SACW - 10 March 2017 | Afghanistan: A Rapping Barber / Bangladesh: The blood on our clothes / Lessons for Pakistan from Trump’s America / India: Goons on campus / China: Cultural Revolution on Trial / French Presidential Election 2017: the risk of President Le Pen

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - 10 March 2017 - No. 2930 
[via South Asia Citizens Web - sacw.net since 1996]

Contents:
1. Bangladesh: The blood on our clothes | Shehzad M Arifeen
2. Bangladesh: Textbooks being tailored to please religious groups? - select commentary and reports
3. India: Links to Reportage & Commentary on Right-Wing Violence in Ramjas College and Delhi University (February - March 2017)
4. India: Attack on Children’s Right to Food - RTFC’s Statement on the compulsory Aadhaar in Mid-Day - Meal
5. India: Teesta Setalvad talks about her memoir, Foot Soldier of the Constitution at the press club, New Delhi on 6th March, 2017
6. India: This Sugar is Bitter - Digital version of 1992 citizens report by ABVA on chemical dependency & HIV infection
7. Recent on Communalism Watch:
- India: Ujjain RSS leader must be arrested for hate speech and BJP must condemn his remarks - Editorial, Hindustan Times (3 March 2017)
- India: The rise of ABVP and why it attracts the youth (Smriti Kak Ramachandran)
- India: Implications of the Acquittal of Swami Aseemanand
- Hindi Article: Polluting Universities with sectarian mindset
- India: RSS-affiliated schools bloom across Bengal (Soumya Das, The Hindu - Feb 25, 2017)
- India under Modi: Why do students get jailed but RSS leaders who issue vile threats walk freely? - A letter to Arun Jaitley by Kiran Nagarkar
- India: A special NIA court has acquitted terror accused Swami Aseemanand in the Ajmer blast case
- India: Religion & Uniform Civil Code - Justice P B Sawant in a two part video in Marathi
- India: ‘Gujarat riots did not happen all of a sudden’ - from Teesta Setalvad’s discussion on her memoir
- India: A Kerala Roman catholic churchman at his reactionary best says Women wearing jeans, T-shirts should be drowned
- India: Chalo Nagpur! ​Women’s call for action against Manuvad and Hindutva -Text of Press Release

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
8. Crossed in translation - Linguistic slights spur ethnic division in Sri Lanka
9. A Rapping Barber, a Defiant Teenager and a Release for War-Weary Afghans | Mujib Mashal
10. Lessons for Pakistan from Trump’s America | Pervez Hoodbhoy 
11. Pollution of minds: Sexual harassment of Gurmehar Kaur has nothing to do with love for country - Editorial, The Times of India
12. How India-Pakistan wars tore apart the social fabric of Umerkot | Vaqar Ahmed
13. India: Goons on campus - The meaning of Ramjas | Mukul Kesavan
14. India: Let’s get this right | Maj Gen Raj Mehta (retd)
15. India - The parent trap: Maneka Gandhi has no business worrying about the hormones of adult college-going women (Editorial, Times of India)
16. French Presidential Election 2017: Don’t be complacent about the risk of President Le Pen | Natalie Nougayrède
17. The Cultural Revolution on Trial by Alexander Cook review – a sensational moment in Chinese history | Julia Lovell
18. Chang on Prostitution and the Ends of Empire by Stephen Legg

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1. BANGLADESH: THE BLOOD ON OUR CLOTHES | Shehzad M Arifeen
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Since December of the past year, Ashulia and Savar have been in an uproar. What started off with workers’ demands regarding how the factories are run evolved into demands for better pay, a more democratic workplace, labour law reform, an end to illegal sackings and random factory closings, and more. The response from the government and the BGMEA would undoubtedly have made Pinochet proud.
http://www.sacw.net/article13134.html

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2. BANGLADESH: TEXTBOOKS BEING TAILORED TO PLEASE RELIGIOUS GROUPS? - SELECT COMMENTARY AND REPORTS
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Some commentators believe the changes in Bangladesh’s books might have a political motive
http://www.sacw.net/article13130.html

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3. INDIA: LINKS TO REPORTAGE & COMMENTARY ON RIGHT-WING VIOLENCE IN RAMJAS COLLEGE AND DELHI UNIVERSITY (FEBRUARY - MARCH 2017)
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A compilation of relevant links to commentary and reports on violence in Ramjas college and Delhi university’s North Campus on 21-22 Feb 2017 and the response that has followed. ". . .That Ramjas was the staging ground for this violence wasn’t an accident; given the college’s freethinking past, there could be no better place for the student’s wing of the RSS to enact the new normal. In its present avatar, with the BJP in command of an absolute majority at the Centre, the ABVP isn’t a student body, it is a vigilante organization, the sole purpose of which is to coerce Indian universities and their students into obeying the ideological writ of the sangh parivar. The BJP sees Indian universities as treacherous swamps that need to be drained."
http://www.sacw.net/article13133.html

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4. INDIA: ATTACK ON CHILDREN’S RIGHT TO FOOD - RTFC’S STATEMENT ON THE COMPULSORY AADHAAR IN MID-DAY - MEAL
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The right to food campaign strongly opposes the central government’s move to make Aadhaar compulsory for children under the midday meal scheme in government schools. This is nothing but an attempt to coerce people to enrol their children under Aadhaar.
http://www.sacw.net/article13129.html

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5. INDIA: TEESTA SETALVAD TALKS ABOUT HER MEMOIR, FOOT SOLDIER OF THE CONSTITUTION AT THE PRESS CLUB, NEW DELHI ON 6TH MARCH, 2017
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A video recording
http://www.sacw.net/article13131.html

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6. INDIA: THIS SUGAR IS BITTER - DIGITAL VERSION OF 1992 CITIZENS REPORT BY ABVA ON CHEMICAL DEPENDENCY & HIV INFECTION
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1992 report by AIDS BHEDBHAV VIRODHI ANDOLAN (AIDS Anti-Discrimination Movement): "It is surprising that very few people consider drug-dependency as a disease. No illness in any society is purely medical. The social and political dimension of the illness will determine the reaction of society to the illness, both socially and legally. ABVA therefore, has tried to document the politics of the problem of drugs and drug users. . . ."
http://www.sacw.net/article13128.html

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7. RECENT ON COMMUNALISM WATCH:
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- India: Ujjain RSS leader must be arrested for hate speech and BJP must condemn his remarks - Editorial, Hindustan Times (3 March 2017)
- One of the main suspects in 2016 Dhaka's Gulshan cafe terror attacks arrested from Kolkata
- India: The rise of ABVP and why it attracts the youth (Smriti Kak Ramachandran)
- India: Implications of the Acquittal of Swami Aseemanand
- Hindi Article: Polluting Universities with sectarian mindset
- India: RSS-affiliated schools bloom across Bengal (Soumya Das, The Hindu - Feb 25, 2017)
- India under Modi: Why do students get jailed but RSS leaders who issue vile threats walk freely? - A letter to Arun Jaitley by Kiran Nagarkar
- India: A special NIA court has acquitted terror accused Swami Aseemanand in the Ajmer blast case
- India: Religion & Uniform Civil Code - Justice P B Sawant in a two part video in Marathi
- India: ‘Gujarat riots did not happen all of a sudden’ - from Teesta Setalvad’s discussion on her memoir
- India: A Kerala Roman catholic churchman at his reactionary best says Women wearing jeans, T-shirts should be drowned
- India: Chalo Nagpur! ​Women’s call for action against Manuvad and Hindutva -Text of Press Release
- India - Assam: Nagpur based and RSS connected Nikhil Bharat Bangali Udbastu Samannay Samiti (NBBUSS) demands emanding citizenship for Hindu Bangladeshis
- Why PM Modi is failing India (Ujjal Dosanjh)
- India: Delhi University attacks: Students change Facebook profiles worldwide in solidarity against far-right violence
- India - Babri Masjid Demolition Case: Won't Accept Dropping Of Charges Against LK Advani On Technical Grounds, Says Top Court (A Vaidyanathan)
- India: How BJP changed its politics from ‘Vikas’ to Hindutva as UP election moved east
- India: Are calls for an independent Kashmir or 'azadi' always illegal or seditious? The answer is no - Garga Chatterjee
- India: RSS leader from the Madhya Pradesh openly announces award for assainating the Chief Minister of Kerala
- India: Can Madarassas be compared with RSS run Schools? asks Ram Puniyani
- India: Central Board of Film Certification under Nihalani and his victorian moral brigade should check out Hindu mythology says Pavan Varma
-> available via: http://communalism.blogspot.com/

