SACH 52 - 2018 - Copy · 2 SACH OCTOBER—DECEMBER 2018 Noorjahan Poem by KHONDAKAR ASHRAF HOSSAIN, BANGLADESH Water is Boiling on the stove. What’s there inside the water? Stones,

SACHWomen in South Asia : Justice and EmpowermentSouth Asian nations carry a range of religious faiths, legal systems, economic and political forces. Diversesocio-cultural practices here are often characterised by strong patriarchal biases which impact upon thelives of women. In recent decades the patriarchal interpretations of religious beliefs, cultural attitudes andpolitical manipulations have come to define the social and cultural contexts of women and their status insocieties. State regulated laws, polices and violence are among the tools used to reinforce patriarchyagainst the rights and interests of women. Women’s struggle in the region has not only been for an equalrepresentation in public spaces but also an ideological battle against the deep rooted patriarchal normsand customs that view women in a place of subordination.

Notable cases like denying entry to women in Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala region of Indian stateof Kerala, conviction of Pakistani Christian woman Aasiya Noreen commonly known as ÂsiaBibî in a caseof blasphemy by a Pakistani court with death sentence and struggle of women survivors of a decade longarmed conflict in Nepal seeking justice show that the struggle has been an ongoing one. Sabarimalacontroversy in Kerala, India is a long standing fight against the patriarchal dogma of the religious orderwhich does not allow the entry of women into the temple and denies them the right to practice religion.Thisage-old discriminatory religious practice was overturned by the Supreme Court of India by observing thatthe ban on the right to practice religion is in violation of women’s fundamental right to religion and worshipas enshrined under Article 25 of the Constitution. The judgment noted that while faith and religion do notcountenance discrimination, religious practices are sometimes seen as perpetuating patriarchy, therebynegating the basic tenets of faith, gender equality and rights. Similarly, Pakistan’s Supreme Court overturnedthe conviction of Christian woman Asia Bibi facing execution for blasphemy, a landmark verdict thatsparked protests in the Islamic nation. Asia Bibi was convicted in 2010 after being accused of insultingIslam. Her case has been deeply divisive in Pakistan where there is strong support for the controversialblasphemy laws. Nepal was enmeshed in a prolonged bloody civil war for a decade. The conflict led toimmense suffering with innumerable deaths and injuries. Women were victims of torture, abuse and sexualviolence. Gender based violence continues to remain invisible even years after the end of conflict aswomen and girl victims and survivors continue to suffer with the faint hope to rebuild their lives again.However the struggle and fights for survival, rights, and empowerment always goes on.

Women’s indomitable resistance against the patriarchal order in South Asia offers a ray of hope.Women’s battle for empowerment and equality is most visible in all the cases. Despite all odds women inNepal continue to fight for justice for victims of gender crimes. In Pakistan Asia Bibiwas finally releasedafter her case galvanized international support. In India despite threats and protests women are enteringthe Sabrimala temple to reclaim gender equality. These recent examples in South Asian countries show afailure on the part of its societies and nations in eradicating the deep-rooted patriarchy. In a healthydemocracy, both individual and group rights need to be considered and the State must bridge the gapbetween constitutional ideals and social reality.

SUNIL KUKSALSUNIL KUKSALSUNIL KUKSALSUNIL KUKSALSUNIL KUKSAL

South Asian Composite HeritageISSUE NO. 52 OCTOBER-DECEMBER, 2018

2 SACH OCTOBER—DECEMBER 2018

Noorjahan

Poem by KHONDAKAR ASHRAF HOSSAINKHONDAKAR ASHRAF HOSSAINKHONDAKAR ASHRAF HOSSAINKHONDAKAR ASHRAF HOSSAINKHONDAKAR ASHRAF HOSSAIN, BANGLADESH

Water is Boiling on the stove.What’s there inside the water?

Stones, only stones.

Should we gorge on the stones, O God!Should we bathe in the hot-water spring,O God!We’ll Burn with the stove, well meltinto dewdrops in your anger.Should we be fire like bowed griefor stones of fire, or little pebbleson the foundation bed, or zamzam well?

Water is boiling on the stove.What’s there inside the water ?

A women’s heart her sari

What do you do with sari?Who weaves the weaver?The thatcher has no rood over his head;the quack shivers in daily fever.

What do you do with sari?

It makes a good burial cloth, you knowOne who has nothing, a sari is her world,

her afterworld.

Wrap her body in four yard long sari- that’ll be her best, her nights rest,her winter’s warmth.

Water is boiling on the stove.What’s there inside the water?Only men men’s tongues.

Let us all sing the praise of the tongue.It tastes a bit salty, acrid but savoury:it rules over the wold, over other men,and prattleson in infinite zeal.

Water is boiling on the stove.What’s there inside the water?

A whip inside. And an ocean.

Where does the girl go everyday?What does she brings home with various fruitsfrom around the village-that flower of grief, that dame of sadness?

She collects stones, only stones.She’d build a stone sculpture

of Neolithic Age.

The east wind whispers into her eras:she’d write an eternal poem with pebbles ,a page like Apollinaire’s wherethree thousand well-rounded, black anddevout stones shower down incessantly

And Noorjahan gets petrified foreverin the cement of grief:with the touch of Time the stone has turnedinto a piece of lamentationa white bird on immaculate purity.

That girl will one day be an ababeel 1

And the stone to death the king’s hordes.

Translated from Bangla original by the poetCourtesy : Writing Across Borders

1 A lock of little birds name “ababeel” threw stones onthe army of the Abyssinian ruler, Abraha Ashram, whohad attacked Mecca, killing all his elephants. The eventis reffered to in Sura Fil of the Quran.

(Noorjahaan, a young girl from Sylhet, Bangladesh, was stoned to death by religious fanatics in(Noorjahaan, a young girl from Sylhet, Bangladesh, was stoned to death by religious fanatics in(Noorjahaan, a young girl from Sylhet, Bangladesh, was stoned to death by religious fanatics in(Noorjahaan, a young girl from Sylhet, Bangladesh, was stoned to death by religious fanatics in(Noorjahaan, a young girl from Sylhet, Bangladesh, was stoned to death by religious fanatics inthe nineteen-eighties. They buried half her body in a pit before casting their stones)the nineteen-eighties. They buried half her body in a pit before casting their stones)the nineteen-eighties. They buried half her body in a pit before casting their stones)the nineteen-eighties. They buried half her body in a pit before casting their stones)the nineteen-eighties. They buried half her body in a pit before casting their stones)

OCTOBER—DECEMBER 2018 SACH 3

IT seemed the little girlwas born to sing. Hermother often recalled thatwhen she was a baby, shewould carry herpiggyback to communitysinging events on festivaldays. As soon as thesingers took up a tuneand gradually when theircollective voices began toswell in volume andharmony, her daughterwould twist herself thisway and that and startsinging her own versionof the song, mostlyconsisting of loud shrieksand screams. Thoughamusing at first, herdaughter’s antics irritatedthe spectators and the singers as well, andoften, she had to withdraw from thegatherings in embarrassment. What the motherconsidered unreasonable behaviour in a childbarely a year old, was actually the firstindication of the singing genius that she hadgiven birth to.

When Apenyo, as the little girl wascalled, could walk and talk a little, her motherwould take her to church on Sundays because

The Last SongThe Naga people of the troubled northeastern region of India have enduredmore than a century of bloodshed in their struggle for an independentNagaland and national identity. Yet they managed to cope with violence,negotiate power, and seek safe havens amid terror. They whispers songswhich we can’t hear from our naked ears.

