Telangana government [the
AIMIM is the Telangana Rashtra Samithis alliance partner]. I know this
government is a protector of Dalit
rights. Why have the State police only arrested protesting students and
not the Vice Chancellor who has
been accused under the Scheduled
Caste/Scheduled Tribe [Prevention
of Atrocities] Act?
During the hearing on March 28,
the prosecution did not press for judicial remand and the students were
granted bail.
On March 25, the university was
back on its feet. Power supply was
restored, the Internet began functioning, and food was served in the
messes. But it was an uneasy calm.
An overwhelming majority of the
students and several staff members
hold Appa Rao responsible for Rohith Vemulas suicide. They described the incident as an
institutional murder. A view widely
held is that Appa Rao should not
have returned to work while investigations were under way under the
S.C. and S.T. Act into a complaint
led after Rohith Vemulas suicide,
which names Appa Rao and six others for abetting the suicide and accuses them of instituting false,
malicious or vexatious suit or criminal proceedings against Dalit students.
A one-man judicial probe headed
by a former Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court, the second such
commission in the universitys history, is also under way.
After the students were released
close to midnight on March 29, attempts were made to draw attention
to their demands. Appa Rao said he
was willing to discuss them as long
as they are within the statutes. But
the students have decided to take
their protests to the streets of Hyderabad. They are unrelenting in their
demand for the resignation of Appa
Rao.

V I C E C H A N C E LLOR A P P A R AO P OD I LE (in red shirt) coming out of the

human rights commission office in Hyderabad, along with Registrar
M. Sudhakar, after he deposed before it on March 28.

I AM rule-bound and will not do

anything against the established
statutes of the University of Hyderabad, says Appa Rao Podile, the
beleaguered Vice Chancellor of
the university. He has refused to
step down, but the 26 students
and faculty members who were arrested and released on bail after
several days would not budge from
their demand that he do so. Appa
Rao is condent of the outcome of
his case in the Hyderabad High
Court seeking annulment of the
first information report (FIR) led
in the case of the suicide of PhD
scholar Rohith Vemula. The FIR

was registered by the Hyderabad

police on the basis of a complaint
by Dontha Prashanth, in which he
accused Professor Appa Rao of
taking discriminatory and harsh
punitive action against Dalit students and claimed that this led to
Rohith committing suicide. But
Appa Rao maintained that the
complaint was an emotional act,
and that it could not be backed by
evidence. Dontha Prashanth, an
economics PhD scholar, was one
of the ve Dalit students who were
suspended from the dorms, the
messes and common facilities last
November for a whole semester on

44

Raz Kr

the basis of a complaint alleging violence against the member of an opposing students union. The
suspension was revoked this February following Rohiths death and the
national outpouring of solidarity
with the striking students. Appa Rao,
a life sciences professor, is condent
that the charges levelled against him
will not stand legal scrutiny, but he
refuses to consider even temporary
absence from the Vice Chancellors
post until his petition in the High
Court is decided. Excerpts from an
interview he gave Frontline:
According to you, what happened
when you resumed charge on March
22?
We were all in a Deans, staff and
Executive Council meeting at the
Vice Chancellors lodge, which is also
the V.C.s camp office. It included the
Chief Proctor and Deans of all
schools.
Going by the complaint led by HCU
Registrar N. Sudhakar, the alleged
vandalism, that is, the damage to
property and breaking of glass, was
solely carried out by the students
protesting against you. But the Joint
Action Committee for Social Justice
said that the vandalism was from
both sides and that there were no
fewer than 20-30 students, mainly
from the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi
Parishad, and even more faculty and
non-teaching staff who are your
supporters present inside the lodge.
Investigation into that incident is
ongoing. It will reveal everything. If
there was violence from the other
side, that will also come out. The
police have taken pictures of the
place and noted the damage that
happened, etc. But I am not sure of
the course of investigation.
How do you explain the papers that
mention clearly the tasks assigned
to various students, the Dean of
students welfare, your Personal
Secretary Krishna Ram and several
professors, including those from the
Centre for Integrated Studies and
Life Sciences Department? It
appears that your return was
carefully planned and meant to be

executed with utmost care, taking

into account the possibility of
violence.
I wont go by those papers, but
one thing I can say is that I have to
inform my P.A. and faculty/staff that
are here, and I have to know about
the basics about those I am interacting with and those who have been
asking me to return to the university.
The question of fear of violence was
never there in my mind. When my
colleagues and non-teaching staff
met me, I asked them not to stay
back. I told them that they [protesting students] were all my students
and never thought that anybody had
to stay here [V.C.s lodge]. I expected
protests and I was willing to face
them. When I say that, I mean a
democratic protest. I was willing to
meet protesting groups about their
demands.
Why did you choose to return when
an investigation into your role in the
suicide of Rohith Vemula is pending,
particularly when some clauses of
the S.C./S.T. Act have also been
mentioned in the FIR? Would it not
be in the tness of things for you to
have stayed away until the ling of
the charge sheet, considering that
you hold a public office and were the
head of the institution when the
suicide occurred?
I have sought the quashing of the
FIR, and my legal counsel says that it
cannot be established that I will be
found guilty of any of the charges
levelled against me.
Yes, but has the court stayed the
investigation by the police?
We have not sought the quashing
of the investigation. The same data
that have been submitted before the
court have been submitted to the National S.C./S.T. Commission.
Again, would it not be in the tness
of things that you continue to be on
leave until the completion of the
investigation and the ling of charge
sheet?
In this university, two years ago
there was a judicial inquiry into a
similar case of Dalit suicide and the
V.C. had not taken even one days
45

leave. I am referring to the Madhari Venkatesh case. Professor Ramaswamy was the V.C., he never
took leave.
If the High Court does not quash the
FIR, then you will step down?
Anytime a court establishes a
case. I have a job to do. I have been
appointed through a search-cum-selection process, and there is a difference between this and a nomination.
My powers are different from someone who is only an in-charge V.C. If
at any time the judicial process nds
fault with me, I will have to honour
its decision.
But could you not set a good
precedent by stepping aside
temporarily, unlike your
predecessor whom you have cited?
I am yet to see any V.C., or any
official, of that kind who has. I am
glad you are asking these questions, I
want somebody to look at it [suicide]
as a common man [would]. You consider the suicide note. Has the boy
[Rohith Vemula] made any mention
of the university, Appa Rao, or any
such kind? If, in future, any small
complaint is given against the V.C.,
I am not trying to reduce this [suicide] to a small incident, it is not and
I think it is a very serious issue.
But if there is a minor incident in
the university or any other place, it is
impossible that the head of the institution will have the acceptance of
100 per cent of the stakeholders. Not
even 10 per cent or 40 per cent for
that matter, that is, when a small
number is trying to project it as a
problem, that can happen in any institution. This means we are suggesting that any person appointed can
hold office only for one month or at
best six months. There will come a
time when no sensible person will
take up this job.
If I am proven guilty, I will be the
last person to continue. I am being
given unfair treatment. My right to
serve as a V.C. is being curtailed. For
example, the case has been led, let
the judiciary take its course. I am
very much troubled by Rohiths
death, but emotions are not grounds
for removal. My friend [Dontha
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Raz Kr

Prashanth] has led an emotional

complaint because he has lost his
friend, but where is the legal ground?
If somebody asks me to leave on that
ground, how can I? If I have to relinquish this office, the reasons have to
be substantiated. There are two ways
of addressing the problem: you demand either a police inquiry or an
internal inquiry into the incident, or
you approach the judiciary.
But you approached the judiciary,
not them, and the court has neither
stayed the investigation nor granted
you stay of arrest, or the quashing
of the FIR, which was your main
plea.
So let them [High Court] not
grant [quashing of FIR]. They will
either punish or quash the petition.
It may take some time. I was trying to
push it, but it is taking time. And
here, an institution [HCU] cannot
wait for one individual. There are
some connected things. It is not that
I am craving for power. After ve or
six years I will go back to being a
professor. I am honestly following
the systems in place, the statutes,
and I have approached this matter as
a law-abiding citizen. It is unfair on
my friends part to expect me to both
step down and then approach the
judiciary as well.
Your friends?
Yes, in many things we have
worked together, my professors. We
have worked together, but now they
are asking two things from me at one
time. Is there any order anywhere
asking me to step down? No such
order from the Ministry [of Human
Resource Development] either. And
the students as well, they are all my
friends.
There are allegations that you have
brokered deals as quid pro quo for
buying the support of non-teaching
staff. That is, allocation of 60 acres
of land for housing, which is why
they have turned in your favour.
They had overwhelmingly supported
the JAC following Rohiths death.
No, please dont buy into such
arguments. I have established credibility on this campus. For different
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APRIL 29, 2016

There are two

ways of
addressing the
problem: you
demand either a
police inquiry or
an internal
inquiry, or you
approach the
judiciary.
purposes, some people are trying to
dent my credibility. People know,
you have to know this by now, and
look into what or who is Appa Rao
for the past 10 years? In this time, I
have worked with almost everyone,
every leader of the unions, every faculty and department head, and they
all have regard for me and for the
systems that I have put in place. It is
that respect that they have for me. I
am not a person who brokers deals. I
am rule-bound, and that bothers
many of my friends. So the kind of
utterly false allegations that I will
pay one rupee extra to anybody who
is not eligible for it are only meant to
malign the immense goodwill that I
enjoy in this institution. I am here
today because of the goodwill that I
have earned.
But the university seems to be
divided.
You have got that wrong. You
have to correct your sentence there.
Suppose there are 400 faculty members, 200 on one side and 200 on the
other, it could be considered to be
divided. But that is not the case here.
There are only a few who dont want
me here, very few.
So the majority are with you then?
That is the sense I get. When the
demand [V.C.s resignation] of the

students was referred to the schools,

all schools unanimously said that we
cannot do it, it is beyond our purview. If they wanted to join they
could have done so, but they didnt.
What is statutorily possible and
what are largely expected of you
could be two different things.
Yes, you could say that. But, as I
said, I am rule-bound, and one has to
consider what already exists in University of Hyderabads own statutes.
You have said that you returned of
your own volition, but as a Central
university of considerable standing,
when your own appointment is done
by a panel set up by the MHRD,
would you not have to keep the
Ministry in the loop on your return?
When I went on leave I did not
inform them. But when I joined I
simply sent a note informing that I
have joined. There are no prescribed
rules on how a V.C. takes leave and
whom he must keep informed. There
are only established practices, and I
am going by them. If rules are
framed, I will gladly follow them.
Protesting students say they will not
give up until you resign or go on
leave.
There are those who want me to
stay as well.
But a large number of the students
who are represented by elected
bodies/unions, ASA, SFI, DSU, they
say
I am not sure who these large
numbers of students are? Out of the
5,000 [students], even I am not
clear. My assessment could be
wrong. For some Appa Rao is antiDalit, for some Appa Rao is rulebound, for some Appa Rao is asking
for transparency. Even after all that,
I am not sure who are against me of
the 600/700 non-teaching staff,
400-odd faculty and 5,000-odd students, I am not sure who they are.
Others [other faculty, students,
staff] have the liberty to speak what
they want. When the university
writes anything, we have to be very
careful. We have to word everything
very carefully.

46

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ECONOMIC OFFENCES

Truant at large
THE Vijay Mallya affair continues, like a B-grade Bollywood potboiler in which the villain smartly
eludes a bunch of bumbling cops.
The amboyant businessman, whose
airline company made a spectacular
crash in 2012, is wanted by a clutch of
law enforcement and regulatory
agencies, and banks and nancial institutions whom he owes in excess of
Rs.9,000 croreRs.6,963 crore being the principal and the remainder
being the interest on the accumulated borrowings. But there are others too waiting for the prodigal son to
return, among them his erstwhile
employees, to many of whom he owes
unpaid salaries. Then there are suppliers such as the fuel companies,
component suppliers, airport operators, caterers and many others to
whom Mallyas companies owe substantial sums.
After playing hide-and-seek for
so long, suddenly, out of the blue
came Mallyas recent offer, from a
faraway location, to pay a not-so-insubstantial sum of Rs.4,000 crore.
As always in such cases, the devil lay
in the details. For one, the offer of a
one-time settlement, to be made over
six months, would imply that banks
would get only about 40 per cent of
what he owes them, and that too with
all the uncertainties associated with
Mallya. But even more serious are
the precedents that such a heavily
discounted settlement would set for
the many more such cases that saddle the loan books of banks. The
third question that Mallyas offer
poses is, Why should the banks ac-

SAURABH DAS/AP

Vijay Mallya, the delinquent borrower on the run from several

agencies of the government, now wants to strike a deal,
but the banks remain wary. B Y V . S R I D H A R

V I J A Y M A LLYA at the Buddh International Circuit in Noida on October 2012.

cept his offer when his net worth in

the four companies in which he has
signicant holdingsUnited Breweries, Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilizers, UB Holdings and the
defunct
Kingsher
Airlines
amount to more than Rs.7,000
crore?
All in all, the sordid details of the
47

Mallya affair are not merely about

negligence by banks, 17 of which
have lent money since Kingsher
was launched in 2005, but of how
regulators looked the other way and
policymakers and government agencies systematically sacriced the
public interest and public money to
serve the interests of a corporate
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

group. The critical question then is,

How did Kingsher Airlines manage
to accumulate loans to this extent,
getting past multiple gatekeepers
with such nesse and ease? The answer to this would explain, among
other things, how multiple statutory
bodieslaw enforcement agencies,
regulatory agencies, tax authorities,
audit rms and government Ministries and departmentswere part of
the process that allowed Mallya to
milk the system for so long.
Mallyas recent ight to the United Kingdom and the drama surrounding the recent summons the
Enforcement Directorate (E.D.) issued illustrate how permissive the
system has become, especially when
it comes to dealing with a wilful
defaulter, as several banks have declared Mallya. The E.D.s summons
initially sought Mallyas appearance
on March 18 in relation to a money
laundering charge against him by the
Central Bureau of Investigation
(CBI), but after he expressed his inability to appear on that day, the E.D.
was considerate enough to reschedule his appearance to April 2. Mallya failed to appear even on this date
and cited his ongoing plan for a settlement with the banks to seek an
appearance in May. The E.D. rejected this and recently issued its third
and nal summons seeking his appearance before it on April 9.
Earlier, the CBI drew attention
for what many considered its failure
to stop Mallya from leaving the country. This happened even as the Supreme Court was hearing a petition
from a clutch of banks seeking a restraint on his access to funds as long
as he owed them money. The E.D.s
investigations follow the CBIs registration of a first information report
last year pertaining to the means by
which Mallya group companies were
able to get loans beyond the credit
limits set by banking regulations.
The E.D.s money laundering probe
is exploring whether slush money
was sent overseas and then brought
back in (technically termed roundtripping) to manipulate share prices
of the group companies. Meanwhile,
the Serious Fraud Investigation Ofce (SFIO) is reportedly probing the
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

allegedly inated valuation of the

Kingsher brand, at over Rs.4,000
crore, which helped Mallya group
companies access higher volumes of
credit from banks. The SFIO is also
probing the diversion of funds into
companies and avenues the credit
was not provided for. In a statement
issued recently, Grant Thornton India LLP, the audit and consulting
rm that valued the brand, said it
was cooperating with the investigations and that the valuation was legitimate and appropriate in the
context of when it was done.
The regulator of the stock exchanges, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), is
probing allegations of insider trading, listing agreements and violations of corporate governance
norms. SEBI is also probing Diageos
acquisition of United Spirits Ltd
(USL) after Mallya, in desperate
need of cash, sold it to the multinational company.
Apparently, SEBI is now reviewing the terms of the deal that allow
Mallya to escape free of any liability
following investigations of the companys books. SEBI is also investigating the role of company directors and
auditors who validated the deal. Diageo is to pay Mallya $75 million
over ve years ($40 million in the
rst year) to relinquish his nal residual stake in USL, and the deal
provides for safeguards against any
further liabilities for Mallya. The
banks had recently moved the courts
and debt recovery tribunals, pleading that Mallya be prevented from
accessing these funds until he cleared his dues to them.
Apart from Grant Thornton, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte LLP
and Walker Chandiok & Co. are also
under scrutiny, with a slew of regulators seeking answers on their valuation, auditing and due diligence of
the United Breweries Group companies over the last few years.
A COMPLEX WEB

The multiple tracks the investigating

agencies, regulators and tax authorities are now pursuing give the impression that the regulatory noose is
tightening around Mallya, that the

endgame is now on for him. They

also may appear to suggest that the
government is cracking the whip on
wilful defaulters such as Mallya.
Nothing could be further from the
truth. For one, it is too little and too
late because Mallya may have already siphoned off funds that could
be tapped from the corporate entities
that could be legally linked to him.
A second aspect of the problem is
the fact that a long and tortuous
process awaits the institutions that
are trying to get hold of whatever
little of the asset base that Mallya
and his companies may yet possess.
For instance, proceedings before the
debt recovery tribunals have been on
since 2013, and after more than 80
hearing sessions, nothing has moved
as far as the lenders are concerned.
The apparently complex mechanism Mallya used to access bank
funds is actually based on a very simple modus operandi. This is inextricably tied to Mallyas business
operations, which has been characterised by three important features.
First, the hub of his empire, from the
time of his father, Vittal Mallya
(from whom he inherited the major
part), has rested on the cash-rich liquor business. The second aspect of

48

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In fact, the E.D. is now reported to be

exploring whether the central bank
followed due diligence norms while
deciding to extend the restructuring
package to the civil aviation sector in
general and to Kingsher in particular.

VIJAY BATE

AIRLINE FIASCO

E M P LO YE E S O F K I N G F I S H ER A I RLI N ES protesting against Mallya near

Kingsher House in Mumbai, once the airlines headquarters, on March 9.

his business model, which has played
a critical role in Mallyas high-prole
rise as an airline promoter, is the use
of a highly leveraged nancial model
to fund the business. Linked to this is
also the apparent diversion of large
volumes of funds within the UB
Group.
For instance, Diageo found a
Rs.2,100-crore hole in the books of
USL in 2015 and, in fact, sought Mallyas ouster from the companys
board. The third aspect, which is often missing in much of the media
accounts of his rise and fall, pertains
to the liberal policy regime governing
aviation. To make sense of the Mallya affair, it is important to see it not
merely as a case of a rogue entrepreneur but as a case of a system that
was open to abuse in the name of
reforms. At the centre of the drama is
United Breweries Holdings Ltd, the
holding company that is the fulcrum
on which the Mallya empire turns. It
is through this entity that he controls
United Breweries, his prime liquor
company and key generator of revenues for the group. As the airline
business oundered, Mallya, it ap-

pears, leveraged the interconnected

nature of the companies he owned to
draw funds from healthier parts of
his empire to fund the bleeding venture. In 2009, a year in which Kingsher Airlines made a loss of
Rs.1,600 crore, IDBI Bank extended
a loan of Rs.900 crore. The justication for this loan was that it was
backed by the value of the brand,
then valued at over Rs.4,000 crore.
The medias amnesia is striking;
none of this is new information. For
instance, six years ago, the Reserve
Bank of India permitted the consortium of banks led by State Bank of
India to do what was then called a
one-time debt-restructuring package. This followed intense lobbying
by the aviation industry seeking relief from the Union government. Of
course, even then, banks did not seriously believe the one-time promise,
and believed that the loans were very
likely to turn non-performing. This
was vindicated in October 2012
when the civil aviation regulator revoked Kingsher Airlines licence
and later withdrew the time slots allotted to it at the countrys airports.
49

Mallya successfully used his commanding presence in the liquor

economy to build a facade of success.
The high degree of leverage was
made possible because bank funds
were available on tap to Mallya. A
combination of dressing the accounts and large-scale diversion of
resources enabled Mallya to continue the milking of the banking system.
But all this would have not
helped if it were not for the reforms
that rocked the aviation business. To
make sense of this, the decline of Air
India needs to be appreciated. The
systematic running down of the public enterprise during the United Progressive Alliance regime through a
combination of means created space
for entities such as Kingsher Airlines. While the national carrier was
brought down by the sheer weight of
the loans it had obtained to fund
large-scale, and unwarranted, aircraft purchases, from which it is yet
to recover, it also ceded lucrative
routes to private carriers such as
Kingsher. The euphoria that accompanied the launch of private airlines quickly evaporated, but the axe
fell quicker and harder on Kingsher
because it never had any pretensions
of being an economy carrier. This
positioning too was seen as keeping
with Mallyas image as the King of
Good Times. Speaking to a TV anchor recently, Finance Minister
Arun JaitleyMallyas Rajya Sabha
colleague; Mallya made it there
thanks to the support from Jaitleys
partysaid Mallya had given private
entrepreneurs in India a terrible
name. The sudden rush of activity
by the government and its various
agencies and the expression of righteous indignation at the ways of a
wayward businessman do not hold
out much hope that such upstarts
will be nipped in the bud in the future.

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

A setback for Tatas

The decision of Tata Steel to shutter its U.K. operations illustrates
the pitfalls of Indian companies seeking success abroad
rather than xing problems at home.

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

AFP

T the end of March, Tata Steel,

the agship company of the
Tata group, announced that it
was closing its steel operations in the
United Kingdom that are reportedly
bleeding losses at the rate of one million pounds (approximately Rs.9.5
crore) a day. Its board, which met in
Mumbai, had rejected a plan to turn
the U.K. company around on the
grounds that it was unaffordable and
did not make sense and preferred a
sale of the business. However, with no
suitors coming forward to buy out the
assets, expectations are that it will
soon just shut the British plants. This
is the second major failure in investment decisions taken by the Tatas in
recent times, the other being the
launch of Nano, the cheap, small car.
In Britain, the likely closure has,
as expected, raised a series of questions: the fate of the 15,000 workers
(more than 4,000 of whom are concentrated in Port Talbot in the south
and 3,000 in Scunthorpe in the
north) likely to be affected by the decision; the future of the British steel
industry given global overcapacity;
and the role of competition from and

A H A N D O U T image from October 2006 shows steel slabs being made at

Corus Port Talbot plant in Wales.

limited protection against, cheap
Chinese imports in inuencing the
current situation. In particular, it is
being argued that British industry is
being wiped out because Europe and
the U.K. protect their industrial sector (against Chinese competition)
less than the Americans do. The crisis has also led to a call from the
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn that
the U.K. government nationalise the
company and not treat workers as

expendable, which would require the

Conservative Party under Prime
Minister David Cameron to rethink
its market-oriented industrial policy.
Corbyns call makes sense to
many because the fate of Tata Steel is
widely seen as the result of neglected
investment in the companys plants
as it moved from state ownership under British Steel to private owner Corus Steel, before being acquired by
Tata Steel in a bidding war against

50

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PATTY CHEN/REUTERS

Brazils Companhia Siderurgica Nacional (CSN) in 2006. That war took

the price paid by Tata for Corus to
608 pence a share from the original
offer of 455 pence a share. Analysts,
at that time, had held that the nal
price was clearly over the top, especially for capacities that were not the
most competitive, and driven more
by nationalist fervour rather than
business logic. Reecting that nationalism, Ratan Tata was reported
as saying at the time: I believe this
will be the rst step in showing that
Indian industry can in fact step outside the shores of India in an international marketplace and acquit
itself as a global player.
The sceptical analysts are now
being proven right. To claim that in
2006 nobody anticipated the 2008
global crisis or the slowdown in China is to miss the point. It is not just
that not anticipating is, in itself, a
failure. It is also that if the original
acquisition costs had been a third
lower, Tata Steel might have been in
a position to weather the difficulties
much better and even stay aoat until the time global capitalism experienced a revival. The Tatas claim then
was that the decision to acquire Corus at the high price that they did was
because of the potential synergies
embedded in the acquisition, while
their original offer was valid as the

A LA B O U RER marks steel bars at a steel and iron factory in Chinas Jiangsu
province in this 2008 photograph. China expects to lay off 1.8 million workers in
the coal and steel sectors as part of its efforts to reduce industrial overcapacity.

price for Corus as a standalone

facility.
The claim was that the group
could ship iron ore and/or low-cost
crude steel to Corus plants in Europe, which would use their technological know-how to turn low-cost
raw steel into nished products for
European markets. Clearly, that did
not work.
At that time steel demand was
expected to rise sharply on the back
of a nance-led construction boom
in the region and Chinas breathtaking growth. But there were at least
some who saw the construction
boom as speculative and Chinas
growth as led by too much investment which created unutilised and
unusable infrastructural and industrial capacities.
They were right: the boom went
bust and Tata Steel U.K., among the
less competitive, faced a crisis.
RIPPLE EFFECT IN INDIA

For India, this experience raises a

different set of questions. It challenges the much-lauded Indian investment thrust overseas that has
been backed by governments unable
to ensure adequate demand growth
51

at home. It also raises questions on

the ripple effect that the Tata crisis in
the U.K. can have within India.
For some time now, Indian rms
that have built up adequate capability in certain areas to identify, acquire and run production facilities
have been viewing the prospects of
expansion abroad owing to the inadequate growth opportunities at
home. Besides, large inows of foreign capital after liberalisation,
which were well in excess of the sums
required to nance the current account decit in Indias balance of
payments, encouraged the government to liberalise the cap on the investment that domestic rms could
make in operations abroad.
The government also incentivised such investment with a concessional tax rate of 15 per cent on
dividends Indian companies received from their foreign subsidiaries. As a result, the annual
commitments abroad by Indian
rms in the form of equity, loan and
guarantees issued rose from more
than $10 billion in 2007-08, touched
an annual gure of about $17-18 billion during 2008-10 and then registered a spike to $40-44 billion
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP

A 2 0 0 6 PH O T O G R A PH showing B. Muthuraman (left), managing director of

Tata Steel; Ratan N. Tata, chairman of Tata Sons; James Leng, chairman of
Corus; and Philippe Varin, chief executive of Corus; at a press conference in
London after Tata Steel won the bid to take over Corus.

during 2009-11 and $35-37 billion

during 2012-14.
This did give rise to a new sentiment in government and outside.
That the share of manufacturing in
GDP at home was distressingly low
compared with Indias erstwhile
peers when they were at similar levels of per capita income was increasingly ignored. The focus was on the
success of Indian rms abroad, not
as exporters from India but as investors in foreign lands. Besides Tata
Steel, other examples were often
quoted, without reference to the possible correctness or otherwise of the
investment decision.
The Tatas acquisition of JLR
Land Rover, Hindalcos acquisition
of Novelis and Bharti Airtels acquisition of Zain Telecoms African operations are typical instances. What
the Tata Steel experience reects is
that this kind of strategy, where the
focus is on the fortunes of individual
Indian (or Indian-origin, as in the
case of Arcelor Mittal) companies
abroad, has rarely been successful. It
has not generated much by way of
foreign exchange through prots
that are partially repatriated to India
with the benet of lower rates of taxation. It has also been a total failure
as an alternative to growth based on
investment at home geared to domestic or export markets.
However, the difficulty is that the
nationalist celebration of the foreign forays of Indian rms has enFRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

couraged the government to support

this strategy. This came into focus in
November 2014, during Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to Australia, when the industrialist Gautam
Adani signed a memorandum of understanding with State Bank of India
for a loan of up to $1 billion. The loan
was to part-nance the currently
shelved Carmichael project to mine
the huge coal reserves in the untapped Galilee Basin. With the Australian federal government and the
Queensland State government desperate for the investment to address
the problem of collapsing employment in the coal industry, the Adani
project too was seen as an instance of
Indias emerging role as a favoured
international investor that the government had to back.
This, however, is not a new tendency. Even in 2006, when Tata Steel
acquired Corus, the Indian government was expected to back the
buyout materially, with credit from
the public banking system. Reports
at the time suggested that the company planned to fund the acquisition
on a 53:47 debt-equity basis, with
Tata Steels exposure likely to be in
the region of $4.1 billion, also a mix
of debt and equity. This was expected
to take Tata Steels debt-to-equity ratio above 100 per cent from its preacquisition level of about 15 per cent.
So, besides the question of how
the company would bear the interest
burden, given the high capital costs

associated with the competitive bidding, there was the question of where
the required credit would come
from. When the deal was announced,
the then Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, declared that the government will be ready to help the
Tatas, if they have any request, to
complete the Corus transaction,
though he qualied his statement by
saying that it would only be general
help in the nature of facilitating
clearances or approvals or permissions within the country. But there
may have been more to this support.
Tata was to nance its approximately $13 billion acquisition of Corus with around $4.1 billion in
equity, $6.14 billion in long-term
debt and $2.66 billion in short-term
debt. Whatever the nal proportions,
there can be no doubt that the debt
incurred must have been huge (upwards of Rs.12,500 crore at todays
exchange rate). While a consortium
of foreign banks led by Credit Suisse,
including Deutsche Bank and ABN
AMRO, helped put together the
package, a number of Indian banks,
such as Export Import (Exim) Bank
of India, Bank of Baroda, ICICI Bank
(U.K.) and Bank of India, had expressed an interest in being a part of
the consortium. Given the secrecy
surrounding these matters, the exact
exposure of these banks is not
known.
The debt had been incurred
against Corus future cash ows that
were clearly overestimated. In fact,
Tatas decision to retrench its U.K.
assets is seen as a way of paring down
the companys net debt, placed at
close to $10 billion (or around
Rs.65,000 crore) at the end of last
year. But with selling the U.K. assets
proving to be a difficult proposition
in todays market, that debt will not
be easy to clear. It does increase the
vulnerability of the Tatas, since debt
of the kind incurred for the Corus
acquisition has to be serviced in foreign currency at a time when the rupee is depreciating.
It also increases the vulnerability
of an already beleaguered banking
system. This has been the result of
seeking success abroad rather than
xing problems at home.

52

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WORLD AFFAIRS

Troubled transition
YE AUNG THU/AFP

M YA N MA R N A T I O N A L
LE A G UE for Democracy

leader Aung San Suu Kyi is

welcomed by the new
President, Htin Kyaw, at a
dinner reception following the
swearing-in ceremony in
Nay Pyi Taw on March 30.