::: URLs & FULL TEXT :::
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8. CROSSED IN TRANSLATION - LINGUISTIC SLIGHTS SPUR ETHNIC DIVISION IN SRI LANKA
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(The Economist - Mar 2nd 2017 | COLOMBO)

Monoglot officials are impeding post-war reconciliation

FROM its gleaming new headquarters, Jaffna’s police force serves around 100,000 people. The vast majority of the local population are Tamils or Tamil-speaking Muslims; fewer than 50 locals are members of Sri Lanka’s biggest ethnic group, the Sinhalese. But the vast majority of the city’s 532 police officers are Sinhalese; only 43 are Tamil, and very few of the rest speak the Tamil language well.

This is not just an affront to Tamils, whose complaints about discrimination lay at the root of a 26-year civil war that ended in 2009. It is also a practical problem. Sripathmananda Bramendra came to the new headquarters one day in December to obtain the paperwork needed to replace a lost licence-plate. He waited for hours to talk to a Tamil-speaking officer. But the only one around was first busy with a superior, and then had to rush off to translate at a public protest. Everyone still queuing was told to return the next day.

Roughly three-quarters of Sri Lankans are Sinhalese; Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims make up the remaining quarter. But the population is relatively segregated, with most Tamils concentrated in the north and east. Unlike most officials in the provinces, police are recruited at national level and rotated around the country during their careers (doctors in government hospitals are another troublesome exception). The result is that police stations in Tamil areas are staffed mainly by Sinhalese, who struggle to communicate with the people they are supposed to be protecting. This, in addition to the mistrust bred by the civil war, puts Tamils off joining the police, compounding the problem.

Even after Sri Lanka became independent from Britain in 1948, English remained the language of administration. But in 1956, in an effort to court Sinhalese voters, the prime minister of the day pushed through a bill to make Sinhala the sole official language. For Tamil-speakers in the bureaucracy, the results were devastating. Those who did not learn Sinhala were denied raises and promotions. Many were forced to retire. The share of Tamils in the bureaucracy fell from 30% in 1956 to 5% in 1970. In the armed forces the plunge was even steeper: from 40% to 1%.

In theory, subsequent changes in the law have restored the status of Tamil, giving it near-parity with Sinhala in all government business. In practice, admits Mano Ganesan, the trilingual minister in charge of implementing the relevant laws, a properly bilingual bureaucracy is decades away. Since 2007 all state employees have been required to achieve proficiency in both Tamil and Sinhala within five years of being hired. But progress is sluggish. In 2015-16 60% of those who passed the required exam did so with the lowest possible score, suggesting that they are far from fluent. Embarrassing errors remain common. Mr Ganesan cites the example of a sign above a bench in a government office that read, in Sinhala, “Reserved for pregnant mothers” and, in Tamil, “Reserved for pregnant dogs”.

The Centre for Policy Alternatives, an NGO, tracks violations of the official language policy and, on occasion, petitions the courts to rectify them. In 2014 it secured an order compelling the central bank to print all the wording on new banknotes in Tamil as well as Sinhala. It is now suing to require instructions on medicine to be printed in both languages. More than 100 laws (many of them adopted in colonial days) have not been officially translated into Tamil or Sinhala. Even national identity cards did not become bilingual until 2014, after a legal challenge.

Forms in most public offices in the north are available only in Tamil, and elsewhere in the country only in Sinhala, causing problems for those who cross the linguistic divide. A similar problem applies to the courts, with a shortage of interpreters leading to delays in many cases.

The working language of the Supreme Court is English, but most appeal documents from lower courts are in Sinhala or Tamil, depending on the part of the country in which the case originated. The only Tamil-speaker on the court has just retired; the remaining judges must rely on English translations. The Court of Appeal, which also uses English, is only slightly better off: three of its 12 judges speak Tamil.

Police issue parking tickets and fines in Sinhala. Government circulars are mostly in Sinhala. The immigration department offers forms in three languages, but does not have enough Tamil-speakers to process the Tamil ones. Dial the emergency services, and there is often no one to field calls in Tamil.

Mr Ganesan wants to deploy bilingual assistants in all public offices, strengthen legislation to punish violators of the official language policy, establish a state-of-the-art complaints centre and even allow parties to lawsuits to request a judge who speaks a particular language. Implementing the language policy properly, he says, “will be the prelude to a political solution” to the Tamil grievances that stoked the civil war. As a recent task-force on national reconciliation noted: “Shortcomings in bilingual language proficiency throughout the machinery of the state were identified in most submissions across the country as a major impediment to reconciliation.” The task-force first published its findings in English and later in Sinhala; the Tamil translation is still not ready.

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9. A RAPPING BARBER, A DEFIANT TEENAGER AND A RELEASE FOR WAR-WEARY AFGHANS
by Mujib Mashal
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The New York Times - MARCH 6, 2017

Zulala Hashemi, 16, performing during “Afghan Star,” a competition TV show similar to “American Idol.” Credit Erin Trieb for The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan — One is a barber, 22, who found his voice in rap, his passionate rhymes expressing the angst of a generation that has known nothing but war. His religious mother disapproves of music, switching the channel when a song comes on.

The other is a girl, 16, who was raised by her widowed mother in a conservative eastern city. When she appears onstage, dazzling in a vivid green head scarf and silver-trimmed dress, she owes it to the mother who put her foot down in the face of protest from relatives.

These are the unlikely stars of a music competition modeled after “American Idol” that provides weary Afghans a much-needed release on weekend nights.

In its 12th season, the show, “Afghan Star,” is pure entertainment: Young artists, dressed in chic local and Western wardrobes by a young local designer, belt out songs onstage, accompanied by an orchestra of Afghan and Western instruments. People can vote by text.

But amid an escalating battle with extremists, entertainment like this is a risky business, especially in a conservative society that looks down on music as vulgar. And especially when it includes women.

The show’s judges drive around in armored vehicles. The contestants are provided with safe housing inside a compound for the duration of the show. Audience members go through multiple security checks.

Photo

“Afghan Star” judges preparing for the filming of the show. Because of safety threats, they travel in armored cars. Credit Erin Trieb for The New York Times
In previous seasons, the network that televises “Afghan Star,” Tolo TV, would rent spaces in the city to hold the show. After threats to its staff increased — a Taliban car bomb killed seven colleagues last year — the network decided this season to move the studios inside a gated street in Kabul’s protected diplomatic enclave.

Still, war has a way of disrupting the music.

During one recent episode, a female contestant changed her upbeat song to a mournful one that she performed dressed mostly in black. Her uncle had been killed in a suicide bombing in front of the Afghan Parliament that week.

