The violence-hit areas in North East Delhi, where all that remains after the act of hate are wounded bodies and thinker.

Cleansing of secularism

February 26, 2020, 10:30 a.m. Outside the Maujpur Metro station near Kabir Nagar, there is not a soul on the road. No vehicular traffic, no pedestrian, just a long row of policemen with stern faces holding guns and batons. By the side of the roads are the burnt remains of a motorcycle and a car and a thousand pieces of wood, cardboard tyres, iron railings and concrete lattice screen, some of them still smouldering. They have probably been dumped aside to allow free movement of traffic, of which there is none. Fear hangs thick in the air. I am on my way to Gokulpuri, a little more than a kilometre away, but the smell of smoke visible in the sky from Kabir Nagar portend disaster. As one black smell rises and fades into the sky, another makes its appearance. It goes on and on endlessly. Row of tyre shops have been set afire in Gokulpuri, as I discover half an hour later.

It reminds 78 year old Haji Yaqub of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. At that time, he had shifted with his family from Gokulpuri just hours before violence struck the colony. “Hundreds of Sikhs were butchered in this part of the city in 1984. The media did not even get to know of it for days. The business of Sikhs were set on fire. I saw similar hatred in the eyes of men here and decided to move my children against their wishes to Mustafabad,” he says. It was scarily farsightedness. Not many Muslim business establishments were left unscathed in Gokulpuri. Mostly tyre shops dealing in retreads, owned by Muslims from Bijnore and Muzaffarnagar, were set ablaze on third and fourth days on the violence, which began on February 23. A mosque was burnt down, another attacked. The families that stayed behind paid the price; those who shifted to safety proved wise.

The collusion between the government, communal aggressors, the police and activist of the ruling dispensation, which was all too evident in all the days of the Delhi riots, could well indicate what is in store for the country as a whole.

“Studies on communal riots in independent India have repeatedly highlighted the collusion between the government, the rioting aggressors, the police and the activist of the ruling dispensation of the time. Even so, the record of the current Regime at the centre is exceptional. It is as though the collusion is steroid driven. It is characterised by a sort of unparalleled obviousness in disregarding Democratic and administrative norms and systems as well as in pursuing cunning devices. The case if the Delhi riots in the last week of February is no different.” This was how former senior Indian Police Service (IPS) Officer and renowned Hindi author Vibhuti Narain Rai said in response to the question in the first week of March, even as the Delhi Police claimed that things had returned to normal in the capital region.

Rai went on to add that the obviousness of the collusion and violation of norms during these days was such that the command and control of the Delhi Police was practically shifted the North Block, which houses the Union Home Ministry, marking a grave administrative fault line. “But that was being done without any misgiving.” Rai’s observations are founded in his three and a half decade long service in the IPS, during which he carried out relentless research in the communalisation of politics and administrative services, including the police and other security agencies. This research reflect in his works such as shahar mein curfew(curfew in the city), combating communal conflict, communal conflicts: perception of police neutrality during Hindu-Muslim riots in India.

The struggle for women’s freeing cannot be seperated from the fight against the hierarchical caste system which both eyernalises and strengthens Brahminical patriarchy in India.

The yearly celebration of women’s day and the ritualistic glorification and worship of wen notwithstanding, there is an urgent need for critical appraisal of the status of wen in India. Such an appraisal as a mere academic exercise will not generate much value unless it is politically charged to fight for women’s freeing.

When the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, held up a placard that read “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” while meeting a group of feminist during a visit to India in November 2018, it created a huge uproar in the media, forcing him to apologise. Brahminical/Brahmanism has been narrowly equated with the Brahmin caste, and even so-called “liberals” began to attack the Twitter CEO for being party to this casteist slogan that targeted one particular community, excluding all others.

Despite strong voices in support of an exclusive law to punish honour killings , the Prevention of crimes in the Name of Honour and Tradition Bill remains a non-starter.

The term “honour killing” does not exist in Indian Penal law. Crimes of this nature are dealt with as homicide or manslaughter. Hence, legal experts are at a loss to explain what constitutes an Honour killing.

A bouquet of law protects women and the disadvantaged sections against abundance forms of violence including those involving caste and community. If the victim of a criminal act is Dalit, provision of the Scheduled castes and the Scheduled Tribes( Prevention of atrocities) Amenemt (S.C./ S.T.) Act, 2015, are invoked. If they happen to be women or girls, laws such as the women harassment act and the Dowry Harassment act are applied. India is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. But honour killing has taken centrestage in debates and discussions only since 2002 when the U.N. adopted a resolution on “Working towards the elimination of crime against women committed in the name of honour. Human rights watch describe honour killing as an act of violence against a female family member who is perceived to have brought dishonour on the family and the social group. The majority of the victims of such killings are Dalits and women.

In countries where honour killing by community or caste based extrajudicial groups or individuals has been reported, deliberations are underway to introduce a special piece of legislation. In many countries including India, although the police and the judiciary have started to differentiate between honour killing and homicide and filicide, for the victims it is a case of Justice delayed or justice denied. However, the proactive stand of the Supreme Court against the heinous crime and it’s out of the box interpretation of such a crime bring hope. Judgments in Honour killing cases have prompted even the lower judiciary to treat these crime as serious guard against bad and biases investigations. The state and other stakeholders have been forced to take a relook at the crime. On many occasions, the higher judiciary has ruled that there was nothing honourable in these killings.