By TEMSULA AOTEMSULA AOTEMSULA AOTEMSULA AOTEMSULA AO, INDIA

she could not be left aloneat home. On other days,she was left in the careof her grandmotherwhen the mother went tothe fields; but on this daythere was no one to takecare of her as everyonewent to church. Whenthe congregation sangtogether Apenyo wouldalso join, though her littlescreams were not quiteaudible because of thegroup singing. Butwhenever there was aspecial number, troublewould begin; Apenyowould try to sing along,much to theembarrassment of the

mother. After two or three such mortifyingSunday outings, the mother stopped going tochurch altogether until Apenyo became olderand learnt how to behave.

At home too, Apenyo never kept quiet;she hummed or made up silly songs to singby herself, which annoyed her mother at timesbut most often made her become pensive. Shewas by now convinced that her daughter hadinherited her love of singing from her father


whi had died unexpectedly away from home.The father, whose name was Zhamben, wasa gifted singer both of traditional folk songsas well as Christian hymns at church. Nagatraditional songs consist of polyphonic notesand harmonising is the dominant feature ofsuch community singing. Perhaps because ofhis experience and expertise in folk songs,Zhamben picked up the new tunes of hymnsquite easily and soon became the lead malevoice in the church choir. He was aschoolteacher in the village and the time ofhis death was undergoing a teacher-trainingcourse in a town in Assam. He was suddenlytaken ill and by the time the news reachedthe village, he was already dead. While hisrelatives were preparing to go and visit him,his friends from the training school broughthis dead body home. Apenyo was only ninemonths old then. From that time on, it was alonely struggle for the mother, trying tocultivate a field and bringing up a small childon her own. With occasional help from herin-laws and her own relatives, the widowcalled Libeni, was slowly building a futurefor her daughter and herself. Many of therelatives told her to get married so that sheand little Apenyo would have a man to protectand look after them. But Libeni would notlisten and when they repeatedly told her tothink about it seriously, she asked them neverto bring up the subject again. So mother anddaughter lived alone and survived mainly onwhat was grown in the field.

At the village school Apenyo did welland became the star pupil. When she was oldenough to help her mother in spreading thethread on the loom, she would sit nearby andwatch her weave the colourful shawls, whichwould be sold to bring in additional income.Libeni had the reputation of being one of thebets weavers in the village and her shawlswere in great demand. By and by Apenyo toolearned the art from her mother and becamean excellent weaver like her. In the meantime,her love for singing too was growing. Peoplesoon realized that not only did she love to

sing but also that Apenyo had an exquisitesinging voice. She was inducted into thechurch choir where she soon became the leadsoprano. Every time the choir sang it was hervoice that made even the commonest songsound heavenly. Along with her singing voice,her beauty also blossomed as Apenyoapproached her eighteenth birthday. Hernatural beauty seemed to be enhanced by herenchanting voice, which earned her thenickname ‘singing beauty’ in the village.Libeni’s joy knew no bounds. She was happythat all those years of loneliness and hardshipwere well rewarded by the God through herbeautiful and talented daughter.

One particular year, the villagers werein an especially expectant mood because therewas a big event coming up in the villagechurch in about six months time: thededication of the new church building. Everymember of the church had contributedtowards the building fund by donating in cashand kind and it had taken them nearly threeyears to complete the new structure of tinroof and wooden frames to replace the oldone of bamboo and thatch. In every householdthe womenfolk were planning new clothes forthe family, brand new shawls for the menand new skirts or ‘lungis’ for women. Thewhole village was being spruced up for theoccasion as some eminent pastors fromneighbouring villages were being invited forthe dedication service. Pigs earmarked for thefeast were given special food to fatten themup. The service was planned for the first weekof December, which would ensure that theharvesting of the fields would be over andthe special celebration would not interfere withthe normal Christmas celebrations of thechurch. The villagers began the preparationswith great enthusiasm, often joking amongthemselves that this year they would have adouble Christmas!

These were, however, troubled times forthe Nagas. The Independence movement wasgaining momentum by the day and even theremotest villages were getting involved, if not


directly in terms of their members joining theunderground army, then certainly by paying‘taxes’ to the underground ‘government’. Thisparticular village was no different. They hadbeen compelled to pay their dues every year,the amount calculated on the number ofhouseholds in the village. Curiously enough,the collections would be made just before theChristmas holidays, perhaps because travel forthe collectors was easier through the winterforests or perhaps they too wanted to celebrateChristmas! In any case, the villagers wereprepared for the annual visit from theirbrethren of the forests and the transaction wascarried out without a hitch.

But this year, it was not as simple as inprevious years. A recent raid of anunderground hideout yielded records of allsuch collections of the area and thegovernment forces were determined to ‘teach’all those villages the consequences of‘supporting’ the rebel cause by paying the‘taxes’. Unknown to them, a sinister plan wasbeing hatched by the forces to demonstrate tothe entire Naga people what happens whenyou ‘betray’ your own government. It wasdecided that the army would go thisparticular village on the day when they werededicating the new church building and arrestall the leaders for their ‘crime’ of paying taxesto the underground forces.

In the meanwhile, the villagers caughtup in the hectic activities prior to theappointment day, a Sunday, were happilybusy in tidying up their own households,especially the ones where the guests wouldbe lodged. The dedication Sunday dawnedbright and cool, it was December after all,and every villager, attired in his or her best,assembled in front of the new church, whichwas on the same site as the old one. Thevillagers were undecided about what to dowith the old one still standing near the newone. They had postponed decision until afterthe dedication. That morning the choir wasstanding together in the front porch of thenew church to lead the congregation in the

singing before the formal inauguration, afterwhich they would enter the new building,Apenyo, the lead singer, was standing in themiddle of the front row, looking resplendentin her new lungi and shawl. She was goingto perform solo on the occasion after thegroup song of the choir. As the pastor led thecongregation in the invocatory prayer, a hushfell on the crowd as though in greatexpectation: the choir would sing first numberafter the prayer. As the song the crowd waswaiting to hear began, there was the soundof gunfire in the distance; it was an ominoussound which meant that the army wouldcertainly disrupt the festivities. But the choirsang on unfazed, though uneasy shufflescould be heard from among the crowd. Thepastor too began to look worried; he turnedto a deacon and seemed to be consulting withabout something. Just as the singing subsided,another sound reverberated throughout thelength and breadth of the village: a frightenedDobashi, with fear and trembling in his voicewas telling the people to stay where they wereand not to attempt to run away or fight. Therewas a stunned silence and congregation frozein their places unable to believe that theirdedication Sunday was going to be desecratedby the arrogant Indian army.

Very soon the approaching soldierssurrounded the crowd, and the pastor wascommanded to come forward and identifyhimself along with the gaonburas. But beforethey could do anything, Apenyo burst intoher solo number, and not to be outdone bythe bravery or foolishness of this young girl,and not wishing to leave her thus exposed,the entire choir burst into song. The soldierswere incensed; it was an act of open defianceand proper retaliation had to be made. Theypushed and shoved the pastor and thegaonburas, prodding them with the butts oftheir guns towards the waiting jeeps belowthe steps of the church. Some of the villagerstried to argue with the soldiers and they toowere kicked and assaulted. There was a feebleattempt by the accompanying Dobashi to


restore some semblance of order but no onewas listening to him and the crowd, by nowovercome by the fear and anger, began todisperse in every direction. Some members ofthe choir left their singing and were seentrying to run away to safety. Only Apenyostood her ground. She sang on, oblivious ofthe situation as of the situation as if an unseenpresence was guiding her. Her mother,standing with the congregation, saw herdaughter singing her heart out as if towithstand the might of the guns with her voiceraised to the God in heaven. She called out toher to stop but Apenyo did not seem to hearor see anything. In desperation, Libeni rushedforward to pull her daughter away but theleader of the army was quicker. He grabbedApenyo by the hair and with a bemused lookon his face dragged her away from the crowdtowards the old church building. All thiswhile, the girl was heard singing the chorusof her song over and over again.