“We told her she didn’t need to perform that week,” said Massoud Sanjer, the head of Tolo’s entertainment wing. “She said, ‘No, life continues.’ But she changed her song selection.”

None of this dissuades contestants like Zulala Hashemi, the 16-year-old who was raised by her widowed mother in Jalalabad, a city so conservative that women are rarely seen on the streets — and when they do venture out, almost always in burqas.

Photo
Mermen Hashemi, right, helping her daughter, Ms. Hashemi, prepare for the contest. Credit Erin Trieb for The New York Times

Between recordings, on the occasions the mother and daughter return home, they put on their burqas and disappear into anonymity.

Zulala always sang at home, but never took formal music lessons. This year, when she saw an ad for “Afghan Star” tryouts, she asked her mother if she could participate. She was surprised to win a spot on the show, which would bring her to Kabul.

“She has a voice that is very particular to Afghanistan’s geography,” said Waheed Qasemi, a revered Afghan artist who is the show’s music director. “It’s a mountainous voice.”

But for her voice to be recognized, Zulala has had to put up with the resistance of her relatives, including her brother, who is a police officer. She is also afraid of facing her teachers and classmates because “they may get angry” with her.

“I knew they wouldn’t give me permission, and until this day they haven’t given me permission,” Zulala said about her relatives. “But I wanted to show my talent to the people; I didn’t want my talent to go in vain.”

What made it all possible was the support of her mother, Mermen Hashemi, who has a degree in economics and has worked in many senior jobs in the province, including running the government archives. Mrs. Hashemi has raised nine children on her own since her husband died of an illness 16 years ago, and she said she would not put up with meddling from relatives.

“I have earned with my own hands, and I have defended myself and my children,” Mrs. Hashemi said. “No one has given me anything, and I have not given anyone time to say anything about my children.”

Mrs. Hashemi has been with her daughter in Kabul over the last three months, following her “like a shadow,” according to Mr. Sanjer. She is in the green room when Zulala performs on stage, and she follows her into the dressing room when Zulala needs to change between performances.

Zulala is one of the three remaining contestants in the competition, which is set to end on the Persian New Year’s Eve in mid-March.

The favorite, however, is Sayed Jamal Mubarez, the barber from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, who tops the votes week after week.

Photo

Sayed Jamal Mubarez, 22, a barber from Mazar-i-Sharif, is the favorite to win the contest. Credit Erin Trieb for The New York Times
His rising fame has made his mother relent: She will watch him perform, but only if he stays away from vulgarities and there are no women gyrating in his video clips.

Mr. Mubarez discovered rap only four years ago. At his barbershop, he would rap along to the Iranian artists playing on his sound system as he cut hair. Their words of protest spoke to him.

About two years ago, Mr. Mubarez started writing his own verses. A purist, he has since stopped listening to other rap to make sure his words come from the heart. He writes at night, and if he can’t get a piece done in one 90-minute sitting he drops it as forced.

“If I get up from writing it and say I will complete it another time, that rap cannot be written later,” Mr. Mubarez said.

He has gained a large following in just four months on the show, a remarkable rise in a country that is only beginning to discover rap music. He sticks to subjects that speak to the people.

Photo

Audience members, who go through multiple security checks, in the studio during the filming of the show. Credit Erin Trieb for The New York Times
Many of his raps are inspired by personal stories, like one he wrote about his lack of education. Mr. Mubarez had a cousin as a classmate in school who later went on to university, while Mr. Mubarez, the oldest son in the family, worked jobs from the age of 12 — churning asphalt, clearing snow — to bring money home to his father.

Years later, the cousin with the university diploma stayed with Mr. Mubarez’s family. Mr. Mubarez said he was nervous around him, feeling backward and ashamed. After he dropped off the cousin at the bus station one evening, he put his feelings to verse.

“From the earth to the sky is the difference between us/Don’t say why I didn’t study — just go, let us be.”

From his barbershop, he posted the rap on YouTube and shared it on Facebook so people, particularly the cousin, could see “that if Jamal didn’t study, it was because his life was different than yours.”

Even male stars like Mr. Mubarez feel the heavy pressure of society when performing. That was on display during a recent episode, when he performed a duet with Aryana Sayeed, the Afghan pop sensation who is a judge on the show.

Ms. Sayeed, who has spent much of her life abroad, is known as much for her bold style as for her music, pushing the boundaries of a conservative society with her close-fitting dresses.

On the day of the performance, she was wearing a blue dress that accentuated her curves; Mr. Mubarez, in a red New York Yankees cap over a white bandanna, was wearing red shoes, white pants and his signature black leather jacket.

Midway through the performance, much to the pleasure of the audience, the two singers broke into a little dance, shimmying as they stepped left and right.

Ms. Sayeed and Mr. Mubarez dancing together on stage. 
Tolo TV
When viewers tuned into the show after the taping, they found no trace of the performance. The executives had cut it out, apparently because Ms. Sayeed’s appearance had been too provocative.

But they put the video online, and Mr. Mubarez’s family got to watch it.

“They are a little uncomfortable,” Mr. Mubarez said. “My mother is unhappy.”

Fahim Abed contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on March 7, 2017, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Rapping Barber, a Defiant Teenager and a Release for War-Weary Afghans. 

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10. LESSONS FOR PAKISTAN FROM TRUMP’S AMERICA
by Pervez Hoodbhoy 
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(Dawn, February 25, 2017)

Donald Trump’s presidency is the tip of the spear that xenophobic white supremacists are using to reconquer America. A Republican-dominated Senate and the House of Representatives may differ with Trump on smaller matters but will support him on core issues. The alt-right’s goal is to barrel over traditional American values of freedom and generosity, terrorise Muslim and immigrant families into leaving, and remove the checks and balances that have preserved the country’s openness to new peoples and ideas.

The future is uncertain. An unhinged, foul-mouthed, openly racist, narcissistic casino owner is not just president but is also commander-in-chief of the world’s most powerful military. Under him the United States could become the Fourth Reich — a reincarnation of a Nazi-like Germany. Let’s note that Trump is only four weeks into his presidency with 98pc still to go. Yale history professor Tim Snyder says that American democracy has less than a year to live. He predicts that the Madisonian republic, founded in 1789 and renewed in 1865, could die.

But whatever ultimately happens, something is definitely slowing down — and even stopping — the right wing’s mad charge to topple all that is good and decent about America. What?
The thousands of Americans who protested the Muslim ban at airports were there to protect a principle.

First, it’s the American people. Most of the articulated opposition comes from well-educated Americans brought up on decent, enlightened values learned in school. Tens of thousands have stormed congressional district offices and town hall meetings to vent at Trump’s regressive agenda on climate change, banning Muslims and Mexicans, increasing income inequality, and denial of women’s reproductive rights. One in three Californians want their state to leave the US legally and peacefully in 2019. Cal-Exit may not actually happen, but it shows how upset Americans are.

The pace of resistance is astonishing. Back in 1970, as a student in Boston, I had travelled to Washington to join a crowd of 50,000 people protesting America’s war against Vietnam. It had taken about 10 years of patient organising to achieve this size. But last month, with barely a few weeks of effort, an estimated 3.3 million angry people — mostly educated women appalled at Trump’s misogyny — took to the streets. In Washington D.C. itself there were 500,000, significantly more than the estimated attendance at Trump’s inauguration the day earlier.

Second, Trump faces an obstinate, uncompliant judiciary. He fired Sally Yates, acting attorney general, for declaring illegal his executive order blocking Muslims. Subsequently, a lower court reaffirmed her decision, which was further upheld by three judges from the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals. Thousands of barred travellers could thereafter enter the US.