Myanmar is celebrating its rst civilian government

in over half a century, but internal tensions persist
between the various centres of power in the country.
BY JOHN CHERIAN
53

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

THE FIRST CIVILIAN GOVERNMENT IN MORE

than 50 years in Myanmar (Burma) formally took over
the reins of power on April 1. The military, which has had
a monopoly on power for most of the years since the
country gained independence, will continue to have a
major say in the running of the government. The Constitution it has bequeathed to the country without meaningful debate has placed major roadblocks on the path
to a smooth transition to full-edged civilian rule. Aung
San Suu Kyi, who led the National League for Democracy
(NLD) to a sweeping victory in the elections, has not been
allowed to become President, nor has the junta relaxed its
iron grip over key state institutions. The Constitution
explicitly prohibits citizens with foreign spouses or children holding foreign passports from holding the top post
in government. Though her husband is no more, Suu
Kyis two children are British. The NLD leader, who
spent 15 long years incarcerated by the military, failed in
her efforts to convince the military top brass to allow her
to become President. In early March, she held three
closed-door meetings with the current military chief,
Ming Aung Hlaing, in order to cut a deal with the military.
After a landslide victory in the elections in November
last year, Suu Kyi made it clear that she would be calling
the shots as far as major decision-making was concerned
in the new government. After the army vetoed her demand, she chose her close condant, Htin Kyaw, as the
NLDs candidate for President. He was elected with a
thumping majority. I have become President because of
Daw Aung San Suu Kyis goodwill and loving kindness,
he told reporters after his election. Two Vice-Presidents,
one of them a candidate of the army, were also elected.
Myint Swe, the armys choice, was a former head of
intelligence. Many in Myanmar hold him responsible for
the crackdown on the monks protests in 2007. The NLD
selected Henry Van Thio, who belongs to the ethnic Chin
minority. He is a former army officer who is said to have
good relations with the current military hierarchy.
When the Cabinet was announced in March, Suu Kyi
was given charge of four key portfolios, including that of
Foreign Affairs. However, in early April it was announced that she would hold only two portfolios. New
nominees have been put forward for the Energy and
Education Ministries. Three other important portfolios,
Defence, Border Security, and Interior, were given to
representatives of the military as mandated by the armydrafted Constitution. The Interior Ministry in particular
is a powerful one, having within its ambit the duties of
coordinating and communicating with all the different
Ministries. It also controls appointments to all the provincial and State-level bodies. When Suu Kyi was negotiating with the army top brass after last years elections,
she offered them three additional Cabinet portfolios provided that they relented on the issue of her assuming the
presidency. The new President, Htin Kyaw, in his rst
speech in the parliament, advised his countrymen to be
patient as the government strove for full democracy. We
have to work for a Constitution that is in harmony with
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

democratic values, he said. After a meeting with Than

Shwe, the former army ruler, Suu Kyi stated that the
incoming civilian government would not focus on the
past. The army brutally suppressed the pro-democracy
movement in 1988. The army has also been accused of
serious human rights violations and other crimes in its
decades-long war with various ethnic minorities. In addition, there are charges relating to corruption and misuse
of office during the long era of military rule. But in the
last couple of years, Suu Kyi and the army have had a cosy
relationship.
The NLD and the army broadly agreed on the changes in foreign policy, particularly on the countrys proUnited States tilt. After a visit by the former Secretary of
State, Hillary Clinton, in 2011, Myanmar was elevated
from the status of a pariah state to that of an emerging
democracy. After President Barack Obama announced
his pivot to the East, Myanmar was quick to abandon its
pro-China tilt and open up the economy to Western
investments.
Suu Kyi on her part started visiting Western capitals
to persuade them to lift the economic sanctions on the
country. She was noticeably silent on the targeting of the
Muslim Rohingya minority. She was also supportive of
the armys new economic policies that aimed to convert
the country into South-East Asias newest sweat shop.
After the meeting with Suu Kyi, Than Shwe described her
as a future leader of the country. But the new army
leadership does not want to let go of the tight leash it has
54

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YE AUNG THU/AFP

that have been at war with the Central government, some

of them since independence, is a high priority for Suu
Kyi. Forty per cent of the countrys population consists of
people from different ethnic groups. Despite predictions
to the contrary, ethnic communities also voted massively
for the NLD and generally ignored the army-backed
party. Suu Kyi also wants to expedite the release of more
than 500 political prisoners who were charged under the
draconian laws of the military junta.
The next move, which may take some time, will be to
formally amend the Constitution so that she can legally
assume the top job. That will require support from a 75
per cent majority plus one. Only a split among the legislators nominated by the army, which holds 25 per cent of
the seats, will enable the passage of a constitutional
amendment. Many of those whom the army has nominated to the parliament are senior officers, and a number
of them hold the rank of colonels and major generals.
Their mandate is clear: to ensure that the armys inuence and perks continue to remain unscathed.
Suu Kyi seems equally determined in her pledge to
be above the President. Given her new exalted status as
de facto Prime Minister, she will be able to wear many
hats, including that of the leader of the ruling party in the
parliament. The supporters of the army have already
described her latest move as power grab. The members
of the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development
Party have been critical of Suu Kyis political gambit. One
senior army politician said that the proposed move would
destroy the balance of power that existed between the
legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Another army
officer, also a parliamentarian, said that the move would
put the post of state counsellor on a par constitutionally
with the President. Given her popularity at home and on
the world stage, there is little the army can do at this
juncture. Like its counterpart in neighbouring Thailand,
the current army leadership will bide its time and wait for
the civilian-dominated government to falter and for rifts
to emerge within the ruling NLD. Thaksin Shinawatra,
and later on his sister Yingluk, were elected with huge
majorities in Thailand in consecutive elections. But a
politicised army, in cahoots with a corrupt Bangkok elite,
has repeatedly undermined democracy. Even as the people of Myanmar are celebrating the election of the rst
civilian President after more than 50 years of army rule,
the military in Thailand is proposing to introduce a new
Constitution that will drastically curtail democracy.
As of now, the 70-year-old Nobel laureate strides the
domestic political scene with supreme condence. Step
by step, she is trying to tame the highly politicised army.
It will not be easy as the army controls key government
institutions and has stakes in lucrative business ventures
which it is loath to give up. In a recent speech on the
occasion of the Armed Forces Day, the army chief, Gen.
Min Aung Hlaing, said that the military had to play a
leading role in national politics with regard to the ways
with which we stand along the history and critical situations of the country. Under the current Constitution,
the army chief can take over in a crisis situation.

NATIO N A L L E A G UE for Democracy supporters offer free

snacks on April 1 as they celebrate the new regime.

on the civilian government. In recent weeks, it has been

sending out signals that it is unhappy over the powers
that are incrementally being accrued to Suu Kyi.
As soon as the new civilian-dominated parliament
opened on April 1, the NLD introduced a Bill to create a
new post of state counsellor. It was the rst Bill to be
passed by the legislature after it convened. Despite the
objections of the army, which still controls more than 25
per cent of the seats in the national parliament, the
proposal has been speedily accepted by the Upper House.
It has to be approved by the Lower House and the new
President. That will only be a formality. The state counsellors job will be akin to that of a Prime Minister.
With this deft political move, Suu Kyis authority will
now be stamped on the legislature as well as the executive. As state counsellor, she will be able to openly
interact with the legislature and the executive. After
being appointed a Minister, she had to give up her parliamentary seat. As Foreign Minister, she will be able to sit
on the inuential military-dominated defence and security committees.
Aung Kyi Nyunt, a senior member of the NLD who
helped draft the Bill, said that Suu Kyi would now be able
to advise the speakers of the two Houses on problems
relating to peace and development that the nation was
facing. Establishing a lasting peace with ethnic groups
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WORLD AFFAIRS
PAKISTAN

Terror in Lahore
Despite stringent emergency laws, Tehreek-e-Taliban militants
launch a big terror attack in Pakistan, killing 70 people on
Easter Sunday. B Y J O H N C H E R I A N
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ARIF ALI/AFP

terror attack carried out by the TTP on Pakistani soil was

on a secondary school in Peshawar in December 2014.
That attack resulted in the death of more than 133
schoolchildren.
Following the Peshawar attack, the Pakistan government lifted the moratorium on executions, which had
been in place since 2008. Last year, Pakistan carried out
the largest number of executions in the world, although
only a few of the cases involved terrorist acts. Under the
emergency laws passed by the civilian government after
the Peshawar attack, with support from all the major
opposition parties, the Army was given powers to try
terrorism suspects in special military courts, bypassing
the civilian judicial system. The Army launched massive
combing operations in big cities such as Karachi using
the extraordinary powers conferred on it to arrest or
eliminate terrorists and militants who were waging war
against the state. By the end of 2015, the military had
arrested more than 95,000 people, of whom only around
2,000 are said to be hard-core militant suspects.
The Army also launched a big military operation in
the autonomous North Waziristan region, which led to a
huge rise in the number of internal refugees apart from
the deaths of hundreds of militant ghters. As a result,
there has been an increase in terrorist blowback within
the country. The Army, at the same time, was used by the
security establishment to crush democratic dissent and
trade union rights. An anti-privatisation strike by Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) employees in Karachi
was suppressed by involving the military. Cadres of major
opposition parties, such as the Pakistan Peoples Party
(PPP) and the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM),
have been detained arbitrarily in Sindh province. Balochistan, which is experiencing a separatist insurgency,
has long been subjected to anti-terrorism operations by
the military.
There is no doubt that Pakistan is among the countries worst affected by terrorism. It has been estimated
that in the past four years, more than 1,700 people have
been killed in more than 170 incidents of terrorist-related
violence. In a bid to further widen the sectarian divide,
the Shia community has been specically targeted. Christians, too, have been singled out, with churches and
schools being the primary targets. Pakistanis have also
been killed in missile attacks launched by the United
States drones. These attacks intensied after Barack
Obama became President in 2008. Many of the drones
used in the attacks are based inside Pakistan. A recent
report in the U.S. media, based on official documents,
revealed that nearly 90 per cent of those killed in drone
attacks were civilians. Drone attacks targeting Al Qaeda
leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in 2006 when he was reportedly hiding in Damadola, a Pakistani village, resulted in
the death of 76 children and 27 adults. Al-Zawahiri was
unscathed. Similar strikes in Pakistan have killed hundreds of civilians. U.S. drone attacks have instigated
many terror attacks in Pakistan and other countries.
The Lahore terror attack has happened at a time
when religious fundamentalists are exing their muscles

AT THE S I T E of the bomb blast in Lahore on March 27.

THE SLAUGHTER OF MORE THAN 70 PEOPLE

on Easter Sunday in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal childrens park
in Lahore, Punjab province, has once again brought to
the fore the serious threat posed by terrorist outts to the
security of the Pakistani state. The attack, carried out by a
suicide bomber, was ostensibly targeted against the minority Christians who were celebrating Easter. But more
non-Christians were killed in the attack; a large number
of them were children. A splinter group of the Pakistani
Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack, with its spokesman claiming that
Christians in Lahore celebrating Easter were the targets. The attack, he said, was also a message to the
government of Pakistan that similar attacks would continue until the government acceded to the demand of
introducing strict Sharia laws in the country. The last big
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With the latest terror attack, sections of the Pakistani

Taliban, which seem to be moving closer to the Daesh
(Islamic State), have sent a strong signal that they are
now very much active in the Punjab province, the political stronghold of the Sharifs and the ruling party, the
Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N). Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif cancelled his participation in the Nuclear
Security Summit (NSS) in Washington in the last week of
March at the eleventh hour following the developments
in his hometown. There were reports that Nawaz Sharif
would be meeting his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, on the sidelines of the summit. Announcing the cancellation of the visit, Nawaz Sharif said that he was
determined to eliminate the extremist mindset from
the nation and take the war to the doorstep of terrorist
outts.

on the streets of Pakistan. In Islamabad, thousands of

protesters rampaged through the high-security red
zone destroying vehicles and surrounding the parliament building to commemorate the death of Momtaz
Qadri. Qadri was convicted and hanged for the killing of
the Governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, in 2011. Qadri, a
personal bodyguard of the Governor, had objected to
Taseers progressive views on the anti-blasphemy law.
The authorities were able to disperse the protesters only
after prolonged negotiations with their leaders. The Army had to be called in to persuade the protesters to leave.
Among the demands put forth by the clerics leading
the protests was the immediate implementation of Sharia law and the expulsion of all those professing the
Ahmadiya faith. The protesters, who mainly belonged to
the Barelvi school of Islam, wanted the immediate
hanging of the Christian woman, Asia Bibi, accused of
apostasy, whom Taseer had tried to defend. A Pakistani
court had sentenced her to death for the alleged crime of
blasphemy. In recent days, conservative Pakistani clerics
have another cause celebre; they are vociferously protesting against a new law, called the Protection against
Violence against Women Act, passed by the Punjab
government. The law prohibits husbands from beating
their wives. Stringent punishment, including prison
terms and the wearing of security bracelets, awaits those
who violate the law. Religious parties and their allies in
the parliament have opposed the law, calling it unIslamic. They have threatened to launch agitations all over
the country if the Punjab government does not repeal the
law at the earliest. It is, therefore, obvious that terrorism
is ourishing in a climate that fosters it, encouraged
directly or indirectly by internal as well as external forces.

COUNTERTERRORISM

AP

The State Department said that the U.S. would work with
Pakistan to root out the scourge of terrorism. The Pakistan military did not waste much time in launching its
counterterrorism operations in Punjab province after the
attack on the childrens park. The ruling party led by the
Sharif brothers, according to reports, would have preferred a more nuanced carrot-and-stick approach while
dealing with the militant and terror groups in the Punjab.
Apparently, if reports from Pakistan are to be believed,
both Nawaz Sharif and the Punjab Chief Minister, Shahbaz Sharif, were not consulted when the Army chief,
General Raheel Sharif, ordered regular Army units and
paramilitary Rangers to begin anti-terror operations in
the province. It was the military spokesman who announced the beginning of the operations, not the civilian
government. In the rst 48 hours of the operation, the
Army said that it had arrested 5,200 people on suspicion
of being either militants or terrorist sympathisers.
In the last week of March, the Pakistani authorities
dramatically announced the arrest of an Indian spy.
Kulbushan Jadhav, a senior retired officer of the Indian
Navy, was shown on Pakistans media, confessing to
subversive activities in Balochistan. Pakistan Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid and military spokesman Lt
Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa accused India of sponsoring
and orchestrating terrorism and separatism. From available indications, New Delhi is caught in a delicate situation. It is sticking to its stand that Jadhav was a
legitimate businessman who took premature retirement
from the Navy.
The timing of the video release featuring the Indian
spy caught on Pakistani soil coincided with the visit of a
ve-member Pakistani investigation team to Pathankot
in the Indian State of Punjab, which was the site of a
terror attack in January. India blames the attack on the
Pathankot Indian Air Force base on terrorists from Pakistan. This is the rst time that India has allowed an
investigation team from Pakistan to visit the country.
The Pakistani authorities have arrested many Jaish-eMuhammad (JeM) activists in connection with the terror
attack in Pathankot.

P R IM E M I N I S T E R N AW A Z S H A RI F with a victim of

the blast during his visit to a hospital in Lahore on

March 28.
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WORLD AFFAIRS

Global gaze on caste

The Indian government resists any international scrutiny of the caste
system, including a recent U.N. report that condemns caste hierarchy. But
no amount of sophistry can wish away the possibility of anarchic violence if

NAGARA GOPAL

the government continues to downplay the problem. BY V I J A Y PRA S H A D

TH E S U I CI D E of the Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula has put caste oppression in the centre of political debate in
India. Here, students of Hyderabad University in a demonstration over Rohith's death on the campus on January 19.

OUT OF THE MAZE OF THE UNITED NATIONS

Human Rights Council came a short reportjust over
10,000 wordswith an innocuous title, Report of the
Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues (January 28,
2016). This report takes aim at caste discrimination as a
global affliction, not one that impacts South Asia only. It
is a powerful report, which suggests that the caste system
contradicts the principles of human dignity, equality
and non-discrimination. It is not caste violence or caste
discrimination that is objectionable, notes the report, but
caste hierarchy itself.

Indias permanent representative to the U.N. in Geneva, Ajit Kumar, hastily dismissed the report. Speaking
for the Government of India, Kumar noted that the
Special Rapporteur for Minority Issues, Rita IzsakNdiaye, had breached her mandate. He insisted on a
narrow reading of her charge, namely to report on the
human rights of national, or ethnic, religious minorities. Caste, he said pointedly, did not belong to this list.
The report noted that caste has minority-like characteristics, which Kumar suggested could apply to any social
group. A narrower understanding of minority rights is

Letter from America

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necessary, Kumar suggests. The Indian government has

resisted any international scrutiny of the caste system
and its attendant consequences such as poverty and humiliation. During the 2001 World Conference Against
Racism, India strenuously rebuked the U.N. for taking
up issues of caste hierarchy and the status of Dalits in
Indian society. Omar Abdullah, at the time Minister of
State for External Affairs in the government led by the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), told the assembled delegates in Durban, South Africa, that reports of caste oppression were highly exaggerated and that those who
spoke about the trials of Dalits produced misleading
propaganda based on anecdotal evidence. Kumars
statement is in line with this denial.
Rita Izsak-Ndiaye is unrepentant. She told this writer
that the silence on caste discrimination was intolerable.
The death of Hyderabad Central University student Rohith Vemula puts the issue back on the table. Vemulas
death and the stories of other Dalit victims of suicide,
said Rita Izsak-Ndiaye, are indeed tragic signals of despair and demonstrate the urgent need to challenge and
change the mindset of people who think of others in
hierarchical terms. The Indian government seems loath
to acknowledge the problem, let alone allow a mature
discussion to take place over a toxic problem with deep
roots in society.
rope, the growth of Islamophobia in the West, marginalisation of Amerindians, and the question of
discrimination based on the caste system. When Diene
raised these issues, the Indian government reacted negatively. Ambassador Hardeep Puri, then based in Geneva,
said that discrimination had been banned by the Constitution. Caste, he suggested, was integral to Indian society, since it originated in the fundamental division of
Indian society during ancient times. The Indian social
divisions did not amount to racism, said Puri, meaning
that they were outside the purview of Dienes mandate.
I raised Kumars question about the mandate to Rita
Izsak-Ndiaye, namely on whether the framework of minority rights applied to caste. Puri had said that the
framework of race did not apply, and now Kumar rejected the framework of minority rights. India, conveniently,
avoided censure on caste discrimination by saying that it
was sui generis to India and so outside the criticism of
multinational agencies. There is no internationally
agreed denition of minorities, said Rita Izsak-Ndiaye,
because minority situations are multifaceted. In some
cases, lower caste groups are ethnic or religious minorities in classic terms. In other cases, even if they speak the
same language or pray the same way, their non-dominant status and their self-identication as minorities led
them to use the minority rights framework for decades to
claim their rights.
Dalit representatives at the 2001 Durban Conferencesuch as Martin Macwan of the Navsarjan Trust
(Gujarat), Ruth Manorama of the National Federation of
Dalit Women and N. Paul Diwakar of the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rightsinsisted that the debate

GLOBAL PROBLEM

One of the most important parts of Rita Izsak-Ndiayes

report is the insistence that the discrimination of caste is
not merely a South Asian problem. She notes that about
250 million people in the world suffer from caste-based
discrimination, although of these the vast majority201
millionlive in South Asia. Rita Izsak-Ndiaye points to
Yemens Mushamasheen (Marginal Men), Japans Burakumin, Mauritanias Beidane and Haratines, Madagascars Merina and Bara, Nigerias Osu, Senegals Neeno,
and Somalias Sab. Each of these communities, just like
the various Dalit groups in India, faces untouchability
practices and occupational segregation. The report turns
the spotlight of attention towards a widespread practice
of using ideas of pollution and lth to constrain people
into essential but unremunerated occupations. Rita Izsak-Ndiaye points out that these invented barriers are a
major cause of poverty and perpetuate poverty in affected
communities.
If South Asias caste problem is on the surface, these
others are buried in obscurity. Her framework of global
caste, says Rita Izsak-Ndiaye, shines a light on these
other countries where caste is a taboo topic which is
hidden from public discourse. I hope this report can
trigger some further discussion. Scholarly literature has
used the idea of caste to unearth the practices of discrimination in places outside South Asia, although this
discussion is esoteric and has had little impact on public
policy. Rita Izsak-Ndiayes report is not the rst to raise
these issues. In the early 2000s, the Special Rapporteur
on Racism, Doudou Diene, had drawn out the deeprooted discriminations against the Roma in Eastern EuFRONTLINE .

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Scheduled Castes and in 2013 India nally banned

manual scavenging. If there is a political consensus
against untouchability and caste discrimination, why is
India so averse to the kind of report that Rita IzsakNdiaye produced? She told me that she recognised that
this is an extremely sensitive topic internally so it will be
important for Indian society to openly and honestly carry
on with a public discussion and identify joint actions on
how to ensure equality and dignity for all.
PROPERTY AND PRIVILEGE

S. JAMES

Rita Izsak-Ndiayes report recommends that governments pass laws, create awareness-raising campaigns
and adopt reservation and quotas as mechanisms to
combat caste discrimination. Most of these are commonplace in India. Yet, violence against Dalits and exclusion
on social and economic lines continue in a harsh and
brutal manner. In one aside, Rita Izsak-Ndiaye notes
that accusations of witchcraft are sometimes made to
deprive Dalit women of their basic economic and social
rights, including access to land and their assets. Nothing
more is said about this important point. Rita IzsakNdiaye told this writer that she did not elaborate on the
issue of land and resources because of the space limit. It
is hoped that a future report will take up this issue as its
centrepiece.
Violence by dominant castes seems to be driven in
many cases by the refusal to allow Dalits to own land and
the demand for Dalits to workat substandard wages
on the landlords elds and in their homes. These
demands run parallel with cruel forms of violence. Any
attempt to undermine the violence of caste is going to
have to take seriously questions of property and privilege.
In 1949, B.R. Ambedkar told political leaders of India
that their hesitant approach to land reform (and wealth
redistribution) did not bode well for democracy. How
long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and
economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will
do so only by putting our political democracy in peril.
Most of the groups referred to in Rita Izsak-Ndiayes
report had struggled for decades to bring attention to the
problems of their society. The Buraku Liberation League
in Japan has a history in parallel to Ambedkars Scheduled Castes Federation and the Republican Party of India. These groups fought, as Ruth Manorama put it, to
turn pain into power. Each of these organisations and
the political pressure they put on their society forced
their governments to address these deeply rooted social
problems. The Indian government might not like attention on the world stage, but it has been forced to adopt
ideas of human rightsthe result is the National Human Rights Commission, formed in 1993. Pressure from
these groups brought the issue of caste to the U.N. for the
rst time at the 2001 Durban conference. Rita IzsakNdiayes report is part of a sustained effort to force social
change. No amount of sophistry by the Indian government can sideline the brutality of caste discrimination.
Either it gets broached with the motivation to erase it, or
it will erupt in dangerous and anarchic violence.

M E MBE R S of the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi staging

a road roko in front of the Government Rajaji Hospital in
Madurai in January, demanding the arrest of those
accused in the murder of A. Chinna Karuppiah, a Dalit.

about caste being an internal matter to India merely

avoided the question of caste discrimination. If the atrocities against Dalits were merely an internal matter, they
asked, why did the government do so little to tackle it? No
resolution came from the U.N., but Macwan was unfazed. Why do you need more resolutions than already
exist? We are not interested in a resolution from the
U.N., he said. We are interested in creating greater
visibility for the Dalit issue. Minority rights or antiracism provided the opportunity to talk about what had
not been addressed sufficiently within India. While theoretical and academic debates on the approach are interesting, Rita Izsak-Ndiaye said, I wish that there is
more attention paid to the actual problems of inequalities and barriers to the enjoyment of dignity and human
rights by lower castes and to possible solutions on how
we can overcome them.
No question that the Indian government has under
its belt a great number of laws. India has been a signatory
to the International Convention for the Elimination of
All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1969) and of the
other nine conventions and protocols that place the
country rmly in the anti-racism camp in world affairs.
Domestically, India has not only banned untouchability,
but passed a series of laws to combat caste discrimination. In 2004, under pressure from the controversy at
Durban, India established a National Commission for
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AWARDS

Maths prize for Wiles

Sir Andrew Wiles has been awarded the 2016 Abel Prize for his
stunning proof of Fermats Last Theorem, a mathematical problem
that remained unsolved for three and a half centuries. B Y R . R A M A C H A N D R A N
Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut
quadrato-quadratum in duos
quadrato-quadratos et generaliter
nullam in in-innitum ultra
quadratum potestatem in duos
eiusdem nominis fas est divider
cuius rei demonstrationem
mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc
marginis exiguitas non caperet.
Pierre de Fermat
THE above statement translates
as follows: It is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a
fourth power into two fourth powers,
or in general, any power higher than
the second, into two like powers. I
have discovered a truly marvellous
proof of this, which this margin is too
narrow to contain. In algebraic form,
this means that the equation xn + yn =
zn has no (non-trivial) integral solution (for x, y and z) for all powers of n
greater than 2. (A non-trivial solution is one in which x, y and z are all
non-zero.)
This statement is known as Fermats Last Theorem (FLT), which
the French (lawyer-cum-) mathematician Pierre de Fermat wrote
down sometime around 1637 in his
copy of the book Arithmetica written
by the ancient mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria (200-300
C.E.). Although this was not the last
assertion that Fermat made in his
life, it is known as Fermats Last Theorem because it was the last one that
SIR A N D R E W W I L E S outside the
building of the Mathematical Institute
that has been named in his honour.
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ry. For n = 2, the statement is nothing but the Pythagoras theorem: a2 +

b2 = c2, where a and b are the lengths
of the legs of a right-angled triangle
and c is the hypotenuse. This, as we
know, has many non-trivial integral
solutions for a, b and c, the simplest
and most interesting one being 3, 4
and 5. These solutions are called
Pythagorean triples (a, b, c), and
there are innitely many of them.
FLT says that there are no such solutions for n > 2. While the statement is
accessible to every high-school student, it had proved to be one of the
longest-standing unsolved problems

WWW.JOHNCAIRNS.CO.UK

remained unproven for over three

and a half centuries until Andrew J.
Wiles of the University of Oxford
(now Sir Andrew Wiles), who had
been drawn to the problem when he
was just 10 years old, proved it in
1994.
This years Abel Prize, widely regarded as mathematics Nobel Prize,
has been awarded to Wiles for, to
quote the citation by the Norwegian
Academy of Science and Letters, his
stunning proof of Fermats Last Theorem by way of the modularity conjecture for semistable elliptic curves,
opening a new era in number theo-

63

in mathematics. FLT, as is clear from

the citation, is a problem that belongs to the eld of mathematics
called number theory, which deals
with arithmetic properties of numbers, and had attracted generations
of mathematicians especially because of Fermats tantalising remark
that he actually had a proof. FLT has
the distinction of having the largest
number of false proofs among all the
conjectures in mathematics.
But, remarkably, given the large
number of failures, many famous
mathematicians were reluctant to
even approach the problem suspecting its unprovability. For instance,
after trying to prove FLT, Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1835), considered
the greatest mathematician in the
history of the subject, wrote: Fermats Last Theorem, as an isolated
proposition, has very little interest
for me, for I could easily lay down a
multitude of propositions, which one
could neither prove, nor disprove.
The German mathematician David
Hilbert (1862-1943) is supposed to
have said this in 1920 to explain why
he was not attempting to prove FLT:
Before beginning I have to put in
three years of intensive study, and I
dont have that much time to squander on a probable failure. On the
basis of the famous Austrian mathematician Kurt Friedrich Godels incompleteness
theorem
in
mathematical logic, which he himself proved in 1931, there was also a
growing belief among mathematicians of the 20th century that perhaps the problem belonged to the
category of problems that could neither be proved nor disproved. (Godels theorem states that in any
comprehensive logical system, it is
possible to make statements that can
neither be proved nor disproved
within that system. This theorem essentially is a formalisation in the language of mathematical logic of the
ancient paradox known as the liars
paradox, wherein a liar declares
Everything I say is false, which
leads to an obvious paradox.)
But all the failed attempts did
result in the development of new areas such as algebraic number theory
in the 19th century and proof of the
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modularity theorem in the 20th

century following Wiles proof of
FLT. Wiles proof showed two essential things. One, FLT did not belong
to the realm of Godelian unprovable
conjectures. Two, it was not an isolated proposition a la Gauss as the
solution showed deep connections
between
apparently
unrelated
branches of number theory. The
proof, which is over 150 pages long,
also demonstrated that while it certainly could not have t into the margin of the page where Fermat wrote
his statement, he could not have had
a proof at that time with the mathematical concepts and tools that
would have been at his disposal in
the 17th century. Wiles proof invokes concepts such as elliptic curves
and modular forms in which developments were made only centuries
later. As the Norwegian mathematician Arne Sletsjoe notes in his popular description of FLT, Wiles proof
would have been highly inaccessible
to even a brilliant mathematician
like Fermat if he had the opportunity
to read it.
The Norwegian Academy awards
the Abel Prize every year in memory
of the exceptional Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel (18021829) for contributions of extraordinary depth and inuence to the
mathematical sciences and for work
that has contributed to raising the
status of mathematics in society and
stimulating the interest of children
and young people in mathematics.
Few results have as rich a mathematical history and as dramatic a
proof as Fermats Last Theorem,
notes the citation by the Abel Prize
Committee. The prize carries a cash
award of six million Norwegian
kroner, which is about 600,000 or
$700,000.
Wiles was born on April 11, 1953,
in Cambridge, United Kingdom. He
obtained his bachelors degree in
mathematics at Merton College, Oxford, in 1974 and his doctoral degree
at Clare College, Cambridge, in 1980.
During 1977-80, he also was at Harvard University. After a brief period
at the Institute for Advanced Study,
Princeton, in 1981, Wiles became a
professor at Princeton University.
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A P A GE from the book Arithmetica written by the ancient

mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria.

During 1985-86, he spent time at the

Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientiques, Bures-sur-Yvette (near Paris), and at the Ecole Normal
Superieure, Paris. From 1988 to
1990, he was a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford before returning to Princeton. He rejoined
Oxford in 2011 as a Royal Society
Research Professor.
He has received a number of other major awards, notable among
which are the Rolf Schock Prize
(1995), the Ostrowski Prize (1995),
the Wolf Prize (1995/6), the Royal
Medal of the Royal Society (1996),
the U.S. National Academy Award of
Sciences in Mathematics (1996) and
the Shaw Prize (2005). Wiles nar-

rowly missed being awarded the

Fields Medal, which is given only to
mathematicians under 40. When he
proved FLT, he was already 41. But,
in lieu of it, the International Mathematical Union, for the rst time ever
in its history, presented him with a
silver plaque for his achievement. He
was awarded the inaugural Clay Research Award (1999). In 2000, he
was conferred the knighthood.
As a 10-year-old in Cambridge,
Wiles happened to read a book on
Fermats Last Theorem at a local library. According to Wiles, he had
been intrigued by the problem that
he as a young boy could understand
and yet it had remained unsolved for
300 years. I knew from that mo-

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ment that I would never let it go,

Wiles said. I had to solve it.
During his early career in mathematics, he did not actively attempt to
prove FLT since it was generally believed that the theorem had proved
to be too difficult and was probably
unsolvable. But he did come to solve
it 30 years later, in a way that can
only be described as audacious as it
had deed scores of outstanding
mathematicians before him since
Fermat wrote down his statement in
the margins. Wiles chipped away at it
for nearly seven years in total secrecy
(except for conding in his wife) before he cracked it.
Although Fermat had claimed
that he had a general proof of his
conjecture, he left behind details of
his proof only for the special case of n
= 4. It can be easily shown that once
the case n = 4 is proven, the general
proof for all n > 2 requires that the
theorem be proved only for all odd
primes (2 is the only even prime). In
other words, it had only to be shown
that Fermats equation xn + yn = zn
had no integer solutions when n is an
odd prime. But what characterises n
= 3 and higher powers such that
while the equation has many solutions for n = 2, it has none for the very
next power? As Sletsjoe explains, if
you consider numbers, say, up to
10,000, there are 2,691 sums of two
squares, 100 squares and 42 numbers that are both a square and a sum
of two squares. In contrast, when you
consider cubes, there are only 202
sums of cubes, 21 cubes and none of
these is both a cube and a sum of
cubes. This property of being a cube
and a sum of cubes becomes so rare
already up to 10,000 that it is unlikely that any number would satisfy
the requirement, and that is what
FLT asserts.
Between 1637 and 1839, only the
special odd prime cases of n = 3, 5
and 7 could be proved. While Leonard Euler is credited with having
proved for n = 3 in 1770, there were
others after him who provided independent proofs. Adrien-Marie Legendre and Peter Gustav Lejeune
Dirichlet independently proved the
case of n = 5 around 1825. Later others, including Gauss (1875, posthu-

P I ERRE D E F E R M A T, the
lawyer-cum-mathematician.

mously), also gave alternative proofs.