There was chaos everywhere. Villagerstrying to flee the scene were either shot at orkicked and clubbed by the soldiers who seemedto be everywhere. The pastors and thegaonburas were tied up securely fortransportation to army headquarters andwhatever fate awaited them there. More peoplewere seen running away desperately, someseeking security in the old church and someeven entered a new one hoping that at leastthe house of God would offer them safety fromthe soldiers. Libeni was now frantic. Callingout her daughter’s name loudly, she began tosearch for her in the direction where she waslast seen being dragged away by the leader.When she came upon the scene at last, whatshe saw turned her stomach: the young captainwas raping Apenyo while a few other soldierswere watching the act and seemed to bewaiting for their turn. The mother, crazed bywhat she was witnessing, rushed forward withan animal-like growl as if to haul the man offher daughter’s body but a soldier grabbed herand pinned her down on the ground. He toobegan to unzip his trousers and when Libenirealised what would follow next, she spat on

the soldier’s face and tried to twist herself freeof his grasp. But this only further aroused him;he bashed her head on the hard ground severaltimes knocking her unconscious and rapedher limp body, using the woman’s new lungiafterwards, which he had flung aside, to wipehimself. The small band of soldiers then tooktheir turn, even though by the time the fourthone mounted, the woman was already dead.Apenyo, though terribly bruised and dazed bywhat was happening to her was still alive,though barely so. Some of the villagers whohad entered the old church saw whathappened to mother and daughter and afterthe soldier were seen going towards the villagesquare, came up to help them. As they weretrying to lift the limp bodies, the Captainhappened to look back and seeing that therewere witnesses to their despicable act, turnedto his soldier and ordered them to open fire onthe people who were now lifting up the bodiesof the two women. Amid screams and yellsthe bodies were dropped as the helpless villagersonce again tried to seek shelter inside thechurch.

Returning towards the scene of theirrecent orgy, the Captain saw the grotesquefigures of the two women, both dead. Heshouted an order to his men to dump them onthe porch of the old church. He then orderedthem to take position around the church andat his signal they emptied their guns into thebuilding. The cries of the wounded and thedying inside the church proved that even thehouse of the God could not provide themsecurity and save them from bullets of thecrazed soldiers. In the distance too, similaratrocities were taking place. But the savagerywas not over yet. Seeing that it would be wasteof time and bullets to kill off all the witnessinside the church, the order was given to set iton fire. Yelling at the top of his voice, theCaptain now appeared to have gone mad. Hesnatched the box of matches from his Adjutantand set to work. But his hands were shaking;he thought that he could still hear the tune theyoung girl was humming as he was ramminghimself into her virgin body, while all


throughout, the girl’s unseeing eyes were fixedon his face. He slumped down on the groundand the soldiers made as if to move away, butwith renewed anger he once again gave theorder and the old church burst into flamesreducing the dead and the dying into anunrecognizable black mass. The new churchtoo, standing not so far from the old one caughtthe blaze and was badly damaged. Elsewherein the village, the granaries were the first to goup in flames. The wind carried burning chunksfrom these structures and scattered themamidst the clusters of houses, which too burntto the ground.

By the time the marauding soldiers leftthe village with their prisoners, it was darkand to compound the misery it rained thewhole night. It was impossible to ascertainhow many men and women were missingapart from the pastor and the four gaonburas.Mercifully, the visiting pastors were left alonewhen it became known that they did notbelong to this village. But they were orderedto leave immediately and threatened in nouncertain terms that if they carried the newsof what had happened here, their ownvillages would suffer the same fate. The searchfor the still missing persons began only thenext morning. They found out that amongthe missing persons were Apenyo and hermother. When a general tally was taken, itwas discovered that many villagers sustainedbullet wounds as well as injuries from thebeatings. Also, six members of the choir werenot accounted for. An old woman whosehouse was quite close to the church site toldthe search party that she saw some peoplerunning towards the old church.

When the villagers arrived at the burnt-out site of the old church building, their worstsuspicions were confirmed. Among the rain-drenched ashes of the old church they foundmasses of human bones washed clean by thenight’s rain. And on what was once the porchof the old church, they found separate massand through a twist of fate a piece of Apenyo’snew shawl was found, still intact beneath thepile of charred bones. Mother and daughter

lay together in that pile. The villagers gatheredall the bones of the choir members in a coffinbut those of the mother and daughter; theyput in a separate one. After a sombre andsong-less funeral service, the question aroseas to where to bury them. Though the wholevillage had embraced Christianity long ago,some of the old superstitions and traditionshad not been totally abandoned. The deathsof these unfortunate people were consideredto be from unnatural causes and according totradition they cannot be they could not beburied in the village graveyard, Christianityor no Christianity. Some younger onesprotested, ‘How can you say that? They weremembers of our church and sang in the choir’.The old ones countered this by saying, ‘Sowhat, we are still Nagas aren’t we? And forus some things never change’. The debatewent on for some time until a sort ofcompromise was reached: they would beburied just outside the boundary of thegraveyard to show that their fellow villagershad not abandoned their remains to a remoteforest site. But there was a stipulation: noheadstones would be erected for any of them.

Today these gravesites are two tinygrassy knolls on the perimeter of the villagegraveyard and if one is familiar with thehistory of the village, particularly about whathappened on that dreadful Sunday thirty oddyears ago, one can easily miss these twomounds trying to stay above ground level. Theearth may one day swallow them up or ripthem open to reveal the charred bones. Noone knows what will happen to these graveswithout headstone or even to those withelaborately decorated concrete structuresinside the hallowed ground of the propergraveyard, housing masses of bones of thosewho died ‘natural’ deaths. But the story ofwhat happened to the ones beneath the grassyknolls without the headstones, especially ofthe young girl whose last song died with herlast breadth, lived on in the souls of thosewho survived the darkest day of the village.

And what about the Captain and hisband of rapist who thought they had burnt


all the evidence of their crime? No one knowsfor sure. But the underground network, whichseems able to ferret out the deadliest of secrets,especially about perpetrators of exceptionalcruelty on innocent villagers, managed notonly to piece together the events of that blackSunday, but also to ascertain the identity ofthe Captain. After several years of oftenfrustrating intelligence gathering, he wastraced to a military hospital in a big city wherehe was being kept in a maximum-security cellof an insane asylum.

P.S. It is a cold night in December andin a remote village, an old storyteller is sittingby the hearth-fire with a group of studentswho have come home for the winter holidays.They love visiting her to listen to her stories,but tonight granny is not her usual chirpyself; she looks much older and seems to beagitated over something. One of the boys asksher whether she is not felling well and tellsher that if so, they can come back anothernight. But instead of answering the question,the old woman starts talking and tells themthat on certain nights a peculiar wind blowsthrough the village, which seems to startfrom the region of the graveyard and whichsounds like a hymn. She also tells them thattonight is that kind of a night. At first theyoungsters were skeptical and tell her thatthey cannot hear anything and that suchthings are not possible, but the old womanrebukes them by saying that they are notpaying attention to what is happeningaround them. She tells them that theyoungsters of today have forgotten to listento the voice of the earth and the wind. Theyfeel chastised and make a show of stainingtheir ears to listen more attentively and totheir utter surprise; they hear the beginningof a low hum in the distance. They listen forsome time and tell her, almost in triumph,that they can hear only an eerie sound. ‘No’,the storyteller almost shouts, ‘Listen carefully.Tonight is the anniversary of that dreadfulSunday’. There is a death-like silence in theroom and some of them begin to look uneasybecause they too had heard vague rumours

of army atrocities that took place in thevillage on a Sunday long before they wereborn. Storyteller and audience strain to listenmore attentively and suddenly a strange thinghappen: as the winds whirls past the house,it increases in volume and for the briefest ofmoments seems to hover above the house.Then it resumes its whirling as thoughhurrying away to other regions beyondhuman habitation. The young people arestunned because they hear the new elementin the volume and a certain uncanny liltlingers on in the wake of its departure. Theold woman jumps up from her seat andlooking at each one in turn asks, ‘You heardit, didn’t you? Didn’t I tell you? It wasApenyo’s last song’ and she hums a tunesoftly, almost to herself. The youngsterscannot deny that they heard the note but arepuzzled because they do not know what sheis talking about. As the old woman standsapart humming the tune, they look at herwith wonder. There is a peculiar glow on herface and she seems to have changed into anew self, more alive and animated thanearlier. After a while a young girl timidlyapproaches her and asks, ‘Grandmother,what are you talking about? Whose lastsong?’