Faced with defeat, Trump retreated and says he will issue a new executive order. But, unless he replaces most of the judges, that too will fail. Under a system of checks and balances, an American president appoints judges but courts can declare his orders unconstitutional.

Third, a free American press is fiercely resisting. Trump says that the media — specifically naming CNN, ABC, CBS, and the New York Times — is acting as an opposition party. Last Friday he tweeted that they are not just his enemies but also “the enemy of the American people. SICK”.

Examine: Trump called the media an ‘enemy of the American People’ — a history of the term

This outburst comes because the press has exposed Trump’s shady business dealings, exaggerations on the size of the inauguration crowd, promotion of his daughter’s fashion business, lewd remarks on women, help received from Russia for getting elected, and the dubious character of his political henchmen. All this must hurt, but what gets Trump apoplectic are mocking parodies on TV channels and YouTube videos that feature impersonations of Trump and his spokespersons. Such lampooning weakens his authority by depriving him of the gravitas that other US presidents have enjoyed.

This is music to the ears of most Pakistanis — and a relief to much of the world. But now we need to compare this with our own score card on the above three counts.

Media: Yes, Pakistan’s media is free — free to slam politicians and elected governments on evening talk shows. This is, of course, as it should be. But none can touch generals and mullahs. If you want to hide in cyber space and still try then be prepared for abduction, declared as missing, and perhaps returned — as four of the five bloggers are known to have been — but terrified into silence.

America has Fox but also other channels; Pakistan has only numerous versions of Fox. America has Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Glenn Beck among others who spew stupidity and ignorance, lie, and pander to the lowest level of society. But, for fear of lawsuits, they still cannot match the infinitely more degraded, life-threatening, fact-less nonsense spewed by some highly popular Pakistani anchors.

Judiciary: In theory, Pakistan’s too is independent of the executive branch. But nobody believes this, and nobody should. If it was true, Asif Ali Zardari would have long been in jail, Panamagate would have been settled, and the grant of land to generals could be legally challenged.

Of course, we have our heroes. Justice of the Supreme Court Qazi Faez Isa single-handedly put together the detailed Quetta terrorism inquiry commission report that convincingly indicts the interior minister for improper behavior. But nothing has happened yet and nothing will. In contrast, a mere US sessions judge could stump Trump and overturn his executive Muslim-ban order.

People: I cannot remember the last time when Pakistanis rallied together for a cause that was not specifically Muslim. Of course, Kashmir, Palestine, Bosnia and Myanmar are all worthy causes, but they are Muslim causes. In contrast, the thousands of Americans who stormed airports last month to protest Trump’s Muslim ban were there to protect a principle — that all peoples of all religions and ethnicities should have exactly the same rights.

Perhaps someday we too will learn to respect people for what they are — humans — and fight for their rights also, not just our own. Perhaps an Ahmadi, Hindu, Christian or Parsi will be allowed to run for president of Pakistan or become the army chief. Until that time, in moral terms, we cannot really protest where Trump wants to take America.

The writer teaches physics in Lahore and Islamabad.

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11. POLLUTION OF MINDS: SEXUAL HARASSMENT OF GURMEHAR KAUR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LOVE FOR COUNTRY - EDITORIAL, THE TIMES OF INDIA
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(The Times of India, March 1, 2017)

The social media attack against Delhi University student Gurmehar Kaur for voicing her opinion against RSS affiliated students body ABVP, in the aftermath of the violence at Ramjas College, is condemnable. Gurmehar, who is the daughter of a Kargil war martyr, condemned the violence and initiated the #StudentsAgainstABVP online campaign. This not only earned her the ire of trolls who criticised her sentiments as anti-national, but even saw her receive rape threats. Meanwhile, BJP MP Pratap Simha compared Gurmehar to Dawood Ibrahim while Union minister Kiren Rijiju questioned whether someone was polluting the young woman’s mind.

Threatening a woman with rape can’t be justified under any circumstances. In this context, minister Rijiju should be more concerned about who’s polluting the minds of those who have been subjecting Gurmehar to extreme sexual harassment online. His government should show that it is indeed against all forms of intolerance by ensuring the strictest of police action against Gurmehar’s tormentors.

It has been argued that it wasn’t just ABVP members that took part in violence at Ramjas College and students of leftist persuasion were equally guilty. But hooliganism by anyone anywhere needs to be condemned unequivocally. After seeing where Pakistan has ended up by distinguishing between good terrorists and bad terrorists, India must not commit the folly of playing good goons vs bad goons.

A certain section affiliated to BJP and its sister organisations believes in an aggressive definition of nationalism and imposing this on others. Anyone disagreeing with their worldview is labelled as anti-national and intimidated into silence. This intimidation can even take the form of physical violence – even against a war martyr’s daughter advocating pacifism. The role of the government must be to discourage violence and ensure conditions for free debate, where nobody has exclusive claim to nationalism. In a big and diverse country such as ours, people relate to nationalism in different ways. Questioning the government of the day or refusing to mouth patriotic slogans doesn’t weaken the nation. It isn’t anti-national. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat himself has said that no one should be forced to chant, Bharat mata ki jai. It is hooliganism running riot and intimidating diverse voices into silence that does great damage to the nation. It is this message that Union minister of state for home affairs Rijiju should spread.

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12. HOW INDIA-PAKISTAN WARS TORE APART THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF UMERKOT
by Vaqar Ahmed
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(Dawn - Mar 03, 2017) https://www.dawn.com/news/1317968

The suffering of those living in Umerkot during the 1965 and the 1971 wars finds no mention in the history books.

The imposing entrance of the Umerkot Fort.

Wars have a way of creating false or incomplete histories. The tales of heroes and victories often obscure the plight of the common person caught in the war zone.

The suffering of those living in Umerkot, Sindh during the 1965 and the 1971 wars fought between India and Pakistan finds no mention in the history books taught in our schools. I learnt about these unwritten stories by word of mouth during a recent visit to this small, dusty town.

Umerkot is located in the east of Sindh, about 60 kilometres from the Indian border. It is famous for the Umerkot Fort that dates back to the 11th century. Mughal emperor Akbar was born at the Fort in 1542, after the Hindu Raja Rana Parasad gave refuge to his father Humayun, who was fleeing the armies of Sher Shah Suri. The Fort is also the setting of the famous Sindhi tragic romance of Umar Marvi.
Mohammed Shafi Faqir, the Sufi singer of Umerkot.

I, and a group of friends, had travelled to Umerkot to record Shafi Faqir, a very fine singer of Sufi poetry. We were all set to record the singer in the morning when we got the news that he was going to be late since a relative of his had passed away and he had to be at the funeral. He requested a friend of his, Mohammed Jumman, to attend to us while we were waiting.

This sad and unexpected situation turned out to be a blessing in disguise for us as we found out, much to our delight, that Mohammed Jumman, who was about 70 years old, was a wonderful Sindhi poet and a scholar of the area's history. He had been close to the famous Sindhi intellectual and nationalist, the late G.M. Syed.
The humble and un-assuming poet and scholar, Mohammed Jumman.

Recounting the recent history of Umerkot, Jumman told us that in 1965, Umerkot’s population was 80% Hindu and 20% Muslim. Most of the large landowners of the area, known as Thakurs, were high-caste Hindus.

The Thakurs employed tradesmen like shoemakers, carpenters, and musicians. They provided housing, education, and health care for these tradesmen as well. Faqir’s family was also in the employ of a Thakur.