Gabriel Lame settled the case of n = 7
in 1839. All proofs of specic powers
followed essentially the same technique (called the method of innite
descent) with which Fermat had
proved for n = 4. Interestingly, Dirichlets proof for n = 14 was published
in 1832, before Lames proof for n = 7
because the method used was different.
However, as n increased, the
methods and arguments used became increasingly complex, and it
was becoming increasingly clear that
the general proof could not be obtained by building upon the proofs
various people had arrived at
through the 19th and early 20th centuries for individual values of n or
certain special classes of primes. In
the latter half of the 20th century,
computational approaches were pursued to prove the theorem for large
values of n. Harry Vandiver used a
Standards Western Automatic Computer in 1954 to prove FLT for all
primes up to 2,521. Samuel Wagstaff
extended this to all primes less than
125,000 by 1978. By 1993, FLT was
computationally proved for all
primes less than four million. However, proof of FLT for individual exponents up to howsoever large a
number would never be equivalent to
a general proof as there may be an
even higher number X for which the
theorem does not hold.
65

The real breakthrough advance

that led to Wiles ultimately proving
FLT came from unexpected areas of
mathematics research. In the 1950s,
two young Japanese mathematicians, Yutaka Taniyama and Goro
Shimura, noted that the solutions to
a type of equations called elliptic
curves were remarkably similar to
specic expressions of a class of functions called modular forms. (An elliptic curve is an equation of the form
y2 = x3 + ax + b, where a and b are
constants. Such equations appear in
the study of elliptical orbits of planets. By the beginning of the 19th century, mathematicians, Abel, among
others, began studying such equations in their own right, given their
interesting properties. Modular
forms, on the other hand, are more
abstract mathematical constructs
that exhibit a great deal of symmetry
and nice analytic properties.)
Taniyama and Shimura concluded that the observed similarity could
not just be a coincidence and that
there must be a deep connection at a
more fundamental level that produced two identical sequences of
numbers in two apparently entirely
disconnected mathematical areas.
Then, they made this astounding
conjecture in 1955: Every elliptic
curve could be associated with its
own modular form. This is called the
Taniyama-Shimura-Weil
(TSW)
conjecture following the French
mathematician Andre Weils detailed exposition of it about 10 years
later. This was a surprising and bold
conjecture that no one had any idea
of how to go about proving.
In 1984, the German mathematician Gerhard Frey provided the rst
unexpected link between TSW and
FLT. He asserted that if TSW was
true, then FLT would follow as a consequence. Frey showed that if FLT
was assumed to be false, one could
set up a weird (semi-stable) elliptic
curve that would have no modular
form. This would be contrary to the
TSW conjecture, which says that all
elliptic curves are modular. Two
years later, the American mathematician Ken Ribet proved Freys assertion. Freys and Ribets works
implied conversely that if the TSW
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conjecture was true then FLT must

also be true. The three-and-a-halfcentury-old theorem could now be
rephrased in terms of the mathematics of elliptic curves and modular
forms. Now, therefore, the only hurdle that needed to be crossed to prove
FLT was to prove the TSW conjecture. But no one knew how to attack
it.
CHILDHOOD DREAM

Ribets proof in 1986 provided Wiles

with the necessary incentive and
trigger to return to try and prove
FLT, which was his childhood
dream. It was an amazing twist of
fate that the two areas that Wiles had
specialised inelliptic curves, his
PhD subject under John Coates, and
modular formsturned out to be
precisely the areas that would now
lead to the resolution of FLT.
Wiles made the rather unusual
choice of working all alone on FLT
rather than collaborating with someone. According to the Norwegian Academys background information
on him, he was worried that since the
problem was so famous the news he
was working on it would attract too
much attention and he would lose
focus.
In 1993, after seven years of intense research work in utmost secrecy, Wiles believed that he had a
proof. He decided to go public during
a lecture series in Cambridge. However, he did not announce anything
related to FLT beforehand, and the
title of his lectures, Modular Forms,
Elliptic Curves and Galois Representations, did not reveal anything either. But rumour had somehow
spread around the mathematical
community, and he gave his three
lectures on consecutive days to a
packed lecture theatre.
However, later that year, a referee checking his manuscript found an
error. Wiles was devastated. He was
still away from his childhood dream.
But he did not lose heart. With redoubled vigour, he set out to x the
error for which he enlisted one of his
former students, Richard Taylor. After a years work, Wiles found a way
to correct the error. I had this incredible revelation, Wiles said in a
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APRIL 29, 2016

BBC documentary, his eyes welling

with tears. It was the most important moment of my working life. No
gaps were found in the nal manuscript of the proof that Wiles sent to
the journal Annals in Mathematics,
and it was published in 1995 under
the title Modular Elliptic Curves
and Fermats Last Theorem.
The new ideas introduced by
Wiles, notes the citation, were crucial to many subsequent developments, including the proof in 2001 of
the general case of modularity conjecture by Christopher Breuil, Brian
Conrad, Fred Diamond and Richard
Taylor. As recently as 2015, Nuno
Freitas, Bao V. Le Hung and Samir
Siksek proved the analogous modularity statement over real quadratic
number elds.

Wiles made
the rather
unusual
choice of
working all
alone on FLT.
Although it may sound technical,
it may be pertinent here to quote
from the famed Royal Societys statement on him when he was elected to
it, which reveals his amazing ability
to bring in innovative ideas and
methods to tackle apparently intractable problems in mathematics: Andrew Wiles is almost unique
amongst number-theorists in his
ability to bring to bear new tools and
new ideas on some of the most intractable problems of number theory. His nest achievement to date has
been his proof, in joint work with
Mazur, of the main conjecture of
Iwasawa theory for cyclotomic extensions of the rational eld. This
work settles many of the basic problems on cyclotomic elds which go
back to [Ernst] Kummer, and is un-

questionably one of the major advances in number theory in our

times. Earlier he did deep work on
the conjecture of Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer for elliptic curves with
complex multiplicationone offshoot of this was his proof of an unexpected
and
beautiful
generalisation of the classical explicit
reciprocity laws of Artin-Hasse-Iwasawa. Most recently, he has made
new progress on the construction of
L-adic representations attached to
Hilbert modular forms, and has applied these to prove the main conjecture for cyclotomic extensions of
totally real eldsagain a remarkable result since none of the classical
tools of cyclotomic elds applied to
these problems. Proving FLT is the
peak of his achievements and the ultimate testimony to Wiles remarkable mathematical skill and ability.
Martin Bridson, head of the
Mathematical Institute, University
of Oxford, where Wiles currently
works, said this about Wiles: No individual exemplies the relentless
pursuit of mathematical understanding in the service of mankind
better than Sir Andrew Wiles. His
dedication to solving problems that
have deed mankind for centuries,
and the stunning beauty of his solutions to these problems, provide a
beacon to inspire and sustain everyone who wrestles with the fundamental challenges of mathematics
and the world around us. His work
will inspire mathematicians and scientists for centuries to come. We are
immensely proud to have Andrew as
a colleague at the Mathematical Institute in Oxford. In fact, the building in the Mathematical Institute
where Wiles sits has been named in
his honour.
Robert Bryant, the president of
the American Mathematical Society,
had this to say about Wiles: Dr
Wiles fundamental work in number
theory has implications far beyond
its deep consequences in pure mathematics, deepening our understanding of some of the most fundamental
algorithms that underlie communications in our modern world and
providing enormous benets to our
society and our world.

66

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ARCHAEOLOGY

DOORWAY TO

JAINA
HISTORY

T H E S CULP TUR E of a seated

Rishabhanatha, the rst Jaina
tirthankara, in a basadi (jaina
temple) found on the eastern end
of the Kanakagiri hillock.

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At Artipura in Karnataka, the ASI unearths a Jaina centre that

ourished during the time of the Gangas and the Hoysalas.
Text by T.S. SUBRAMANIAN and photographs by K. BHAGYA PRAKASH

IT is hard not to relish the sights

along the way to Kanakagiri, a granite hillock at Artipura village in Karnatakas Mandya district. At the foot
of the hillock is a pond with water
lilies abloom amid leaves oating on
the water. And more pleasantly, we
come across a quaint customa
house-warming ceremony for which
brightly coloured saris are laid on the
street for the new homeowners to
walk on. It is not clear whether it
carries vestiges of the past, but up the
granite hillock situated some 110
kilometres from Bengaluru, there
are more sights and stories that will
lead us to a rich heritage and culture.
Midway up the hillock, as one
approaches a at area on the rock, a
depression springs into view. On one
side of it is a natural cavern, with a
ridge carved above the doorway to
prevent water from entering the
cave. A man-made trough in front of
it collects rainwater to cater to the
needs of visitors. Inside the cavern is
a brief, faded inscription in the Nagari script. Outside the cavern is a
series of bas-reliefs of Jaina tirthankaras, some seated and others
standing. Signicantly
noticeable is the sculpture of Parsvanatha,
the 23rd tirthankara in
the Jaina pantheon,
standing on a lotus
pedestal under the
hood of a snake.
Thirteen tirthankaras are carved in the
series and above them
a 14th one stands
alone. Below these basreliefs are a couple of
faded inscriptions in the
Kannada script and language used in the
ninth/10th century C.E.
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The outline of a tirthankara chiselled

into the rock and left unnished for
some reason provides us an insight
into how these bas-reliefs were
made.
On the rock oor lay a variety of
loose sculptures. They were probably
left near the bas-relief sculptures
decades ago by people who brought
them from the hilltop. One of the
sculptures is of Parsvanatha, standing under the hood of a seven-headed snake. Carved out of chloristic
schist stone, the sculpture belongs to
a time when the Ganga kings ruled
areas near Artipura from the fourth
to the 10th century C.E. This Parsvanatha sculpture is rather plain,
with just the Asoka vriksha (tree)
carved on the stone borders and
three umbrellas, or chatra triya,
above the hood of the snake.
In contradistinction to this is an
ornate sculpture of Parsvanatha belonging to the time of the Hoysalas,
who ruled this part of the country
from the 11th to the 14th century C.E.
The wealth of sculptural details on
this is remarkable. Here Parsvanatha
is seen standing on a simha (lion)
throne that has carvings of lions and
celestial beings. On either side of him
at the bottom are gurines of
yaksha Dharnenda and yakshi
Padmavathy, and at shoulder
level are chamara (y-whisk)
bearers and above them Asoka trees.
Other sculptures include
that of yakshis, yalis, a headless tirthankara, Kubera, ywhisk bearers, a portion of a
bali peeta (where offerings are made), and
broken pillars, some of
them plain and others
with carvings on them.
On top of the hillock,

the team of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), Bengaluru Circle,

led by T. Arun Raj, P. Aravazhi and
R.N. Kumaran, has, in what is called
a scientic clearance in archaeological parlance, unravelled a Jaina
complex consisting of 12 Jaina basadis (temples) and mathas (monasteries). A scientic clearance, as
opposed to an excavation, involves
an element of certainty because it is
based on the knowledge that collapsed structures are sure to be found
in a site or mound. After documenting a site or mound, archaeologists
remove the soil slowly to unearth
structures that lie buried or half-buried there.
In 30 big trenches at Kanakagiri
lie the remains of basadis, built in
brick rst by the Gangas and later
rebuilt and strengthened with stone
veneering by the Hoysalas. Among
the ruins of these Jaina temples are
sculptures of Adinatha, the rst tirthankara; highly embellished pilasters with carvings of different
tirthankaras and their lanchanas
(representative symbols such as the
monkey, the horse, the rhinoceros,
the elephant and the kumbha (pot)
of each tirthankara); a large, superbly sculpted tirthankara in seated position in the sanctum of one of the 12
temples; sculptures of Kubera,
yakshi Ambika, Chakra Dharini,
dwarapalakas (doorkeepers), chamara bearers; nishidi pillars to commemorate sallekhana (a Jaina vow
to embrace death by fasting); big
A P I LA S TE R and a sculpture of

Rishabhanatha. The pilaster has

exquisite carvings of the
tirthankaras Ajithanatha (with his
lanchana, the elephant) and
Sambhavanatha (with the horse)
and of yakshas and yakshis.

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slabs with inscriptions in Kannada,

datable to the 11th century; and longrunning inscriptions on the plinth of
collapsed temples and carved stone
stairs.
The ornate and intricate carvings
on the pilasters are typical of the
Hoysala period. Ubiquitous among
the sculptures are Adinatha, or Rishabhanatha, who is popular among
Jaina devotees.
Kanakagiri is now a veritable
open-air museum of Jaina basadis
and sculptures, said Arun Raj, Superintending Archaeologist, ASI,
Bengaluru Circle.
TWO PHASES OF ACTIVITY

The site lasted from the ninth to the

14th century, patronised by the Ganga, the Hoysala and the Vijayanagara
dynasties. Structural activity on the
site was essentially in two phases.
During the rst phase, the Gangas
built basadis with bricks. In the second phase, the Hoysalas provided a
granite stone veneering to these
structures. Besides, they expanded
the structures by adding ardha mantapas, mukha mantapas, and so on.
But they did not change the direction
of the temples.
This is one of the biggest scientic clearances undertaken at a Jaina
site, said Arun Raj. Here, the inscriptional evidence conrms the archaeological discoveries we have
made. We rst exposed a Jaina temple on the western side last year.
Then, from October 2015 to March
2016, we unearthed 12 Jaina basadis
on the eastern side. After the rains in
2016, we will resume the scientic
clearance.
Summing up the importance of
the Artipura site, Aravazhi, Assistant
Archaeologist, ASI, said: It is here
that we get various types of Jaina
architecture. We have bas-relief
carvings of tirthankaras near the natural cavern. We have exposed 12
structural temples built of bricks and
also the remains of monasteries.

A VI E W OF THE S CI E N TI FI C
CLE AR A N C E being done by the ASI

on top of the hillock. They discovered

12 Jaina temples and monasteries.
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P A R S V A N A T H A , the 23rd
tirthankara, seated under the hood
of a snake. Beside this sculpture is
one of Kubera.

There is rock-cut architecture,

monolithic sthampas and nishidi pillars. Besides, Savanappana Gudda,
the hill with its 10-foot-tall, freestanding sculpture of Gomatesvara,
is situated nearby. The complete set
of Jaina architecture of south India is
available here at Artipura.
K.P. Poonacha, former Joint Director General, ASI, who was at Kanakagiri on February 26 when the
Frontline team was visiting, said:
During its heyday, between the
ninth and 14th centuries, this site
was one of the most important Jaina
religious complexes in this part of
Karnataka. He said the information
available from the inscriptions at the
site was corroborated by the archaeological discoveries in the scientic
clearance.
DATE OF THE SITE

Aravazhi said the site can be dated to

917 C.E. according to the inscriptions. He said the site formed a transitional phase from bas-relief
sculptures to free-standing sculptures. The sculptures found here
bear similarities to the bas-relief
sculptures of tirthankaras carved on
hills around Madurai in Tamil Nadu,
he said.
In his book Temples of the Gangas of Karnataka, rst published by
the ASI in 1962, the late I.K. Sarma,
who retired as an ASI Director, says
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RI S H A B H A N A THA, also called Adinatha. The plainness

of the sculpture is characteristic of the sculptures of the
Ganga period.
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A H IG H L Y E M B E L L I S H ED sculpture of Parsvanatha of the Hoysala period

under the canopy formed by the hood of a snake is shown standing on a

simha throne anked by a yaksha and yakshi.
73

that two indigenous kingdoms rose

in Karnataka during the middle of
the fourth century A.D.. They were
the Kadambas of Banavasi and the
Gangas of Talakadu which controlled territories in southern and
eastern Karnataka for a long period
up to the end of circa 10th century
A.D. The Gangas were great patrons
of Jainism. It was during the reign of
the Ganga king Nitimarga II (regnal
years circa 904 to 919) that several of
the brick-built basadis on the Kanakagiri hill were built.
Sarma says: It is not known why
Nitimarga II built an extensive Jaina
basadi in brick at this place and gifted all the income from the village to
the great Jaina teacher Kanakasena
Bhatara. The very name of this place,
Kanakagiri Tirtha, seems to be after
this great teacher who inspired the
Ganga kings to consolidate Jainism
in this area. More interestingly, this
sacred Jaina-tirtha with brick basadis continued to enjoy royal patronage not only during the time of
Hoysala kings Vishnuvardhan (1117)
and Vira Ballaladeva II (1220) but
also during the Vijayanagara period
and became a sacred resort for great
Kannada litterateurs.
Owing to the dominance of Jainism in the village and its association
with scholars and saints, it was afxed titles such as Kavikandarpa
Tippeyur during the Hoysala period
and Bastiya Tippuru during the Vijayanagara rule, Sarma says. (In ancient days, Artipura was known as
Tippuru.)
What made the ASI staff take up
the scientic clearance atop Kanakagiri was an inscription on a stone slab
found among a heap of bricks. Both
its script and language were in the
Kannada of the Hoysala period of the
13th century. The inscription, which
was done at the instance of the poet
Balachandradeva, is about the existence of a temple complex built of
bricks and how the Hoysalas rebuilt
it with stone. Balachandradeva did
this in memory of his father, the poet
Kandarpadeva, and mother, Sonnadevi. Kandarpadeva, known as kavi
chakravarti, belonged to Tippuru itself. The inscription, in Kannada,
can be dated to 1220 C.E. during the
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O RN AM E N TE D
P I LA STE R S

found during the

scientic clearance
at Kanakagiri being
cleaned. They have
carvings of
tirthankaras
Arahnatha (with the
sh lanchana, or
symbol),
Shreyansanatha
(with the rhinoceros
symbol), Mallinatha
(with a kumbha),
Dharmanatha (with a
dharma chakra) and
Shanthinatha (with
the deer symbol) and
other celestial
beings.

ON THE R I G HT
P A N E L (top,

middle and
bottom) are
terracotta
gures found
during the
scientic
clearance.

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reign of the Hoysala king Vira Ballaladeva.

The scientic clearance has also
unearthed several other inscriptions.
On paleographic grounds, most of
the inscriptions, belonging to the
eighth/ninth century C.E., were that
of the Gangas, said Anil Kumar R.V.,
Assistant Epigraphist, ASI, Mysuru.
Most of the short inscriptions or
those which are found in fragmentary form are in praise of different
people. We are currently getting inscriptions that belong to the Hoysala
period, he said.
The ASI staff has taken estampages of long inscriptions on the
plinth of a Jaina temple in the complex. Although these inscriptions
are not dated, they belong, on paleographic grounds, to the Hoysala period, Anil Kumar said.
The scientic clearance has also
thrown up notable sculptures such as
that of the pot-bellied Kubera. This
sculpture is important because it belongs to the Ganga period. We have
plenty of Hoysala sculptures, but
Ganga sculptures are only a few,
Aravazhi said.
The second season of excavation
on the eastern side of the hilltop has
brought to light temples originally
built with bricks by the Gangas and
later buttressed with stone veneering
by the Hoysalas.
Referring to two nishidi pillars/
slabs to commemorate the sallekhana, Aravazhi said the rst slab had
carvings of a Jaina sage granting
diksha to a king, with his three wives,
before the king undertook his vow.
The second slab had carvings of a
Jaina teacher granting diksha to a
woman to undertake sallekhana.
Professor K. Ajithadoss Jain, former head of the Department of Plant
Biology and Plant Biotechnology,
Presidency College, Chennai, and a
specialist in Jainism, said the slabs
with the carvings might not be nishidi pillars.
The carvings show Jaina acharyas preaching Dharma to the
members of a royal family. In the
second slab, there is a bookstand
next to the acharya, he said.
The scientic clearance gives insights into how the Jaina temple
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B RI C K S U S E D B Y THE G AN G A S to buttress the Jaina temples built by

them in the ninth and 10th centuries atop Kanakagiri.

A M B I K A , who was the yakshi of Neminatha,

one of the 24 Jaina tirthankaras. She is a
seated on a throne borne by a lion.

A KUB E R A sculpture.

Several Kubera sculptures

were found in Kanakagiri.

I N S C RI P T I ON ON A S TON E S LAB (facing page), got done by the poet

Balachandradeva in memory of his parents, the poet Kandarpadeva and

Sonnadevi. It is dated to 1220 C.E., during the reign of the Hoysala king Vira
Ballaladeva. It talks about the existence of a Jaina complex built of bricks
atop Kanakagiri and how the Hoysalas rebuilt it with stone. This led to the
ASI taking up scientic clearance at the site.
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Bahubali of Artipura
LESS than a kilometre from the Kanakagiri hillock at
Artipura is a steep hill called Savanappana Gudda. On
top of it stands a 10-foot-tall monolithic sculpture of
Gomatesvara. While the imposing 57-foot (17.37metre) monolithic statue of Gomatesvara, or Prince
Bahubali, at Sravanabelagola in Karnataka is world
famous, the one at Savanappana Gudda is a big draw for
specialists in Jainism.
The arduous climb up Savanappana Gudda hill is
worth it when you get to see the Bahubali sculpture
there. The prince is doing penance in the forest, creepers have grown around his feet, and his two sisters are
entreating him to give up the penance. Prince Bahubali
gave up ghting with his brother and walked the path of
penance after the example of Mahavir. Arun Raj T. and
P. Aravazhi of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI),
Bengaluru Circle, contend that the Gomatesvara at Savanappana Gudda was sculpted about 65 years before
the one at Sravanabelagola.
An edict on Savanappana Gudda says the Bahubali
sculpture there was made in 918 C.E. (The Gomatesvara
at Sravanabelagola was sculpted circa 983 C.E.) The
argument in favour of it being sculpted earlier rests on
the fact that the rear of the statue at Savanappana
Gudda has not been sculpted at all, while that of the one
at Sravanabelagola has been smoothly sculpted.
Just as there are Kanakagiri and Savanappana Gudda at Artipura, there are the twin hills Vindhyagiri/
Indragiri and Chandragiri at Sravanabelagola. The Gomatesvara at Sravanabelagola was sculpted during the
reign of the Ganga king Rajamalla IV (regnal years
974-985 C.E.), and the credit for it is given to his
minister Chamundaraya. It is carved out of granite rock.

THE 10- FOOT- TALL

sculpture of Gomatesvara,
or Bahubali, atop the
Savanappana Gudda hill,
close to Kanakagiri.

OPINION DIVIDED

However, opinion is divided on which sculpture is older. Professor K. Ajithadoss Jain, a Tamil Jain, said the
Gomatesvara at Sravanabelagola was more sophisticated in its features and hence the other would be older.
However, other specialists in Jaina iconography say it
is a matter of debate.
In an article Nishidhi stones and the ritual of sallekhana in Homage to Shravana Belgola, rst published in 1981, Professor A. Sundara, noted archaeologist
from Karnataka, who calls the Gomatesvara at Sravanabelagola a Jaina iconographical colossus, says: The
date of its creation is taken as 983 but the date of its
consecration is equivalent to 1028. We have no explicit
record as to when the work began. But it could only be
after 978 for the Chamundaraya Purana composed by
Chamundaraya himself, during this year, does not make
any mention of this great achievement.
T.S. Subramanian
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79

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complex would have ourished for

several centuries before it fell into
ruin. The rocky surface of the hill was
rst levelled before the entire temple
complex was built. Pointing to a particular temple, Aravazhi explained
how it came up and underwent
changes later. He said: There are
two working levels for this temple:
the brick structures belong to the
Gangas and the stone masonry to the
Hoysalas.
There is a big, wide brick wall of
the Ganga period. There are two
garbha grihas adjacent to each other, belonging to the Ganga and the
Hoysala period. When the Hoysalas
came to this area, the original temple
had been abandoned. So they built
another temple adjacent to and
above the earlier one. Each temple
had a math for the monks to stay and
learn the scriptures.
At the far end of the eastern side
is a temple showing early Hoysala
inuence. In the sanctum sanctorum
is the sculpture of a superbly carved
Rishabhanatha in a seated position
radiating tranquillity. The sanctum
has no roof and three of the four
pillars that would have supported
the roof remain. Stone veneering to
the brick walls of the various structures are visible and the stone walls
have carvings of owers and animals.
The Hoysalas rarely used granite for making sculptures, said Aravazhi. But in this temple, they have
used both granite and schist. The
seated tirthankara is made of schist
stone. The same stone was used for
making sculptures at Belur and Halebid [in Karnataka].
Arun Raj said the ASI had plans
to conserve the Artipura site. The
mahamastakabhisheka (a Jaina festival held once in 12 years) of Gomatesvara at Sravanabelagola in
Hassan district in the State is scheduled to be held in 2018, and several
lakhs of devotees are expected to attend it. We need the support of the
local panchayat and the local people
to popularise Artipura because Jaina
pilgrims can visit Artipura on their
way to Sravanabelagola. There is a
Jaina site at Kambadahalli in Mandya district which can also be popularised, he said.

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A N O U T LI N E of a sculpture

chiselled on the rock surface near the

bas-reliefs. This gives an insight into
how the sculptors made these
carvings during the 10th or 11th
century during Hoysala rule.

BA S - R E LI E FS of tirthankaras on
the rock surface adjacent to the
cavern. Below them are faded
inscriptions in the Kannada script
and language of the ninth/10th
century.

80

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A SE R I E S of

bas-relief
sculptures of
Jaina
tirthankaras on
the rock surface
adjacent to the
natural cavern
in a depression
on the
Kanakagiri
hillock.

CH A K R A
DH AR I N I . She

holds a wheel,
noose and a
conch in three
hands. The
fourth hand is
held in the
abhaya mudra.
81

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ASI O F F I C I A L S near the sculpture of Adinatha found in a temple on the eastern side of the hillock. From left are T. Arun
Raj, Superintending Archaeologist, Bengaluru Circle; K.P. Poonacha, former Joint Director General; and R.N. Kumaran and
P. Arvavazhi, both Assistant Archaelogists.

E STA MPA G E S of the Kannada inscriptions on the granite plinth of a Jaina temple. The inscriptions belong to the

Hoysala period.
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BOOKS in review

Limits of technological
innovations
The book takes into consideration the impact of innovations on social
life in the U.S. But not much attention is given to the qualitative
changes that have taken place in rural and suburban lifestyles and in
employment patterns over the last two decades. B Y S H E L L E Y W A L I A

ife and work were

risky, dull, tedious,
dangerous and often either
too hot or too cold, writes
Robert J. Gordon about
18th century America in
his book The Rise and Fall
of American Growth. In the
last decades of the 18th
century, women had to lug
water from considerable
distances for their daily
washing and cooking. Before the invention of washing machines and dryers,
according to a reliable
study carried out in 1886,
washing, boiling and rinsing a single load of laundry
used about 5o gallons of
water.
Then the explosion in
technology-driven growth
changed all aspects of life.
Gordon, an eminent
macroeconomist, has given a comprehensive overview of economic growth,
while making a comparative study between the impact
of
advancing
automation
technology
and the growth of real wages and living standards
over two signicant historical periods1870 to 1940
and 1940 to 1970.
Identifying the innovations in lifestyle from

The Rise and Fall

of American
Growth
The U.S. Standard
of Living Since the
Civil War
By Robert J.
Gordon
Princeton
University Press
Pages: 784
Price: 27.95

steam-powered trains to
central heating, and from
electrication to the internal combustion engine, he
argues that the New Deal
labour policies resulted in
the fast rise of real wages
when compared with production, which resulted in
material advancement in
the middle of the last century. Freedom from household drudgery, improved
life expectancy and connectivity would dramatically change the lifestyles
of people. In 1870, there
were no homes with electricity, indoor plumbing or
central heating. By 1940,
however, about 40 per cent

of homes had installed central heating, 60 per cent indoor ush toilets, 70 per
cent had running water
and 80 per cent had electricity. Cars, planes, the
combustion engine, refrigerators, washing machines
and the television expanded urban development,
ushering in the second industrial revolution with its
emphasis on Henry Fords
innovation of the conveyor
belt. As Gordon writes in
the introduction: Our central thesis is that some inventions
are
more
important than others, and
that the revolutionary century after the Civil War was
83

made possible by a unique

clustering, in the late 19th
century, of what we will
call the Great Inventions.
Although it was commonly believed that invention and innovation would
usher in rapid economic
growth and improved living standards, this happened only between 1870
and 1970. Before and after,
there would be very sluggish economic growth and
changes in living standards. The leap forward
that was to go on until 1970
was a result of the significant reforms that took
place during the New Deal.
However, Gordon is of the
view that post-1970, the
American economy entered the stage of stagnation with no broad-based
technological innovations
left to facilitate economic
growth. Because these inventions cannot be repeated, in the decades that
followed, growth also
would not be the same as it
was in the past.
Interestingly,
new
technologies of the last few
decades, in Gordons view,
will not spark any noticeable economic growth
since living standards will
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plateau in contemporary
times. The reason he gives
is that cognitive human
labour has been substituted by information technology in the years that
followed.
Economic
growth essentially reects
two factors: the size and
productivity of the labour
force. The special centurys
impact peaked in the rst
quarter-century
after
World War II, when annual productivity gains averaged almost 3 per cent.
But since 2004, the average has dropped to about 1
per cent. If the labour force
also grows at 1 per cent annually, then overall economic growth is around 2
per cent. By historic standards, thats meagre.
Gordons thesis argues
that all advancement in
human prosperity is directly related to technological innovation, and until
we return to these broadbased innovations of the
years before 1970, there
will be no further rise in
the real incomes of the
working class. Seen in the
context of innovations in
information technology, it
is difficult to believe that
labour would still be as valued as it was in the pre-IT
decades. All activity in the
industrial world would
certainly become less labour intensive and no
great technological leaps
will ever allow the New
Deal era to return. Mass
employment generated by
the automobile industry in
the nature of manufacturing, driving, repairing,
fuelling, washing will now
give way to fewer jobs owing to computer technology in the form of robotic
innovations that tend to
replace the working class
more and more. Visualise
the arrival of driverless
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would have not been

where it is today. The invention of electricity,
though signicant, cannot
be the technology that is
valorised, as recent experiments in discovering new
sources of power generation that have minimum
greenhouse gas emissions
cannot be ignored. These
would indeed be substantial inventions in the future with positive and
stabilising effects on maintaining ecological balance.
The book takes into
consideration the impact
of innovations on social life
in the U.S. where, for instance, the importance attached to calorie intake or
the cost of mutton or
chicken determined dietary habits at the start of
the last century. But not
much attention is given to
bring out a more comprehensive picture of the qualitative changes that have
taken place in rural and
suburban lifestyles. Gordon also ignores the
changing landscape of the
rise in employment over
the last couple of decades.
Gordons history of
U.S. growth and its fall
misses out on a few trends
in contemporary economic
development, too. The
U.S. heartland comprising
the area around the Great
Lakes, the upper northeastern States such as New
York and Pennsylvania
and
the
Midwestern
States, were once the core
of the great Industrial Revolution. Manufacturing giants like auto, steel, heavy
equipment, fossil fuelbased industries and ancillary-support-manufacturing units provided the
bread and butter for the
bulk of a growing nation,
and the growth continued
unabated well into the

cars, which seems to be

around the corner. More
skills and education will
undoubtedly be the requirement of tomorrow,
rather than unskilled labour in labour-intensive
jobs. Broad-based innovations will not have the
same impact as they did in
the past. Smartphones
were introduced in 2007,
Gordon writes, but have
had no noticeable bearing
on productivity gures.
Though overowing
with volumes of data and
institutional details, with
tables and charts of useful
historical data that a student of U.S. history and
political economy would
nd useful and fascinating,
the book gives the trajectory of the economic history
of growth and its fall within a negative economy that
has overtaken the globe
with greatly increased income and wealth disparity.
However, Gordon misses out on the more recent,
signicant inventions of
carbon energy, gene-based
medicines, new materials
like grapheme, and automated vehicles that are a
signicant contribution to
the progress in material
sciences and health care.
To him, broad-based inventions of the industrial
age are of prime importance owing to their impact on labour welfare. It is
also not true, as he maintains, that the United
States alone is responsible
for all these inventions.
What about the contributions to information technology
and
communication by Indians and Chinese? The father of the Pentium chip is
Venod Dham, an Indian
who migrated to the U.S.
in the early 1980s. Without
him, computer technology

mid-20th century. The

U.S. was the rising star, a
beacon of prosperity that
the whole world sought to
emulate.
DISRUPTED MARCH