The old storyteller whips around andsurveys the group as though seeing them forthe first time. She then heaves a deep sighand with infinite sadness in her voice spreadsher arms wide and whispers, ‘You have notheard that song? You do not know aboutApenyo? Then come and listen carefully…’

Thus on a cold December night in aremote village, an old storyteller gathers theyoung of the land around the leaping flamesof a hearth and squats on the bare earthamong them to pass on the story of that BlackSunday when a young and beautiful singersang her last song even as one more Nagavillage began weeping for her ravaged andruined children.

Courtesy : “These Hills Called Home :Stories from a War Zone”


THE kantha or, asit is increasinglyreferred to now, thenakshi kantha, is animportant women’sdomestic art ofBengal. It is made allover Bangladeshexcept in the south-eastern ChittagongHill Tracts region.Layers of oldgarments such assaris, lungis anddhotis are puttogether and reconstituted into objects offunctional, ritual, or ceremonial use. Bordersand motifs are embroidered in variations ofthe running stitch with coloured thread,traditionally drawn from the borders of oldsaris. The empty spaces are stitched withwhite yarn to create an effect of ripples. Inmost Bengali families, small kanthas made ofsoft, old cloth, are used to wrap babies.Husbands or sons who leave home to workon land or water almost always carry withthem a kantha made by their mothers or wives.The kantha symbolizes the affection of themaker for the recipient and, being made ofrags, is also believed to grant protection fromthe evil eye. Kanthas form part of the dowryof brides in certain parts of Bangladesh.

However, this traditional craft was notin the public eye until the mid-1980s. Thougha chance remark had interested me in thekantha and I had gone on to study it in

The Refining of a Domestic Art :Surayia Rahman

By NIAZ ZAMAN NIAZ ZAMAN NIAZ ZAMAN NIAZ ZAMAN NIAZ ZAMAN and CA CA CA CA CATHY STEVULAKTHY STEVULAKTHY STEVULAKTHY STEVULAKTHY STEVULAK

museums and inareas associatedwith the craft, it wasmore or less anecessary domesticskill to make objectsof personal use.The Liberation Warin 1971 had leftmany womendestitute. After theindependence ofBangladesh, therewere attempts toprovide work for

such women by drawing upon their traditionalneedlework skills. This encouraged the revivalof the kantha. Karika, a newly set-uphandicrafts cooperative, offered some kanthaitems for sale: “carpet” kanthas, pieces workedwith cross stitches on red material, and a fewdress items embellished by anarasi, a spacedrunning stitch resembling the Holbein stitch.Aarong, run at that time by the MennoniteCentral Committee, also had a few pieces withlight kantha embroidery. But that was all. JasimUddin’s poem had become better known thanthe article itself, so that when the averageBengali spoke of the nakshi kantha or heardthe term, it was the poem that was referred toor understood, not the quilt so lovingly andpainstakingly put together by the women ofBengal. This article Presents that how aprivate, domestic craft turned into arepresentative Bangladeshi art form and therole of a few women in making this change.


In “Organising Women’s Employmentthrough Kantha Production,” HameedaHossain describes how kantha making wasset up soon after Bangladesh becameindependent. Attempts to rehabilitate womenin 1972 led, particularly in districts with astrong kantha tradition such as Jessore,Kushtia, Faridpur, and Rajshahi, to setting upcottage industries and attempting to marketkanthas as commercial products This attemptto revive kanthas was, however, notimmediately successful. Hameeda Hossain,Perveen Ahmad, Ruby Ghuznavi, Lila AmirulIslam, who were closely associated withKarika in its initial stages, pulled out thekantha, so to speak, from the closed trunks inwhich it had so long lain and displayed it atthe outlet. Karika was followed by Aarong –the outlet for the Mennonite Church Counciland then for Bangladesh Rural AdvancementCommittee (BRAC) – and Kumudini.

However, the catalyst for the kantharevival was the setting up of the Pan PacificSonargaon Hotel. In “Kantha and JamdaniRevival in Bangladesh,” Martha Alter Chen,who worked with BRAC from 1975 to 1980,describes in detail the role of BRAC in helpingto revive the kantha at Jamalpur. She noteshow BRAC attempted to develop the women’straditional skill and how most of the womendid not stitch anything more than “the mostrudimentary quilts” . However, furtherdiscussion led to the women bringing outquilts that their mothers had made. Chen goeson to note how once they “knew the womenpossessed the skill and shared the tradition,although the link with the more designedkanthas had been broken”, they started workon reviving the kantha. They realized that atJamalpur a certain type of kantha was beingmade which differed from the more heavilyworked kanthas in museums. As Chen pointsout, “This Jamalpur variety, presumably amore recent Muslim expression, is lightlyworked in narrow borders of patterned – orthreaded – running stitches derived from andnamed after agricultural products (paddystalk, date branch), insects or animals (ant,

scorpion, fish), or nature (waves)”.In a discussion with Cathy, Chen

described the role of Surayia Rahman in thekantha revival. One of the pieces on displayat the five-star hotel was designed by Surayia.Chen describes how she knew SurayiaRahman as an artist and how she showedSurayia some photographs of kanthas fromthe Kramrisch collection. Together, they choseelements to include in a nakshi kantha wallhanging for Sonargaon. Surayia produced asketch based on these elements. The sketchwas stencilled and enlarged. The women atJamalpur then embroidered a sample(approximately 2 feet by 4 feet). The hotelapproached BRAC to commission it toproduce a large decorative nakshi kantha,based on the sample. However, the work wasfinally done by Kumudini.

At Kumudini, Sister Mike helpedneedlewomen and their traditional needleworkskills. The true kantha phor or stitch is not adarning stitch. The stitches, which have topenetrate all the layers of the cloth, have tofall slightly ahead or behind the previous rows.It is only thus that the characteristic ripplesof the kantha can be produced. The womenwere also taught to use the weave runningstitch to create border patterns replicating thepar patterns of sari borders. But, apart fromacquiring traditional kantha skills, it appearsthat Sister Mike also taught them a filling stitchto fill in large expanses of colour.

While workers at Kumudini when Italked to them when I was revising my kanthabook spoke of this stitch as the Kashmiri stitchor bhorat – which simply means filling – Ilearned later that it is what is known as theRomanian stitch. In traditional kanthas, largeexpanses of colour are filled in by typicalkantha stitches: the kantha stitch, darningstitches, either minute pin-dot stitches or aninterwoven darning stitch, kaitya – the bentstitch – or chatai or pati phor– the mat stitch.Workers also learned a fourth stitch: the stemor dal, to outline motifs. In older kanthas eitherthe back stitch – used to stitch garments byhand – or a double row of close running


stitches is worked. The result of Sister Mike’sintervention helped make possible the largeSonargaon pieces but also reduced the endlessvariety of stitches used in kanthas to thesefour – five, if we include the Jamalpur par orborder patterns. Surayia Rahman’s piece wasembroidered using the bhorat. Instead of usingthe kantha stitch for the background, thebackground was embroidered in the darningstitch that eliminates the ripple effect oftraditional kanthas.

