Githa Hariharan - Battling for India: A Citizen’s Reader

CONTENTS

Words
Lal Singh Dil

Dissent in October
Indian Cultural Forum

Why Are Writers Dangerous?
Shanta Gokhale

They Feared His Words: A Tribute to M.M. Kalburgi
K. Satchidanandan

Beef
Chandramohan S

Elegy For a Lost Friend: Gauri Lankesh (19622017)
Pushpamala N.

The Writers Second Life
Githa Hariharan

Pardon
K. Satchidanandan

Conversation: Malayalam Poet Kureeppuzha Sreekumar on Being Attacked by the RSS
Indian Cultural Forum

Writing the Age
Nayantara Sahgal

Breaking the Silence
Shashi Deshpande

Conversation: Ghanshyam Shah on Higher Education in Gujarat
Indian Cultural Forum

Disciplining the Cherry Orchard: Campus Tales from Delhi
Somok Roy

Sedition and the Status of Subversive Speech in India
Lawrence Liang

In My 40 Years As a Journalist, I Have Never Witnessed Such a Toxic Atmosphere
Nikhil Wagle

Murder
Uday Prakash

Death of a Young Dalit
Meena Alexander

They Chose Death Over Humiliation
Vidhya and Tilak Tewari

Children of God
Huchangi Prasad

Structural Discrimination in Institutions of Higher Education
Vidhya

Conversation: Chinnaiah Jangam on Dalit Memory, Imagination and the Nationalist Narrative
Indian Cultural Forum

Conversation: Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan on a Bahujan Government
Newsclick

From Communal Deadlock to a Communal Emergency: An Ambedkarite Assessment of Indian Conditions Today
Soumyabrata Choudhury

Gau Raksha and the War Against Indias Poor
Prabir Purkayastha

Conversation: Bezwada Wilson Asks Who Will Clean the 12 Crore New Toilets
Newsclick

She Will See a Bitter Moon
Manash Firaq Bhattacharjee

A Trial By Fire
Teesta Setalvad

Violence Against Minorities: The New Normal
Sanjukta Basu

Blaming the Victims: The Case of the Alwar Lynching
Harsh Mander

Manipur Notes, November 26 to 28, 2018
Karwan-e-Mohabbat

No, This Land and Country Is Not Ours Anymore: An Open Letter from An Indian Student
Aslah K. Vadakara

A Symbolic Moral Gesture
K.P. Ramanunni

No Closure for Kashmirs Half Widows
Gulzar Bhat

The Kashmir You Will Never Understand
Faakirah Irfan

Conversation: Nandini Sundar on a State Without a Constitution
Indian Cultural Forum

Write Down I Am a Miyah
Hafiz Ahmed

A Return to the Bad Old Days in Assam?
Vivan Eyben

How to Properly Greet a Fellow Anti-national
Orijit Sen

DemonetisationA Poem
Abhishek Anicca

The Bullet Train
Ra Sh (Aadhar No: 9876 5432 1001)

Statues Rise and Fall, Only the People Remain
Prabir Purkayastha

The Economy Under Modi
Prabhat Patnaik

Conversation: Surajit Mazumdar on the Promises and Reality of Demonetisation
Newsclick

How Demonetisation Ravaged the Rural Economy
P. Sainath

Bring in the Goats
Keki Daruwalla

No Room for the Poor in Smart-city Bhopal
Shreya Roy Chowdhury

Rationalists Under Attack: If We Shut Up, They Succeed
Vartika Rastogi

The Curious Case of RSSBJP Science
Prabir Purkayastha

How People in Power Get Away with Unscientific Statements
Tejal Kanitkar

The Double Curse of Superstition and Communalisation
Rajendra Chenni

Out of Little Mouths
Ashok Vajpeyi

Dalits Are Not Going to Go Away If You Dont Use the Word!
Geeta Seshu

I Knew I Was Going to Jail That Day
Sweta Daga

Sonebhadras Daughter Sukalo
Citizens for Justice and Peace

Conversation: Mohsin Alam Bhat on Responding to Hate Crimes
Newsclick and Indian Cultural Forum

Conversation: Natasha Rather on Womens Continued Fight for Justice in Kashmir
Newsclick

Censorship, Section 377 Ruling and the Rise in Right-wing Assault
Bindu Doddahatti

Transgender Bill: Denying Constitutional Rights to the Community?
Yogesh S

Productive Work Has to Become a Part of Education in Order to Challenge the Caste System
Anil Sadgopal

Growing Anger, Growing Resistance
PARI and Newsclick

Conversation: P. Sainath on Why the Kisan Mukti March Is Not a Culmination But a Geginning
Newsclick

The Mountain, Forest and Streams Are Our Gods
Purusottam Thakur

INTRODUCTION

Here are some people, quite a few of them actually, that you and I should meet. Alivelamma, a woman farmer. Huchangi, Rohith, Ravan, poet, student, activist; all dalit. Sukalo, Rajkishor, Leelabati, activist, poet, singer; adivasis. Salima and Jaffruddin, who happen to be Muslim. Two workers; one a union member, the other home-based.

And there, not too far away, are journalists, writers, artists, teachers and many young peoplesome of them students, many of them looking for work.

What do all these people have in common? First, the crowded country where they all live, the nation called India. This nation is an idea too. Out of this idea grew a rights-based Constitution that steers the nation so all its people can live as equal citizens. But over the last few years, there has been a battle going on in this country. The battle began a while back, perhaps more than a decade back. But since 2014, it has reached a feverish pitch. We can now see two signposts as we enter the Indian nation. One reads: Battling India , and it knows only one language, of coercion and plunder. The other says, boldly, and in many voices that speak many languages: Battling for India ; and this is the second thing the people we should meet have in common.

The Battling India Parivar, a many-headed beast, has both official and unofficial guides to take us around its dominion. It has its own police who shoot, lynch, bomb. It seeks to regulate what we think, write, sing; what we eat and wear; how we pray or whom we love. A versatile and busy force, this lot. The official guides (official because they are, for now, the government), smother us with cooked-up data and harangue us endlessly about development. They boast of making the GDP soar, crushing black money, and our eyes glaze over. To get our attention back, they try to scare us: there are enemies everywhere, across the border and within our borders. This is why they are building a sanctuary. Seeing this work in progress, we can tell that the inhabitants of the sanctuary will be mostly Hindu, preferably upper caste, ideally male and heterosexual. They will, of course, make room for their best friends, all of whom belong to a rich and exclusive gang of barons, company sharks and godmen.

Tired of all this exclusiveness, depleted by it, we seek some regular people so we can still recognise the India we used to call home. And we meet the Battling for India Republic.