It seemed nothing could

disrupt
this
onward
march. The U.S. was making everything it needed
and the world wanted. But
the forces of globalisation
would bring this growth to
a grinding halt. The U.S.
could not isolate itself
from the cheap labour that
China was willing and able
to provide. Chinas admission to the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) in
1978, the liberalisation of
its communist regime towards free markets and the
availability of cheap skilled
labour made it an ideal
manufacturing haven for
companies in the U.S. Industrialists were held hostage by the labour unions
in the U.S. and the cost of
doing business was getting
prohibitively
expensive.
China beckoned, and jobs
went offshore to China,
Mexico and wherever else
goods could be produced
cheaper than in the U.S.
and shipped back to be
sold. Eventually, what was
once a thriving broadbased manufacturing sector was decimated by catastrophic
job
losses,
prolonged economic decline and population loss,
causing bustling cities to
become ghost towns.
This continued until
new economic shoots
sprang in the Rust Belt
with the rise of labour wages in China and the local
labour unions adjustment
to the new global wage
parity. Employees began to
understand that they
would have to learn new
skills and be willing to

84

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T H E N E W YO R K
S K YL I N E . The U.S. used to

MOHAMMED YOUSUF

be a beacon of prosperity.
But the forces of
globalisation brought its
growth to a grinding halt.

work with lower wages and

fewer benets to bring
back jobs they had lost to
international competition.
This worked to reinvigorate a dying auto industry
while also bringing in foreign car manufacturers
like Nissan, Honda and
Toyota from Japan who
thought it was more procient to be near the consumer
to
be
most
responsive to their changing needs. Once labour
rates had reached equilibrium between the local
manufacturer and the international entrepreneur,
it was far more efficient to
build locally. Consequently, the industrial sector has
added nearly a million jobs
in the last ve years and
the surging demand for
new cars has spiked employment in places like Michigan,
which
has
recovered almost 50 per
cent of the jobs it lost in the

programmers and phenomenal broadband speed

so that the entire world is
the new global village. Today, the digital economy
employs over a quarter
million people in California, and with it the demand for investment
banking has grown to accommodate the need for
mergers and acquisitions.
The U.S. is experiencing a tectonic shift in how
it employs and supports its
population. The divisions
between industrial and
non-industrial industries
has blurred with the advent of smart cars that
are controlled almost entirely by an on-board computer. Knowledge is a
resource that does not
need to be mined, grown or
produced as a tangible. It
is sourced and consumed
without a smokestack. It is
the cleanest form of employment, and as the econ-

recession of 2008. Gordon

could be advised to take
note of this basic reality.
Gordons thesis that
there would be slow economic growth in the age of
information technology is
also awed to an extent.
He has undervalued the
impact of new technologies. Together with the rebirth of a new and
improved manufacturing
economy, sustainable and
more efficient, the knowledge or digital economy
has been generating hundreds of thousands of jobs
which are mostly concentrated on the west coast in
the famous Silicon Valley. The advent of the
computer and the Internet
has given birth to brand
new industries like data
mining and developing applications. This new engine
of
growth
is
underpinned and supported by millions of software
85

omy matures from a

manufacturing-based
economy to a service-centered one, we will continue
to see upheaval and disruption, with global forces
repeatedly challenging the
status quo until a new normal is found.
Until then, we can
agree with Gordon that the
future will be more contentious than the past because the growth in
incomes will be indifferent
and added weight will be
given to income circulation. The paucity of funds
will give rise to disenchantment, especially with
the prevailing conditions
that would thwart any
drive of robust economic
explorations. Mere privileging of technology may
give spasmodic strength,
but it is essential for the
human race to remember
the limits of such a passion.

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BOOKS in review

Mapping themes
in Adoors lms
A panoramic and intense study of Adoor
Gopalakrishnans work in all its diversity and
complexity. B Y C . S . V E N K I T E S W A R A N

ne of the tragedies of
contemporary
lm
historiography and studies
in India is its inability or
refusal to accept Indian
cinema as plural. If one
goes through lm literature in English produced
during the last few decades, one gets the feeling
that Indian cinema is, and
was, Bollywood. Studies on
other language cinemas of
India that have an equally
vibrant, diverse and long
history are few and far between or, in many cases,
non-existent. The books
that have come out are
mostly about the chronological, descriptive history
of regional or vernacular (words which should
be understood as regionalised and vernacularised). Very rarely do they
dwell upon movements,
auteurs
or
landmark
works, which most often
end up as box items
alongside the historical
narratives. Only Hindi cinema seems to demand and
get attention to details,
barring a few exceptions
such as Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Guru Dutt
and Mrinal Sen. In this situation, several great auteurs and their wonderful

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APRIL 29, 2016

The Films of Adoor

Gopalakrishnan
A Cinema of
Emancipation
By Suranjan
Ganguly
Anthem Press
India, 2015

of the great auteurs work

in all its diversity and complexity. But how does one
describe, assess and position a lm-maker like
Adoor whose career spans
over ve decades and encompasses a wide range of
themes and concerns? The
most common method is to
follow his oeuvre chronologically and trace the directors gradual evolution
through his works by delineating their sociopolitical
concerns and aesthetic
styles, or the narrative
structures that predominate and persist in them.
Ganguly attempts a thematic,
zigzag
journey
through Adoors lms; he

body of work in various

language lms in India are
largely ignored or relegated to oblivion, a predicament that is further
accentuated by the nonavailability of high-quality,
subtitled DVDs (digital
versatile disc) or Bluray
discs. The redemption and
preservation
of
these
works is a task that still requires many a P.K. Nair,
even in the digital context.
Suranjan
Gangulys
book The Films of Adoor
Gopalakrishnan: A Cinema of Emancipation assumes great signicance in
this context, for it is one of
the rst attempts at a panoramic and intense study

picks and links the major

thematic strands and leitmotifs and traces their aesthetic
and
political
trajectories. In the process,
he illuminates surprising
connections and excavates
hidden linkages and liminal parallels at various levels: of protagonist gures
and characters, enduring
social and political overtones and undertones, aesthetic
devices
and
strategies and audio visual
patterns. It is like connecting seemingly random dots
to create a complex but integral picture of a lmmakers oeuvre that spans
the last half century.
PHILOSOPHICAL
INVESTIGATION

I follow the trajectory

[by] focussing on the
search for emancipation
within a Kerala struggling
to dene itself between regressive forces and the advent of modernity, states
the author in the introductory chapter. He also maps
the major thematic concerns and narrative terrains of Adoors work. All
but one of Gopalakrishnans lms are set in Kerala, in southern India,
where he has lived all his
life. Keralas abrupt displacement from a princely
feudal state into 20th-century modernity is the backdrop
for
most
of
Gopalakrishnans complex
narratives about identity,
selfhood and otherness.
The lms deal with eviction and dislocation, the
precarious nature of space
and the search for home.
They are about power and
its abuse and the abject
conditions of servility it
breeds. They focus on guilt

86

Raz Kr

G.P. SAMPATH KUMAR

and redemption and the

possibility of transcendence that lies in choice and
action as well as inner
transformation. They also
allude to the power of human subjectivity to invoke
its own state of freedom
and thereby transcend its
materially circumscribed
world. This generates, in
turn, a whole other discourse on the role of the
imaginary in our public
and private lives and its
ability to simulate realities
that are more real than the
real. It results in a philosophical investigation of
the nature of reality itself,
its perception and its
representation.
The analysis of the
Adoor oeuvre of 11 feature
lms from Swayamvaram
in 1972 to Oru Pennum
Randaanum in 2008 is organised thematically in
eight chapters. The rst
chapter is dedicated to the
analysis of Mukhamukham (1984), the most despairing of Adoors lms.
Placing the lm as one that
deals with the crisis engulng a society that is paralysed by its own
incapacity to live up to its
cherished ideals [and] to
forge new values and create a concrete agenda for
change, Gangulys analysis elaborates upon how an
enigmatic revolutionary
icon
is
constructed
through various means.
Fact and ction, the real
and the imaginary, all go
into the making and unmaking of a myth, raising
deeply political questions
about the innate responsibility and agency of the
people.
The next two chapters
focus on Elipathayam
(1981) and Vidheyan
(1993), narratives featuring men from landowning

A D O O R Gopalakrishnan

at a lm festival in
Bengaluru in January.
families who grapple with
the challenge of living in a
post-feudal era where they
must radically recongure
their sense of the self, identity and home. While Elipathayam
mercilessly
documents the pathological symptoms of a self-destructive system in the
contexts of power, sexuality and labour, Vidheyan
deals with master-slave relationship that is more venal and sordid in its
physical and mental abuse
and oppression. According
to Ganguly, theirs is a liminal existence as outsiders
stuck between past and
present, in an unreal inbetween space that becomes the site of their psychic dislocation, which
takes the form of a neurotic obsession with power
that they exercise either on
their immediate family
members or the community at large. And yet, officially, the men have no real
87

access to power. This

strange
contradiction
power within powerlessnessonly conrms their
perverse otherness.
Kodiyettam (1977) has
been seen by many critics
as a lm about the attainment of adulthood of a
childlike character totally
immersed in infantile
pleasures and his blase dependence on others. Ganguly follows an interesting
tangent by looking at the
narrative as an exegesis on
a culture of wasteful selfindulgence and degrading
machismo where men live
suspended in a time warp,
outside all norms of productive social living and
engage in mindless consumption and a demeaning corporeality. Picking
on the theme of food and
the ritual of feeding, Ganguly elaborates upon it by
linking various kinds of allusions to food and consumption in Kodiyettam,
whose symbolic relevance
extends to motherhood,
sexuality, seless love, conjugality, and power relationship within the family.
Ganguly looks at all the
three lms mentioned
above as critiques of masculinity that is directed at
an entire culture, a whole
way of life where people
are incapable of any collective form of redress.
The next chapter is
about Adoors debut lm
Swayamvaram,
which
Ganguly places along with
Elipathayam and Vidheyan in its focus on the
politics of dislocation and
survival (both physical and
moral) in which the search
for home, self and identity
becomes a key issue.
Drawing from and connecting various visual and
narrative details, the author essays the various nu-

ances of the desperate and

doomed journey of two
lovers, subtly bringing to
surface their disparate
gender
predicaments.
While the lm upholds
the modernity of their
choice and bid for freedom, the couple eventually
fails to live up to the expectations generated by that
choice. The regressive
forces win at the end, but
Sita, despite her debilitating self-image, emerges
stronger
and
more
resilient.
For Ganguly, if one
dominant trope associated
with women in Adoor Gopalakrishnan lms is the
act of food and feeding, the
other is a recurring visual
element: the doorways
against which women are
framed, which is what the
chapter on Nalu Pennungal and Oru Pennum Randaanum focusses on. It is
the doorway that tends to
assert itself both literally
and metaphorically (when
it is not invoked visually)...
in which women seek voice
and visibility within a society that often seeks to silence and marginalise
them. The doorway embodies their sense of insecurity,
exclusion
and
otherness. Taking the
doorway as a visual and
political metaphor, the
analysis explores the limits
and the immense possibilities that herald liberty
and emancipation and its
existential connotations
outside the context of
gender.
The chapter titled
Making the Imaginary
Real: Anantaram, Mathilukal and Nizhalkutthu is
an
exploration
into
Adoors fascination with
human interiority in the
context of creativity. For
Ganguly, these lms mark
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a shift in the narrative terrain from the social and

historical to an exclusively
interior realm featuring as
protagonists men who are
physically or psychically
displaced but invent and
inhabit a complex imaginary world, thus reconguring their sense of
difference. Mathilukal,
based on an autobiographical story by Vaikom Muhammed Basheer, is about
the inner workings of a
writers mind, and at the
centre of Anantharam is a
schizophrenic young man.
Both of them author and
invent alternate realities
for their own reasons. In
Nizhalkuthu, it is the deep
empathy of the hangman
that prompts him to reinvent the story he listens to
by implicating himself in
its predicaments. In each
case, the power of the human mind and its creative
potential is affirmed and
engagement with the
imaginary is equated with
freedom and liberation.
All these lms make us reect on the dividing line
between art and life and
between real and imaginary as well as the question
about the nature of
reality.
INTERROGATING
REALISM

Another interesting dimension of Gangulys critical

analysis
is
his

in our grasp, thus placing

it in contrast with Mukhamukham, which is about
the abject failure of that
dream. Ganguly is also
circumspect about such
endorsement of a progressive agenda shaped by
the modernity of choice
and
outlook,
which
seems too good to be true
in our times. According to
him, Like all proponents
of humanist cinema, Gopalakrishnan faces the
challenge of having to constantly recongure the
grounds of his humanism
in relation to a dynamic,
ever-changing and unpredictable contemporaneity. He also points out that
Gopalakrishnans lack of
engagement with larger
contemporary
realities
within and outside Kerala
and his immersion in the
feudal past may suggest a
regressive tendency. But
Ganguly thinks that to
judge his legacy merely in
terms of its contemporaneity is to do him a grave
injustice. The idealism of
Kathapurushan, however
problematic for some, is
based on life-affirming, real values that could be described asto use those
much maligned terms
timeless and universal.
Such idealism enables us
to understand the enduring quality of Gopalakrishnans cinema, which while
embracing historical specicity also seeks to transcend it. Hence the
emphasis on emancipation
surpasses its political and
social contexts and applies
to the human condition in
its totality.
It is this overarching
idea and concern about the
human condition in all its
complexity that provides
the basic framework to
Gangulys critical ap-

exploration about how

Adoor employs complex
multiple narrative structures to subvert the text
and in the process interrogates the very nature of realism as a representational
mode and its truth claims.
Such questioning of realism leads Gopalakrishnan
to address what constitutes ction and ctionmaking as well as the role
of the imaginary. Such
strategies, while foregrounding the inadequacies of realism, prompts
the viewer to reect on lm
itself as an articial construct, which also explains
the recurrence of storytelling and storytellers, references about narratives,
and the acts of narration
with in the lms.
The last chapter dwells
upon
Kathapurushan
(1995), arguably Gopalakrishnans most ambitious
lm, epic in scale, intimate
in tone and covering nearly
forty-ve years of Keralas
history. According to the
author, it is primarily a
cinematic Bildungsroman
that charts the emotional
and psychological evolution of a man and his consciousness and is framed
by some of the key events
that have shaped Keralas
modernity. For Ganguly,
it is the most optimistic
of Gopalakrishnans lms
where the dream of emancipation seems to be with-

The writer picks and links the

major thematic strands and
leitmotifs in Adoor
Gopalakrishnans lms and
traces their aesthetic and
political trajectories.
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

proach to Adoor lms. It

makes a close reading of
the narratives, plot, characters, visual compositions, mise en scene and
montage, while linking
them across narratives and
with socio-political horizons.
Shunning psychologising of characters to x
them into certain personality modes and behavioural patterns and thus
explain away their actions and exhaust their
possibilities, he considers
them as complex, fullblooded
individuals
caught in the ux of specific time, space and culture.
Such unreining of characters on the one, and the
disavowal of narrow ideological preconceptions on
the other allows the author
to be open to surprising
connections and fresh trajectories in his journey
through these narratives,
which is what makes the
book an exciting journey
for the reader too. In the
process of weaving together externally enigmatic
and diverse narratives into
an internally coherent and
wholesome picture, Ganguly refreshes the reader/
viewer with new angles
and theoretical leaps.
Most importantly, the
study follows an exploratory and excavatory style that
shuns closures and assertions, thus prompting the
viewer towards further
tangents and digressions,
other resonances and connections.

C.S. Venkiteswaran is a
National Award-winning
lm critic and documentary
lm-maker based in
Thiruvananthapuram. He
has published books and
articles on visual media and
cinema in Malayalam and
English.

88

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BOOKS in review

Documenting India
The book offers a refreshing take on the role of the
documentary in Indian society and illustrates its
claim on reality. B Y R A M E S H C H A K R A P A N I

HEARTENING development in recent

years is the growing body
of literature on the Indian
documentary lm, depicting its transformational
role in society and its place
in the history of resistance
to state brutality and the
struggle against various interests intent on riding
roughshod over citizens
rights to serve corporate
greed. It also brings distressing stories from the
darkest corners of society
into our comfortable living
rooms.
The book under review
is the most recent addition
to this library of scholarship. It has the twin advantages of being authored
by two distinguished academics who are also established practitioners of the
craft, having made over 40
documentaries and bagged
numerous awards. The
book thus brings a unique
set of concepts and ideas to
the reading table and,
much like its subject(s),
forces the reader to engage
and grapple with an alternative perspective.
Mainstream cinema,
on the rare occasion when
it has not restricted itself to
entertainment fantasy, has
traditionally been a oneway top-down route of disseminating ideas and opinions, usually in the form of

A Fly in the Curry

Independent
Documentary Film
in India
By K.P. Jayasankar
and Anjali Monteiro
Sage Publications,
2016
Pages: 256
Price: Rs.795

homilies and platitudes.

Art house cinema emerged
as a challenge to this set-up
by depicting real-life stories, but documentary cinema goes one step beyond
that. And this book, as Arjun Appadurai informs us
in his insightful foreword,
demonstrates that the documentary is not just a
frame for reality but is better seen as a claim on reality. Right off the bat, the
book challenges the reader
to think differently, to
learn to perceive differently and to recognise the documentary for what it is and
what it has done. And in
doing so the authors help
us understand better the
vision of a wide spectrum
of lm-makers and the signicance of their oeuvres.
This book makes no

claims to being an all-inclusive, encyclopaedia like

Shoma A. Chatterjis opus
on the Indian documentary
lm is a comprehensive
work (Documenting reality, Frontline, November
13, 2015). Instead, it sacrices breadth for depth by
seeking to explore the ruptures within documentary
practice and the role of the
lm-maker herself and the
interplay between the medium and reality.
According to the authors, the title references
Henry Breitroses assertion
that the lm-maker in cinema verite mode is not
merely a y on the wall, an
observer recording a happening, but a y in the
soup, an active participant
whose presence leads to action. The book is thus an
89

exercise in studying the

documentary lm-maker
not as a chronicler but as
an actor and participant
and the relationships he
forges with the subject and
the audience.
Documentaries, more
than any other genre of
lm-making, must be seen
in their historical and social contexts. The authors
unravel the signicance in
place and time of various
lms through an intense
interrogation of their
work.
The documentary does
more to shake us out of our
reverie than any other
genre, and this book, in a
way, performs a similar
function by pulling us out
of our cocoons, where we
are surrounded by the contrived bromides of protdriven cinema, to shine
light on an alternative universe of light and sound.
It is imperative that we
pay greater attention to the
work being done in this
space for the obvious reason of acquainting ourselves with social issues by
learning about the stories
of resistance, and also improving our sense of cinema and appreciation of the
medium, as these lms
constantly
push
the
boundaries and expand the
possibilities of the craft.
No doubt there are
players who have, in recent
years, received more bandwidth than expected for exploring issues outside the
realm of multiplex cinema,
such as Dalit oppression
and tribal struggles against
mining
conglomerates
(Chaitanya Tamhanes National
Award-winner
Court and Devashish Makhijas Odiya lm Oonga
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

ANAND SANKAR

G. MOORTHY

C.V. SUBRAHMANYAM

A STI L L F R O M Do Din Ka Mela directed by Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jayasankar.

FIL M - MA K E R S R.P. Amudhan, Stalin K. and K.P. Sasi.

readily come to mind). But

they are still few and far
between, unlike documentaries which also enjoy the
advantage of being shorn
of allegory.
Perhaps the most important section in any of
the six chapters in the book
is the one titled Resisting
Caste Oppression, not because other causes are less
important but because
these stories continue to
suffer from a new-age untouchability. It is ironical
that despite the huge advances in technology,
which have enabled realFRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

narration of the subalterns story, where lmmakers like Stalin K. and

R.P. Amudhan challenge
the status quo by forcing us
to acknowledge the social
realities outside social
media and far away from
the cities, where a different
India resides.
Stalin K.s India Untouched, a distillation of
9,000 minutes of footage
from the makers travels
through eight States, has a
sequence where a group of
Dalit girls draw water from
a well, an act that was performed for the camera but

time reporting and instant

telecasting of events and
incidents to millions of
viewers, the stories of Dalit
life, their struggles and the
oppression they continue
to suffer remain largely invisible to newsrooms,
mainstream cinema and
prime-time television. Dalit murders are mostly covered as events before the
nations attention is gently
guided on to the next hot
topic of the day or the
week.
This chapter enlightens us on how a silent revolution is happening in the

ended up breaking a social

taboo that had been in
place for centuries. This
serves as a prime example
of how the very act of
shooting a documentary
can lead to social change,
however minor and eeting thus reinforcing the
power of the documentary.
Two recurring themes
in the book, feminism and
the city, offer fascinating
insights into various lms
that tell a diverse range of
stories and investigate the
inspirations that drove the
lm-makers to document
the untold stories of the
marginalised and the dispossessed, in the process
helping them articulate
their thoughts, hopes,
fears and aspirations.
The authors dip into a
wealth of material and experience to organise an
elaborate and impressive
anthology of content, analysis and reection on the
history and signicance of
the documentary and
make a compelling case for
the need to nurture it.

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INTERVIEW

Reshaping the contours

of Carnatic music
Interview with the Carnatic music exponent T.M. Krishna.

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

BY R . K . R A D H A K R I S H N A N

T.M Krishna

I distance myself from the term classical, since it is a

sociopolitical term, meaning nothing in aesthetic
terms; I prefer the term art music. Art music is not
there to send out a political message.
91

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BIJOY GHOSH

IN the extremely rigid, traditionbound, hierarchy-driven and classconscious world of Carnatic classical
music, the vocalist Thodur Madabusi
Krishna, popularly T.M. Krishna, is a
mist: for many a summer now, he
has no longer been restricted to the
art and culture section of the
media. While the musical genius of
T.M. Krishna is never in questionthe rave reviews he is getting
now as he is touring the United
States is the latest attestation to this
factin recent times making news
outside of the stage seems to have
become second nature to him. Taking the music from the controlled
climes of the sabhas to the sweltering heat of the slums, Krishna has
attempted many experiments that, at
once, redene him and his music.
His ability to engage his audiencethrough both shock and surpriseis extraordinary. He plays

P A RA I D RU M M E R S perform at the Urur Olcott Kuppam Margazhi festival in

Chennai. (Right) A section of the audience.

around with the concert format, provokes his audience and challenges
them to move beyond the comfort of
the format handed down for generations, and insists that a concert for
him is not about merely moving
around the pieces.
But the biggest shock to his fans
and followers was when he announced that he would not sing in
the Citadel of Carnatic Music, the
Chennai December music season. In
a Facebook posting, he said: I would
like to inform all of you that henceforth (beginning December 2015), I
will not be singing in Chennais December Music Season.
Right from when I was ve or six
the season has been part of my musical universe and I have learnt so
much from musicians, musicolo-

gists, scholars and rasikas. Unfortunately, at the place I am today I am

unable to reconcile my musical journey with that of the December season. My growth in the eld of music
has been largely due to the sabhas of
Chennai, and, over the years, they
have been most accommodative and
graceful in accepting my varied requests, he said. He thanked all of
them for everything.
Krishna, who was trained by Vidvans Seetharama Sarma, Chingleput
Ranganathan and the legendary
Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer in his
formative years, devoted his time to
explore the uncharted territories in
music, such as collaborating with the
jogappas in Karnataka (See Frontline, March 20, 2016) and embarking on a hazardous journey to Sri

The Urur Kuppam festival is not trying to convert anybody

to Carnatic music. It is only trying to give it spaces outside
its elitist quadrangles.
FRONTLINE .

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92

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BIJOY GHOSH

Lankas Northern Province to reach

out to and help the Tamil-majority
region rebuild its classical music traditions. His fellow traveller in this
endeavour, the Carnatic vocalist and
playback singer P. Unnikrishnan,
had to apologise for having travelled
to Jaffna, after a group of Tamil nationalists targeted him for supporting the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime.
Krishna, however, refused to be cowed down by the threats.
Krishna is also a sought-after
speaker and does not hesitate to take
on the high and mighty. In October
2015, Krishna wrote an open letter to
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to break his silence on the
future of pluralism in India. Can we
really not see the connections between the so-called stray incidents
all over the country, from the murders of Narendra Dabholkar, Govind
Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi to that
of Mohammad Akhlaq. Your direct
voice needs to be heard now, unless
you do not consider this an event of
signicance, he wrote in The Hindu.
He has co-authored Voices Within:
Carnatic MusicPassing on an Inheritance, a book dedicated to the
greats of Carnatic music. In 2013, he
unveiled A Southern Music, publish-

ed by HarperCollins, a work on the

Carnatic tradition.
Excerpts from an interview he
gave Frontline:
What is your idea of art? Should it
deliver a message? For you art is
also a means of engaging with social
and political issues. From this
standpoint, how effective is the
Carnatic music realm, which has
increasingly isolated itself from the
mainstream?
I have a difficulty with this umbrella term art. Every art form has a
reason for its existence. Western
popular music has very centrally included a sociocultural and even political message for direct political
and social change, to question ideas
of love and freedom or to oppose oppression of any kind, and so on. The
Civil Rights Movement in the U.S.
and music are inseparable. You nd
this energy embedded both in the
lyrical content and in the presentation of the music. Take lm music
everywhere. It exists because the medium of cinema exists. Its aesthetic
and intentionality are directed towards the storytelling process. Each
art form addresses different emotional needs of the human being and
93

of society as they exist at the time.

However, receptivity is another matter. And your own receptivity depends on how clean or clogged your
receptors are of your conditioning.
I distance myself from the term
classical, since it is a sociopolitical
term, meaning nothing in aesthetic
terms; I prefer the term art music.
Art music is not there to send out a
political message. I am not sitting on
the stage to tell you all to reject the
caste system, or talk about reservation. So, there is no direct political or
social message. Nonetheless, what a
form such as art music can do and
does do is very interesting. The whole
idea is to abstract life experiences
from the literal. When you abstract,
the experience is removed from the
actual event. And in that abstraction
a profound transformation can take
place, both in the presenter and in
the listener and, in fact, in what is
being presented as well.
In Carnatic music, you have three
elements at workraga, tala and
text. They are used to abstract various life experiences beyond an actual
event, beyond even nostalgia. So,
there is a huge bandwidth of reasons
why art exists, and experiences that
art gives and why it moves, changes,
transforms, each differently perhaps,
but essentially. And so, very curiously, it is also a reality that every art
form creates its own political ambience and inuences and converses
and, indeed, lives within a political
arena.
At one level, the experience of
Carnatic music is not literal, political
or social. But the basket within
which it exists is denitely social and
political. So, it will be a lie for me to
escape into this abstraction and
claim that we are beyond the sociopolitical [realities around us].
I work at two levels. The way I
have addressed music is [in terms of]
abstraction. But if you dont recognise the sociopolitical [contexts],
your abstraction, or the idea of the
sublime, is not going to exist. Unless
you address both, a conversation is
not possible. I do think that the sociopolitics of every art form is different as the experience of every art
form is different.
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Raz Kr

When I started asking these

questions, I knew there would be a
blowback from the community. For
some time, there was a huge gap between what I was saying and what
people were making of it. But I also
learnt from that. I have realised in
the last ve years or so that people
need not agree with me as long as
there is engagement with the questions. But these questions are being
discussed [now], which is a great
way forward. People outside the
eld, I knew, would understand the
points with greater ease than people
within the community, which is
looking at these questions in its own
way, both the musical aesthetic questions and the sociopolitical questions. I am happy about that. But
some four years ago, no one in the
so-called Carnatic community was
willing to have a conversation about
it. Everybody was being reactive, but
not being attentive. They would react
and I would react to the reaction.
And it went on like that.
But now, I think that I have better understood the nuances of discussion and that there is a point in
negotiation. I am not as pessimistic
now as I was four years ago. The
younger generation is at least looking at these things. But I do agree
with you that despite all this movement, the Carnatic music world is
still very in-grown, very in-bound,
and therefore isolated. Sometimes it
is shocking how isolated we are. It is
unbelievable how complete and contented we feel within this microcosm. Theres no reason to step out.
Do you think you can make Carnatic
music inclusive? I am referring to
your organising the Urur Olcott
Kuppam festival and teaching
Carnatic music in corporation
schools. Is there a structured plan
or is this you doing your little bit for
your peace of mind?
Many of these initiatives began
from a single thought, they were not
part of a structured plan. I had been
talking and writing about these issues for two-three years, but it soon
became clear to me that as one who
practices the art I cannot just philosophise.
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APRIL 29, 2016

In the case of the Urur Olcott

Kuppam project, one December I
was thinking to myself, Suppose
there is a December art festival in a
kuppam [slum] what will happen?
Once an idea comes to your head, you
know how it is, right? It becomes an
animal with its own life and starts
growing inside your head.
I didnt know whom to speak to. I
am as elitist and upper middle class
as you can get and I do not know
kuppam environments. That is when
one thing led to another and to
[Chennai-based environmental activist] Nityanands attempt.
Now, can it make a difference?
Carnatic music can connect with a
larger audience. And not by competing with any other art form. There
are two angles: the people and the
process. There are [the] people, an
overwhelming number, who are not
part of this world, and the process,
also overwhelming, is one of self-realisation, a humbling process too of
the classical music worlds realisation of itself. I feel that the music
itself, if it interacts with a larger diverse cultural group, will only benet
from being shared, being internalised by those unfamiliar with it. This
is not about making it easier for people to understand music. That very
attitude is condescending, implying
that others are not capable of having your so-called intellectual or aesthetic abilities.
In this initiative, the musician is
put in an environment which is not
his or her traditional habitation,
where he/she may not be naturally
at home. We are used to seeing the
same faces in the audience and how
we love that! I know, for instance,
when exactly my audience will applaud. But here, you are in front of an
audience which will probably not
clap, an audience whose appreciation gradient I just do not know, and
which does not think what you are
singing is great or melodious. So it
becomes a fascinating interaction, a
discovery actually.
The Urur Kuppam festival is not
trying to convert anybody to Carnatic
music. It is only trying to give it
spaces outside its elitist quadrangles.
Everyone, we need hardly to say it,

has a right to access it. But does everyone have the chance to access it?
And I must say that access here is not
just physical, it is intellectual, it is
psychological.
Elite art forms are never exposed
to an environment where they can be
rejected. That is their safeguard, but
also their escape route from the reality of a larger world. Art forms are
not on a level playing eld, socially or
artistically. Every community has its
own art forms and these art forms are
also trapped in their small, community environments. So, there are two
or three things that you are constantly aware of. One, you are not gifting
Carnatic music to anyone with the
presumption that they are culturally
deprived. All we are saying is that
this [Carnatic music] too is a reality,
try it out, savour it. But we have to be
conscious of the danger of certain
missteps. People beyond the Carnatic world do realise the social imbalance that Carnatic music brings with
it, and their perception is moulded
by the fact that the performances are
held at private sabha spaces. This
can lead to a view that appreciating
this music will confer a [higher] social status. This is dangerously delusional and we have to guard against
inadvertently fostering such a false
notion.
Therefore, we are also trying to
say that parai [attam] deserves as
much respect as Carnatic music.
That koothu deserves as much respect. These are sophisticated aesthetic forms. So we try and create a
balance placing both on the same
stage. When a person looks at a
koothu performance, and then, the
next second, hears Vijay Siva singing,
two art forms belonging to different
social strata are levelled in perception. We are inuencing perception.
So the artist from the classical world
realises that he or she is no different
from the parai vidwan. The parai
artist realises, or should realise, that
their art is as classical as the so-called
classical.
Theres an element of the personal too in this, a philosophical inquiry
that goes on. Even as Urur is happening, I am getting on stage for my next
concert. Theres a conversation that

94

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S.S. KUMAR

P . U N N I K R I S H N A N at a cultural event at a school in Chennai, a le picture.