As a matter of fact, there are three typesof kanthas – the Jamalpur variety, SurayiaRahman’s nakshi tapestry, and Razia Quadir’srural designs – that dominate the kantha scenetoday in Bangladesh. While Jamalpur work,as Chen has pointed out, is lightly worked,Surayia Rahman’s nakshi tapestry makes useof very close embroidery alternating withlightly worked areas. The piece designed byRazia was planned with the idea that it wouldmake use of a variety of stitches found inkanthas. Things, however, did not turn outexactly as Razia had planned. Sister Mike alsointervened in Razia Quadir’s design. RaziaQuadir had briefly taken up fine arts atSantiniketan and then practiced for anothersix months at the Fine Arts Academy run byLady Ranu Mukherjee in Kolkata. However,for personal reasons Razia was unable tocontinue. Moving with her family to Dhaka,she joined Aarong as a designer. At this time,Aarong was still being run by the MennoniteCentral Committee, but would soon betransferred to BRAC. Among other things,Razia designed small kantha pieces forAarong. She was also commissioned to workon two designs for Sonargaon : a triptychusing lotus motifs and a piece with a ruralscene, both of which are displayed in theSonargaon lobby.

Kanthas are traditionally associatedwith marriages and for this piece Raziaplanned a central wedding motif with apalanquin, a bride and groom seated side byside as well as the happy couple holdinghands, along with other rural motifs. On bothsides of the piece she also designed two

mosques, with the Bangladeshi Islamic culturein as mind. Mosques are also a very commonsight all over Bangladesh. When she designedthe piece, Razia also planned that it would beworked in traditional kantha stitches, anddesigned feathery and light stitches to suggestthe type of stitch to be used. This piece, aswell as motifs drawn from other kanthas thatshe did for Aarong, is included in SayyadaR.Ghuznavi’s Naksha. Razia signed herdrawing “Ritu,” the name she used for hercreative work. However, Sister Mike had themosques drawn by the American nun andalso had some of the other motifs changed.She also suggested perhaps the use of the patiphor for embroidering the piece. The piece asembroidered thus lacks the delicate look ofthe design Razia had originally designed. In1981, Aarong was taken over by BRAC.During the changeover, earlier employees hadto retake their interviews. A disagreementover salary led to Razia Quadir’s leavingAarong. However, her designs continue to bereplicated – but with the use of the pati phorthat was employed exclusively for the piece.

Surayia’s role in refining domestickantha embroidery came to public light withthe kantha that she designed for Pan PacificSonargaon. Prior to this textile art piece inthe hotel, Surayia had imagined kantha as anart form for the wall as one can see in herpaintings of kantha that pre-date her workwith threads.

What had inspired Surayia to think ofkantha in a new direction – as fine art to lookup at rather than for household use?

As a child in Calcutta, Surayia’s mothertaught her embroidery, but not kanthastitching. Surayia had little formal schoolingbecause of the tuberculosis epidemic, and shetaught herself to draw and paint in everyspare moment. Statues of figures that adornedthe parks and roads inspired her, and shedrew the life of the people who she observedon her travels with her father and hermeanderings about Calcutta with her bearer.A professor noticed Surayia’s artistic talentand invited her to enroll in Calcutta School of


Art, but Surayiacould not attenddue to communalriots. Surayia’sparents marriedher at 17 years ofage and shemoved with herhusband toDhaka, then inEast Pakistan, in1950

To supporther growing familyand for 18 years,Surayia soldvarious forms of her art at the Women’sVoluntary Association shop in Dhaka: dolls,stationery, and scrolls with folk designs.Following the War of Independence and thebirth of Bangladesh in 1971, Surayia continuedwith her art, focusing on oil painting. Shealso experimented by painting alponas withmud on cloth, and rural scenes that simulatedthe running stitch of kantha with paint andbrush strokes. She wondered what her folkdesigns and stories would look like on cloth,and why kantha could not be considered inthe public’s mind as an art form. In her mind,if kantha could go on the wall and be seenlike a painting, perhaps it would be givenmore value. She envisioned kantha as someof the finest tapestries in the world, stories oncloth to look like a painting. Her style becameknown as “kantha tapestry.

Surayia’s chance to design kantha forstitches to be displayed on a wall came whenMartha Chen of BRAC invited Surayia todesign an artwork for Pan Pacific SonargaonHotel in 1979. Martha brought photographsof old kanthas from the Philadelphia Museumof Art and Surayia designed a sample for thewall of the hotel. One can see the similarity ofthe images between the two works, yetSurayia’s brought her own artistic ideas tothe piece as well. When Niaz asked Surayiawhy one of the gentlemen in the piece wasrising from his chair, Surayia replied, “He is

rising from hischair in ecstasy ofthe dancers.” For35 years, the finalwork, embroideredby womenworking withKumudini, hasbeen in its originallocation on themezzanine of thehotel , across fromthe elevators wherecountless peoplemove quickly pastit every day. This

artwork’s significance in the history of kantharevival is little known, as is Surayia andothers’ role in its creation.

Following the Sonargaon commission,Surayia and a Canadian expatriate living inDhaka, Maureen Berlin, discussed possibilitiesfor creating “kantha tapestry” to providelivelihoods for impoverished women. Manywomen were losing jobs in the jute industryas exports were declining. Maureen workedat Corr - The Jute Works organization andhad become friends with Surayia through herart. She invited Surayia to teach two youngwomen to embroider a design at her office.Surayia used one of the figures on the designshe had made for BRAC and embroidered itherself to show the women. She then trainedthe women to stitch the complete piece. Therewas great interest in this piece from potentialbuyers, and this market potential seeded theidea for to start a project that could offeryoung women a possibility for a sustainablelivelihood. The concept was to produce highquality wall hangings and charge a marketprice significantly higher than the price fortraditional kantha, and where the sale of theworks would provide enough income for self-sufficiency of the women – mostly singlemothers – and their children.

In March 1982, Surayia and Maureenstarted the Skill Development forUnderprivileged Women (SDUW) project on


a limited scale, initially with four women. TheCanadian High Commission (MissionAdministered Funds) provided a grant of CAD15,000 for a pilot project for 6 months toexpand the project for 50 women. Maureenwas the donor’s representative and ProjectDirector; Surayia was the Project Designer.

Surayia provided the designs, selectedcolor combinations, and supervisedembroidery and quality control. She developeda process for transferring her designs to cloth,and washing and stretching the embroideredpieces for final sale. Oversight by an artist forthe entire process of a “team” artwork hadnot been done before. In her earliest pieces,Surayia used cotton cloth as a backgroundbut soon moved to the use of silk backgroundto reinforce the image of kantha as art. Sheused local materials: several layers of cloth,the upper layer being silk woven in Rajshahi,and thread made from bamboo, processed andspun at the Karnaphuli Rayon and ChemicalsLtd. factory at Chandragona, in theChittagong Hill Tracts. The running stitch andfilling stitch (introduced by Sister Mike) wereprevalent in her pieces.

Surayia had a taste of kanthaembroidery from her BRAC commission forPan Pacific Sonargaon. With the help of theembroiderers of SDUW, she now had thepossibility to expand her repertoire of art to“kantha tapestry.” Her paintings of kanthawere now evolving to the next level – thistime drawings on cloth to be “painted” institches. Just as Surayia’s early work forWomen’s Voluntary Association focused onfolk motifs, so did Bengali traditions andvillage life form the basis for her first textilecreations. The Boat Race, one of her earliestworks, brings together Surayia’s observationsof this popular water sport with folk motifsand vignettes of peoples’ lives.

