[Reader-list] Fwd: [YSC] Fwd: On the Hindu Photograph, 17-06-10

[Rakesh Iyer]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Chithira V <chithira.v at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 11:13 AM
Subject: [YSC] Fwd: On the Hindu Photograph, 17-06-10
To: acjenvironmentelective at googlegroups.com, cptg at googlegroups.com,
youthforsocialchange at googlegroups.com



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Geetha V <geethv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 9:50 AM
Subject: [genderstudies:79] On the Hindu Photograph, 17-06-10
To: aditya at kafila.org, ncc <nccindia at yahoogroups.com>, edit at epw.org.in,
genderstudies at googlegroups.com, Nalini Rajan <nalinirajan at gmail.com>, Kavita
Panjabi <kavip at vsnl.com>, Revathi R <revathi.work at gmail.com>, Padma
Venkataraman <aramangai at gmail.com>, umafam <umafam at gmail.com>, cpiml shankar
<cpiml.shankar at gmail.com>


Dear friends

We have sent the following letter to The Hindu - we are not sure if it will
be carried. But we thought we should circulate it widely.

Best regards
V. Geetha, S V Rajadurai


The Editor
The Hindu


Sir

We are shocked to see the photograph featured in The Hindu, dated
17-06-2010, which shows security personnel in West Bengal, carrying the body
of a woman killed in a purported raid on a Maoist hideout. The woman's body
had been trussed up like the carcass of a dead animal. The photo speaks
volumes of how the Indian state views those it considers a threat to the
internal security of the nation - as people beneath its contempt and
consideration. The photo featured alongside that of the dead woman shows a
'captured' young adivasi man, barely past his adolesence - a face that could
stand in for a large number of disenfranchied, poor and desperate tribals,
who are being treated as enemies of the state for merely wanting to lead a
life of autonomy and diginty. Merely labeling the dead woman and this young
man 'Maoist' does not explain the reasons for their disenchantment with the
Indian state's policies, both at the regional and national levels - policies
which are calculated to deprive them of their right to life and livelihood.
Nor does such a labeling take away from the cynical and outrageous disregard
and disrespect that these photos represent.
There is a civic decorum that democratic life demands we share, and the
media is as much a party to this compact. But when the media presents such
photos without comment, and agrees to treat a section of the Indian
citizenry as little more than animals to be hunted, one wonders what the
democratic contract* *is all about - perhaps it is a lovely fiction that we
all like to invoke when struggles for equality and justice turn violent; and
which we allow ourselves to forget when we feel triumphant over our
poltiical opponents or when we wish to endorse those who are clearly enemies
of the people, as in the Bhopal case.

S. V. Rajadurai
V. Geetha
5/43J, Corsley Road
Kotagiri 643217
Phone: 04266-275480
Mob: 94435-34252


-- 
What is the problem of women’s freedom? It seems to me to be this: how to
arrange the world so that women can be human beings, with a chance to
exercise their infinitely varied gifts in infinitely varied ways, instead of
being destined by the accident of their sex to one field of
activity—housework and child-raising. And second, if and when they choose
housework and child-raising to have that occupation recognized by the world
as work, requiring a definite economic reward and not merely entitling the
performer to be dependent on some man.
- Crystal Eastman

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