Tell me, how many Hindustani

musicians can draw, shall we say, the
cinema crowd? Even 200 of them?
Unni can, Jayashree can, Nitya
[Nityasree Mahadevan] can.
happens between these different aspects of my life, seeing what happens
to me aesthetically and professionally and personally. But that is not the
overriding intention of this whole exercise. The overriding attempt is to
initiate conversations.
IN CORPORATION SCHOOLS

The corporation school was an extension of that. It is fair to ask how

many people from other communities I am teaching personally. The
truth is that I am not. Where can we
begin? So Sangeetha Sivakumar and
I decided to start this initiative. Four
young singers are involved in this
initiative that we are guiding with
the support of the Aanmajothi Trust.
But there is a problem in teach-

ing Carnatic music in corporation

schools. The fact is that the classroom environment gives respectability to an art form. If you say, I am
going to teach in a classroom, it
means that what I am bringing is
important, even more important.
Therefore, it would have been ideal
for Carnatic music to have a classroom, and for parai attam also to
have a classroom. Otherwise, there is
an imbalance, isnt there? These are
things we have to think about and
address.
There have been sporadic efforts by
you and musicians like N. Ravikiran
to teach Carnatic music in
government/municipal body-run
schools. Considering the rigour and
95

longevity needed for classical arts

training, what do these attempts
seek to serve? Does it really
translate to democratising the art
form?
There are different levels of operation. One is this one-hour event,
half-a-day event. It does not go beyond that. Thats why this endeavour
is different. We have taken just four
schools, and per school 20 children
who are in Class VI. That gives us
about four years [before the students
complete schooling]. Even now,
teachers can see three or four students who really have talent. But all
20 will have an exposure to the basic
idea of Carnatic music. So they need
not be singers, they can also be listeners. They can also be involved in the
world of Carnatic music in many other ways. But for those who are talented, I think if you create a process it
can continue beyond the four years.
It is not about teaching them for
ve years and then telling them that
they have passed. How can the parents be brought into this engagement? How can the school itself be
part of this engagement? It is too
early for us since it is only about three
months ago that we started. But I do
think this is different because the endeavour is to create the possibility
that we can have musicians from different communities.
Now, the question is, what are
you going to do with the students
who are talented? What systems are
you going to put in place? Can you
take them in for advanced training?
What will mainstream Carnatic music do? How much acceptability will
these talented students get? These
are larger questions.
I know musicians will teach. No
musician will say no. So that is the
next stage. In three years time, if I
nd, say, four children who are really
talented, then we need to be prepared to take it forward from there.
No parent [of a talented child] will
say, Let my child explore art. I dont
need anything. So, we need to create
an economic environment and a social conversation so that people can
come together and take them to the
next stage. The next challenge is, how
do you place them in the sabha strucFRONTLINE .

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Raz Kr

ture? These are all things that need

to be built into this conversation, if
this endeavour is to achieve democracy in terms of diversity of performers. A lot of things need to come
together. Just because we take classes in four schools for four years, are
we really changing something?
Things can change if we are willing to
go the extra mile.
How do you make people interested
in classical music when they want
to, very clearly, listen to lm music?
For instance, Unnikrishnan is very
popular wherever he goes because
he is a playback singer. With
Bombay Jayashree, too, it is the
same.
First of all, the mindset should
change. You are not competing with
lm music. The moment you begin
competing with lm music, you are
going to fail. The fact that Unni
[Krishnan] or [Bombay] Jayashree
is famous because of lm music is an
advantage to Carnatic music, which
Hindustani music does not have. Tell
me, how many Hindustani musicians can draw, shall we say, the cinema crowd? Even 200 of them? Unni
can do it, Jayashree can do it, Nitya
[Nityasree Mahadevan] can do it.
When these three sing Carnatic music, they sing solid Carnatic music.
There are no compromises in that.
When you get people to listen to Unni [in a Carnatic setting] only because he is a playback singer, I think
that is an entry point for them. They
see Unni as someone they can immediately connect with. So, when Unnikrishnan comes to Urur Olcott
Kuppam, the people there already
have a connection. When Unni talks
[to them] about the art form and
says this is Carnatic music, then their
perception of Carnatic music can
change.
But we have to remember that we
are not counting numbers. A.R. Rahman is A.R. Rahman. Semmangudi

Srinivasa Iyer is Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer. That does not make any
one of them less than the other. Just
because fewer number of people
know Semmangudi that does not
make him any less a musician. And it
does not make Rahman a greater
musician just because more people
know him.
ROCK MUSIC

You have explored cinema as a

medium to take Carnatic music to a
larger audience, via Maargazhi
Raagam and One. Is it because
the director Jayendra
Panchapakesan, who is also your
friend, pushed you into it, or was
this another of your experiments? I
also believe that you sang sitting on
a rock in the middle of a lake in
Coonoor, on an especially cold
morning

the shoot, at around 9 p.m. K.J.

[Singh, who handled the audiography] informed me that we would
have to leave at 3 a.m. because we
had to shoot at sunrise. I reached the
spot at 3:40 a.m., and he showed me
a lake and told me I had to sit on top
of a rock in the lake. I was taken
aback. Three guys held a ladder horizontally, and I walked across it and
sat on the rock. It was hilarious.
I thought it would be difficult to
sing. Actually, it was not. It was possibly the crispness in the air, the sun
coming out, all of this created an environment which enabled me to let
go. Great credit to the team of 40
people who remained invisible, giving me the space to experience nature. It was a very emotional
experience for me.
QUESTION OF STRUCTURE

Was it easy singing on a very cold

morning seated on a rock?

You clearly enjoy playing with the

concert format, but your audiences
have got used to the format. Even if
you began a concert with a tillana or
a tani avartanam, or sang
standalone aalapanas, or had your
violin accompanist play a different
raga to the one you have just sung,
no one really seems to mind
because each of those renderings is
so beautiful. Having made the point
that a great artiste can do what he
wants, is it not time to give your
audience some comfort? After one
has heard a superlative Kambhoji
from you and is happily anticipating
one of the great Kambhoji kritis in
your repertoire or that of your guru,
do you know how wretched it is to
be served with tanam in Dhanyasi? I
am not putting down one or the
other. Or, is it your point that a
Brahmin audience needs to be
tortured?

Honestly, I had no clue what I

would be going through. They had
sent me some photographs. We landed in Coonoor and the evening before

To explore this question, it is necessary to say why I am doing what I

am doing. Is it just about shifting A
to B, B to C, C to D, D back to A? If it

Someone asked me, How is it

that you always land up doing these
kinds of things? The truth is that
they land on my lap. Maargazhi
Raagam was completely Jayendras
idea. The same with One. Jayendra
had come to a concert of mine, and
[the producer] Srikanth [Chandrasekharan] had come to another concert of mine, and both of them had a
chat. There was something they experienced in the concert that drove
them to the possibility of just letting
the artist speak. Then Jayendra shot
me an email saying that he wanted to
hear me in a forest, in the mountains.
I said, Yeah, when? Within 15 days,
he sent me a shooting schedule. I was
open to it. In some way, that is also
the philosophy with which I sing. So
there was a connect between all of us.

[The concert] has got to the point where we musicians play

you [the audience] like a puppet....
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BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

was as dumb a thing as that, honestly, I wont waste my time. Instead of

singing one at number one, you sing
it at number four. What is the big
deal? Nothing. The standard joke
about me is, When will T.M. Krishna begin his concert with mangalam
[the last piece in a concert]? That is
a poor joke. I did not wake up one
morning and say I dont like this
structure, that from now on I will
sing only four pieces in a concert. No.
This is not about the order of songs.
People have reduced this to the order
of songs. It is about the content and
experience at every moment in the
concert.
This is part of my musical journey. As I dug deeper into the music,
its form and its idea of structure and
presentation,
many
questions
emerged. What is this thing that connects one form to another? I sing an
aalapana and the violinist presents
an aalapana. That is a very supercial connectivity. What is it that
binds me and the violinist while exploring the aalapana? How do we
ow into a kirtana? Is it a habituated
thing or is there something deeper?
When I say kirtana is a form, what
do I mean? What is its aesthetic reality? How do sahitya, raga, laya and
tala work together to create the art
object? Where dwells the musician
in this? How do I respect the compo-

P ERF O RM I N G A T S UN R I S E on a rock in the middle of a lake in Coonoor,

Tamil Nadu. [P]ossibly the crispness in the air, the sun coming out, all of this
created an environment which enabled me to let go.... It was a very emotional
experience for me.
sitional form? When I say sometimes
that a song is a tiny composition, that
it is a ller between two serious pieces, is its functionality only its positional point to provide relief between
two serious items? Just run that by.
I want to relax for ve minutes.
There are many questions like this.
So, when I started exploring
form, composition, structure and
their undeniable connection with experience, I felt that though we believe that the varnam is connected to
the mangalam, giving us a unied
aesthetic kutcheri experience, actually the varnam has nothing to do
with the mangalam. What we fool
ourselves to be an aesthetic unity is
actually a presentation-related
structural conditioning, far divorced
from the music itself. Many questions emerged. Can the music live
beyond
the
presentational
conditioning?
If I sing a Kambhoji aalapana,
how can I dwell and live in the
Kambhoji aalapana to the point that
the aalapana completes itself? You
dont need a kirtana to substantiate
it. It doesnt happen every day. But
when it happens, what do I do? You
97

said that after hearing a brilliant

Kambhoji, it is tortuous to hear a
Dhanyasi. I will ask you a counterquestion: You have heard a complete, brilliant Kambhoji. Why do
you want to hear anything more?
I am in that frame of mind.
Exactly. The reason you want
that is because you are used to hearing a Kambhoji kirtana. My point is
that you recognise what happened
was precious, that what you got out
of it was a complete experience, irrespective of whether it was me or it
was someone else who sang. Can you
shed that baggage of needing something when this art object was on its
own so precious and then move over
to another preciousness? Thats all I
am asking. So, when I say I want to
explore the varnam, it is not about
varnam being in position No. 1, but
about what I have done or can do
with a varnam. Can we give it a centrality in the way we treat it, that it is
as important as a kirtana or a tillana? And theres another aspect. The
aesthetic prospect that a tillana provides is so different from what a kirtana provides. So how can I explore
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Raz Kr

THE HINDU ARCHIVES

TH E A UD I E N C E at a sabha in Chennai absorbed in a performance during the December music season. A le picture.

both? Now does that bring discomfort? Sure it does.

Discomfort is an understatement.
I was also uncomfortable at the
beginning because I am also habituated. Discomfort comes from various sources. Like you said, it could
come from an expectation and also
because our appreciation is moulded
by that. But I am challenging that. I
am challenging that for myself and I
am challenging it for you. Because
that needs challenging. Because if
you dont challenge that, we are missing the wood for the trees; the music
for the concert. Because the concert
is a comfortable zone. It has got to
the point where we musicians play
you [the audience] like a puppet. I
dont feel proud saying this, I am very
disappointed that Carnatic music
has come to this precipice. Now that
it has got to that point, this is something that needs to be explored. I am
demanding something very intense
from the audience since the art form
demands it.
Why are you shocking the audience
so often? Have you ever had a
structured conversation with the
audience?
I have many times spoken in the
concert and tried to explain myself.
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

But it is a long process. It will take a

decade, maybe. But again, in this, I
will give you the other counter: Initially when I started doing this, there
was this angry young man thing
within me. [My wife] Sangeetha
[who is also a musician] tells me:
You see it very clearly. But [you
must] realise that everybody else
does not see it so clearly. Therefore,
there was a disconnect of perceptions. But I think, over the years,
there has been some change. People
who were extremely critical of me
four years ago are now sending me
some of the nicest emails. They may
not share my perceptions, but they
recognise that something is being
said here and that theres some value
to the experience. If you are willing to
undergo the experience, you will nd
that the discomfort is irrelevant.
NOT A SERVICE PROVIDER

In many of your kutcheris, you have

said that you are not singing for the
audience. That you are on the stage
for the music. One criticism that I
have come across is that you are
trying to be cute on stage. Do you
ever intend putting an end to this?
[Laughs.] Recently, a friend told
me, Dont talk. Just sing. Anyway,
what you are singing says it. Why do

you want to say it? That is fair

criticism.
But thats always a tough call. At
one level, you are asking me to just
sing. At another level, you are saying
that perhaps I need to say a few
words about what I am trying to do.
It is a tough one. Some days I say it
because I just want to say it. I dont
process it in my head. I just feel it has
to be said.
When a beautiful thing is happening, everybody will applaud. I am
like, Can you guys keep quiet? Dont
kill it. Ive said it.
On the criticism that I really
dont care about the audience. I have
said this many times, and I dont regret it. I am not saying this out of
disrespect. I am not a service provider. I am saying that I am not here to
provide you a good evening where
you can go back home, have two
whiskeys and then sleep. No. This art
form is not that. I am not saying that
other art forms are any lesser,
though. I also watch Shah Rukh
Khan lms, I also go to Carnatic music concerts.
The interaction for all of us is
with the music that is being received.
Our focus is the experience of the
music that is happening. Be vulnerable for those two to three hours, give
yourself up to the music. That is all

98

Raz Kr

we need to do. I dont care if there are

two people sitting in front of me, or if
there are 1,000 people. But I respect
the human being. I also have respect
for the ability to giving yourself up to
share that experience. Just because
you bought a ticket, you have not
bought a service from me. Sorry.
CRITICAL INSIDER

The world of Carnatic music has

increasingly become Brahminised.
This has not happened today. When
the focus shifted from ragam to
sahityam, the access shifted from
having an ear for music, which any
person of any caste or gender or
economic status can have, to having
literacy in Sanskrit and Telugu and
later Tamil. Access to schooling was
restricted to the upper castes those
days. This process was reinforced
with development, leading to the
migration of the educated [upper
caste] villager to the towns, where
he replaced the temple precincts
and the maidans with the sabha. The
temple and the maidan were public
spaces, the sabha was always a
private place created by the uppercaste migrant. You, T.M. Krishna,
are a product of the Brahmin
aristocracy and have beneted
vastly from those connections.
Should you not, therefore,
acknowledge where your roots lie
while seeking to make your
audience more open and inclusive?
I think I have. If I havent, I am
sorry. I dont think I have ever negated the fact that I belong to the Alwarpet-Mylapore aristocracy of
Madras. I am not going to run away
from it. But I am also not going to be
non-critical of it. This is an accusation I hear from the middle class, my
community, You are kicking the ladder. You beneted from it. This is
like saying that I cant be critical of
the person who voted for me. This is
ridiculous. Of course, I beneted
from them and I am in a position to
ask these questions only because this
whole community kind of rallied
around me. But lets also be honest, I
had some talent.
The point I am making is that an
insider should be reective. I am not

the rst person raising these questions. The problem is that the people
who have raised these questions have
always been on the outside. Nobody
cared about them. Now I am being
told that as an insider I should not
raise these uncomfortable questions.
So, basically, everyone demands status quo. How convenient.
Fifteen years ago, I didnt care
about these questions. I never
thought about these things. The interviews I had given in 1997 or thereabouts are as elitist and as
problematic for me now. As I have
grown I have reected and asked
questions about myself. All these
emanate from what the music has
given me.
This is not about removing the
sacred thread and throwing it away.
That act does not take away from me
what I am. But I have to always look
within. I am a Brahmin, privileged,
upper class and English-speaking.
My elitism has not gone away anywhere. It exists still in me. I am not
cleansed of all this. But I should be
aware that it exists in me. But if you
dont reect on who you are, then
there is no point of this existence.
There is, of course, the larger
question of what shapes an artiste
and where the limits of artistic
freedoms lie. This is very important
in todays context of shrinking space
for dissent. There is also the danger
of being labelled anti-national. For
an artiste, is it important to remain
acceptable to all sections of society,
lest he or she becomes a target?
The world of classical artists in
India does not care a damn about
politics. This is not really true in the
West. If you look at the history of
Western classical music you nd that
classical musicians have taken
strong political positions. But in this
country, generally, classical musicians have remained subservient to
political structures. The fact is that
artistes are always after national
awards and therefore, depending on
which government is in power, they
ow with the tide. That has been the
unfortunate truth.
The writers here have not been
like that. Thats where the function99

ality of the art inuences the artist.

Im digressing a bit. See, theatre and
writing deal with sociopolitical issues directly. Musicians of the socalled classical schools do not deal
with sociopolitics. They believe they
are dealing with that which is beyondthe divine. For the classical
world in India, that is Hindustani
and Carnatic, sab naad ki baat hai.
Sab upar vale ki baat hai. They belong to a different stratosphere.
What does this basically mean?
You are saying you are above all these
gross jatiwadi discussions. So, the
moment you place yourselves there,
you believe, or you create an aura
that by discussing these things, you
are making yourself banal. This is
also a kind of elitism. Spiritual
elitism.
You do not want to address the
actual real-life problems. But now, it
is taking a different twist. Because of
the rise of the ugly Hindu-Indian homogenisation and the fact that classical musicians are always religiously
connected, in the name of being
proactive politically, we are fanning
in the classical world a covert upsurge of the Hindutva coefficient,
which remained dormant for long.
This has to be watched.
I am not going to make a binary
of the religious and the secular. Its
all grey because belief systems are
nuanced. Now you have classical musicians talking openly about dharma.
They are not being political. See,
dharma is very easy to talk about
because we musicians exploit the
words and life stories of Tyagaraja,
Dikshitar, Shyama Sastri, Purandara
Dasa and others to maintain a religious and spiritual aura about our
art.
So, we are using a political situation to reinforce [the point] that
we are still beyond situational reality. We do not want to dirty our feet
or recognise the darkness within. I
am not saying everyone must become
social or political activists. I think we
all should start walking barefoot on
the road.Art is about what is around
us. If we do not feel what is around
us, what are we creating? This is not
about being communist or secular.
This is about being a human being.
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CINEMA

Grandchildren
of the Holocaust
Son of Saul, the Oscar-winning Best Foreign Language Film, is one of
the most unique lms on the theme of the Holocaust. B Y M A R G I T K O V E S
THE Hungarian Oscar-winning
movie Son of Saul is one of the most
unique lms on the theme of the
Holocaust. One single character
leads the viewer through the lth and
stench of the concentration camp; he
shows the apathy of the damned and
the everyday absurdity of the camp.
The director of the lm, Laszlo
Nemes Jeles, avoids conventions and
makes the viewer confront the camp,
the greatest shame in recent European history.
A number of Hungarian works
deal with fascism and the Holocaust,
perhaps because the Hungarian
Jewish symbiosis with society, culture and language made the unfold-

ing events of persecution and

murder especially shocking. The only Hungarian lm to win the Oscar
before Son of Saul was Mephisto in
1982. Based on Klaus Manns novel
and directed by Istvan Szabo, Mephisto deals with the relationship between fascist power and art from the
point of view of the German actor
Gustav Grundgens. It focusses on the
compromises and adjustments
Grundgens made in the 1930s to further his career. In 2002, the Nobel
Prize in Literature was awarded to
the Hungarian writer Imre Kertesz.
His rst novel, Fateless, deals with
the concentration camp experience
of a 14-year-old boy, Gyuri, who is

arrested while travelling on a tram in

the summer of 1944 and taken a few
days later to Buchenwald, one of the
largest camps near Weimar.
The German occupation of Hungary in March 1944 set in motion the
full-scale persecution of Hungarian
Jews. Of the 750,000 Hungarian
people considered Jewish according
to the Nuremberg Laws in 1944,
600,000 fell victim to the Holocaust,
most of them killed in AuschwitzBirkenau. Forty-two thousand men
were called up for labour in the Hungarian army, and they perished when
they were forced to ght in the territory of Hungary or the Soviet Union
without equipment or arms.
PICTURES: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

M A TYA S E R D E L Y (left), the cameraman of Son of Saul, and Laszlo Nemes Jeles, the director. (Right) The actor Geza

Rohrig as Saul Auslander, the lms main protagonist. The events in the lm are shown entirely from Sauls point of view.
FRONTLINE .

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100

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Son of Saul opens with blurred

images. Birds are singing; all is
green. The scene is blurred until the
camera focusses on Saul and the red
cross on his back that shows that he
is the member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The
Sonderkommando,
or
special
squad, was a group of prisoners who
assisted the transport of people to
the gas chambers. After closing the
doors of the chambers, which were
disguised as showers, the squad collected the money, jewellery, gold and
other belongings of those killed,
cleaned the walls and washed the
oors, aired the rooms and carried
die Stucke (the pieces), as the
corpses were called in German, to the
crematorium. The rst shots in 4:3
aspect ratio, which brings the face in
a special frame, show that the lm
focusses on one person and that the
events are perceived entirely from his
point of view.
Even though Son of Saul is dened as a Holocaust lm, in many
ways it counters the tradition of lms
on the Holocaust such as Schindlers
List, Life is Beautiful or The Pianist.
It does not wish to paint a tableau
about human suffering or to use narrative codes that deal with survival
and heroism. As Nemes Jeles said:
These lms try to say in space and
time too much. Their language repeats, and the visual material too.
Son of Saul is different. It chooses
a claustrophobic narrow angle, selects a special perspective of two days
in the main protagonist Saul Auslanders (Geza Rohrig) life. Primo Levi
describes the Sonderkommando in
his book The Drowned and the Saved.
Levi claims in the chapter The Gray
Zone that the Nazis alleviated their
guilt by making the Sonderkommando carry out the brutalities and the
murders in the concentration camps.
Gideon Greifs book We Wept without Tears (2005) deals with the testimonies of men who were members of
the Sonderkommando and who were
themselves traumatised and shocked
by the encounter of heaps of human
bodies. They felt like robots, sickened by what they had to go through.
Son of Saul shows how Saul takes
people to the shower, carries bodies

and scrubs the oor. The lm remains at the level of the protagonist,
who does his work in a state of apathy, in emotional numbness. Most of
the shots, which the cameraman Matyas Erdely has taken from a distance
of 60 centimetres, show Saul from
the back, and his face is only visible
when he has to make a decision. Rohrig said: It is not about a role I play
in the lm, but about presence, emphasising that it was hardly a role in
the conventional sense. Rohrig added: The position of people in the
annihilation camps reminds one of
the epidural numbness that one feels
after anaesthetisation. Survival in
the camp was only possible by concentrating on the next moment.
Sauls apathy is only broken when he
discovers the body of a boy who he
claims is his son. From that point on,
when he snatches the body from the
morgue and searches for a rabbi to
give him a Jewish funeral, the viewer
can hear Sauls enhanced breathing,
and this together with the 4:3 aspect
of the lm means getting into the air
of the concentration camp saturated
with steam, gas and smoke.
Son of Saul is Nemes Jeles rst
full-length lm, and he is probably
the youngest director to make a lm
about the Holocaust. Nemes Jeles
(born in 1977) is a member of the last
generation able to meet Holocaust
survivors, who are in his grandparents generation. The extermination
of the Jews is a sensitive subject in
Hungary, and whenever the theme
surfaces, the dividing lines make
themselves felt. In an interview to
the weekly Saturday (Szombat),
Nemes Jeles said that anti-Semitism
was ourishing in Eastern Europe.
Nemes Jeles studied history, international relations and screenwriting

Son of Saul is
director Laszlo
Nemes Jeles
rst full-length
lm.
101

at college and he studied the sources

dealing with the concentration
camps. The Scrolls of Auschwitz
(1985), published by the historian
Bernard Ben Mark, contains the accounts written by concentration
camp inmates of what was going on
in the camps. These accounts were
found between 1945 and 1980 buried
in the crematoria area in Auschwitz.
The scrolls give information about
the workings of the death camps. An
additional source of the lm was
Miklos Nyiszlis book I was Doctor
Mengeles Assistant (1946), which
depicts the functioning of gas chambers and crematoria. The book
claims that some victims survived
the gassing. Saul in the lm gets permission from the doctor to spend
time in the morgue with his dead
son.
Rohrig studied lm direction and
Polish philology in Hungary after
founding a punk band which was
banned in the 1980s. Later, he took
up Jewish theology in Israel and New
York. While in some sources the Sonderkommando members were characterised as half-victims and
half-hangmen, Rohrig emphasised
in an interview in The Guardian that
after reading The Scrolls of Auschwitz he did not have the slightest
doubt that the Sonderkommando
were not just equally victimised but
more victimised. They lived in the
epicentre of hell. I think they deserve
utmost respect. Some of them tried
to make their way into the gas chambers instead.
The lm is based on concrete historical events: on October 7, 1944,
the special squad that served at Crematorium IV in Auschwitz-Birkenau
rose up against the supervising soldiers. In the rebellion, 12 SS officers
were wounded and three were killed.
The prisoners who managed to escape were caught and killed. In Son
of Saul, an order is given in the camp
that a list of 300 names of the dispensable members of the special
squad should be given so that they
can be directed to some other workplace. The members of the Sonderkommando guess that this means
they are to be executed, and that this
is being done to prevent the secret of
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APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

the murders and the crematoria

from getting out. The lm depicts the
preparations the squads members
make to break out from the camp, the
photographs they take to register the
reality of Auschwitz, and ultimately
their execution after they are caught.
Saul accompanies one of his fellow
prisoners, Katz, who is going to take
photographs, and on the excuse of
repairing a lock he ensures that nobody disturbs Katz while he takes
photographs. (Four photographs
taken in Auschwitz showing women
before execution survived and were
smuggled out by the Polish Home
Army but were not given enough importance as recordings of events in
the camps. The rst reports the Allies
took seriously were the Vrba-Wetzler
report of April 1944 sent to Swit-

zerland and the Rosin-Mordowitz

report of June 1944. These reports,
which were given publicity by the
Swiss Press, The New York Times and
the BBC, were suppressed in many
countries, and adequate action, including bombing the railway lines
leading to Auschwitz, was not taken.)
Saul gets explosives that have
been smuggled out of the womens
barracks by some women prisoners
who worked in a munitions factory.
The lms narrative deals with the
events of two days, the day before the
uprising and the uprising itself. In
the lm, the events of the uprising
are less important than Sauls preoccupation with the funeral of his son
and his search for a rabbi.
Saul comes from Ungvar, a town
with an Orthodox Jewish communiA M AY 1944
P HOTOG R A P H

KACPER PEMPEL/REUTERS

YAD VASHEM PHOTO ARCHIVES/AP

showing Jewish
women and children
deported from
Hungary, separated
from the men, lined
up on the selection
platform at the
Auschwitz camp in
Birkenau (the
entrance to the
camp is shown
below), in Nazioccupied Poland.

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

ty in the eastern part of Hungary,

now in Ukraine. Sauls family name
is Auslander (foreigner, alien). While
Saul deals with the boys body, takes
it from the morgue, and nds a rabbi
who will say the kaddish over the
child, all other aims and events become alien, exterior to him. His
mates are engaged in the exchanges
of the night, cooking, discussion and
prayer, but Sauls activities and concentration are completely taken up
with the idea of a funeral for his son.
He carries the body while he ees
and drags the rabbi along and he only
crosses the river outside the camp
because he is forced by the other
members of the squad to carry on.
A funeral is considered meaningless and even absurd in the conditions of the camp and it is in contrast
to the wishes of Sauls squad mates.
But the idea of the funeral lends
meaning to Sauls existence. In the
camp where the rule of survival overwrites all other rules, the dignity of
another persons death becomes the
objective and the meaning of Sauls
life. The contrast between the strategy and plans of the Sonderkommando and Sauls purpose and activity
makes the lm brilliant.
The viewer is physically involved
in the lm. After the rst blurred
images, the depth of focus of vision
and the specic quality of noises
the fall of a spade, the closing of a
door, the sound of watermake it
possible for the viewer to perceive the
events clearly. The composer for the
lm, Laszlo Melis, uses music by
Transylvanian Jews which was collected in the 1930s. The music highlights the focus on Saul and his plan.
The last frames of the lm have the
rst visible cutting. This is where the
lm turns to a somewhat traditional
mode. The lm ends with Saul smiling as he looks at a child in the forest
who has managed to run away from
the German officers pursuing the
camp inmates. For Saul, death may
mean release and absolution of the
responsibility of last honours; for the
other members of the Sonderkommando, it means the dignity of death
after the failure of rebellion.

Margit Koves teaches Hungarian at Delhi

University.

102

Raz Kr

CINEMA

A STI L L from Baahubali, which won the award for Best Feature Film.