The frames of Surayia’s works appearsimilar to the wide frames of some of the olderkanthas that Surayia may have seen inmuseums. However, frames had a particularlysignificance to Surayia as, before she had seenkantha, she had been exposed to framed

calligraphy in her older sister’s home. As ayoung girl, she had often elaborated framesaround her drawings. Upon her arrival inDhaka, Surayia met Jasim Uddin, the Bengalipoet who had written Nakshi Kanthar Math,or “Field of the Embroidered Quilt.” JasimUddin became a family friend, and his poetry.Surayia also brought her fascination withregional history into the stories of her kanthaartworks. A German expatriate living inDhaka in the 1980s, Andreas Falk, showedSurayia old photographs of scenes of theBritish Raj and encouraged her to draw storiesof her memories as one of the last witnessesof British rule in Bengal. Her pre-colonialdesigns are influenced by the stories that herparents told her of their Moghul ancestry.Surayia’s designs and the fine embroidery ofthe woman of SDUW quickly became verypopular. The Government of Bangladeshpresented the works as State gifts, inBangladesh and abroad. The project receivedmany visitors, mainly foreigners, and thus thework started to spread around the world.Surayia’s “kantha tapestry” style becameavailable in many local shops as well.

For reasons that are yet unclear, Surayiawas terminated from the SDUW project fouryears after its founding. A publication producedshortly after Surayia’s termination andfeaturing primarily her designs makes nomention of Surayia or her role in the foundingof the organization. Surayia’s designs wereretained by SDUW; the project applied to theCopyright Board to have designs registered bythe SDUW project. Surayia’s appeal to theBoard was decided in favor of SDUW, and shethen appealed to the High Court. The decisionof the High Court was to register copyright infavor of Surayia for only one of her designsand in favor of SDUW for nineteen designs.

Surayia’s designs evolved again in thepost-SDUW period. Surayia formed her ownsmall enterprise, Arshi, at the request of someof the artisans of the SDUW project whowanted to continue working with her. Sheused some designs that she still had at homeand made new designs. With the advice of a


lawyer to change her designs slightly, sheadded elements to some original designs, andchanged the typically horizontal, later in Arshidays it is vertical. Surayia’s eldest daughter,Annie, had helped with Arshi until she diedin a tragic accident in 1994. She was a vitaladvocate for Surayia with regard to thecopyright case. During the Arshi period, theartisans embroidered in their homes ratherthan in a central workshop, as had been thecase in the SDUW project. From within Dhakaand from villages at long distance such asKhulna, the women traveled to and fromSurayia’s home for guidance, to receiveartwork and supplies, and to bring theirfinished pieces for sale.

Much of the marketing of the finishedpieces was with the assistance of volunteers,primarily expatriates of the United States andCanada living in Bangladesh. These volunteersacted as focal points for orders and held salesin their homes. Mrs. Ses Purvis establishedthis system in the late 1980s, and this salesoutreach carried on from volunteer tovolunteer until Surayia retired from her work.Surayia also received special commissions forunique pieces, such as for the opening of theUS Embassy in Dhaka in 1989. The USEmbassy piece portrays President H. M.Ershad of Bangladesh and AmbassadorWillard Ames De Pree of the United Statesflanking Teresita C. Schaffer, Deputy AssistantSecretary of State for the Near East and SouthAsia cutting the ribbon. Above them, is apicture of the embassy and below this, on theright and left, are pictures of a village fair(Poush Mela) in Bangladesh, where Muslimsand Hindus enjoy a day together. On theupper right-hand corner is a picture of AhsanManzil, the palace of the Dhaka nawabs. Atthe very top are flags of the US andBangladesh signifying the friendship of thetwo nations, and in the centre an insignia ofthe United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment (USAID). In keeping with otherpieces designed by Surayia, there is anattractive floral border all around. In the lowerleft and right hand corners are kadamba

flowers – common to traditional kanthas andassociated with Krishna, the god of love. Inaddition, there are other floral motifs –reminiscent of the central lotus motif intraditional kanthas.

In 2007, over 25 years since theSonargaon commission and replicating over100 of her designs on thousands of wallhangings, Surayia found it painful to hold apencil and draw. She transferred her goodwilland designs to the Salesian Sisters ofBangladesh, who continue to oversee the workand sales for the artisans of Arshi-Salesian.Over the years, Surayia had also trainedwomen in other projects to embroider herdesigns, and the SDUW project also continuesto make and market some of her designs.Rather than continuing to repeat her designs,Surayia now wants other artists to stepforward and work with kantha, creating theirown stories and stitches on cloth and bringingkantha to yet another level. Surayia did nothave an artist protégé working with her, andmany artisans have left for jobs in industriesincluding garments, banking and shrimpfarming. The sustainability of “kanthatapestry” is at a crossroads, despite its currentubiquity.

In conclusion, the refining of thedomestic art of kantha took place as a resultof various influences: the resurgence ofnational pride and a quest to revive traditionalcrafts, the support of governments,corporations and non-governmentalorganizations for preservation of culture andwomen’s work, and the intervention ofBangladeshi and foreign individuals who sawopportunity to bring a chance for a brightereconomic future for underprivileged womenand their communities. This refinement ofkantha was also made possible becausewomen from the highest to the lowesteconomic strata of society joined hands tocreate beauty and an artist who, despiteobstacles, dared to keep experimenting withart and to share her creative gifts with others.

Courtesy : http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/886


“EDUCATION is increasingly a casualty inAfghanistan,” a briefing note by theNorwegian Refugee Council (NRC) recentlyobserved. The note was in reaction to a larger,comprehensive report by the Global Coalitionto Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA),titled ‘Education Under Attack’, which studiesthe impact of conflict on education in 28countries. According to the report,Afghanistan, along with Nigeria, suffered themost number of attacks against students andeducators. Indeed, as conflict in the countrysurges, educational facilities find themselvesthreatened or caught in the crossfire. In thelatest such attack, a suicide bombing inside aclassroom in Kabul on Wednesday killed 48people, many of them students preparing forthe national university entrance exams.Claimed by the Islamic State (IS), the attacktargeted the minority Shia Hazara community.In June, some schools for girls were forced toshut following threats from the IS. Separately,over a 100 schools in Logar province werebriefly closed, allegedly by local Talibangroups. Last month, the Malikyar Hotak HighSchool in Khogyani district of the easternprovince of Nangarhar came under attack,resulting in the beheading of three staffmembers. “Threats — and actual violence anddestruction — to schools and staff inNangarhar Province are paralysing theeducational sector and quickly reversingdevelopment gains,” William Carter, head ofthe Afghanistan programme at the NRC, toldthis writer, adding that the situation has had“a profoundly distressing effect on children’s

Militants’ War on Educationin Afghanistan

By RUCHI KUMARRUCHI KUMARRUCHI KUMARRUCHI KUMARRUCHI KUMAR, INDIA

sense of safety”. Aid organisations workingwith local educational groups have alsoconfirmed that not only are school andeducational facilities at risk of attacks but alsothat the overall environment has discouragedstudent attendance. The NRC observed thatschools in the region were “increasingly atrisk on military, ideological, and political faultlines, with attacks increasing in easternAfghanistan”.NOT SAFE AT SCHOOL

In its own research, the NRC found thata majority of the surveyed children did not feelsafe at school. It discovered that at least 12%had experienced attacks on their schools and15% had experienced shooting very near theirschool buildings. Another 36% were frightenedabout risks of kidnapping or attack en route toschools and many of them had missed lecturesand exams because of threats from armedgroups. “This also undermines parents’attitudes to the value of education,” Mr. Carterelaborated. Meanwhile, as the much-delayedparliamentary elections approach, schoolfacilities used as voting registration and electioncenters are increasingly at risk from insurgentattacks. An assault on a school that was beingused as a National ID registration centre inKabul resulted in 60 deaths in April. Currently,according to the UN, over 60% of the 7,000voter registration and polling centers areschools, with activities taking place duringclassroom hours.

