Introspection on the 2010 journey reveals hidden lessons

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Was 2010 different?

Alice Bloch, a UK-based author, once said “We say we waste time, but that is impossible. We waste ourselves.” It is applicable to a nation as much as in the case of an individual. This is the 51st week of 2010 and our last issue of the year – this makes it all the more important for us to look back and introspect the rocky road that India traversed with high expectations and promises.

Revisiting the victories: Firstly, India secured the non-permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) after a gap of 19 years with an overwhelming majority. This was not a victory in the literal sense, as Japan is already serving as a non-permanent member, Kazakhstan withdrew itself and there were several weak contenders. However, India can use this win as a platform for strengthening diplomatic ties with other important nations as well as usher in the much needed reforms in the UNSC. Moreover, it can also clear some UN developmental loans. The second positive lesson was in snatching the 2nd position in medal tally in the 2010 Commonwealth Games with 101 medals. It boosted the confidence levels of Indian athletes and sports associations. Thirdly, India securing the top rank in test cricket was the icing on the cake. Indian history rarely has had such celebrations to boast of in one go. And most importantly, leaders of the world's most influential nations including US President Obama, French President Sarkozy, British PM David Cameron, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Russian President Medvedev have visited India in the same year. India's increasing pace of growth has finally managed to create a magnetic field attracting the who's who of the world.

And now the dark side: With 8.5 per cent expected growth rate, inflation remained an omnipresent problem. Both the general inflation rate of 10.16 per cent and food inflation of 16.49 per cent during June remained to be the highest among G20 nations. This continues to be a matter of great concern. But the biggest shocks of the year were the numerous corruption cases. From the Rs.1.76 lakh crore 2G scam, to the mammoth irregularities in the Commonwealth Games, 2010 proved to be the biggest shame year for the nation.

India also continues to rank first in terms of murders. The death in road accidents, sexual harassment, domestic violence, cyber-crime, crime against women too are on a rise. Separatist movements remained unstoppable and unresolved – Kashmir remains a burning example. More than 23 days of Parliamentary logjam cost the nation a whopping Rs.146 crore. The maximum number of citizens (above 250 million) in India's history remain undernourished. We have more poor and illiterate today (around 500 million) than ever in our history. India houses a third of the globe's poor people. Atrocious and abominable are the only words reserved for such an achievement by our successive governments. May 2011 be better...

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The Importance of being Bant Singh

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The past decade has seen an upsurge of Dalit resistance in Punjab and the struggle of Bant Singh has brought fresh hope for exposing the ‘hidden apartheid’ in the state. Nirupama Dutt travels to his village of Burj Jhabbar in the cotton belt of Punjab to know the man and the movement

Film actor Ajay Devgan presents his story on a popular television channel. Musicians like Chris Mcguiness and Taru Dalmia travel to do a music project with him. Recording companies from Mumbai want to bring out his album. He is also slated to participate in the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2011.

Who after all is Bant Singh? He was just another leader of agrarian workers who also sang revolutionary songs and struggled to make ends meet for his wife and eight children in the past decade. What happened to make him a heroic symbol of Dalit resistance in Punjab? Bant was born in a Mazhabi Sikh family. Mazhabis were former ‘untouchables’ who were inducted into the fold by the Gurus as Sikhism rejected the Hindu caste hierarchy. Yet the malaise of caste was to permeate the fabric of Sikh society with the hierarchical shift as the Jats were the landlords and the Dalits the agrarian labourers.

Bant could hold his own as he was politically aware, choosing not to work as an attached labourer. He instead sold cosmetics and toys besides rearing hens and pigs. He continued to be politically active, organising labour, helping them come out of never-ending debts through court cases and demanding fair wages. As vice-president of Mazdoor Mukti Morcha, a wing of the All India Agricultural Labour Association (AIALA), he irked landlords who were used to undisputed serfdom. He sent all his children to school and did not allow them to work in the Jat fields.

The turning point came in 2002 when his minor daughter Baljit Kaur, a student of Class IX, was gang-raped. He did not let it pass as is the custom because the rape of a Dalit girl by a Jat boy is common. Bant decided to fight for justice and three persons, including a woman accomplice, were sentenced to life imprisonment. “I was offered money to withdraw the case but I did not want to compromise on the honour of my daughter. We struggled for justice and got it.” However, he had to pay a heavy price for taking on the Jats. He was physically attacked several times. Then on the evening of January 5, 2006, seven Jat boys brutally beat him up with iron roads. His arms and legs were pounded to pulp. He lay for several hours in the fields till he was taken to Mansa Civil Hospital where the doctors were indifferent to him. After 36 hours, once gangrene had set in, they said they could not treat him. Bant’s comrades raised money and moved him to the PGIMS in Chandigarh.

The doctors had to amputate his two arms and a leg. When Bant was given this news, he said bravely: “I still have a tongue and I will continue to sing against oppression”. Indeed, he did surprise the doctors as well as the patients by singing out loud and clear the revolutionary songs of Punjabi poet, late Sant Ram Udasi, from his bed. Two months later, he came out of the hospital to address a public rally in Chandigarh. In different hospitals for over two years, he continued to sing.

His great courage brought attention to his spirit of resistance. The media came to him, the police upgraded the case to Section 308 of the IPC and the accused were arrested. Relevant sections under the SC/ST Act were added to the case. The attack on Bant was aimed at terrorising him and all other Dalit labourers but the outrage was such that thousands of them started coming to the rallies held in his support all over Punjab. His courage and songs gave hope to others. The culprits were jailed for seven years.