Starry affair
Regional and alternative cinema get short shrift at the National Awards,
with the jury deciding to celebrate mass entertainers and fete only those
lms that ask no uneasy questions. B Y Z I Y A U S S A L A M
FOR the common lover of Hindi
cinema, the year 1975 brings back
memories of Deewar and Sholay;
some sing praises of Jai Santoshi
Maa too. Only a discerning few identify the year with Shyam Benegals
Nishant, a lm as unsettling as it was
provocative. Benegal had previously
handled the caste issue in Ankur. In

Nishant he focussed on a social order

where villagers were all poor and
dark-skinned and the women were
uneducated and meant for the pleasure of the feudal lord. In a telling
piece of dialogue, written by Satyadev Dubey, women were compared
to cows. Only Benegal had the nesse
to handle such a comparison with
103

dignity. In the hands of a lesser man,

it would have been reduced to sheer
ridicule. In his hands, it became a
scathing indictment of gender
discrimination.
However, when it was released
the only cinema hall in New Delhi to
show it was Regal. In contrast, Jai
Santoshi Maa, as mediocre and amaFRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

JIGNESH PANCHAL

SA L M A N K H A N during the shooting of Bajrangi Bhaijaan; Amitabh Bachchan, Best Actor award winner, with Deepika

Padukone in Piku; Kangana Ranaut (left), Best Actress, in Tanu Weds Manu Returns.

teurish as they come, was shown at

practically every cinema by turn.
Even theatres reserved exclusively
for Hollywood fare made an exception for it. Deewar, with its famous
Mere paas maa hai dialogue, completed a silver jubilee at the popular
Majestic theatre, while Sholay
picked up after a lukewarm beginning in a stupendous manner. The
audience for Nishant began in a
trickle but gradually became a gentle
stream. It ran for seven consecutive
weeks, a reasonable achievement but
one clearly dwarfed by the 25-week
run of Deewar, the 50-week run of
Jai Santoshi Maa and the endless
shows of Sholay. Yet, Nishant, and
not any of the others, won the National Award for Best Feature Film
in Hindi. Fortunately, the National
Film Awards jury was alive to the
moment, able to discern between the
popular and the socially responsible,
between a box office hit and a lm
that deserved to be seen.
Hence, while Deewar cornered
glory at the popular Filmfare awards
and Sholay too got one, they both lost
out to the sensitive Nishant at the
National Awards. Yash Chopra and
Ramesh Sippys lms whipped up
magic at the box office, but Benegals
merely appealed to the audience by
depicting socio-economic inequalities in Indian villages.
Set in 1945, before the founding
fathers of our Constitution coined
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

the term India that is Bharat, it

resonated with discerning lovers of
serious cinema in 1975. A year later,
Manthan, based on Gujarats dairy
cooperatives, won the same national
award. The grapevine those days was
that if a lm won a National Award,
it was difficult to nd it showing at a
cinema hall near you. These lms,
some rather uncharitably said, were
only meant for the lm festival circuit.
If Nishant were to be made today, it would have stood no chance in
front of the competition offered by
lms like Baahubali, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, Piku and Tanu Weds Manu
Returns. In 1975, Ramesh Sippy was
the man who gave us the biggest
commercial hit, Sholay, and this year
he headed the jury. And it showed in
the jurys choices. Baahubali, replete
with mythical symbolism and smart
special effects, garnered a whopping
Rs.600 crore within a few months of
its release. It clearly left the jury impressed. It won the National Award
for Best Feature Film, technical wizardry rather than a plausible storyline tilting the scales in its favour at
the awards just as it had done at the
box office.
In the 1970s and 1980s, cinema
to be lauded was cinema with a purpose; now it seems the cinema to be
applauded is the cinema that is accompanied by the sweet sound of
cash registers ringing and mass

whistling inside the theatre. Baahubali, for all its faults, was, however, a
rare non-Hindi lm to win the distinction in the general category. All
the other winners were Hindi lms,
rather mainstream commercial ventures that made all the compromises
with the narrative and content to cater to the masses.
Take, for instance, the Salman
Khan-starrer Bajrangi Bhaijaan,
which was released at the same time
as Baahubali in more than 5,000
screens. In many ways an appeal for
peace at a human level between India and Pakistan, it went on to be the
second-highest grosser in the history
of Indian cinema. Despite its simplistic treatment of the subject, it got
the National Award for Best Popular
Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment, leaving some wondering if
ying kites with the Prime Minister
helps.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali won the
Best Director award for Bajirao
Mastani, a popular take on a medieval saga. Interestingly, in many ways
Bajirao Mastani, Bajrangi Bhaijaan
and Baahubali were competing for
the same slot, the same award, just as
they had competed for the same audience at the time of their release.
The jury kept all of them happy, giving an award in at least one category
to each contestant, almost like a father distributing cookies at home to
squabbling children.

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fall into your kitty. And if you did so

in Hindi, it almost guaranteed an
award. Continuing the march of
mainstream commercial entertainers at the National Awards were people like Juhi Chaturvedi and
Himanshu Sharma, who won the
awards for the Best Original Screenplay and Dialogue in Piku and Tanu
Weds Manu Returns, respectively.
Some might argue that the lms
were not merely entertainers, but nobody can deny that they catered to
the multiplex crowd, a tacit admission that the lms had a avour with
which a man or a woman from the

NFAI, PUNE

Then there were awards for rank

commercial entertainers like Tanu
Weds Manu Returns and Piku, with
Kangana Ranaut and Amitabh
Bachchan winning the Best Actress
and the Best Actor awards, respectively. (Interestingly, Bachchan won
the Best Actor award for 2009 for his
performance in Paa at the 57th National Awards, and that jury was also
headed by Ramesh Sippy.) Not arguing with the performance of either
Kangana Ranaut or Bachchan, but it
did seem to many that you only had
to get the cash registers jingling at
the box office for a national award to

A SC E N E from Shyam Benegals Nishant (1975).

105

hinterland could not identify, never

mind the over-the-top Hindi laced
with choice words by Kangana Ranaut or Bachchans toilet humour.
If in the 1970s cynics wondered
whether the awarded lms ever permitted themselves a moment of good
cheer, today the jury has gone to the
other extreme. Only cinema that asks
no uneasy questions is feted. And
feel-good cinema is lauded in times
when achche din have proved to be
elusive, even illusory. It may not
quite be the jurys version of have no
bread, let them eat cake, but by
largely rewarding box office success
stories, the awards have lost some of
their lustre. The line between the
popular and the classy has blurred.
The jury is guilty of forgetting
that lms, however light they may be,
cannot and should not dispense with
the dark side of life. Even a heart
unaccustomed to sorrow is incapable
of realising the profundity of love
and joy. Films like Baahubali and
Bajrangi Bhaijaan are all about living in the moment, in some ways
escapist, in others quick-x fantasies, certainly not the kind of lms
you would watch a few years down
the line. There have been some saving graces, though, almost like a spell
of rain after a long drought. Neeraj
Ghaywans Masaan, which wooed
audiences at lm festivals across the
world, got him the Best Debut Film
award. Masaan is a dark, gently
moving love story set against the
burning ghats of Varanasi. It created
only a few ripples in the commercial
cinema circuit but managed to impress critics. With its realistic take,
far removed from the hype of mass
entertainers, it told us that there was
more to cinema, even Hindi cinema,
than mass entertainers.
That was but a small concession.
Otherwise, the National Awards
seem barely discernible from the
other popular awards going around
by the name of Filmfare, Screen and
what have you. The National Awards
somehow managed to apply the principles of reduction: leave out Marathi lms, leave out Bengali
offerings, leave out Tamil and Malayalam cinema too. At best, give
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P. SUSHEELA, the melody queen

of south Indian lms, whose illustrious career spanned several decades and was marked by ve
National Awards and a dozen Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh
State awards, besides the Padma
Bhushan in 2008, has now been
honoured with an entry in the
Guinness World Records.
The Guinness adjudicators
have recognised the singer, now
80, as the world record holder for
having sung 17,695 solo, duet and
chorus-backed numbers in 12 Indian languages, including Tamil and
Telugu, since 1960. The Asia Book
of Records has also recognised her
stupendous feat by awarding her a
certicate and a badge for singing
the most number of single studio
recordings. My heart is in music,
she said while reacting to the honour from the London-based Guinness World Records.
Susheela thanked everyone
who had helped make her career an
illustrious one. A handful of her
fans and well-wishers had set up
psusheela.org and submitted a detailed catalogue of her numbers to
the Guinness World Records organisation, which verified the same
in January and bestowed the honour on her. The Guinness World
Records in 2011 featured Asha
Bhosle for singing 11,000 solos,
duets and chorus-supported songs
in over a dozen Indian languages.
Hailing from a music family in
Andhra Pradesh, Susheela, who
was born in 1935 in Vizianagaram,
completed a diploma in music in
the Maharaja Music College there

guage, thereby reinforcing the oftcontested stereotype of regional versus national cinema, vernacular
versus Hindi cinema. The jury did
not bother to cast the net far and
wide, it just stuck to Hindi and preferred to celebrate the official language by awarding mass entertainers
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

M. MOORTHY

Honour for a melody queen

V ET ERA N playback singer

P. Susheela.

and honed her skills under the musicians Subramaniya Iyer and S.
Rajeswara Rao. She was singing
songs in All India Radio when the
noted music director Pendyala Nageswara Rao spotted her talent and
introduced her in 1952 in a Telugu
lm called Kanna Talli, which was
also made in Tamil as Petra Thai.
She sang a duet with playback singer A.M. Raja for the lm.
From then on it was an evergrowing career graph for her. She
sang thousands of songs in Tamil,
Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada,
Hindi and other Indian languages.
The Tamil lm Kanavane Kankanda Deivam in 1955 and Missiamma in the same year
catapulted her into instant fame,
though she had to face stiff competition from singing stalwarts of her
time such as P. Leela, Jikki, M.L.
Vasanthakumari, A.P. Komala and
Sulamangalam
Rajalakshmi,
among others.

made in it. It effectively ended the

prospects of Gurvinder Singhs Punjabi lm, Chauthi Koot, and Raam
Reddys Kannada lm, Thithi. Despite being lapped up beyond the
boundaries of India and feted at lm
festivals far and wide, the lms had
to be content with awards in the re-

Her distinct and melliuous

rendition laced with impeccable
phonetic clarity of the language
made her stand out even among
the distinguished.
The era between the 1960s and
the 1980s was witness to the emergence of melodies with beautiful
lyrical content in Tamil cinema,
and Susheela found herself tting
perfectly into the setting. Not a single movie in Tamil and other south
Indian languages then could ever
be complete without her golden
renditions.
She sang several timeless classics for music directors such as
K.V. Mahadevan and Viswanathan-Ramamurthy and with singers
such as T.M. Soundararajan, A.M.
Raja and P.B. Srinivas, mesmerising music lovers.
She and the noted singer S.P.
Balasubramaniam sang 1,336
duets, the pair that sang the most
number of duets.
She was active as a lm singer
until the year 2000, after which
she shifted to non-lm numbers
such as devotional songs. If asked,
I can sing even now, the veteran
says with a smile. Hers has been the
hauntingly melliuous voice for
more than half a century now.
It was the Tamil poet and lyricist Vairamuthu who wrote a tting accolade to her in his book
Intha Kulathil Kal Erinthavargal
(Those who threw stones in this
pond), where he says that he worships Susheela Amma.
If death comes to embrace me,
I will ask people to play a melody of
Susheela and leave with the door
shut. Before I die I want to live
again, the poet immortalised her
thus.
Ilangovan Rajasekaran

gional category at the National

Awards.
Today, in 2016, why does one talk
of Nishant? It is because of a Baahubali, a Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The memories of the past stay warm. It is the
present that leaves our discerning
cinegoers cold.

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ESSAY

NATIONALISM VS
HINDUTVA

HESE three very revealing statements by the then

president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)
imply all too clearly that the BJP is an admittedly
Hindu party; rejects secular policies; and has as its
main objective the establishment of a Hindu Raj so that
Hindu interests would prevail (rule India). This, of
course, is not Indian nationalism but Hindu nationalism, which the BJP calls Hindutva or cultural
nationalism.
All this rests on a basis that is obvious though unstated by the BJP. But its ideologue V.D. Savarkar spelt it
out boldly. It is that Hindus constitute a separate nation. Hindutva is another name for the two-nation theorya Hindu nation, as distinct from other Indians,
over whom it rules to promote Hindu interests. Savarkar was also the author of both Hindutva and the
two-nation theory.
This is the very basis that underlies Prime Minister
Narendra Modis insidious ventures. A secular Constitution is being silently chipped away by executive acts to
establish a Hindu Raj. The shell will remain. The kernel
will be gone. Its architect, Dr B.R. Ambedkar, would have

The ideologues of the ruling

dispensation believe not in Indian
nationalism but in Hindu
nationalism, or Hindutva, which
is the earliest version of the
two-nation theory. B Y A . G . N O O R A N I

PTI

VIJAY SONEJI

Henceforth only those who ght for Hindu interests

would rule India.
L. K. Advani on November 19, 1990.
Secular policy is putting unreasonable restrictions on
Hindu aspirations.
Advani on October 20, 1990.
It would not be wrong to call the BJP a Hindu
party.
Advani to BBC as quoted in Organiser
of August 5, 1989.

BJP P R E S I D E N T A M I T S H A H and (right) Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. Shah red the opening salvo in the BJPs

renewed campaign for Hindu Raj. Jaitley, lauding the nationalism of Savarkar, spoke of an ideological battle.
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fought against it. So must we allIndians who reject the

two-nation theory and value our secular credo.
If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be
the greatest calamity for this country. No matter what the
Hindus say Hinduism is a menace to liberty, equality and
fraternity. On that account it is incompatible with democracy. Hindu Raj must be prevented at any cost. (Dr
B.R. Ambedkar; Pakistan or the Partition of India;
Thacker & Co. Ltd., Bombay; 1946; pages 354-55.)
With an eye to the Assembly elections, the BJP has
once again launched a menacing campaign for the establishment of Hindu Raj in India and thus effectuate V.D.
Savarkars concept of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva,
in short. The opening salvo was red by its president,
Amit Shah. But it was left to Arun Jaitley, Finance Minister, to let the cat out of the bag when, on March 26, 2016,
he lauded the nationalism of Savarkar. This is a huge
challenge for us. This is a big ideological challenge. We
should consider this an ideological battle (Hindustan
Times, March 27, 2016). Why now, nearly two years after
the BJP regime came to power? The answer is obvious.
Having concealed the Hindutva card cleverly and touted
development instead in 2014, the BJP has now reverted
to its original faith and to its mentor, Savarkar, author of
Hindutva: Who is a Hindu. He was judicially indicted by
Justice J.L. Kapur of the Supreme Court as a participant
in the conspiracy to assassinate Gandhi.
On February 8 this year, Amit Shah acknowledged
with pride that Modi has been working to the true
traditions and culture of this country and this is a proud
moment for Hinduism (Sanatan dharma). By performing aarti at Kashi, Modi had aroused hopes in the hearts
of millions of people that he would protect our culture.
The context lends added signicance. He was speaking at
Vrindavan after visiting the Banke Bihari Mandir to
seek blessings and inaugurating the Priya Kantju temple. The Times of Indias correspondent Anuja Jaiswal,
who reported the speech (February 9), correctly sized up
what Shah was up to. Setting the tone and tenor for the
BJPs Mission UP 2017, the partys president, Amit
Shah, played the Hindutva card by portraying Narendra
Modi as a true Hindu nationalist whose idea of governance was not limited only to material (bhautik) development of the country but also spiritual (adhyatmik).
One has reason for disquiet when men in power profess
to look after the peoples spiritual needs (emphasis added, throughout).
The plans had evidently been made earlier. The in-

cident at the Jawaharlal Nehru University on February 9

came in handy, as did the Member of Parliament Asaduddin Owaisis justied refusal to chant Bharat Mata
Ki Jai. The symbolism of the Mother in Hindutvas credo
deserves greater notice than it has received so far (see
box).
Secularism has ever been an integral part of Indian
nationalism ever since the Indian National Congress was
founded in 1885. These swadeshi McCarthyites prescribe
their own loyalty oaths to the rest of the countrymen.
Joseph McCarthy did not wield governmental power. His
Swadeshi followers are in the driving seat of power. He
did not pretend religious sanction. They do. It is one
thing to refer to ones country as a motherland in common parlance; another as Mother (with a capital M). The
former is an object of love and loyalty. The latter is an
object of worship. Politics merges with religion.
When, on March 17, 2016, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) joint general secretary Dattatreya
Hosabale declared that anyone who refuses to say Bharat Mata Ki Jai is anti-national for us, he was proclaiming the Sangh Parivars version of nationalism; namely
Hindu, not Indian, nationalism.
Two days later, Amit Shah raised the pitch. The BJP
will not tolerate criticism [sic] of the nation; will not
tolerate criticism of the country. Besides anti-national
activity cannot be justied on the plea of freedom of
expression (Asian Age, March 20). How will the BJP and
the RSS express their refusal to tolerate? By acts of
violence? Whatever constitutes criticism of the country
or the nation as distinct from that of the states acts and
policies? Clearly, the Sangh Parivar sets itself up as an
umpire of what constitutes anti-national activity, very
much as Joseph McCarthy took it upon himself to decide
what constituted Un-American activity.
The BJPs assertion of right and power is a menace to
democracy. No one has a right to take the law in his own
hands, dene the offence by himself and exert himself to
express his refusal to tolerate it. Even the state cannot
wield executive power without the sanction of the law
laid down by the legislature.
But Amit Shah is not deterred by legalities. BJP
workers should launch a campaign against anti-national
activities across the country, he said on March 19 (DNA,
March 20). The BJPs national executive went one better
with an even vaguer resolution on March 20 (will rmly
oppose any attempt to disrespect Bharat [sic] (The Hindu, March 21).

The BJPs assertion of right and power is a menace to

democracy. Nobody has the right to take the law into his
own hands. Even the state cannot wield executive power
without the sanction of the law made by the legislature.
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kaiah Naidu offends Modi. The 18th century English poet

Alexander Popes immortal lines t him to perfection.
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone, /Bear, like the
Turk, no brother near the throne, / View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes, / And hate for arts that caused
himself to rise; / Damn with faint praise, assent with civil
leer, / And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; /
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, / Just hint a
fault, and hesitate dislike; / Alike reserved to blame, or to
commend, / A timrous foe, and a suspicious friend; /
Dreading een fools, by atterers besieged, / And so obliging that he neer obliged; / Like Cato, give his little senate
laws, / And sit attentive to his own applause.

RAJEEV BHATT

MODIS SILENCE

P R IM E M I N I S T E R N AREN D RA M O D I with his

Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe performing puja during
Ganga aarti in Varanasi in December 2015. Shah said in
February that Modis Ganga aarti fed the hopes of many
that he would protect our culture.

To Jaitley the slogan Bharat Mata Ki Jai was above

debate. The ideology of nationalism guides own beliefs
and philosophy (Hindustan Times, March 21). Confusion of thought is coupled with clumsiness of expression.
Nationalism is a concept, not an ideology. What part of
the BJPs philosophy does it guide? But, of course,
Jaitleys nationalism is Hindutva, not Indian nationalism.
During this entire debate Modi never spoke up, not
even when intolerance began to rage over the land. He
has his Dev Kant Barooahs. If on February 8 Amit Shah
praised him to the skies, on March 20 Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu called him Gods
gift to India, citing two clinching bits of evidencehis
wax statute at Madame Tussauds museum in London
and a place on Time magazines list of 100 most important persons in 2015 with a deserved elevation this year to
the top 30 (Hindustan Times, March 21).
Coming as it does from a man of such high sophistication as Venkaiah Naidu, the testimonial acquires great
weight. Not long ago, he had called L.K. Advani Loha
Purush (iron man) and A.B. Vajpayee a distant second as
Vikas Purush (development man). He can be trusted to
shower equally offensive encomiums on Modis successor, should the wheel of his fortune turn for the worse.
Modis Cabinet is stuffed with persons of impressive
sophistication such as Uma Bharati, Smriti Irani and
Ravi Shankar Prasad.
It is unlikely that such praise by Amit Shah or Ven-

The Economist foresaw this trend ve months ago. The

BJP had made a naked appeal to Hindu unity. Mr Modi
himself intervened to hint that its opponents were planning to take affirmative action privileges away from lower-caste Hindus in favour of Muslims.
The BJPs election victory last year was attributed to
its promise of competence and good governance. It persuaded enough voters that the Hindu-nationalist part of
its agenda and the shadow over Mr Modis pastallegations of his complicity in anti-Muslim violence in the
state of Gujarat in 2002were marginal. Now many
worry that Hindu nationalism is a pillar of Mr Modis
vision after all. During its previous stint in power the BJP
ruled with a parliamentary minority and had to ditch
some of its Hindu aims, such as a federal ban on cow
slaughter. Now, although it has a majority on its own,
with a coalition as an optional extra, many hoped its
emphasis on economic progress would nevertheless serve
as a constraint.
Mr Modis willingness to play communal politics in
Bihar, and his failure to take a rm stand against those
perpetrating crimes in the name of Hinduism, cast doubt
on that. Perhaps, with his eye already on re-election at the
end of his term by 2019, he feels that he cannot alienate
the BJPs Hindu activists, who are an essential part of his
support and electoral machine. This is a disturbing notion, implying that defeat as well as victory in Bihar might
make Mr Modi more beholden to the extremists. Worse,
however, is the thought that perhaps he agrees with
them (November 7, 2015).
The assault on an Indo-Canadian, Supinder Singh
Khehra, in Quebec City in the last weekend of March by
four men drew instant condemnation by Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau, who was then in the United States. He
said that such hateful acts had no place in Canada. We
stand clearly against the kind of discrimination and intolerance that it represents (Hindustan Times; April 3,
2016). Modis silence on graver outrages against the
minorities in the country reveals him in his true colours.
It is the duty of the Prime Minister of a country to
condemn outrages against the minorities. He sets the
tone and conveys a message. The British Prime Minister
David Cameron does so repeatedly as a matter of course.
Modi prefers to convey by his silence a different message

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to his followers. The BJPs leaders ravings about nationalism and anti-nationalism serve only to invite attention to their own cover-up. The Hindutva which they so
ardently believe in is only a wrapping for the two-nation
theory. Both were espoused by the same man, their heroSavarkar. He had inherited a poisoned legacy and
injected his own added poison.
LAJPAT RAIS IDEAS

In 1899, Lajpat Rai published an article in Hindustan

Review in which he declared that Hindus are a nation in
themselves, because they represent a civilisation all their
own. This was not a new idea even then. Lajpat Rai was
directly inuenced by a conception of Hindu nationalism
in the aftermath of the purication of Hinduism by the
Arya Samaj. In 1902, Lajpat Rai entered into a debate in
the pages of Hindustan Review and Kayastha Samachar
with an anonymous Hindu Nationalist and Pandit
Madhao Ram about the basis for initiating a discussion
on Hindu nationalism.
In several key passages of his response, Lajpat Rai
expressed a series of gestatory ideas, many of which were
to nd their way virtually unchanged in Savarkars denitive Hindutva (Chetan Bhatt; Hindu Nationalism:
Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths; Berg, Oxford and
New York, 2001; page 50). In 1917 he proclaimed that he
was a Hindu nationalist.
In 1923, Lajpat Rai argued that Muslims should have
four States (the Pathan Province, western Punjab, the
Sind and eastern Bengal). But he added: It should be
distinctly understood that this is not a united India. It
means a clear partition of India into a Muslim India and a
non-Muslim India. Lajpat Rai is credited with being
the rst major leader of the national movement to propose the theory of two exclusive nations in India and is
said to have proposed this from the late nineteenth century (ibid., page 73).
Dr Ambedkar quoted another Sangh Parivar luminary, Lala Hardayals statement in Pratap of Lahore in
1925, which he called his political testament. I declare
that the future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and of the
Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (1) Hindu Sangathan,
(2) Hindu Raj, (3) Shuddhi of Moslems, and (4) Conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the Frontiers. So
long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four
things, the safety of our children and great grandchildren
will be ever in danger, and the safety of the Hindu race
will be impossible. The Hindu race has but one history,
and its institutions are homogeneous. But the Musalmans and Christians are far removed from the connes of
Hindustan, for their religions are alien and they love
Persian, Arab and European institutions (Pakistan or
Partition of India, page 117).
As president of the Hindu Mahasabha, Savarkar repeatedly espoused the two-nation theory well before
M.A. Jinnah did. It owed logically from his Hindutva, in
which Hindus alone constituted a nation. At the Mahasabhas annual session in Ahmedabad in 1937, he said,
Several infantile politicians commit the serious mistake
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APRIL 29, 2016

in supposing that India is already welded into a harmonious nation or that it could be welded for the mere wish
to do so. These, our well-meaning but unthinking
friends, take their dreams for realities. Let us bravely
face unpleasant facts as they are. India cannot be assumed today to be a Unitarian and homogenous nation,
but on the contrary these are two nations in the main, the
Hindus and the Muslims in India (ibid, page 131).
He said later in 1939: We Hindus are marked out as
an abiding Nation by ourselves. It must shun territorial
nationalism which implies that all who are born in India
belong to the Indian nation. He opts for cultural nationalismonly they are nationalists who subscribe to Hindu culture (read: religion). This is the cultural
nationalism which Savarkar propounded. Golwalkar
supported it, as did L.K. Advani and the BJPs election
manifestos. Are those people Indian nationalists or Hindu nationalists?
Savarkar urged: Let us Hindu Sanghathnists rst
correct the original mistake, the original political sin
which our Hindu Congressites most unwillingly committed at the beginning of the Indian National Congress
movement and are persistently committing still of running after the mirage of a territorial Indian Nation and of
seeking to kill as an impediment in that fruitless pursuit
the life growth of an organic Hindu Nation (L.G. Khare
(Ed.); Hindu Rashtra Darshan; 1949; page 63).
GOLWALKARS THEORY

Savarkars ideology is writ large in Golwalkars book We

or Our Nationhood Dened (1938). The book was cited in
a formal legal document led in 1978 before the District
Judge of Nagpur by the RSS, as an organisation. In a
speech in Mumbai on May 15, 1963, Golwalkar said that
he found the principles of nationalism scientically explained in Savarkars great work Hindutva. To him it was
a textbook, a scientic book. He publicly acknowledged
his debt to the book Rashtra Meemansa by Savarkars
elder brother Babarao (G.D.) Savarkar. Golwalkars own
Bunch of Thoughts reects a deep impress of Savarkars
Hindutva.
In his essay of 1939, We or Our Nationhood Dened,
Golwalkar gave free rein to his emulation of Savarkar. He
wrote: Guided by this Religion in all walks of life, individual, social, political, the Race evolved a culture, which
despite the degenerating contact with the debased civ-

As president of the Hindu

Mahasabha, Savarkar
repeatedly espoused the
two-nation theory well
before M.A. Jinnah did.

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PTI

MODI, A C C O R D I N G T O H I S Urban Development Minister

M. Venkaiah Naidu, is Gods gift to India because Madame

Tussauds museum in London is going to exhibit his wax
image. Here, an artist taking the Prime Ministers
measurement for the wax statue.
ilisations of the Mussalmans and the Europeans, for the
last ten centuries, is still the noblest in the world.
He elaborated: Applying the modern understanding
of Nation to our present conditions, the conclusion is
unquestionably forced upon us that in this country, Hindusthan, the Hindu Race with its Hindu Religion, Hindu
Culture and Hindu Language, (the natural family of
Sanskrit and her offsprings) complete the Nation concept; that, in ne, in Hindusthan exists and must needs
exist the ancient Hindu nation and nought else but the
Hindu Nation. All those not belonging to the national i.e.
Hindu Race, Religion, Culture and Language, naturally
fall out of the pale of real National life.
We repeat; in Hindusthan, the land of the Hindus,
lives and should live the Hindu Nationsatisfying all the
ve essential requirements of the scientic nation concept of the modern world. Consequently only those

movements are truly National as aim at re-building,

re-vitalising and emancipating from its present stupor,
the Hindu Notion. Those only are nationalist patriots,
who, with the aspiration to glorify the Hindus race and
Nation next to their heart, are prompted into activity and
strive to achieve that goal. All others are either traitors
and enemies to the National cause, or, to take a charitable
view, idiots (pages 43-44).
His bluntness of speech was much admired by his
followers. Read this: There are only two courses open to
the foreign elements, either to merge themselves in the
national race and adopt its culture, or to live at its mercy
so long as the national race may allow them to do so and
to quit the country at the sweet will of the national race.
That is the only sound view on the minorities problem.
That is the only logical and correct solution. That alone
keeps the national life healthy and undisturbed. That
alone keeps the Nation safe from the danger of a cancer
developing into its body politic of the creation of a state
within the state. From this standpoint, sanctioned by the
experience of shrewd old nations, the foreign races in
Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and
language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence

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Genesis of Bharat Mata

1. The oath prescribed by the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS) for its men: Remembering Almighty God
and my forbears, I take this oath. For the betterment of
my sacred Hindu religion, Hindu culture, and Hindu
community, I will devote myself to the prosperity of my
Holy Motherland. I swear that I shall serve the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh with my body, my mind, and
my money. I will be faithful to this oath throughout my
life.
2. Savarkars Hindutva: Every stone here has a
story of martyrdom to tell! Every inch of thy soil, O
Mother! Has been a sacricial ground! Not only where
the Krishnasar is found but from Kashmir to Sinhal it is
Land of sacrice, sanctied with a Jnana Yajna or an
Atmaajna (self-sacrice). So to every Hindu, from the
Santal to the Sadhu, this Bharat bhumi this Sindhusthan is at once a Pitribhu and a Punyabhufatherland
and a holy land.
That is why in the case of some of our Mohammedan or Christian countrymen who had originally been
forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who
consequently have inherited along with Hindus, a common Fatherland and a greater part of the wealth of a
common culturelanguage, law, customs, folklore and
historyare not and cannot be recognised as Hindus.
For, though Hindusthan to them is Fatherland as to any
other Hindu, yet it is not to them a Holyland too. Their
holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine. Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and heroes are not the children of
this soil. Consequently their names and their outlook
smack of a foreign origin.
Ye, who by race, by blood, by culture, by nationality,
possess almost all the essentials of Hindutva and had
been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by the
hand of violenceye, have only to render wholehearted
love to our common Mother and recognise her not only
as Fatherland (Pitrubhu) but even as a Holyland (punyabhu); and ye would be most welcome to the Hindu
fold. The country is an object of worship; a common
Mother who is also a Holyland.
3. In the Preface to his pamphlet We or Our Nationhood Dened, dated March 22, 1939, the RSS supremo
M.S. Golwalkar wrote: I offer this work to the public as
an [sic] humble offering at the holy feet of the Divine
Motherthe Hindu Nation in the hope that She will
graciously accept this worship from an undeserving
child of Her Own. The Hindu Nation is approximated to the common Mother and both are objects of
worship. (Golwalkars We or Our Nationhood Dened :
A Critique by Shamsul Islam with the full text of the
book; Pharos Media & Publishing P. Ltd., New Delhi
110025; page 5.)
4. Chetan Bhatt of Goldsmith College, University of
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APRIL 29, 2016

London, has written a very incisive and well-documented analysis, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies
and Modern Myths; Berg, Oxford and New York, 2001.
He points out that the song Bande Mataram is virtual
anthem for the contemporary Hindutva movement
(page 27). It means Hail to Thee O Mother (land) and
gures in Bankimchandra Chatterjees novel Anandamath. Chetan Bhatt characterises the slogan Bharat
Mata Ki Jai (Victory to (Holy) Mother Land) as the
Hinduised nationalist slogan (page 45).
He recalls that during the 1991 election, the BJP
[Bharatiya Janata Party] had campaigned on the slogan Towards Ram Rajya (the mythological rule of
Ram). Its election manifesto declared it to be the party
of Nationalism, Holism and Integral Humanism and
exactly reproduced Savarkars denition of Hindutva:
From the Himalayas to Kanya Kumari, this country has
always been one. We have had many States, but we were
always one people. We always looked upon our country
as Matribhoomi, Punyabhoomi (Motherland and
Holyland).
The Hindutva political language of the 1991 BJP
manifesto was deceptive in crucial respects. For example, its one apparently affable declaration that Hindus
and Muslims are blood-brothers did little more than
rehearse the old Savarkarite formula that Muslims were
originally biological Hindus (page 172).
The BJPs 1996 election manifesto declared: Hindutva is a unifying principle which alone can preserve
the unity and integrity of our nation. It is a collective
endeavour to protect and re-energise the soul of India,
to take us into the next millennium as a strong and
prosperous nation. Hindutva is also the antidote to the
shameful efforts of any section to benet at the expense
of others. On coming to power, the BJP government
will facilitate the construction of a magnicent Shri
Rama Mandir at Janmasthan in Ayodhya which will
be a tribute to Bharat Mata. This dream moves millions
of people in our land; the concept of Rama lies at the
core of their consciousness.
In a brilliant passage Chetan Bhatt writes: Of considerable signicance is that a strategy involving devotion was used, rather than the more austere paths of
esoteric knowledge or physical practice that exist in
(especially upper) caste Hinduism. This required the
formulation of novel overarching nationalist religious
symbols, which cannot be said to have traditional endorsements within Hinduism, but which could nevertheless not be explicitly opposed either. One key symbol
was that of Bharatmata, a devotional rendering of the
Mother Goddess as equivalent to the geographical territory of Akhand Bharat. In the Hindutva symbolic
imaginary Bharatmata stands in for Hindu Rashtra,

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and worship of the latter, (page 187).