A look at how the judiciary is tackling the social malaise of honour killing head on through emphatic judgments, which are also building up a body of case law on the issue.

In the absence in Indian law of the term “honour killing”, it has become acute for the judiciary to interpret existing laws to categorise such crimes and intervene effectively on the side of victims.

Intervention of the Supreme Courts and the High Courts on several occasions have given an animated to voices against such extrajudicial executions. Today, even the lower judiciary is proactive on the issue.

The spurt in the number of “honour killings” in Tamil Nadu in recent years is a Stark indicator of the growing bang of patriarchal caste.

It is a loss so cruel. For 25year old N.Nandish, a Dalit man, and 23 years old S.Swathi, who belonged to the Vanniyar community(a most backward caste, or MBC) life was slowly returning to normal after they got married at a temple on August 15, 2018, and registered a marriage a month later. The couple braved extreme hostility from Swathi’s family, which believed that with the marriage the family honour had been compromised and caste sanctity violated. The couple decided to settle down in Tamil Nadu’s Hosur town, which borders Karnataka and is about 50 kilometers from Soolakondapalli village in Keishnagiri district, where their families lived.

The couple who had also sought protection from the police, went missing on November 10. Nandish’s brother N.Shankar lodged a police complaint at the Hosur police station, which registered a case of missing persons and faxed photographs of the couple to police stations in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Three days later, the Hosur police station received a message from the Mandya police station in Karnataka that Nandish body had been recovered from the Shivana Samudra river. Two days later, Swathi’s body, in a highly decomposed state, was also found.

Preliminary investigations reveal that Swathi’s family had baited the couple to their village with the promised that their marriage would be solemnised with traditional customs. They then took the couple to Karnataka, where they strangle them and threw the bodies into the river. The girls body bite multiple hack wounds. Her head was shaven, apparently in an attempt to shame her, and her womb, witha three month old feotus in it, had been ripped open, both the bodies bore signs of abuse.

Swathis’s father, Srinivasan and his relatives were arrested for the crime. Shankar told Frontline that Srinivasan relative and other member of his caste had encouraged him to kill his daughter and her husband. “We took all precautions but failed to save them,” he said.

The incident, is just one example of “honour killing” a euphemism for casteist murders wherein people who consider themselves protectors of caste and culture zealousy safeguard caste endogamy by killing young men and women who marry out of caste. A spike in such killings numbering about 200 in Tamil Nadu since 2013, is testimony to the existence of a society that frowns upon and suppresses an adult’s right to choose their spouse.

One such murder that hit the headlines was that of Veluchamy Shankar, who belonged to the Pallar Scheduled Caste community, in 2016.

The Delhi election will be remembered for the BJP’s divisive campaign and the AAP’s clever attempts to beat the communal trap.

Hate speeches, name calling and double such as pute-impure and traitor-terrorist marked the campaign narrative of the Bhartiya Janta Party(BJP) for the February 8 election to the 70 member Assembly. Once the election heat subsides, what people will remember it for will be slogans such as “desh ke gaddaron ko goli maaron saalon ko” and declaration such as Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is a terrorist.

The fact that these slogans/declarations did not come from debris but were mouthed by Union Ministers Anurag Thakur and Prakash Javedkar is amazing.

Despite the fact that the ruling Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) focussed it’s campaigns on issues such as health, education and bijli-sadak-paani, the BJP campaign centred around issues such as the Citizenship (Amendment) Act(CAA), the National Register of Citizens(NRC), the National Population Register(NPR), Article 370, construction of a Ram Temple in Ayodhya and Triple talaq.

The BJP’s election manifesto, which talked of sops, freebies and development, got lost on the ground when campaigning began.

The decisive victory of the Aam Aadmi Party in the 2020 Delhi Assembly Elections and the defeat of the Bhartiya Janta Party at the end of a high-octane bitterness campaign signals a certain shift in the voting inclinations of a demographically diversified electorate of the National Capital Territory.

Polling to elect the seventh Assembly of the National Capital Territory of Delhi was held in a single phase on February 8 and the results were declared on February 11. The AAP seeking a re-election to the Assembly, contested all 70 seats and won 62, five fewer that what it had in the outgoing Assembly.

The Aam Aadmi Party’s brilliant victory in the Delhi Assembly election holds two important lessons for the BJP: one performance in office pays; two, communal politics is not always a sure way to win elections.

At it’s core, the resounding return of the Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party to power in the February 8 Delhi Assembly election was made possible by three factors. First, a definitive popular rejection of the communal and divisive politics aggressively pursued by the Bhartiya Janta Party(BJP) and it’s associates in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh(RSS) led Sangh Parivar, which made obvious use of their special resources, including the money power at their disposal.

Since December 15, in the subzero winter chill of Delhi, the women of Shaheen Bagh have kept their protest against the CAA going round the clock in what has become a template for protest everywhere.

The India Gate replica is positioned in the middle of the road. A huge steel map of India with the slogan, “we the people of India reject CAA, NRC, NPR blessed on it, stands tall over the replica as thousands of men bow in prayers to the call of the Azan. The road around is dotted with posters, placards and paintings opposing the Citizenship (Amendment) Act(CAA)/ National Population Register(NPR)/ National Register Of Citizens(NRC). It is Friday afternoon at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, a locality which has now emerged as the Their Square of India.

As jumme ki namaaz(Friday prayers) concludes and the men disperse, volunteers swiftly rearrange the place for the women protesters to take their place at the site.