Then came the 1965 war and a major upheaval took place in the lives of the residents. Fearing reprisals by Muslims, most Hindus crossed over to India. The majority of those who left Pakistan were the rich Thakurs.
The serene mood of a desert dweller.

The lower-caste Hindus — Bheels, Kolhis and Meghwars — stayed back as they were poor and discriminated against on both sides of the borders. It did not matter to them whether they earned their living in India or Pakistan.

The migration of the Thakurs left their employees without a place to live or any source of income. Faqir's father and Jumman had to move to larger towns and take up jobs as tea boys or truck cleaners to survive. Jumman told us that the period between 1965 and 1968 were the worst in his life.
Interesting design elements in the doorway.

The war came to haunt the residents of Umerkot again in 1971, when the Indian army crossed the border and occupied parts of Tharparkar. This is something that is not common knowledge in Pakistan.

Many fled Umerkot to its adjoining areas as fear of the advancing Indian army grew. They left their houses and cattle behind as they rushed out of the war zone.

When the ceasefire came into effect and the Indian army retreated, the residents came back to find a lot of their houses destroyed and their cattle stolen. This meant another struggle to rebuild their lives.
There is not much else in Umerkot after the Fort.

The religious composition of Umerkot has now changed and the majority of the population is Muslim. Jumman told me that while generally there is peace between the two communities, the relations are on an edge and a small incident can trigger violence.

He also lamented that before the wars, it was very easy to cross the border to meet relatives. All that was needed was a small tip to the border guards. Now, it is not possible to do so without taking the risk of being shot.

It is telling that Jumman's nom de plume is Dar Badar (of no fixed abode). There could not have been a more appropriate word for the displacements he had been forced to endure.

The sadness of this history was alleviated somewhat when Faqir arrived and sang the songs of love of the native soil, of peace, and of the impermanence of all things worldly.
Shafi Faqir singing songs about the love of native soil and peace.
VIP seating for Shafi Faqir's concert.
Our videographer being observed with a calm interest.
Young and old both display an equanimity not found in the cities.
A charming little mosque inside the fort grounds.
Robust stairs leading to the top of the fort.
A cannon overlooking the town.
Colourful and languid.
Mobile artwork in Umerkot.
Freshly roasted peanuts in downtown Umerkot.

All photos and video are by the author.

Vaqar Ahmed is an engineer turned part-time journalist who likes to hang out at unfashionable places like shrines, railway stations and bus stops.

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13. INDIA: GOONS ON CAMPUS - THE MEANING OF RAMJAS
by Mukul Kesavan
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(The Telegraph - March 5, 2017)

The barbarism at Ramjas College has a local history and a pan-Indian purpose. The local history is that starting forty years ago, a group of teachers centred in the college's history department began pushing back against the dysfunction, entropy and lumpenism that characterized, in lesser or greater degree, many undergraduate colleges in Delhi University. They weren't alone in this; all over Delhi University knots of lecturers who saw teaching as a vocation helped students swim free of the banality and inertness of the B.A. business. To the extent that it was singular, Ramjas's ginger group combined an enthusiasm for teaching with a democratic passion for causes and, sometimes, the charismatic ability to inspire (and infuriate) students and colleagues.

Year after year, Ramjas and its students organized seminars, cultural events and adventurous, yet frugal, college expeditions. A recognizable Ramjas 'type' emerged: curious, undeferential, sharp, as likely to become a journalist or film-maker as a professional research student. This meld of inquiry, scepticism and worldliness is what universities ought to aim for and Delhi University, with all its defects, has been one of the few campuses in contemporary India where freethinking and dissent haven't been squashed by bureaucratic sanction and political intimidation. This is partly because it is a Central university located in Delhi, remote from the provincial interference and thuggery that long since destroyed once good state colleges and universities. But it is also because good teachers and keen students in the scores of affiliated colleges that constitute this massive university worked to build and institutionalize an uneven but real intellectual culture. And they did it in a university which, unlike JNU, isn't left wing by default, where the student body has long been dominated by either the ABVP or the NSUI.

The physical assault on the college auditorium and the students and teachers participating in a seminar within it was a calculated attack on this real but fragile intellectual autonomy. It was an exemplary beating of the sort a headmaster in a boarding school might administer to a student as a way of dramatizing for his pupils the consequences of disobedience. That Ramjas was the staging ground for this violence wasn't an accident; given the college's freethinking past, there could be no better place for the student's wing of the RSS to enact the new normal.

This is where the local history of Ramjas meets the pan-Indian plans of the sangh parivar. The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad that led the attack has, since the inauguration of the Narendra Modi government, been the prime mover in the Bharatiya Janata Party's bid to capture Indian universities. In Hyderabad, in JNU, in Jadavpur University, in Jodhpur University and, now, in Ramjas a pattern has repeated itself. The ABVP will first take exception to an event on campus. This could be a film screening, a lecture, a demonstration, a seminar, anything that can handily be described as anti-national. It will then solicit the aid of helpful BJP legislators or ministers to use the sinews of the State - the relevant ministry or the local police force - to intimidate university administrations, to arrest its ideological enemies on campus or to look the other way while its goons go rampaging.

In its present avatar, with the BJP in command of an absolute majority at the Centre, the ABVP isn't a student body, it is a vigilante organization, the sole purpose of which is to coerce Indian universities and their students into obeying the ideological writ of the sangh parivar. The BJP sees Indian universities as treacherous swamps that need to be drained. The finance minister, Arun Jaitley, said as much at an event in the London School of Economics immediately after the violence at Ramjas. There is, he said, "an alliance of subversion" in Indian university campuses between separatists and the ultra left. The ABVP is best understood as a campus Salwa Judum, a vigilante militia informally licensed by the party that currently controls the State to police India's universities on its behalf.

Ramjas represents an escalation in this effort. In Hyderabad and JNU, the ABVP played the role of a police informer; here it used the police on the day of the seminar at Ramjas as a friendly auxiliary and went on the attack itself. Stung by its reverses in Hyderabad and JNU, the ABVP resorted to direct action because it saw Delhi University as its turf. That some policemen felt emboldened to join in the violence (and were subsequently suspended for it) is a sign of how far the rot has gone.

The vigilante mob that stoned the auditorium, nearly strangled one of the teachers and attacked other students wasn't merely attacking free speech; it was calling time on the right of students and teachers to be physically safe, to not fear for their lives on campus. I was a young lecturer in Jamia Millia Islamia when a violent mob roamed the campus, holding a university to ransom in 'protest' against the vice-chancellor's interview on the subject of The Satanic Verses. Mushirul Hasan, the pro-vice-chancellor at the time, was physically attacked. We don't realize how fragile civility and safety are on a campus till they are destroyed by violence. It takes years to restore the trust that made them possible in the first place. Forget ideas, if a campus isn't a safe space physically, it is nothing.

The sangh parivar's current assault on university campuses is made worse by the fact that it isn't about universities at all. The ABVP is using universities as public altars where students and teachers are offered up as sacrifices to the Great Jingo. A vicious chauvinism is being publicly articulated and performed using students as extras and colleges as props.

But large public universities aren't easily silenced. After decades, I returned to Delhi University to march in support of a cause. It was strange, even depressing, driving into a campus where I had been an undergraduate forty years ago to join a demo defending freedoms a university ought to be able to take for granted.