5. Dr D.R. Purohits able work Hindu Revivalism
and Indian Nationalism (Madhupriya, Bhopal, 1990)
deserves a much wider readership than it won. What he
writes of Bankimchandra Chatterjees novel explains its
true signicance. Durga, the goddess and the mother
became one with the country, the greater goddess and
the mother. In his well-known novel, Anandamath, he
presented the country as Goddess Kali, black because of
intense misery, naked because denuded of wealth, with
human skulls round her neck because the country was
no less than a vast burial ground. But the future India
would be like radiant Durga who will annihilate the
demons and usher in an era of plenty and prosperity.
English translation of Bande Mataram: I bow to
thee, Mother, richly-watered, richly fruited, cool with
the winds of the south, dark with the crops of the
harvest, the Mother!
It is thy image we raise in every temple, For thou art
Durga holding her ten weapons of war, Kamala at play
in the lotuses and Speech, the goddess, giver of all lore,
To thee I bow!
I bow to thee, goddess of wealth, pure and peerless,
richly-watered, richly fruited, the Mother! I bow to thee
Mother dark-hued, candid sweetly smiling, jewelled
and adorned, the holder of wealth, the lady of plenty the
Mother! Thus nationalism with Bankimchandra became the national religion. Nationalism as the religion
of India could be the only way of attaining the status of a
national state (page 76-78).
Anandamaths depiction of the future Mother India was singularly religious: Future Mother India was
Durga, the goddess with resplendent face, wearing all
sorts of weapons of force in her hands, and in the left
hand seizing the hair of the Asura, her enemy, and in the
right hand assuring all not to be afraid. The revolutionaries, who moved incognito as Sanyasins, were
like the characters in Anandamath. Durga, the goddess
and the mother, became one with the country, the
greater goddess and the mother. (See J.N. Farquhar;
Modern Religious Movements in India; pages 354-355
and 358).
Small wonder that the Congress Working Committee decided to excise some lines on October 26, 1937. A
poem that invites surgery cannot become a national
anthem that inspires all. Purohit adds: Bankimchandra Chatterjee raised nationalism to the dignity of a
religion. He stirred the souls of many men in this country by placing new religious ideals before them. The
country did not remain with him a mere fact of geography. He identied the motherland with old religious
deities. He added a new imagethe image of the Motherlandin the pantheon of the Hindus. The Bande
Mataram song became an equally inspiring national
hymn. In doing so, he promoted the spirit of nationalism and inuenced the ideas of Bipinchandra Pal and
Aurobindo Ghose (page 79).

6. Aurobindo Ghoses contribution was no different,

as Prof. Donald Eugene Smith noted in his classic India
As a Secular State (Princeton University Press; 1963).
Some of the most passionate statements of the Extremist creed came from the pen of Aurobindo Ghose.
Liberty is the fruit we seek from the sacrice and the
Motherland the goddess to whom we offer it, he wrote
in 1907. Into the seven leaping tongues of the re of the
yajna (ritual sacrice) we must offer all that we are and
all that we have, feeding the re even with our blood and
lives and happiness of our nearest and dearest; for the
Motherland is a goddess who loves not a maimed and
imperfect sacrice, and freedom was never won from
the gods by a grudging giver. Aurobindos religious
symbolism was much more than vivid imagery; he identied the country with its ancient faith so completely
that patriotism and worship became indistinguishable.
Nationalism is not a mere political program; nationalism is a religion that has come from God.
The cult of Durga or Kali, with its tantric ritual and
animal sacrices, quickly became associated with revolutionary terrorism in Bengal. A pamphlet printed at a
secret press called upon the sons of India to rise up, arm
themselves with bombs, and invoke the Mother Kali.
What does the Mother want? A coconut? No! A fowl or
a sheep or a buffalo? No! The Mother is thirsting after
the blood of Feringhis (foreigners) who have bled her
profusely. While most of the Congress leaders condemned the terrorism in Bengal, Tilak gave veiled approval by his silence.
Bepin Chandra Pal, another Extremist leader,
wrote in The Soul of India that the traditional gods and
goddesses who had lost their hold upon the modern
Hindu mind were now being reinstated with a new
nationalist interpretation. Hundreds of thousands of
people had now begun to hail their motherland as
Durga or Kali. These are no longer mere mythological
conceptions or legendary persons or even poetic symbols. They are different manifestations of the Mother.
This Mother is the spirit of India. This geographical
habitat of ours is only the outer body of the Mother.
Behind this physical and geographical body, there is a
Being, a Personalitythe Personality of the Mother
(pages 90-91).
7. Yogesh Vajpeyis summing up is apt. Though
Raja Rammohun Roy was the rst to attempt it, it was
Bankim who gave the project to unite Hindus under one
umbrella a mass appeal. His eulogy of goddess Kali in
the hymn Vande Mataram instilled the idea of the
motherland as a divine entity (Indian Express; June
30,1998).
This is the record on Bharat Mata. When the
upstarts of the BJP tell us that it is anti-national not to
proclaim it, it is because they do not bear loyalty to
Indian nationalism, but to Hindu nationalism or
Hindutva.
A.G. Noorani

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Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of the them overthrow all signs of slavery and domination and
glorication of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the follow the ancestral ways of devotion and national life. All
Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to types of slavery are repugnant to our nature and should
merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, be given up. This is a call for all those brothers to take
wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming their original place in our national life. And let us all
nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential celebrate a great Diwali on the return of those prodigal
treatmentnot even citizens rights. There is, at least sons of our society. There is no compulsion here. This is
should be, no other course for them to adopt. We are an only a call and request to them to understand things
old nation; let us deal, as old nations ought to and do deal, properly and come back and identify themselves with
with the foreign races who have chosen to live in our their ancestral Hindu way of life in dress, customs, percountry (pages 47-48). This is the ideology that inspires forming marriage ceremonies and funeral rites and such
other things (pages 130-131). By now we know the name
the Ghar Wapsi programme.
Rejecting territorial nationalism, Golwalkar said for this. It is Operation Ghar Wapsi.
Here was already a full-edged ancient nation of the
that the amazing theory was propounded that the Nation is composed of all those who, for one reason or the Hindus and the various communities which were living
other, happen to live at the time in the country. But as in the country were here either as guests, the Jews and
Parsis, or as invaders, the Muslims and
we have seen we Hindus have been livChristians. They never faced the quesing, thousands of years, a full National
tion how all such heterogeneous groups
life in Hindusthan. How can we be
could be called as children of the soil
communal having, as we do, no other
merely because, by an accident, they
interests but those relating to our Counhappened to reside in a common territry, our Nation?... Let us rouse ourselves
tory under the rule of a common
to our true nationality, let us follow the
enemy.
lead of our race-spirit, and ll the heavThe theories of territorial nationalens with the clarion call of the Vedic
ism and of common danger, which
seers from sea to sea over all the lanformed the basis for our concept of nadOne Nation, one glorious, splendotion, had deprived us of the positive and
rous Hindu Nation benignly shedding
inspiring content of our real Hindu Napeace and plenty over the whole world
tionhood and made many of the free(pages 59, 63 and 67).
dom movements virtually anti-British
Golwalkars Bunch of Thoughts
movements. Anti-Britishism was equa(1968) was avidly devoured by the Parited with patriotism and nationalism.
vars men and ran into several impresThis reactionary view has had disassions. It is to the Sangh Parivar what
LA LA LA J P AT R A I , an early
trous effects upon the entire course of
Hitlers Mein Kampf was to the Nazis.
proponent of the two-nation
the freedom struggle, its leaders and the
The chapter headings reveal the autheory.
common people (pages 142-143).
thors mindsetTerritorial NationalThen came the question of Musism (which he rejects); Internal
Threats, which are the Muslims, the Christians and lims. They had come here as invaders. They were conceiving themselves as conquerors and rulers here for the last
the Communists.
These gems reect Golwalkars brilliance. In fact, we twelve hundred years. That complex was still in their
are Hindus even before we emerge from the womb of our mind. History has recorded that their antagonism was
mother. We are therefore born as Hindus. About the not merely political. Had it been so, they could have been
others, they are born to this world as simple unnamed won over in a very short time. But it was so deep-rooted
human beings and later on, either circumcised or bap- that whatever we believed in, the Muslim was wholly
hostile to it. If we worship in the temple, he would
tised, they become Muslims or Christians.
Everybody knows that only a handful of Muslims desecrate it. If we carry on bhajans and car festivals, that
came here as enemies and invaders. So also only a few would irritate him. If we worship cow, he would like to
foreign Christian missionaries came here. Now the Mus- eat it. If we glorify woman as a symbol of sacred motherlims and Christians have enormously grown in number. hood, he would like to molest her. He was tooth and nail
They did not grow just by multiplication as in the case of opposed to our way of life in all aspectsreligious, culshes. They converted the local population. We can trace tural, social, etc. He had imbibed that hostility to the very
our ancestry to a common source, from where one por- core (pages 147-148). Those twelve hundred years are
tion was taken away from the Hindu fold and became exactly what Modi talked about in his rst speech to the
Muslim and another became Christian. The rest could Lok Sabha as Prime Minister.
The name India given by the British was accepted.
not be converted and they have remained as Hindus.
It is our duty to call these our forlorn brothers, Taking that name, the new nation was called the Indian
suffering under religious slavery for centuries, back to Nation. And the Hindu was asked to rename himself as
their ancestral home. As honest freedom-loving men, let Indian (page 150). This is the nationalism that SaFRONTLINE .

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grown even militant and aggressive towards other religions. The latter believed in a composite culture of India,
and viewed India as a nation composed of all the communities living therein. It was broad-based, pacist, secular,
democratic and liberal in temperament. One exalted a
community over other communities while the other emphasised unity in the diversity of various communities.
The one had great belief in centralised leadership and in
militancy; the other was wedded to liberal and democratic traditions.
Thus the forces of Hindu nationalism defended by
the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh presented a formidable challenge to the growing
forces of Indian nationalism during the thirties and the
IN BJPS MANIFESTOS
That explains the formulations on cultural nationalism forties of the twentieth century. It was, so to say, a struggle
in the BJPs election manifestos, some of which have been for existence between two ideologies, and as such there
could be little room for cooperation bequoted above. The one of 1998 was
tween the rival ideologies. Its positive
headed Our National Identity: Culturqualities apart, in so far as Hindu naal Nationalism. It said in plain lantionalism clung to its limited ideal and
guage: Our nationalist vision is not
lost sight of the comprehensive national
merely bound by the geographical or
ideal, it did hinder the steady growth of
political identity of Bharat but it is rethe Indian national movement (pages
ferred by our timeless cultural heritage.
174-175). It continues to perform this
This cultural heritage, which is central
nefarious role even in this day and age in
to all regions, religions and languages, is
2016 by passing off Hindutva or Hindu
a civilisational identity and constitutes
nationalism as the real nationalism and
the cultural nationalism of India, which
arrogating to itself a right to denounce
is the core of Hindutva. This we believe
Indian nationalists as anti-nationals.
is the identity of our ancient nation
Hindutva, a euphemism for the twoBharatvarsha.
nation theory, exposes these bogus
The BJP is convinced that Hindutnationalists.
va has immense potentiality to re-enerA blight has descended on our great
gise this nation and strengthen and
land with these anti-nationalsindiscipline it to undertake the arduous
V . D . S A V A RKA R , the author
competent in governance; rapacious for
task of nation-building. This can and
of both Hindutva and the
power; intolerant of dissent; hostile to
does trigger a higher level of patriotism
two-nation theory.
minorities; repressive of autonomous
that can transform the country to greacultural and educational institutions,
ter levels of efficiency and performance.
It is with such integrative ideas in mind the BJP joined especially universities; and betrayers of Indian nationalthe Ram Janmabhoomi movement for the construction ism. This is a government that openly proclaims that it
rules only in the interests of the majority communityas
of Shri Ram Mandir at Ayodhya.
The 2004 manifesto was as explicit. Cultural Na- Advani had urged.
What the celebrated Junius wrote on January 21,
tionalism: The BJP draws its inspiration from the history
and civilisation of India. We believe that Indian nation- 1769, on the misgovernance of the regime of the day, is all
hood stems from a deep cultural bonding of the people too true of the Ministry that rules India today: If, by the
that overrides differences of caste, region, religion and immediate interposition of Providence, it were possible
language. We believe in the Cultural Nationalism for for us to escape a crisis so full of terror and despair,
which Indianness, Bharatiyata and Hindutva are syn- posterity will not believe the history of the present times.
They will either conclude that our distresses were imagionymsis the basis of our national identity.
This stark conict between Indian and Hindu nation- nary, or that we had the good fortune to be governed by
alism has been noted by all. Dr D.R. Purohits analysis (in men of acknowledged integrity and wisdom: They will
Hindu Revivalism and Indian Nationalism; Madhupri- not believe it possible, that their ancestors could have
ya, Bhopal, 1990) is incisive. The two nationalisms, as Dr survived or recovered from so desperate a condition
Beni Prasad puts itthe Hindu and the Indianwere while a Narendra Modi was Prime Minister; an Arun
fundamentally in opposition to each other with respect to Jaitley, the Finance Minister; a Rajnath Singh, the Home
their ideals. The former was exclusive, narrowly-based, Minister; a Smriti Irani, the HRD Minister; a Ravi Shanmixed with religion and partial: it considered the Hindus kar Prasad, the Telecom Minister; a Sadananda Gowda,
the only nationals of Hindusthan and did not include the Law Minister; and others of the same kind, too
other communities living in India within its scope; it had numerous and inconsequential to deserve mention.
THE HINDU ARCHIVES

varkar, Golwalkar and the BJP espousenot Indian nationalism. In 1969, the BJPs ancestor, the Jana Sangh,
revived the cry in the name of Indianisation. A resolution passed at its Patna Session on December 30, 1969,
exhorted: Every effort should be made to revive and
strengthen the sense of nationalism which is the sum
total of cohesive forces in any country. This requires a
clear understanding of the concept of nationalism and its
main-springs. With the lapse of Preventive Detention
Act, the need for enacting a law of treason has become an
imperative necessity. This law should dene treason and
treasonable activities.

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LEGAL ISSUES

Courting controversy
The Madras High Court suspends a magistrate who acquitted two
granite scam accused and sought to prosecute a Collector.
BY ILANGOVAN RAJASEKARAN

ON March 24, Justice P.N. Prakash of the Madurai Bench of the

Madras High Court smelt a rat at the
happenings in the Magistrate Court
at Melur in Madurai district before
which a batch of cases in the multicrore granite quarrying scam were
pending.
The Bench was hearing petitions
of the Keelavalavu and Othakadai
police, which claimed that the magistrate, K.V. Mahendra Boopathy,
was showing reluctance to take up
the offences of a seriously grave nature led under various sections of
law in the granite scam and refusing
to commit them to the Sessions
Court, which is the competent judicial authority to probe such cases.
The bench made a few scathing remarks against the magistrate, who
has since been suspended.
One can wake up a sleeping
man, but not a person pretending to
sleep, said Justice Prakash, referring to the magistrate for not taking
on le the charges and committing
the cases to the Sessions Court according to the directions of the High
Court, which was monitoring the
granite scam investigation after appointing U. Sagayam, a serving Indian Administrative Service officer, as
its Legal Commissioner.
Sagayam submitted a voluminous report to the court with his recommendations on November 23,
2015, after a year-long probe into the
scam (The mother of all loot, Frontline, July 24, 2015.)
The magistrate, it was expected,
would at least now adhere to the
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APRIL 29, 2016

High Courts directions in all cases

relating to the granite scam. A senior
official attached to the Mining Department claimed that after the
Mines and Minerals (Development
and Regulations) Amendment Act,
2015, came into force in January last
year, the Sessions Court alone had
the jurisdiction to try cases of such
nature.
But what followed was a series of
bizarre acts involving members of
the subordinate judiciary in Tamil
Nadu. On March 29, the Melur magistrate, ignoring the High Courts
caustic observations and warnings,
took on le two charges against P.R.
Palanisamy, a granite baron and
owner of PRP Granites, who is allegedly involved in the multi-crore
scam, and Sahadevan, a granite lessee, in a case relating to illegal
mining, transporting and hoarding
of granite slabs on patta land, and
also in another charge led under
Section 379 of the Indian Penal Code
(IPC). He acquitted both the miners
of illegal hoarding.
But not satised with this, the
magistrate went a step further and
recommended criminal prosecution
of a former Madurai Collector, Anshul Mishra, who had led the petitions against the two miners with
regard to the illegal hoarding of
granite blocks and also the two Special Public Prosecutors (SPPs),
K.C.A.D. Gnanagiri and R. Sheela,
who argued in the case under Sections 181, 182, 191 and 199 of the IPC,
for misguiding the court.
The police had actually led as

many as 98 cases, many of them of a

serious nature, against the illegal
quarry owners under Sections 147,
447, 379, 420, 434, 465, 467, 468,
471, 304 (ii) read with 511, 120 B,
109, 114 and 297 of the IPC, Sections
6, 3 (a) and 4 (a) of the Explosives
Substances Act, 1908, Sec 3 (i), (iv)
and 3 (i), (xiv) of the S.C./S.T. (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and
Sections 3 (i) (ii) and 4 of the Tamil
Nadu Public Properties Damages
and Losses Act, 1992 (TNPPDL), besides invoking the provisions of the
Tamil Nadu Prevention of Illegal
Mining, Transportation, Storage of
Minerals and Mineral Dealers Rules,
2011, and the Mines and Minerals
Development and Regulation Act.
Charge sheets for all these cases had
already been led before the court
and have been pending for long now.
Instead of taking cognisance of
these cases of grave crimes, the magistrate chose to pass orders on miscellaneous petitions led separately
in 2013 by Anshul Mishra, who was
instrumental in bringing the granite
looters before the law, stating that
Palanisamy and Sahadevan had
transported and hoarded illegally
quarried granite slabs of about 4,900
and 900 cubic metres, respectively,
and stocked them in patta lands in
Melur and Keelavalavu villages in
Madurai district.
These cases were led under the
provisions of the Tamil Nadu Prevention of Illegal Mining, Transportation, Storage of Minerals and
Mineral Dealers Rules, 2011. Mishra
asked the Melur court, which has the

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B. JOTHI RAMALINGAM

criminal prosecuterritorial jurisdiction,

tion against Mishra
to permit the State govand the two SPPs.
ernment to take possesHe said that the
sion of the hoarded
prosecution should
material and auction it.
be punished for blaWhile many cases of
tant lies and supother serious offences
pression of facts
were pending, the masince Mishra had
gistrate also chose to
ceased to be the
take on le a charge in a
Madurai Collector at
case led under Section
the time when the
379 of the IPC against
case was led in
Palanisamy and Saha2013. Officials and
devan.He said that ungovernment repreder the Mines Act, if the
sentatives have misquarry owner who had a
represented
the
licence to quarry transU . S A GA Y A M .
facts, he said.
ported and stored the
Refuting
this
material in a different
claim, a senior police
area without permisofficer in Madurai
sion, the punishment
district, who did not
should be a mere penalwish to be named,
ty of Rs.25,000.
told Frontline that
But, if the mineral
had the magistrate
was mined illegally, the
told them to le a
accused, he contended,
fresh petition, they
would have to undergo
could have done so.
one years imprisonIt is just a technical
ment as per law or a ne
formality.
After
of Rs.25,000 or both. In
three years of inacthis case, the accused
tion, he raked up a
had the licence to mine.
mere procedural isThe magistrate, takT H E S U S P EN D ED
sue to dismiss the
ing up the offence under
judicial magistrate,
case itself, he said.
Section 379 (theft), obK.V. Mahendra Boopathy.
The verdict creserved that the two minated a furore and
ers also did not have the
intention to cause loss to the govern- prompted the Madras High Court to
ment and did not violate any law, and send a two-member team comprising the Madurai Principal District
acquitted them.
Quoting a Sanskrit verse on the Judge A.M. Basheer Ahmed and
tenets of justice, he said that the Special District Judge S. Saravanan
hands that hold the balance of justice of the Madurai District Court to conduct an inquiry. Based on their reshould be strong.
He claimed that the Madurai port, the Madras High Court
Bench of the Madras High Court was Registry, on April 1, placed the macritical of him since the prosecution gistrate under suspension pending
had failed to point out that he (Boo- further inquiry. In fact, the investipathy) had in fact passed certain or- gating officers in these cases faced
ders in a batch of cases relating to some embarrassing moments because of the way the magistrate hanmining.
He also referred to some conict- dled the granite cases involving
ing verdicts by two different judges mining barons.
Despite their repeated requests
of the Madras High Court in this
regard to justify his stand. Hence, I to commit the cases to the Sessions
have to act sub silentio (in silence), Court, especially those led under
the TNPPDL Act and in accordance
he said.
Then came his instructions to the with the law, Boopathy did not do so,
court head clerk to initiate steps for leading to an inordinate delay in try117

ing the cases. Hence, the State prosecutors had no other alternative but to
approach the High Court to get their
grievances addressed. Justice Prakash went on record in his report
that the magistrate had refused to act
according to the directions of the
High Court in granite cases since
2015. Justice Prakash suggested that
contempt proceedings and disciplinary action be taken against the magistrate who was showing his
obstinacy.
Justice M.M. Sundresh and Justice S. Vaidyanathan, in their reports
on the magistrate in 2015 and January 2016 respectively, held that the
magistrate was trying to justify his
actions.
Justice Sundresh said that he was
sticking to his guns by contending
that there is no intention on the part
of the accused to cause loss and that
he has refused to take cognisance of
the major offences.
He took cognisance of a lesser
offence under Section 379, which, he
claimed, prescribes a ea-bite
sentence.
Boopathys suspension comes in
the wake of stern action by the Madras High Court in fullment of its
commitment to ensure the proper
dispensation of justice at all levels,
especially in the subordinate judiciary in Tamil Nadu.
Recently, an Additional Sessions
Judge in Tiruvarur was sacked following some serious allegations. The
High Court dismissed six district
judges last year, while a sub judge
was placed under suspension on the
day of her retirement on charges of
corruption.
Meanwhile, the State has decided to challenge the order passed by
Boopathy acquitting the granite
miners and to take steps to nullify his
order calling for the criminal prosecution of the former Collector and
the two SPPs. The Madras High
Court, in pursuance of the Sagayam
report on the granite scam, had
asked the government to submit a
report on whether a Central Bureau
of Investigation or a Crime BranchCriminal Investigation Department
inquiry was needed into the multicrore granite scam.

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

Raz Kr

Raz Kr

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA DULUTH, U.S.

Seed time capsule

TH E J O S H UA T R E E is one of the many species whose

seeds are stored in the Project Baseline frozen seed bank.

IN a visionary project of the

U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), called Project Baseline, a time
capsule containing more
than ve million seeds frozen in time has been created at a U.S. Department of
Agriculture facility in Fort
Collins, Colorado. The cap-

sule will be maintained at

18 C for the next 50 years
after which the seeds will be
made available so that scientists can study evolution
in wild plant populations
across time and space, using what is called the resurrection approach. With
an NSF funding of $1.3 mil-

lion, a team of scientists led

by Julie Etterson of the University of Minnesota Duluth
established this seed bank.
Most seed banks aim at preserving biological diversity.
Project Baseline is aimed at
controlled studies of how
plants evolve under the
stresses of climate change
and environmental degradation.
In a paper published
earlier this year in American Journal of Botany, Julie
Etterson and colleagues described the project. The
seeds, representing about
60 species, were taken from
around 250 locations in the
U.S. The process of seed
collection began in 2012,
and samples were taken
from diverse environments
and a wide variety of spe-

ONE of the main reasons for

limiting the operating lifetime of nuclear reactors is
that metals exposed to the
strong radiation environment near the reactor core
become porous and brittle,
which can lead to cracking
and failure. Scientists at the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), U.S., and
collaborators from Texas
A&M University, and universities in South Korea, Chile
and Argentina, have found
that adding a tiny quantity of
carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to
the metal can dramatically
slow this breakdown process. For now, the method
has only proved effective for
aluminium, which limits its
applications to the lowertemperature environments
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

MIT

Carbon
nanotubes

A N EX A M P LE of how the researchers treated aluminium

with carbon nanotubes.

found in research reactors.

The team said the method
might also be usable in the
higher-temperature alloys
used in commercial reactors. The ndings were described in a recent issue of
Nano Energy.
Aluminium is currently
used in not only research
reactor components but al-

so nuclear batteries and

spacecraft and has been
proposed as a material for
storage containers for nuclear waste. So, improving
its operating lifetime could
have signicant benets,
said Ju Li of MIT, the lead
author of the work. The
metal with CNTs uniformly
dispersed inside is de-

cies. The collection phase

has now been completed.
Hitherto, when studying
the impact of anthropogenic
pressures,
scientists
looked at the differences in
similar species growing at
different sites or temporal
changes at a single site. But
with such studies, it can be
difficult
to
distinguish
changes caused by evolution from those due to adaptation of plant species to a
changing
environment,
termed plasticity.
The resurrection approach is a powerful way to
observe evolution in action
in the wild and provides insights into how plant populations evolve in response
to stressors. Dormant ancestors of a known age are
reared in a common garden

signed to mitigate radiation

damage for long periods
without degrading, said
Kang Pyo So of MIT, co-author of the paper. Helium
from radiation transmutation takes up residence inside metals and causes the
material to become riddled
with tiny bubbles along
grain boundaries and progressively more brittle, the
researchers explained. The
nanotubes, despite only
making up a small fraction
of the volumeless than 2
per cent and about 1 per
cent by weightcan form a
percolating,
one-dimensional transport network
that provides pathways for
the helium to leak out instead of being trapped within the metal, where it can
continue to do damage, they
pointed out. The huge total
interfacial area of these
one-dimensional
nanos-

120

Raz Kr

with the contemporary descendants collected from

the same site to directly observe evolutionary change
over time and examine how
it differs across space. Such
studies can tell scientists
whether the early owering
observed in some plants in
conjunction with global
warming is attributable to
evolution or plasticity or
how fast adaptive evolution
is occurring and whether it
can keep up with climate
change. The project has
long timescales compared
with the average evolution
study, which is important if
global change is to be studied, researchers said. The
rst call for proposals under the project to work with
the specimens is planned
for 2018.

tructures provides a way for

radiation-induced point defects to recombine in the
metal, alleviating a process
that also leads to embrittlement. For a given amount of
exposure to radiation, tests
have shown the amount of
embrittlement is reduced
about ve- to tenfold. The
composite can be manufactured at low cost by common industrial methods and
is already being produced
by the tonne by manufacturers in South Korea for the
automotive industry.
While the material used
for testing was aluminium,
the team plans to run similar tests with zirconium, a
metal widely used for hightemperature reactor applications such as the cladding
of nuclear fuel pellets. We
think this is a generic property of metal-CNT systems, he said.

EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP

LIFE SCIENCES / MATERIAL SCIENCE / CLIMATE CHANGE

P A RA D I S E H A RB O UR , A N TA R C TI C A, on March 4.

Sea level rise cannot

be pumped away
BURNING fossil fuels leads to greenhouse gas emissions that cause global
warming. The consequent thermal expansion of ocean water and the melting
of glaciers and ice sheets raise sea levels, which will continue for millennia.
Under unabated warming, sea level rise
may exceed 130 cm by 2100. Climate
scientists at the Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact (PIK), Germany, explored whether unprecedented geoengineering such as pumping water
masses on to the Antarctic continent
could be used to mitigate the effects of
climate change. Our approach is denitely extreme, but so is the challenge of
sea level rise, said Katja Frieler, the
lead author of the PIK study. We explored a way to at least delay the rise of
sea level we can no longer avoid.
Local adaptation, for instance,
building dykes, will not be physically
possible or economically feasible everywhere, she pointed out. Protection
may depend on the nations economic
situation..., and this clearly raises an
equity issue, she added. Hence the
interest in a universal protection measure. We wanted to check whether sac-

ricing the uninhabited Antarctic region

might theoretically enable us to save
populated shores around the world.
The scientists addressed the problem from an ice-dynamics perspective,
using state-of-the-art computer simulations of Antarctica. Since the ice is
continually moving, ocean water put on
its surface can only delay sea level rise,
and if it is placed too close to the coast,
ice-sheet mass loss and thus sea level
rise after some time could even increase, they found. As a consequence
the water has to be pumped a long way,
at least 700 km, inland on to the Antarctic ice sheet. But the ice sheet is up to
4,000 m high. Pumping so much water
that high up would require enormous
amounts of energy (more than onetenth of the present annual global energy supply to balance the current rate of
sea level rise). Antarctica is very windy,
so the power for the pumping could in
principle be generated by wind turbines;
yet this would require building roughly
850,000 wind energy plants. The costs
would be much higher than those associated with local adaptation studies,
though these by denition are limited in
scope and scale, the scientists stated.
So, rapid greenhouse gas emission reductions are indispensable if sea level
rise is to be kept manageable.
Stories compiled by R. Ramachandran

121

FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

Crime as punishment
A book on torture in custody penned by a victim and a lm in Tamil on
the subject bring out, perhaps for the rst time in India, the stark
reality of the vicious side of law enforcement.