The deteriorating situation has also

Continued on page 17


Blasphemy, Pakistan’s New ReligionBy MOHAMMED HANIFMOHAMMED HANIFMOHAMMED HANIFMOHAMMED HANIFMOHAMMED HANIF, PAKISTAN

AFTER spending eight years on death row,Asia Bibi, a Christian, was acquitted byPakistan’s Supreme Court this week. For manyhere it seemed like a good day. The country’shighest court had finally delivered justice andreleased a woman whose life has already beendestroyed by years in solitary confinement.The court decision quoted Islamic scriptures,bits of letters by the Prophet Muhammad anda smattering of Shakespeare. A great wrongwas righted.

And that’s why Pakistan’s new religiousright, which has rebranded itself as theprotector of the Prophet’s honor, hasthreatened to bring the country to a halt.

Posters were put up with fatwas againstthe judges who had issued the Bibi decision.The judges’ guards and cooks were urged tokill them before evening; anyone who didwould earn great rewards in the afterlife.Pakistani conservatives, emboldened by gainsin the general election this summer, goadedthe generals into rebelling against the armychief, whom they accused of being an Ahmadi,a persecuted religious minority. They calledPrime Minister Imran Khan a “Jew child.”

Khan, in an impromptu address to thenation, seemed appalled at the language andthe implication: He said his government hadalready done more than any other for Islamand warned protesters not to take on the state.But the mobs will settle for nothing short ofBibi’s public hanging.

Bibi probably didn’t even know whatblasphemy was when she was accused ofcommitting it. There are many versions of whatled to the charges against her, but all revolvearound a verbal altercation with Muslim

neighbors in Punjab, an eastern province, aboutdrinking water from the same vessel. SomeMuslims won’t share utensils with non-Muslims, a belief that has more to do with(Hindu) casteism than (Islamic) scripture. Wecan never know what she may or may nothave said because repeating blasphemy is alsoblasphemy, and writing it down may be evengreater blasphemy. So let’s not go there.

We do know what happened next. Bibiwas convicted of blasphemy in 2010 and, afterwhat her lawyers called a forced confession,was sentenced to death by one court. Anothercourt later confirmed the sentence. Thegovernor of Punjab Province, Salman Taseer,visited her in prison and promised to lobby fora presidential pardon. He was assassinated byone of his police bodyguards who believed thegovernor had committed blasphemy byquestioning the country’s blasphemy laws. ThePakistani media was understanding. Of thebodyguard’s feelings.

A federal minister who happened to beChristian and spoke up for Bibi also wasassassinated. Although nobody has actuallybeen hanged by the state for blasphemy so far,the mere accusation can be an open invitationto kill the accused. Last year, the universitystudent Mashal Khan was lynched byclassmates after he was accused of puttingsome blasphemous posts on social media. Theywere nothing more than a campus rebel’spersonal thoughts, some revolutionary poetryand musings about the meaning of life.

Also last year, five bloggers were pickedup by intelligence agencies in what seemedlike coordinated raids. They had all writtenagainst the army or its security policies. Some


had written in prose, some in poetry; others inFacebook rants. As their disappearance lasted,some people on social media and TV anchorsclose to the army started accusing them ofhaving committed blasphemy. They wereeventually released by their abductors, but somuch poison had been spread about them thatthey had to leave the country.

Ahead of the last election the same peoplewho are now demanding the army chief’s headlaid siege to the capital. They were protestingagainst the government for changing one wordin the oath that you are required to take as amember of parliament. This blasphemy brigadewas egged on by the media and oppositionpolitical parties. Khan, who was the oppositionleader at the time, said that his followers wererearing to join the protest. Gen. Qamar JavedBajwa, the army’s top commander, said publiclythat it couldn’t be expected to use force againstits own people, an honorable sentiment withlittle precedent in Pakistan’s history.

After a botched police operation, the armytriumphantly negotiated with the protesters,and an agreement was signed conceding manyof their demands. The law minister was fired.The word change in the law was changed back.A general was seen distributing 1,000-rupeenotes to demonstrators and patting them on theback: Are we not with you? Aren’t we all partof the same brotherhood?

Now those brothers have returned to biteour military and civilian establishment. Anarm around the shoulder and some petty cash

may be a good law-and-order strategy in somepotentially explosive situations. But not whenyou play politics with the Prophet’s honor.

It’s almost certain that Bibi will not beable to live in the country after her acquittal.And a lot of people like her are still languishingin cells waiting to be tried. There’s a literatureprofessor, Junaid Hafeez, who has been in jailfor the last five years facing bogus blasphemycharges. After he was arrested, his lawyer wasshot dead for defending him. His current lawyercan’t be named.

Hafeez has to be kept in solitaryconfinement to protect him from otherprisoners who might take it upon themselveshimself to avenge the Prophet’s good name.

Now that the prime minister himself is inthe righteous’s sight — protecting a blasphemermay be even graver blasphemy — and a maneven more powerful than him, Bajwa, has beendeclared kafir, an infidel, one can only hopetheir respective institutions won’t use theblasphemy card against their perceivedenemies. There were about a dozen reportedcases of blasphemy between 1927 and 1986,but there have been more than 4,000 sincethen, when the laws were reinforced. Pakistaniliberals are asking the government and thearmy to go and crush the mullahs and take thecountry back. It might be more useful to goafter these blasphemy laws that seem to beturning all of us into blasphemers.

Courtesy : https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/opinion/pakistan-bibi-blasphemy-death-sentence.html

Militants’ War on Education in AfghanistanContinue from page 15

affected the delivery of educational aid. “Thislevel of insecurity has made it very difficultfor us to assure the safety of both ourbeneficiaries and our own staff,” Mr. Cartersaid, adding that they are evaluating differentapproaches to ensure that children areprotected and that their learning can becontinued in the wake of deepening insecurity.

“However, we are making adjustmentsintended to reduce the likelihood and limitthe impact of such incidents on children andstaff,” he said.

Courtesy : https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/militants-war-on-education-in-afghanistan/

article24726454.ece


INDIA’s agrarian crisis has gone beyond theagrarian. It’s a crisis of society. Maybe even acivilizational crisis, with perhaps the largestbody of small farmers and labourers on earthfighting to save their livelihoods. The agrariancrisis is no longer just a measure of loss of land.Nor only a measure of loss of human life, jobsor productivity. It is a measure of our own lossof humanity. Of the shrinking boundaries ofour humaneness. That we have sat by andwatched the deepening misery of thedispossessed, including the death by suicide ofwell over 300,000 farmers these past 20 years.While some – ‘leading economists’ – havemocked the enormous suffering around us,even denying the existence of a crisis. TheNational Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has

A Long March of theDispossessed to Delhi

By PPPPP. SAINA. SAINA. SAINA. SAINA. SAINATHTHTHTHTH, INDIA

not published data on farmers’ suicides fortwo years now. For some years before that,fraudulent data logged in by major statesseverely distorted the agency’s estimates. Forinstance, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal andmany others claimed ‘zero suicides’ by farmersin their states. In 2014, 12 states and 6 UnionTerritories claimed ‘zero suicides’ among theirfarmers. The 2014 and 2015 NCRB reportssaw huge, shameless addles in the methodology– aimed at bringing down the numbers.