The mood didn't last; the march was exhilarating. To be one of thousands of cheerful, determined (and mildly apprehensive) marchers is a buoyant business. To hear students shouting familiar slogans that you once found both rousing and absurd, to walk down familiar streets, is to march with live bodies and ghosts of demos past. It is to reaffirm that students and teachers aren't extras, that they have speaking roles where they literally write their own lines. I looked up to see an enormous tricolour at the head of the procession and felt a surge of something; how did we let these goons steal our colours? " ABVP", chanted a mocking chorus of girls behind me, "why so creepy?" The sun was on our backs, a din in our ears as we walked past Daulat Ram, turned left towards Ramjas and then gathered in the square by the arts faculty, reclaiming the university, one step at a time.


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14. INDIA: LET’S GET THIS RIGHT
Maj Gen Raj Mehta (retd)
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(The Tribune, March 6, 2017)

IHAVE watched the media coverage on LSR English Honours student Gurmehar Kaur’s ethical stand on violence with great dismay and concern. We seem so determined to slot people into various categories that we tend to go overboard in making denunciations or get blue-in-the-face defending the indefensible. This is why it is important to give an unbiased opinion on some aspects of this unseemly conundrum. 

Firstly, Gurmehar is just a kid. All of 20, she’s studying at an elite college. She has seerat and soorat which isn’t unusual. Many of her peers are in the same category. She’s an Army brat and that’s pretty routine too.

Secondly, her father, Capt Mandeep Singh, an Air Defence officer seconded to 4 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), died in combat in Kashmir, soon after the Kargil War ended in July 1999. He was entitled to wear the war medal authorised to all those deployed for Operation Vijay. Loosely called the Kargil War medal, it covered inter-service troops wherever their deployment was ordered. So does that make the girl a liar? Clearly, this is irresponsible branding.

Thirdly, he died in a terrorist strike on his company camp at Natnoosa, Kupwara. The official report on his death states that the terrorist attack came in at 1.15 am on August 6, 1999. He received a splinter injury on the left infra-clavicular region and died instantaneously. Mandeep was thus a martyr as much as the Kargil War heroes were and, yes, he was killed by Pakistani/Pak-inspired terrorists. Is the young lady lying? I should think not. Have sections of media, ‘defence experts’, some itinerant cricketers and opinionated actors gone somewhat berserk? Take a call.

Fourthly, I have some idea what I am talking about, instead of making breathless assessments on the basis of irresponsible reportage on social media or elsewhere. One of the units under my command as an RR Sector Commander in 1998-1999 was 4 RR, then located at Bij Biara, a few kilometres from my Khanabal HQ. I visited the unit often as operational commanders must. I knew its operating ethos, its officers and visited their company posts. Mandeep had about seven-year service and while I don’t recall him in particular, I do remember that 4 RR was efficient and had quality rapport with both locals and ‘intezamia’ (civil administration). The unit was shortly thereafter relocated to 7 Sector RR and went through a trying time which isn’t part of this narrative. This is when young Mandeep lost his life.

Lastly, deprived of Daddy very early, Gurmehar was brought up by her wise Mum not to grow up with hatred in her DNA. Was that wrong of Mum? I certainly don’t think so. Reaching adulthood in that cocooned, ethical context if a 20-year-old kid says war claimed Daddy, is she showing political affiliation? The fact that the terrorist attack was Pakistan conducted/sponsored is not as important as a Mum and child’s survival strategy of growing up without hatred and revenge corroding her mind.

Let the bright girl be. May she grow up to be a world-class pacifist. No harm there either. In the meanwhile, let you and I handle Pakistan and others in the way we are trained and educated for and without apology. Take a call.

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15. INDIA - THE PARENT TRAP: MANEKA GANDHI HAS NO BUSINESS WORRYING ABOUT THE HORMONES OF ADULT COLLEGE-GOING WOMEN (EDITORIAL, TIMES OF INDIA)
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(The Times of India, March 8, 2017, 2:05 am IST TOI Edit in TOI Editorials )

The minister for women and child welfare, Maneka Gandhi, has clearly mixed up her mandate. She evidently disregards the welfare of young women, by treating them like children who must be minded by others. When asked about the curfews that discriminate against college-going women, Gandhi said that as a parent she would want a lakshman rekha to protect from their own “hormonal outbursts”.

While she said she would want a curfew for young men too, that does not address the paternalist flaw in her attitude.

Women have struggled to access education, and then to fight the patriarchal protection racket on campus – one that punishes them, the victims, in the name of their own safety. This statement comes at a time when the Pinjra Tod movement, beginning with Delhi University, has been fighting dormitory restrictions for young women, agitating for the mobility and autonomy that is their due as adult citizens.

Some private professional colleges are extreme in their policing – women are denied phones, are constantly surveilled, and allowed to leave campus only accompanied by vetted relatives. The university sees itself as a transit stop between a woman’s parental and marital home, and takes on the role of policing her sexuality and ‘safety’. Who set them up in that role?

If the concern is sexual threat and assault in public spaces, then it cannot be addressed by curbing women’s access to public space or cloistering them away. If the concern is consensual sexual activity, then the minister has no business curbing the hormones of any adult woman or man, equal citizens who can vote, drive, be tried as adults, and are constitutionally accepted to be in full possession of their own selves. That controlling, patriarchal mindset has no place in a modern nation. It’s 2017, after all.

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16. FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2017: DON’T BE COMPLACENT ABOUT THE RISK OF PRESIDENT LE PEN
by Natalie Nougayrède
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(The Guardian - 8 MArch 2017)

France is a country beset by scandals and security fears – and with the mainstream parties crumbling, anything is possible

François Fillon, centre, at his rally in Paris on Sunday. ‘There was a whiff of 1930s politics in the air’ in the run-up to it. Photograph: Philippe Wojazer/Reuters

Marine Le Pen’s far-right Front National party has never been closer to power. That is not to say she will be elected president in May. When in 1962 Charles de Gaulle introduced direct universal suffrage for the presidential election, he cushioned it with a two-round voting system in which a 50% majority is required in the runoff. Le Pen seems set to pass the first hurdle, but not the second. In that case, the biggest danger lies not so much in her entering the Elysée Palace, but in her party becoming the largest opposition force in the National Assembly after the parliamentary elections in June. But don’t be mistaken, a worst-case scenario is possible.

The fact is, the taboo of a far-right presidency no longer holds in France. Low turnout in the runoff, combined with political polarisation, more scandals or, even worse, outbreaks of violence, could make a Le Pen win possible.

Looking at French politics with the Brexit and Trump campaigns in mind is enough to cause a shudder. Remember that in Britain a lot of those who wanted to remain weren’t very excited, while the passionate voices belonged to those who wanted to leave. Xenophobic populists were allowed to thrive in Britain and the US because mainstream parties (the Tories, the Republicans) provided them with a sufficient amount of complacency, if not complicity. The French far right is buoyed by similar factors. It knows that – as Gramsci put it – the battle of political ideas is waged in the cultural sphere as a whole.

Politics is not just fought in institutions, but also in the language we use, the stories we tell, the images we conjure. In today’s France it has become almost normal to say immigration and refugees are a problem, and that secularism is threatened by the very presence of Islam. France has swung to the right in recent years; the centre right has been radicalised and hijacked by many of Le Pen’s ideas. The Socialists are divided and in disarray. As for the radical left, it is awkwardly in tune with Le Pen on issues such as globalisation and trade – not to mention the shared, populist narrative of a clash between two supposedly homogeneous blocs, “the people” and “the elite”.

If Le Pen is soundly defeated in the presidential runoff (as polls currently predict, whoever her opponent might be), the relief democrats will feel could well be short-lived. With the Front National set to enter parliament in large numbers one month later, France will continue to look like the sick man of Europe. The fallout will be huge, and felt far beyond its borders.