E know from contemporary experience as much as

from history that crime
and punishment may be associative
concepts but are not necessarily in a
cause and effect relationship. A crime
need only be assumed, not proven, to
warrant the punishment. From the
Inquisition well into the eighteenth
century, demonstrative, elaborately
graded and what were considered exemplary forms of torture were devised and carried out in full display of
the public to extract confessions from
the accused. The confession was tantamount to guilt. It did not matter
that it was prised from the accused by
the iniction of unbearable bodily
torture.
The make-believe was that when
the body was beleaguered by insufferable pain, the soul or the spirit of the
person would reveal the truth. The
truth, of course, invariably meant acceptance of guilt, and its logical end
was absolution through repentance
before certain and ultimateand at
that stage of torture, welcome
death. Confession and contrition
were the objective and natural conseFRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

quence of torture. It was important

to save the soul; it mattered little
what the body suffered and that it
perished in the process. This makebelieve, we are further led to believe,
may have rubbed off on some of

M O H A M M A D AA M I R KHAN

was picked up in Old Delhi in

1998 as a suspect in some
low-intensity blasts and kept
in jails for 14 years and
tortured before his release for
lack of evidence.

those subject to the torture. We see

them depicted in states of ecstasy as
they are tortured, as representing the
apotheosis of salvation by pain.
The torture was even sugar-coated as a generous opportunity for the
accused to prove his or her innocence. If the person was really not
guilty of the alleged crime, there was
no way any torture would affect him.
He would be unscathed, beatically
untouched, by the red-hot iron tongs
that tore away chunks of esh from
different parts of his body, by his
limbs being coated with sulphur and
set on re, by being stretched on the
rack, by being quartered by horses
pulling his four limbs in four directions, by being immersed in boiling
oil, and by other such ingenious
means. So, all in all, it was a Hobsons
choice compounded, and confounded, by metaphysical claptrap.
Enter Dostoevsky, in the postEnlightenment era, and his Crime
and Punishment in the latter part of
the nineteenth century, where the
crime is something of an aspirational
challenge for the protagonist, who
has to bring the punishment upon

122

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BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

himself, partly as affirmation of accomplishment of that challenge.

Raskolnikov is driven to kill the old
woman to transgress and exceed his
mundane condition, much like, he
imagines, Napolean became aware
of his destiny and went about his
invasions. It was, more than the routine or natural reaction of guilt or
penitence of a novitiate homicide, a
peculiar casuistry of larger moral
cause and effect. The crime and the
punishment are in tandem. The punishment, in a sense, vindicates the
crime. It is causally linked to the
crime. The admission of the crime is
logically impelled by the tension between the protagonists personal and
social entanglements on the one
hand and his ambition to exceed his
circumstances on the other. It is not
forced by intimidation or extorted by
iniction of corporal pain.
From that symbiotic relationship
of crime and punishment at the religious and psychiatric planes respectively to the secular disjunction
between them obtaining now is a giant leap. There is crime and there is
punishment, and the two, it would

A S T I LL F RO M the Tamil lm 'Visaaranai'.

seem, do not necessarily need to have

anything to do with one another. The
punishment itself is often really the
crime. Not the legal punishment after a trial as ruled by a court of law,
but the arbitrary punishment of having to spend years in isolation and
connement in extreme conditions,
the punishment of custodial beating
and torture so that the interrogators
can fabricate the evidence required
to x the judicial verdict.
In the wake of 9/11, third-degree
torture was euphemised as extraordinary rendition. Detention without
trial for lengthy periods in conditions
of physical and mental privation was
ghettoised in Guantanamo Bay, from
where eventually most of the 775 persons held since 2002 have been released because no case could be
brought against them. It must now
have dawned on the most hawkish
elements in the United States security and intelligence apparatus that
cases manufactured under duress do
not stick and can be uselessly or dangerously misleading. At least the
123

Obama administration seemed to be

veering round to this wisdom. And
yet in the wake of the terror attack on
Brussels, the Republican Presidential aspirant goes right back to publicly bragging about resorting to a lot
more than waterboarding.
At least two lms, both made in
2007one, from the accounts one
has read, more profound, low-budget and British, and the other as serious and as expensive as Hollywood
generally gets and neatly avoiding
pinning the blame where it ultimately belongstake up the theme of the
spiriting away of a suspect and his
torture via extraordinary rendition.
Gavin Hoods Rendition is a light
touch on a dark subject without looking away from the excess, illegality,
suffering and injustice entailed in
this essentially criminal modus operandi. Jim Threapletons Extraordinary Rendition (which I have not
seen), shown at the Locarno Festival
in 2007 and telecast by BBC, apparently has some shocking and grippingly real scenes of torture,
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP

TH E ' V I S A A R A N A I ' T EA M at the 72nd Venice International Film Festival on

September 10. (From left) Chandrakumar, whose book "Lock-up" in Tamil was
made into the lm, actor Samuthirakani, director Vetri Maaran, and actor
Dinesh Ravi. The lm was presented in the Orizzonti selection of the festival.
particularly waterboarding, but
seems not to have made it into the
cinemas, and little, strangely, has
been heard of it since.
Here in India, given the number
of people shut away in prisons pending trial and the frequency with
which instances of torture in prison
cells surface in the media, one would
think that this regular miscarriage of
justice would have merited a conscientious and honest lm long before now.
After all, the policeman has
played hero, anti-hero, villain, joker
and prop variously in various lms,
and this aspect of how he systematically criminalises the criminal justice system by foisting false cases on
innocent citizens and brutalising
them in custodyfor the lure of
money or promotion, or by way of
simply following orders from higherups in the hierarchy, or to please
anonymous political or corporate interests who pull the strings from outsidewas crying to be seen and
heard by the public.
We have the astounding, living
example of a victim of such dastardly
abuse of police power in the person
of Mohammad Aamir Khan, who
was picked up near his house in Old
Delhi in 1998, when he was barely 20
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

years old, as a suspect in some lowintensity blasts, and had to spend the
next 14 years in different jails undergoing a variety of brutal torture. He
was forced to sign blank sheets of
confession to the many cases thrown
at him, and was eventually released
in 2012 because there was nothing,
at the end of it all, to incriminate
him. Fourteen years of his youthful
life had been lobbed off, and how.
He recounts in his book, Framed
as a Terrorist: My 14-year Struggle
to Prove my Innocence, published
early this year, the kinds of iniquity,
insult and torture he was subject to,
including beatings, extreme stretching of his legs, electric shocks, and
solitary connement. Those who
were torturing him knew or realised
soon enough that he was innocent.
But it did not matter. The crime, of
the blasts, demanded a criminal. It
did not matter if they could not catch
the real criminal. A sacricial lamb
would do instead. He could be beaten into shape to t the description of
the real criminal whom they did not
know or could not nd. And no one is
held to account for this wanton custodial crime.
Vetri Maaran in his latest lm
Visaaranai (Interrogation) engages
with this vicious side of so-called law

enforcement boldly and uninchingly, and for the rst time as incisively
as this on this subject for an Indian
lm. He does it with deft craft and
measured empathy. He does it with a
mise en scene which holds the mood
in rapt and tense control, with chiaroscuro lighting where the dark
shades seem to merge into dank
shadows harbouring untold miseries. His characterisations are at once
vivid yet nuanced, performative yet
behaviourally lifelike and organic.
The cast he has put together lls the
roles assigned to them to the T.
Strangely, though, the malefactors command our attention and
grudging awe more compellingly
than the innocent victims elicit our
sympathy. Not that Dinesh Ravi,
Aaadukalam Murugadoss and the
two others as the hapless workers
caught in the trap are in any way
wanting. They are convincingly and
immediately real in their very body
language of fear and tremulousness.
Dinesh, in particular, brings the
semblance every now and then of
clinging by a thread to his dignity, his
rights and hope in a hopeless situation, providing about all the range
his role can allow. It is not their fault
that at the receiving end of the
torture they are reduced to the stock
response of screaming in pain and
fear. It is in the nature of the situation they are cast into.
The cops, played by Samuthirakani, Ajay Ghosh and E. Ramdoss,
are, each of them, quite brilliantly
different and distinctive. We think
they are familiar, but soon realise
there is more we do not know about
them than we do. Kishore as the corrupt business agent traverses with
understated nesse the range, from
the wily, arrogant xer who knows
his way about policedom to himself
being caught and strung in the web
of the plot being woven by unseen
hands from above. Vetri Maaran lets
the all-round helplessness before
some inscrutable, inexorable power
be. Because that, we know without
his having to tell us, is the way it is.
And will probably continue to be,
given our social relations and power
structures. This is cinema which is,
more than reality, a reality check.

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ECONOMIC OFFENCES

The Panama connection

ARNULFO FRANCO/AP

The Panama Papers expose, the biggest leak ever of a database, made
possible by a unique journalistic venture, rocks governments, shines a
light on politicians and the super rich and exposes their secretive
connections with tax havens across the world. B Y V . S R I D H A R

A M A R Q UE E O F the Arango Orillac Building lists the Mossack Fonseca law rm in Panama City. Panama's president says

his government will cooperate vigorously with any judicial investigation arising from the leak of a vast trove of information
on the offshore nancial dealings of the world's rich and famous.

WHAT do Indian lm stars, the

British and Iceland Prime Ministers,
a mining baron from Bellary in India
and the officials of the Ethics Panel
at FIFA (Federation Internationale
de Football Association) have in
common? The Panama Papers. It
has taken the biggest leak in history,
and an unprecedented coordination

of the global media, to shine the light

on the ways that the rich and the
famous adopt to hide their wealth in
locations normal folk would never
even dream of. The coordinated release of the Panama Papers in early
April shows how celebrities and politicians, arms dealers and art sellers
and businessmen (women, too) and
125

football players and administrators

across the world used the services of
an until-now unknown law rm in,
of all places, Panama, to establish
shell companies in tax havens across
the world.
The leaks have already resulted
in one political casualty. Sigmundur
Davio Gunnlaugsson, Prime MinisFRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

Raz Kr

The expose rips the mask off the faces

of the rich, the famous and the powerful
and makes transparent their ways that
would not be available to
honest taxpayers.
ter of Iceland, was forced to resign
after revelations that he and his wife
had used the services of a Panamanian law rm, Mossack Fonseca,
which specialises as a factory that
churns out shell companies in Panama and other tax havens. British
Prime Minister David Cameron, after days of stalling questions over the
status of Blairmore, a fund established by his father in Panama, admitted
that he gained nancially but that he
sold for a prot just before he assumed office in 2010. However,
Cameron did not say how much of
the 300,000 that he inherited was
because of entities being located in
tax havens. Following the revelations, 20 banks and nancial rms in
London have been asked to disclose
their dealings with Mossack Fonseca
to the Financial Conduct Authority
in the United Kingdom.
Other political leaders in the
Panama Papers net include Russian
President Vladmir Putin, whose
close friends and associates are linked to shell companies incorporated
by Mossack Fonseca, and Pakistan
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose
family, the papers reveal, proted by
mortgaging six London properties
through companies owned in the
Virgin islands. The revelations also
link relatives of at least eight members the Chinese Communist Party
leadership to tax havens, through
Mossack Fonseca.
THE INDIAN ANGLE

The Indian Express, the sole Indian

media house participating in the
project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
(ICIJ), revealed the use of tax havens
by several Indian celebrities, industrialists and businessmen and a host
FRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

of shady operators from the country.

The newspapers investigation attempts to trace the persons behind
these entities led it to slums in Mumbai, localities in Delhi which would
normally not be the bases of the wellheeled, and to several small towns
that would not be expected to be connected to tax havens. The investigations hint at the possible use of
benami (fraudulent) identities to
hide the trail of persons with networks in tax havens across the world.
Among the celebrities mentioned by
The Indian Express is Amitabh
Bachchan, who is reported to have
been made managing director of four
companies in 1993 in the British Virgin Islands and in the Bahamas, both
tax havens. Bachchans daughter-inlaw, Aishwarya Rai, and her family
members were also allegedly helped
by Mossack Fonseca to establish a
company in the Virgin Islands. Interestingly, The Indian Express investigations revealed that internal
instructions exchanged with the law
rm directed that the celebritys
name be shortened to A. Rai for reasons of condentiality. While Bachchan said his name might have been
misused, Aishwarya Rai termed the
revelations totally untrue and false.
The leaks began with a call from
an anonymous source to the Suddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper, offering to provide it data from
Mossack Fonseca. The eight-monthlong investigations were coordinated
by the ICIJ and the German public
broadcasters NDR and WDR. More
than 100 media organisations from
around the world participated in the
probe.
The leaks, contained in over 2.6
terabytes of data, pertaining to 11.5
million documents on 2,14,000 shell

companies and spanning 38 years

since 1977, are the biggest of their
kind in history. More important than
the scale of the expose is the extreme
focus of the leaks since they pertain
to a single source. According to the
ICIJ, Mossack Fonseca, in its present
form, only came into being in 1986
when Ramon Fonseca merged his
small, one-secretary Panamanian
law rm with another company belonging to a Panamanian of German
origin, Jurgen Mossack, resulting in
its present name.
GLOBAL NEXUS

The data reveal Mossack Fonsecas

ties to more than 14,000 banks, law
rms, company incorporators and
other middlemen, which resulted in
the establishment of companies,
foundations and trusts for customers
in tax havens across the world. The
data show that almost 40 per cent of
these intermediaries were located in
three countriesHong Kong, the
United Kingdom and Switzerland.
The ICIJ said it used the country
categorisation contained in the
leaked internal client database to describe how many intermediaries
were in each country.
P. Vaidyanathan Iyer, part of the
Indian Express team investigating
the Panama Papers, described Fonseca as a giant factory that churned
out thousands of companies into
which the haven-seekers could invest. Fonseca was offering companies off the shelf to resident
individuals, he remarked in the
wake of the revelations.
The output from Mossack Fonsecas factory of registering shell companies peaked in 2005, when it
facilitated the incorporation of more
than 13,000 companies; but by 2015
it fell to a third of the peak level. The
data also reveal that the actual lifespan of many of these companies is
quite short, indicating that they are
very specic-purpose vehicles. The
leaks show the widespread use of
bearer shares of companies, which
make it difficult for the authorities to
trace their actual beneciary holders.
The ICIJ describes Mossack Fonseca
as one of the ve biggest wholesalers
of offshore secrecy. The favoured tax

126

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DMITRY LOVETSKY/AFP

CHRISTOPHER FURLONG/AFP

Named in the Panama Papers.

RU S S I A N P RES I DE N T
V LA D I M I R P U T I N.

P AK I S T A N PR I ME M I N I S T ER
NA W A Z S H A R I F .

S I GM U N D U R GU NN LA UG S S ON
O F I C ELA N D .

A IS H W A R YA R A I .

A M I T A B H B A C H CHAN .

PTI

SMARAN SHINDE

AFP

SIGTRYGGUR JOHANNSSON/REUTERS

B R I T I S H PR I ME M I N I S T ER
DA V I D C A ME R O N .

haven of its clients was the Virgin

Islands, where one of every two of
Mossack Fonsecas clients went; the
second was Panama, followed by the
Bahamas and Seychelles.
The Indian government, which
has faced criticism for the tardy progress in reining in the domineering

presence of illicit or black money in

the national economywhich was a
key promise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi before he strode into
office in 2014quickly ordered a
probe into the involvement of more
than 500 Indians identied in the
Panama Papers. A new agency, in127

cluding officials from the Central

Board of Direct Taxes, the Financial
Intelligence Union and Foreign Tax
and Tax Research division and the
Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has
been formed to conduct this operation. Meanwhile, the Special Investigation Team on Black Money,
appointed under the Supreme
Courts directions, continues its
probe into the black money menace.
WRONGDOING LEGALISED

It is important to appreciate that

wrongdoing, in terms of adherence
to the letter of the law, would be
difficult to establish with the Panama Papers. The Indian regulations
have themselves undergone changes
in the last decade, resulting in a more
permissive regime. In this sense, Indian regulators, especially the RBI,
have been behind the curve, so to
speak, of what investors or speculators were actually assuming the law
to be. In effect, the modied regulations suit the interests of speculators who were indulging in tax haven
shopping.
For a long time, Indians were not
allowed to freely convert foreign exchange and take the funds overseas.
For the rst time, in February 2004,
the RBI allowed, through the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, each Indian to take out a maximum of
$25,000 annually for a variety of
purposesbuying shares and other
assets, gifting, donations, education,
health, and so on. This limit was
raised gradually and now is set at
$2,50,000 annually, which at current exchange rates amounts to
about Rs.1.66 crore. A few years after
the scheme was launched, the RBI,
following a review, asserted that the
scheme did not allow Indian entities
to establish companies overseas. But
these entities conveniently assumed
that since the scheme allowed the
purchase of shares, it automatically
also allowed establishment of companies by these entities in overseas
locations.
The RBI reiterated its position in
September 2010, clarifying beyond
doubt that establishing companies
overseas under the provisions of the
scheme was illegal. However, acFRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

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counting rms and chartered accountants, in collusion with law

rms such as Mossack Fonseca, in
brazen violation of the RBI norms,
interpreted the law to mean that the
prohibition applied only to cases of
fresh incorporation of companies
and not to the acquisition of existing
companies.
In a clear case of the regulator
adjusting the policy regime to what
was in effect a fait accompli, the RBI,
in 2013, notied the Overseas Direct
Investment (ODI) scheme, which allowed Indian entities to invest in
joint ventures or in a fully owned
subsidiary in overseas tax jurisdictions. What this clearly implies is
that until the ODI scheme came into
being, the investments of Indian entities in offshore investment vehicles
were in violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
The point in all this is that until 2013
such investments were in clear violation of Indian regulations. After
2013, the issue is one of the use of tax
havens to avoid and evade tax.

The law modied

itself to suit the
interests of
haven seekers.
The justication given by those
indulging in the use of tax havens is
that there is nothing wrong with using smart methods of tax planning.
However, this begs the question of
the extreme secrecy associated with
tax havens, which go far beyond taxation into issues such as the use of
slush funds and kickbacks in operations of drug cartels, terrorist organisations and illegal arms trade.
The layered structure of these
offshore companies is such that it is
virtually impossible for the authorities in any tax jurisdiction to trace
the actual owners of these entities. It
is impossible to lift the corporate veil
in order to separate the nominal shareholders in these investment vehiFRONTLINE .

APRIL 29, 2016

cles from those actually controlling

them. Entities like Mossack Fonseca
provide a range of services to these
entities; thus the law rm has provided nominee directors and shareholders who act as proxies for the
actual beneciaries.
THE PERFIDY OF TAX HAVENS

Although the Panama Papers are unlikely to result in any convictions,

their signicance lies not so much in
the fact that illegality has been committed as they expose the modus operandi of the rich. What it has done is
to rip the mask off the faces of the
rich, the famous and the powerful
and make transparent their ways
that would not be available to normal, decent and honest taxpaying citizens around the world. In the
process, they also reveal the extraordinary abuse of tax havens by the well
heeled.
A remarkable book published recently, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens by
Gabriel Zucman (University of Chicago Press, 2015), throws some light
on the widespread abuse of tax
havens and their implications for social equity. Tax havens with their
nancial opacity are one of the key
driving forces behind rising wealth
inequality, says Thomas Piketty (author of Capital in the Twenty-rst
Century) in his foreword to Zucmans book. Piketty observes that tax
havens undermine a fundamental
facet of modern democracies, which
are grounded in a social contract that
requires that everybody pays taxes on
an equitable basis.
Zucman estimates that about 8
per cent of global nancial wealth
which Piketty considers to be at
the lower boundis based in tax
haven jurisdictions. Moreover, there
are wide regional variations within
this broad picture; Zucman estimates that about 30 per cent of the
wealth in Africa and about 50 per
cent of the wealth generated in Russia and the West Asian economies
wind their way to tax havens. Zucman suggests some kind of a global
register of wealth, of who owns what
in what form and where. The corollary to that would be taxes by nation-

al authorities on the ow of capital,

incomes and of stocks of wealth
across national frontiers. Zucmans
warning is dire. Tax havens, he
warns, are at the heart of nancial,
budgetary, and democratic crises.
In the United States, the centre
of global nancial power, the problem assumes a different form. It is
not so much a problem of the ight of
capital to tax havens. Instead, the
issue there is one of large-scale corporate tax evasion by multinational
companies.
Indeed, critics of the Panama Papers, including those who have argued that the WikiLeaks revelations
were far more damaging to powerful
interests, especially in the U.S., have
pointed to the presence of very few
American entities in the database.
Zucman observes that U.S. corporations are routing prots to countries
such as Bermuda and Luxembourg
on a massive and growing scale. He
estimates the scale of this rerouted
prot to be about $130 billion annually. The comparison of the revelations with the WikiLeaks and
Snowden revelations on the grounds
that the latest expose is the biggest
is hardly fair. The release of the Panama Papers happened to coincide
with the sixth anniversary of the WikiLeaks release of the collateral
murder videos of the bombing of
Iraq, which shook the conscience of
the world and provoked outrage
against the conduct of U.S. military
forces in that country. Similarly, the
Snowden revelations were unprecedented for exposing the scale and extent of surveillance of U.S. agencies
across the world.
The signicance of the Panama
Papers lies not so much in unearthing illegality but in exposing these
secret channels of investment and
bringing into full public view those
who would have been hid forever under a corporate veil. As the case of the
RBI itself has shown, the persistent
power of nancial capital, which resulted in a more permissive regulatory regime, had in any case altered
the notion of what constitutes illegality. In other words, the law modied
itself to accommodate and suit the
interests of the haven seekers.

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LETTERS
available with different private and public
entities. Citizens have no recourse if the
data are misused.
A crucial issue is whether the data are
hack-proof. Hackers from across the
border have regularly attacked government websites. The law will also help to
protect the data of users of mobile
phones, which various applications ask
permission to access when one wants to
install a particular application.

Aadhaar

DEENDAYAL M. LULLA
MUMBAI

THE government presented the Aadhaar

Bill as a nancial Bill to circumvent the
Rajya Sabha where it knew the Bill would
not get passed (Cover Story, April 15).
This is a breach of democratic norms.
The government claims that the data
collected for Aadhaar will remain private
and not be shared with other agencies.
By its own admission, it has shared data
with the French and U.S. administrations. Hackers and rogue elements have
often breached national security, and
governments around the world have
been helpless.
The governments claim that the biometric data is safe sounds unconvincing
in light of the real threat that hacking and
cyberattacks pose. Recently, hackers
broke into the servers of a hospital in Los
Angeles and installed a computer virus
that prevented employees from accessing les. The institution had to pay a ransom in bitcoins to get its les released. In
this digital age, ones digital footprint is
under the care of the government, which
is ill-prepared to protect this data.
H.N. RAMAKRISHNA
BENGALURU

THE governments eagerness to coerce

all people to submit to biometric identication is dubious. Those in power seem to
have forgotten one of the rst protests
that Gandhi led in South Africa was
against the rule that required Indians to
register their ngerprints with the police
and carry identication papers on their
person.
FIROZ AHMAD
NEW DELHI

INDIA needs a data protection Act at the

earliest as millions of people now have
Aadhaar numbers and their data are

THE Supreme Court made it clear to the

government not to make Aadhaar mandatory for citizens who need to access
any benet otherwise due to them. The
Central governments aggressive push
for Aadhaar is inexplicable and unreasonable. The way the government bulldozed the Bill through Parliament
smacks of high-handedness.
Although the court has ordered that
Aadhaar should not be used for any other
purpose except under a court directive,
mass surveillance using Aadhaar is a
distinct possibility. People are being
forced to enrol in Aadhaar, but the process is not hassle-free. Central government employees have been advised to
link Aadhaar to their salary accounts
without being told why this is necessary.
Even schoolchildren have not been
spared. The government should rst
take steps to issue every citizen an Aadhaar number before making it
mandatory.
J. ANANTHA PADMANABHAN
TIRUCHI, TAMIL NADU

PRIVACY is not an abstract issue but is

related to how the Aadhaar data are accessed and used. This must not be done
in a way that can hurt citizens accidentally or deliberately. It is worth thinking
about what could go wrong.
Although the Supreme Court ruled
that Aadhaar should not be made mandatory for accessing services and benets, there are many instances of old
people being denied pension because
they do not have an Aadhaar number or
because the thumb impression does not
tally with their biometric information.
It has been claimed that Aadhaar can
eliminate the duplication of beneciaries
in government schemes and thereby
save the public exchequer thousands of
crores of rupees. In fact, de-duplication
of identity cards such as ration cards has
been done several times but with only a
129

little success. It is not right to say that

Aadhaar is the only means of identifying
beneciaries for government schemes.
T.S.N. RAO
BHIMAVARAM, ANDHRA PRADESH

THE Cover Story articles were well written, but no counterpoint was presented.
Sweden and other welfare states and the
U.S. have had social security cards/numbers for a long time now, so we cannot
assume that Indias version will invade
citizens privacy.
BOBBY BALACHANDRAN
CHENNAI

Honour killings
IT is disturbing that honour killings relating to inter-caste marriages have assumed alarming proportions in Tamil
Nadu (In the name of honour, April 15).
Such dastardly acts will continue until
the government, political parties and civil
society make a concerted effort to put an
end to them. It is
only because political parties formed
on caste lines continue to extend
tacit support to the
frenzied mobs of
their caste that
such
heinous
crimes are committed
without
fear of the law.
Merely ordering a probe into the daylight murder of V. Shankar in Udumalpet
and submitting a report to the Human
Rights Commission will not put an end to
the agony victims families face. Only a
law along the lines of the Nirbhaya Act
will help prevent such murders from taking place.
K.R. SRINIVASAN
SECUNDERABAD, TELANGANA

THE ugly phenomenon of khap panchayats with their instant justice is seen
in many Indian villages (Deceptive
calm, April 15). This sort of justice is a
kind of terrorism as it strikes terror in
people and creates a sense of insecurity
and fear. Khap panchayats should be
banned.
A.J. RANGARAJAN
EDISON, NEW JERSEY, U.S.

Terrorism
TERROR attacks such as the ones in Lahore and Brussels no longer shock many
people as there are so many of them
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LETTERS
happening all over the world regularly
(Blowback in Europe, April 15). No religion is in favour of killing people, but
some preachers in their own self-interest are spreading a wrong message and
brainwashing young people to follow it.
Everyone has to be involved in destroying
the roots of such terror activities. There
is no other solution to end this kind of
worldwide terror. The sad reality is that
countries affected by terrorism are yet to
devise a common strategy to combat the
menace.

sources of revenue for the Railways and

to address the burning issues of cleanliness and passenger safety. The plan to
introduce Wi-Fi in 100 more stations and
satellite railway terminals in major cities
is a truly pioneering step. What stands
out in this Budget is the unprecedented
focus given to punctuality of trains and
the resolve to reduce accidents through
the concept of Mission Zero Accident.
The Budget can be described as a vision
document that will lift the Indian Railways from its current economic morass.

MAHESH KUMAR
NEW DELHI

B. SURESH KUMAR
COIMBATORE, TAMIL NADU

Sedition

Art of Living

THE sedition law hangs over Indian democracy like the sword of Damocles even
though Jawaharlal Nehru made a strong
argument for its annulment 65 years ago
(Colonial relic, April 15). It is baffling
that such an archaic law continues to get
judicial approbation in India. It is all the
more preposterous when the present
dispensation uses the repressive law to
suppress the voice of students and
threaten the autonomy of universities.

HOW did the government give the Art of

Living Foundation permission for its
World Culture Festival without taking into consideration environmental laws
(Against all norms, April 1)? Another
shameful thing was how it allowed Army
personnel to construct temporary
bridges over the Yamuna for the festival.
V.P. RINSHAD
PUTHUR, KERALA

AYYASSERI RAVEENDRANATH
ARANMULA, KERALA

Student unrest
DESPITE the upheavals in some Central
institutions of higher education, students
pursuing higher education are generally
docile and are not much perturbed by the
events in the country (Rising spirits,
April 15). The administrators mistake the
silence of the majority of students as
acceptance of their stand and believe
that the unrest can be contained through
bullying and repressive measures.
The media should be thanked for their
extensive coverage of the happenings in
HCU and JNU. It is regrettable that it has
not evoked much anger among students
and the public, but this cannot be taken
as acceptance of the irresponsible action
of the administrators. There is need for
some hard thinking on the role student
bodies should play in the administration
of institutions.
S.S. RAJAGOPALAN
CHENNAI

Budget
THE BJP governments second Railway
Budget was a welcome departure from
the populist ones of its predecessors
(Off the rails, April 1). Suresh Prabhu
needs to be complimented for his efforts
to seek to generate new/alternative

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APRIL 29, 2016

WHEN the arrangements for the festival

were almost complete, the National
Green Tribunal had no option but to give
the green signal for the event. When the
NGT was aware of the massive arrangements being made from December on
the Yamuna oodplains, why did it not
take suo motu action against the organisation? It is unfortunate that almost all
the authorities that were entrusted with
protecting the environment behaved like
the proverbial ostrich when the oodplain was being wantonly destroyed.
K.P. RAJAN
MUMBAI

The RSS
IT is not correct to say that the RSS never
joined the freedom movement (The nation according to Hindutva, March 18).
The rst Sarsanghchalak of the RSS, Dr
Kesav Baliram Hedgewar, was punished
with nine months imprisonment in Akola
Jail for participating in Jungle Satyagraha.

When the Indian National Congress

decided to celebrate January 30, 1930, as
Independence Day, Hedgewar directed
all RSS shakhas to celebrate the day by
hoisting the national flag and spreading
the message of freedom. The government in the Central Province issued a
circular prohibiting employees of government and local self-government bodies from taking part in RSS activities. It
was the anti-imperialist character of the
RSS and its unconditional support to the
Congress movement that appalled the
British administration and made it issue
the circular.
National leaders also kept in touch
with the RSS, participated in its camps
and appreciated its activities. A Home
Department report in 1940 said: RSS is
intensely anti-British and its tone is increasingly becoming militant. RSS volunteers were introduced into various
government departments in order that
there may be no difficulty in capturing
administrative department when the
time comes. During the 1942 Quit India
Movement, RSS activists provided safe
shelter to prominent underground leaders of the movement.
A 1943 report of the Intelligence Department on the RSS said: The ulterior
objective of the RSS is to drive away the
British from India and free the country.
The RSS history is one of active participation in the anti-colonial struggle and
unconditional cooperation not only with
the Congress but also any other any other group committed to the liberation of
the motherland.
VIDHYA V.S.
KOLLAM, KERALA
CORRECTIONS
In the interview with Marcello Musto (Marx in
new light, April 15), the superscript in MEGA2,
referring to the secondMarx Engels Gesamtausgabe,appeared as an asterisk in some
parts of the interview owing to a technical
problem.
In the Fortnight article Bhujbals rise and
fall (April 15), Krishna Desai, who was murdered by Shiv Sena activists, belonged to the
CPI. He was wrongly referred to as a CPI(M)
legislator.
The second sentence in the last paragraph of
the article The Vaidya sedition trial (April 15)
should read: The trend began 50 years ago
when that fearless advocate, K.M. Munshi, deplored the spectacle of frowning judges and
fawning counsel.
ANNOUNCEMENT
Letters, whether by surface mail or e-mail,
must carry the full postal address and the full
name, or the name with initials.

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