[Reader-list] What are we to do?

[pratap pandey]

Dear Zainab, Jeebesh, and others,

The current issue of the "Seminar" magazine is
entirely devoted to Gujarat. I have been reading it.

On reading this magazine, I find too much emotion in
it. Its contributors seem to have taken a stance
whereby "truth" is inseparable from "guilt", itself an
arguably easy way out. Of course, two essays stand
out: Ganesh Devy's essay on "Tribal Voice and
Violence" and Upendra Baxi's essay on "Notes on
Holocaustian Politics".

Zainab has addressed this issue of too much emotion,
and so has Jeebesh. They have addressed this issue
laterally, in their own ways.

There does exist a simple solution to the "gujarat"
problem. If we accept (as I would like to argue,
perhaps a bit redundantly) that Gujarat has been
ideologically overdetermined, that what has happened
in Gujarat is seriously a case of thoughts or ideas
being transformed into reality (first the ideas were
put in through civil society associations, then the
ideas sank in, then they took hold, and once they took
hold they needed an outlet), then there is only one
way out.

A different set of ideas has to be disseminated, via
civil society associations (completely like the kind
of associations the facsists have put into place). The
facsists have mimicked the Left, in the matter of
organising the flows of knowledge and quotidian
existence.

They have mimicked the left so well that they have
completely left the Left behind:

there is the Pushti Marg, Swaminarayan Sampraday,
Shakti Sampraday;

there is of course the Vanavasi Sevak Sangh, like the
RSS but geared to convince adivasis that they could
not be adivasis because history, and the history of
identity, begins with Aryans;

there is the closure, and transformation, of all
solidarity associations based on labour (sports clubs,
reading rooms, family care and counselling courses,
classes for adult education, day nurseries, primary
health centres).

WE need now to remember these strategies of building
solidarity. We need to "re-memory" these strategies.
Most importantly, we need to disseminate a certain
kind of material into society that will give its
readers a different (perhaps "old", perhaps
"welfarist", certainly "rehashed", so that the
historical mistakes/involuntary despotisms don't
occur; certainly "communitarian", for this form of
solidarity has not really been tested on Indian
political soil ) way to imagine and build society.

GUjarat didn't happen in a day. It was planned for,
over 15 years. At the cost of sounding pathological,
there has to be "another" plan. A 10-year "another"
plan. If the Right has mimicked the Left in GUjarat,
then they have to be "re-mimicked". For this, we need
to nurture the services of school-teachers,
college-teachers, influence parents, talk to children.
Its a 10-year thing.

Anybody got the guts? I ask this question for personal
reasons. I don't have the guts. I want to have the
guts, but I can't seem to take the step. (Such a
vetan-bhogi I am.)

We also need to produce easily understandable
knowledge about India's democratic groundswell. For
instance, Mayawati has to be talked about as a
victory, even if what she is doing doesn't help the
Dalit movement. I believe that the info about
post-independant India is so middle-class that the
real complexities of class/caste development have been
talked about only in "academic" discourse. Actually,
caste/class formations have been radically changing:
this academically-redundant fact needs to be
disseminated.

We need to talk about, and disseminate, the electoral
realities of democracy in India. In a Haryana village,
a Gujjar can go to a Dalit share-cropper, or
agricultural labourer, and say: You have the power to
vote. But we control the land. If you vote, God help
you in the next harvest.

How do we this counter this "counter"-talk?

Zainab, I teach in Jamia Millia Islamia. There, there
have been no protests on GUjarat. The elite Muslim
bloc that also controls the university has had nothing
to say, or do, about GUjarat. They are not bothered.
 
Of course, Ehsan Jafri was killed (as a colleague told
me, his head separated from his body was carried
around, exhibited in a blatant act of what I interpret
as lower-class Hindu chaucinism). But so were a lot of
ex-textile mill workers, trying to eke out their
existence as humdrum entrepreuners.

But JMI is unruffled. Or is it? A friend of mine talks
about secret meetings being held in the community
around Jamia. He says that there exists a certain
opinion among the residents who live in the Jamia area
(I deliberately make this vague: do you know the
"Jamia area"? Zakir Nagar? Jamia Nagar? Abul Fazl
Enclave?). The opinion is this: let them come. The
only way they can take care of us is through aerial
bombing.

We now have examinations in Jamia. The teachers don't
talk. But my students stop me, as I gladly run away
from a mindless 3-hour invigilation. They talk to me
about GUjarat. They are happy it didn't happen in
Delhi, but they are unsure. They say they feel unsafe.
They say they don't know if they should apply for good
jobs. Will I be taken, Sir?

What should I do, Sir?

An ex-student of mine has moved into Zakir Nagar. When
I asked him why (this was in December, last year), he
said: Safety, Sir.

JMI is not protesting GUjarat, as a lot of the
teaching staff wants it to. JMI students are locked in
a dilemma: they are no longer sure "civil society" is
willing to recognise their talents. They are sure it
is ready to undercut them.

What should I do, Sir/Madam?

I am merely invigilating, and feeling fucked.

yours,

pp

P S: Everybody should feel free to walk about. They
do. My students walk about in groups. Daringly, they
walk about in mixed groups. Couples (or temporary
couples, or couples-in-process) weave off into the
dark passages of the New Friends Community Centre.

I don't know what my students' fathers and mothers
think. I am not sure they are not dreaming about
Pakistan.

I don't understand them. I understand their children. 
      

         

           

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