   These are bleak times for France – even by the standards of a country that has a taste for debating its national decline

France is a founding member of the European project, the second-biggest economy in the eurozone, the largest military power on the continent, and a permanent member of the UN security council. It is one of the pillars of the west. With Le Pen woven into its political fabric, France will hover on the edge of illiberalism, its economy hobbled by unemployment and lack of reform, its social cohesion further damaged by slogans of intolerance and division, its citizens ever more distrustful of anything that smacks of officialdom and institutions.

These are bleak times for France – even by the standards of a country that has long had a taste for “chic spleen” and debating its “national decline”. Walk into a bookshop and the covers jump out at you: Understanding France’s Unhappiness, The Twilight of French Elites and French Disintegration are just a few.

Never has an election cycle appeared so unpredictable and daunting for France’s mainstream postwar parties. The faultlines run so deep on major issues such as the welfare state, labour markets, Europe, globalisation, diversity and secularism that they have become impossible to paper over. As old structures crumble, there is a rush to the extremes.

Such is the backdrop to the “Penelope gate” scandal, which has engulfed François Fillon, the rightwing contender under investigation for suspected misuse of parliamentary funds. In desperation he has radicalised his stance, flirting more closely with Le Pen’s identity politics. But by doing so, he has helped to legitimise her populism.

France’s history of far-right movements looms large in this toxic mix. There was a whiff of 1930s politics in the air in the runup to the pro-Fillon rally in Paris last Sunday. Ultra-conservative Catholic groups had initially chosen to frame the event as a popular uprising against judges and the media. In his speech, Fillon ultimately stepped back from that anti-democratic rhetoric. But he did nothing to backtrack on vague, conspiratorial notions of a “political assassination” and a “plot” against him. The hysteria Fillon has brewed up may not save him (in fact, his polling figures have plunged further) Meanwhile, the person who stands to gain is Le Pen. A climate of demagoguery is what she craves.

The result of all of this is that most French democrats currently place their hopes on the 39-year-old former economy minister Emmanuel Macron (now polling second behind Le Pen for the first round). With his positive message of youth, optimism, reform, embracing diversity and the European project, Macron may yet prevent dark forces from prevailing. But his political base remains fragile, whereas Le Pen’s is strong.

Unknowns could yet roil the campaign, such as – God forbid – a terrorist act or a massive Russian-connected hacking and disinformation campaign, either of which would be likely to benefit Le Pen. Remember, this is a country officially “at war” since the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks, still under a state of emergency.

It is no exaggeration to say the fate of democracy in France and in Europe is at stake. In his 1940 book The Strange Defeat, the historian Marc Bloch analysed the collapse of France’s Third Republic. It merits rereading. “Persuasion was replaced by emotional suggestion,” wrote Bloch, describing the violent political passions of the era. To a degree, France faces a similar dilemma today. Will it, as Bloch said, “vibrate blindly to the magnetism” of populists or “know”, on the basis of sound information, that it can “consciously follow the representatives it has chosen for itself”? Democrats are watching with anxiety – and they are right to worry.

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17.  THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION ON TRIAL BY ALEXANDER COOK REVIEW – A SENSATIONAL MOMENT IN CHINESE HISTORY
by Julia Lovell
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(The Guardian, 4 March 2017)

Cook’s timely account chronicles the Gang of Four episode and China’s thwarted drive for de-Maoification

Irrational premise … Yao Wenyuan, a writer and member of the Gang of Four, is tried in 1980. Photograph: Tang Likui/AP

China’s civil society has suffered badly in the political crackdown of the last four years: journalists are stifled by ever-tightening constraints; intellectuals are nervous of even saying the president’s name in company, for fear of being seen as denigrating the cult of “Uncle Xi”. Above all, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) has rained down blows on the rule of law. Legal personnel have been held for months in “black” prisons without access to counsel and been shackled, tortured, their family members harassed. On 14 January this year, China’s chief justice aggressively emphasised that the law was subservient to party writ: “We should resolutely resist erroneous influence from the west: ‘constitutional democracy’, ‘separation of powers’ and ‘independence of the judiciary’. We must make clear our stand and dare to show the sword.”

   The trial was designed to terminate the politics-in-command lawlessness of Mao’s Cultural Revolution

Intensifying party control over the judiciary is part of Xi Jinping’s resurrection of the values and practices of Maoist China. The roots of party domination over the law go back to the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, at which point the CCP began to empower itself – rather than an adversarial, independent judiciary – to define criminality, usually on the politicised grounds of “class identity”. Mao’s political campaigns – especially the Great Leap Forward (1958-60) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) – smashed legal institutions and marginalised legal professionals.

But in The Cultural Revolution on Trial, Alexander Cook chronicles an extraordinary potential turning point in the evolution of the law in the People’s Republic. The most sensational legal process in the history of the PRC, the 1980 trial of the Gang of Four was designed to terminate the politics-in-command lawlessness of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and usher in Deng Xiaoping’s vision of a modernised state devoted to rational economic construction. At this crux moment, communist China flirted with a drastic overhaul of its party-political legal system. Although the enterprise was ultimately stymied by political compulsions, it set a precedent for radical legal reform in the PRC, and for possible de-Maoification.

Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing, is tried in 1980. Photograph: AFP

During the last decade of Mao’s life, his words – or his words as interpreted by the ambitious political operators around him – reigned supreme. “Depend on the rule of man,” he exhorted, “not the rule of law.” The vendettas of 1966-76 generated countless personal tragedies and injustices – individuals persecuted, imprisoned and killed for alleged political crimes. When Deng Xiaoping – purged twice during the Cultural Revolution – manoeuvred himself into the party leadership in 1978, he was faced with a crisis of political and legal legitimacy. How was he to justify jettisoning Mao’s Cultural Revolution (the excesses of which had generated such widespread suffering) while asserting his and the CCP’s entitlement to rule as the heirs of Mao?

At the end of the 1970s, a fierce debate about de-Maoification took place in the upper levels of the party, dominated by individuals who had suffered during Mao’s purges. Deng eventually decided not to repudiate Mao – the Great Helmsman was too crucial to the prestige of the communist revolution. Although the Cultural Revolution was publicly labelled “the error of a great proletarian revolutionary”, Mao’s portrait and embalmed corpse would stay in Tiananmen Square; his Thought would remain one of the “four cardinal principles” of Communist party rule.

Instead, Deng and his lieutenants reached for legal means to smooth the transition. They resolved to reconstruct the PRC’s ruined legal system and stage a public trial that would blame the cataclysms of the preceding decade almost entirely on the Gang of Four, Mao’s closest allies during the Cultural Revolution: his wife, Jiang Qing, the two writers Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan, and the labour activist Wang Hongwen. The prosecution, Deng hoped, would shore up the domestic and international reputation of the new communist leadership by proving its commitment to a professional, rational, evidence-based legal culture, and ending the mob violence of the Mao era.

   Jiang Qing defiantly turned the accusations back on the judges, reminding them that they too had persecuted victims

The undertaking, Cook relates, became a national spectacle. Courts had to be reopened, lawyers and judges rehabilitated, legal codes written for the first time. The address of the court building was edited so that the trial would take place at “No 1 Justice Road”; the interior of the chamber was upholstered in stately crimson velvet. Through the closing weeks of 1980, Chinese people gathered nightly around television sets to watch digested coverage of proceedings.