Sanjay Kak, who was asked by Bant’s comrades to make a film on the man, says: “I had not gone to make a film but it was Bant who made it by the sincerity of his emotions and the angst against the oppression of centuries.” The seven-minute film called Bant Can Still Sing is counted among one of the most eloquent films made by Kak. When I got to meet Bant at his home in Burj Jhabbar, I found him resting on a charpai under a kikar tree in his courtyard. He was quick to greet me with a broad smile. Raising his amputated arm, he hailed me with a Laal Salaam. Soon he was singing inspiring songs and telling me about his campaigns for farm labourers. “They wanted to silence me but I have been able to give out the message far louder than before,” he says. The strength to fight back, he says, came from his ideals, Guru Gobind Singh and Shaheed Bhagat Singh. True, the Dalits had been terrorised when Bant was beaten to pulp but now the Jats too are wary about the excesses for there could be other Bants who will fight back. This is what makes him the hero of Dalit resistance in Punjab.

A Laal Salaam indeed to this man who has turned the tide after centuries and about whom journalist Amit Sengupta says: “In a tangential sense, the ideology of upper caste domination has been pushed to the wall by Bant Singh’s sacrifice and valour. He has become a revolutionary icon, a catalyst for change, a protector of human and fundamental rights, a symbol of defiance against archaic symbols of feudalism and slavery, a physical reality of a dream which is not so impossible.”

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The local media in Kashmir is expanding at a staggering pace though the sailing has not been smooth for local journalists and media organisations

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Assertion amid restrictions

Till the late 1980s, J&K had such less newspapers and magazines that they could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Of these, only Aftab and Srinagar Times, both Urdu dailies, were popular among the masses. When insurgency erupted in the Valley, people needed their daily fix of news. They were eager to remain abreast of developments around them.

State-run Doordarshan and Radio Kashmir were the only accessible sources of news but excessive government control on these media institutions undermined their credibility. People turned to international media, primarily BBC, to get a clear picture of the situation in Kashmir. The then correspondent of BBC World Service, Yusuf Jameel, became a household name in the Valley. Every household would tune into the early morning and evening BBC bulletins.

“People would trust every word the BBC would broadcast. It was too demanding. I could hardly afford any off-the-mark coverage. But my reporting things as they were won me more foes than friends,” recalls Jameel.

Now, two decades later, more than a hundred newspapers, including 25 English dailies, hit the stalls every morning in Srinagar. There are 81weeklies, both offset and litho printed, and 12 monthly and fortnightly English and Urdu news magazines too being published from the Valley alone. About 80 dailies and 132 periodicals are published from Jammu.

The buck does not stop there. According to officials, hundreds of applications for new registrations are pending in the offices concerned in both Jammu and Srinagar. Almost every second month sees the launch of new publications. Most of these newspapers, priced at two to three rupees, survive mainly on government advertisements.
The growing literacy rate, which at present hovers a little above 65 per cent in J&K, has also widened the readership base during the last two decades. At the same time, new technologies like the Internet, networked computers and other hardware and software applications have also helped in producing newspapers in large number with better print quality. Apart from that, more than 20 cable news channels have been launched across the state in the past few years. All of the news channels — more than a dozen — are off the air in the Valley though after the state authorities announced a temporary ban on them four months ago.

GK Communications, with two of its largest circulated daily newspapers, Greater Kashmir (English) and Kashmir Uzma (Urdu) is considered to be one of the biggest media organisations in the state. Both of its newspapers are simultaneously published from Jammu and Srinagar. GK also has a vibrant online edition, which has a large number of visitors across the globe. Similarly, Kashmir Media Group (KMG), which publishes Rising Kashmir (English), Buland Kashmir (Urdu) and Sangarmal (Kashmiri), is also taking shape as a large media group in the Valley. English papers such as Greater Kashmir, Rising Kashmir and Kashmir Times and Urdu language ones like Kashmir Uzma, Srinagar Times, Aftab and Buland are being extensively read.

Mass communication graduates from Kashmir University are being hired by local newspapers on good wages. “Kashmir University’s mass communication department was established in 1985. Since then, we have produced more than 600 journalists and most of them are well placed in local, national and international media organisations,” informs Nasir Mirza, a senior lecturer.

However, it has not been easy for media organisations and journalists to survive in an atmosphere of hostility and conflict. During the last 20 years, more than a dozen mediapersons have been killed in the line of duty.

Apart from such tragedies, Kashmiri journalists have seen the worst kind of aggression by security forces. This summer more than two dozen mediapersons were ruthlessly beaten up by police and security forces at different times while they were performing their duty. Srinagar-based newspapers have frequently been forced to stop publication by the government. During the civil unrest earlier this year, beating up and harassment of newspaper staff and repeated cancellation of curfew passes made their operations impossible. The newspapers have been stopped for an estimated total of thirty days since June this year.

The channel operators believe that they were targetted only for showing the facts. “The channels were screening only what was happening around. People were being killed and injured by the security forces. How could we have not reported such things?” asks Sanam Aijaz, managing director, J.K. channel.

The popularity of social networking sites has also increased during the last few years, especially among the youth. Many Kashmiris, including those living abroad, have created groups on facebook and Twitter to express their political opinions. During the recent unrest, tech-savvy youngsters used these sites to vent their anger. This attracted the attention of security agencies. Police arrested many young boys for posting “objectionable” remarks on Internet.

But the local media in Kashmir lacks in quality. “During past two decades the Kashmir media has grown enormously but quality is missing,” says Pervez Majeed, a correspondent with Delhi-based news magazine Sahara Time. “The conflict provided a breeding ground for non-professionals who are pursuing varied interests and are indulging in activities which can't be called journalism,” he rues.

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'Thorns to Competition' - You can order your copy online from here
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• Hindustan Times Article - Publisher goes underground
• Rashmi Bansal (Editor of JAMMAG)
• Rashmi Bansal (Publisher of JAMMAG)