The trial did not succeed in creating a transparent, independent judiciary. The very premise of it was irrational: to blame four individuals for mass violence and persecution in which tens of millions participated. In the absence of an adversarial defence, the verdict was preordained: after four weeks of closed-door deliberation, the judges pronounced an inevitable guilty verdict. This ruling, followed by a party resolution a few months later, officially closed the public debate on responsibility for the Cultural Revolution. Although hundreds of thousands of its victims were rehabilitated after Mao’s death, most of the crimes committed between 1966 and 1976 escaped prosecution.

A four-metre tall statue of Mao Zedong beside farmland in Shaoshan, Hunan province, in 2016. Photograph: How Hwee Young/EPA

Yet the trial’s red velvet stage set exposed intriguing faultlines in a political system struggling to break with revolutionary politics. The best theatre came from Jiang Qing, a former movie actor, who loudly protested the unfairness of criminalising her now when only four years previously her actions had been fully sanctioned by Mao, the unquestioned head of state. “Everything I did, Mao told me to do. I was his dog; what he said to bite, I bit.” She defiantly turned the accusations back on the judges, reminding them that they had persecuted victims of the purges as fervently as she had. “If I am guilty, how about you all?” Temporarily forgetting their brief to maintain legal decorum, the flustered judges chorused back at her: “Shut up, Jiang Qing! Shut up!”

There is still much we do not know about the shift from Mao to Deng. The details of this singularly sensitive transition – the arguments for and against de-Maoification – will only become public if the CCP itself falls from power. But the questions and dilemmas this process raised – the struggle to establish legal authority independent of a one-party dictatorship determined to suppress challenges from civil society, and to come to terms with the legacy of Mao and his revolution – still haunt China today. The Cultural Revolution on Trial reminds us of the historical possibilities of legal reform and the long shadow of Maoism over Chinese law. It is a timely, thought-provoking account of a foundational episode in the history of contemporary China.

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18. CHANG ON PROSTITUTION AND THE ENDS OF EMPIRE BY STEPHEN LEGG
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Stephen Legg. Prostitution and the Ends of Empire: Scale, Governmentalities, and Interwar India. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. xi + 281 pp. $25.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8223-5773-5; $94.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8223-5759-9.

Reviewed by Sandy Chang (University of Texas)
Published on H-Asia (March, 2017)
Commissioned by Sumit Guha

PROSTITUTION AND EMPIRE

In his widely acclaimed 2007 book, The Spaces of Colonialism, Stephen Legg examined the spatial reordering of Old and New Delhi in the early twentieth century, offering a compelling analysis of colonial urban governmentality. His latest monograph, Prostitution and the Ends of Empire, returns to the colonial capital to investigate how the brothel, as an intimate space, was increasingly constructed as a “local, national, imperial, and international problem” during interwar period (p. 3). In the years leading up to the First World War, prostitution in British India was tolerated in segregated “red light” zones; brothels were designated as “safe” sites where the perceived social and biological problems associated with sex work could be contained. By the interwar era, however, brothels became targeted as spaces of scandal, disease, and sexual slavery that necessitated eradication.This book explains this shift, from the policy of segregation to abolition, by drawing on the works of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Gilles Deleuze. Adopting a scalar methodology, it demonstrates how broader changes in science, colonial governance, civil society, and imperial geopolitics contributed to the growing attacks on brothels during the interwar era.

Prostitution and the Ends of Empire persuasively argues that the change from the toleration of brothels to its subsequent suppression was an uneven and fraught process--one that involved discrete yet entangled networks operating at multiple scales. The narrative arc begins with Delhi and unfolds “out” to explore how the city was intricately connected to broader imperial and global networks. This emphasis on the “relational geography” of brothel regulations enables Legg to draw several revealing conclusions (p. 11). First, the colonial state delegated the regulation of prostitution to civil society actors but was reluctant to provide funds for the “rescue” and “rehabilitation” of these women. Second, while the central government encouraged suppressionist laws at the provincial levels in the 1920s, it refused to legislate against brothels on a colony-wide scale. And finally, the Government of India signed international agreements at the League of Nations pledging abolition, yet at the provincial levels, segregated brothel zones continued to be tolerated.

The first chapter explores how the actions of the Delhi Municipal Committee along with a myriad of civil society actors resulted in the exodus of public prostitutes from the city into marginal spaces. Here, Legg engages with Agamben’s notion of the “state of exception” to show how the city’s prostitutes were “civilly abandoned” by the state and the colonial society as a result of growing residential concerns regarding urban congestion and modernization. At the same time, the author is also careful to account for the various modes of resistance that prostitutes displayed despite this abandonment, such as taking advantage of legal loopholes and challenging their evictions in civil courts. The next chapter charts the spread of the Suppression of Immoral Traffic Acts (SITA) under the legal landscape of dyarchy and provincial self-government between 1919 and 1935. Legg traces how brothel scandals in Bombay and Rangoon, coupled with the flourishing of sexological literature, discredited brothels as “visible” sites of safety. While historian Ashwini Tambe has previously used the same scandal--the murder of Akootai in a Bombay brothel--to explore the social lives of the city’s subaltern community, Legg offers a fresh analysis of the broader, colony-wide implications of the case.[1] Scandals, he astutely observes, “thrive on heterogeneous assemblages; they place the scientific and fantastical, the criminal and legal, the immoral and the ethical, the near and far, side by side, and thrive off their contradictions” (p. 108).

In the final chapter, Legg uses rich archival materials from the Association of Moral and Social Hygiene (AMSH), housed in the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics, to examine how one of the AMSH representatives, Meliscent Shephard, networked the interests of the metropole, League of Nations, the colonial military, medical experts, and Indian nationalists to campaign for abolition of brothels. Legg underscores how discourses concerning hygiene--its moral, social, and imperial variants--were pivotal in shaping the abolitionist campaigns of the 1930s. Building on the insights of Antoinette Burton, he argues that Shephard’s efforts to abolish brothels must be understood within the broader context of imperial feminism. Despite Shephard’s campaigns to secure the support of Indian nationalists, her efforts, inflected by race, gender, and class, were frequently viewed with suspicion by local inhabitants.

This book is an important contribution to the literature on gender, sexuality, and colonialism. Since the publication of Kenneth Ballhatchet’s Race, Sex, and Class Under the Raj (1980), scholars have approached the subject of colonial prostitution in diverse ways. The management of sex work, as many historians have shown, was bound up with broader anxieties concerning miscegenation, racial difference, crime, and public health. Policing of prostitution in the colonies was spurred by fears of moral and biological degeneration within the British Empire. Much of this scholarship focuses on the nineteenth century and the enactment of the Contagious Diseases Acts. Legg’s close study of the interwar period is therefore a welcome one. It shed lights on how debates concerning colonial prostitution continued to erupt, rather than subside, in the aftermath of the First World War. Moreover, as a geographer, Legg brings an awareness and sensitivity to the politics of space that is often overlooked by historians who tend to emphasize change over time. By treating the brothel as a contested site and investigating how it “encapsulated scales from the genital to the global,” Legg tells a fascinating and more complex narrative of the shift from segregation to suppression in interwar Delhi (p. 39).

Prostitution and the Ends of Empire is clearly intended for specialists interested in gender and sexuality, colonial statecraft, the British Empire, and urban studies. This book will be challenging for undergraduates and a broader audience; they will likely find Legg’s earlier articles on urban prostitution, imperial feminism, and the League of Nations more accessible. Nonetheless, the book is packed densely with theoretical insights and meticulous empirical findings that will appeal to scholars interested in historical approaches to the state regulation of sex work. Legg’s attention to archival details and his innovative use of scalar analysis is an admirable example of scholarship that attends, at once, to global and local histories. 

Note

[1]. Ashwini Tambe, Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 79-99. 


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