And yet they keep rising.Meanwhile, protests by farmers and

labourers are on the rise. Farmers have beenshot dead – as in Madhya Pradesh. Derided orcheated in agreements, as in Maharashtra. Anddevastated by demonetisation, as in just about


everywhere. Anger and pain are mounting inthe countryside. And not just among farmersbut amongst labourers who and the MNREGAbeing dismantled by design. Amongstfisherfolk, forest communities, artisans,exploited anganwadi workers. Amongst thosewho send their children to government schools,only to and the state itself killing its ownschools. Also, small government employees andtransport and public sector workers whosejobs are on the anvil.

And the crisis of the rural is no longerconcerned to the rural. Studies suggest anabsolute decline in employment in the countrybetween 2013-14 and 2015-16.

The 2011 Census signaled perhaps thegreatest distress driven migrations we’ve seenin independent India. And millions of poorfeeing the collapse of their livelihoods havemoved out to other villages, rural towns, urbanagglomerations, big cities – in search of jobsthat are not there. Census 2011 logs nearly 15million fewer farmers (‘main cultivators’) thanthere were in 1991. And now and many once-proud food-producers working as domesticservants. The poor are now up for exploitationby both urban and rural elites.

The government tries its best not to listen.It’s the same with the news media.

When the media do skim over the issues,they mostly reduce them to demands for a‘loan waiver.’ In recent days, they’ve recognisedthe minimum support price (MSP) demand offarmers – the Cost of Production (CoP2) + 50per cent. But the media don’t challenge thegovernment’s claims of already havingimplemented this demand. Nor do theymention that the National Commission onFarmers (NCF; popularly known as theSwaminathan Commission) flagged a bunchof other, equally serious issues. Some of theNCF’s reports have remained in Parliament 12years without discussion. Also the media, whiledenouncing loan waiver appeals, won’tmention that corporate and businessmenaccount for the bulk of the non-performingassets drowning the banks.

Perhaps the time has come for a very

large, democratic protest, alongside a demandfor Parliament to hold a three week or 21-dayspecial session dedicated entirely to the crisisand related issues. A joint session of bothhouses. On what principles would that sessionbe based? The Indian Constitution. Specifically,the most important of its Directive Principlesof State Policy. That chapter speaks of a needto “minimise the inequalities in income” and“endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status,facilities, opportunities….” The principles callfor “a social order in which justice, social,economic and political, shall inform all theinstitutions of the national life.”

The right to work, to education, to socialsecurity. The raising of the level of nutritionand of public health. The right to a betterstandard of living. Equal pay for equal workfor men and women. Just and humaneconditions of work. These are amongst themain principles. The Supreme Court has morethan once said the Directive Principles are asimportant as our Fundamental Rights.

An agenda for the special session? Somesuggestions that others concerned by thesituation can amend or add to:

3 Days : Discussion of the SwaminathanCommission report—12 years overdue. Itsubmitted five reports between December 2004and October 2006 that cover a multitude ofvital issues and not just MSP. Those include, toname a few: productivity, profitability,sustainability; technology and technologyfatigue; dryland farming, price shocks andstabilisation – and much more. We also need tohalt the privatisation of agricultural researchand technology. And deal with impendingecological disaster.

3 Days : People’s testimonies. Let victimsof the crisis speak from the floor of Parliament’scentral hall and tell the nation what the crisis isabout, what it has done to them and countlessmillions of others. And it’s not just about farming.

But how surging privatisation of healthand education has devastated the rural poor,indeed all the poor. Health expenditure is eitherthe fastest or second fastest growingcomponent of rural family debt. 3 days: Credit


crisis. The unrelenting rise of indebtedness.This has been a huge driving factor in thesuicide deaths of countless thousands offarmers, apart from devastating millions ofothers. Often it has meant loss of much or allof their land. Policies on institutional creditpaved the way for the return of themoneylender.

3 Days : The country’s mega water crisis.It’s much greater than a drought. Thisgovernment seems determined to push throughprivatisation of water in the name of ‘rationalpricing’. We need the right to drinking waterestablished as a fundamental human right –and the banning of privatization of this life-giving resource in any sector. Ensuring socialcontrol and equal access, particularly to thelandless.

3 Days : The rights of women farmers.The agrarian crisis cannot be resolved withoutengaging with the rights –including those ofownership – and problems of those who dothe most work in the fields and farms. Whilein the Rajya Sabha, Prof. Swaminathanintroduced the Women Farmers’ EntitlementsBill, 2011 (lapsed in 2013) that could stillprovide a starting point for this debate.

3 Days: The rights of landlesslabourers, both women and men. Withmounting distress migrations in manydirections, this crisis is no longer just rural.Where it is, any public investment made inagriculture has to factor in their needs, theirrights, their perspective.

3 Days : Debate on agriculture. Whatkind of farming do we want 20 years fromnow? One driven by corporate profit? Or

by communities and families for whom itis the basis of their existence? There are alsoother forms of ownership and control inagriculture we need to press for – like thevigorous sangha krishi (group farming) effortsof Kerala’s Kudumbashree movement. And wehave to revive the unfinished agenda of landreform. For all of the above debates to be trulymeaningful – and this is very important – everyone of them must focus, too, on the rights ofAdivasi and Dalit farmers and labourers.

While no political party would openlyoppose such a session, who will ensure itactually happens? The dispossessed themselves.

In March this year, 40,000 peasants andlabourers marched for a week from Nashik toMumbai making some of these very demands.An arrogant government in Mumbai dismissedthe marchers as ‘urban Maoists’ with whom itwould not talk. But caved in within hours ofthe multitude reaching Mumbai to encircle thestate legislative assembly. That was the ruralpoor sorting out their government.

The highly disciplined marchers struck arare chord in Mumbai. Not just the urbanworking class, but also the middle classes, evensome from the upper middle classes, steppedout in sympathy.

We need to do this at the national level –scaled up 25 times over. A Long March of theDispossessed – not just of farmers andlabourers, but also others devastated by thecrisis. And importantly, those not affected byit – but moved by the misery of fellow humanbeings. Those standing for justice anddemocracy. A march starting from everywherein the country, converging on the capital. NoRed Fort rallies, nor skulls at Jantar Mantar.That march should encircle Parliament –compel it to hear, listen and act. Yes, theywould Occupy Delhi.

It might take many months to get off theground, a gargantuan logistical challenge. Onethat has to be met by the largest and widestcoalition possible of farm, labour and otherorganisations. It will face great hostility fromthe rulers – and their media – who would seekto undermine it at every stage.

It can be done. Do not underestimate thepoor – it is they, not the chattering classes,who keep democracy alive. It would be one ofthe highest forms of democratic protest – amillion human beings or more showing up toensure their representatives perform. As aBhagat Singh, if alive, might have said of them:they could make the deaf hear, the blind seeand the dumb speak.

Courtesy : https://thewire.in/agriculture/


...Continued from previous issue

WE see, then, that psycho-analysts are idealist in theirapproach to the practicalproblems of living, and in noway take up an attitudedifferent from that of thegreat class-religions. For ifman’s subjective feelings of

misery, unease and unhappiness, are not dueto outer material causes but to Sin (as thereligions put it) or Complexes (as the analystputs it), then man’s misery, unhappiness andunease can be cured by casting out sin, byself-control, by salvation, by abreaction –whatever name one gives to a pure exerciseof will unaccompanied by organised effectiveaction. Indeed, many of the class-religionshave gone further in that they have developedorganisations for clearing up certain sectorsof misery by material action – societies to carefor the sick, for example.

If the root causes of broad areas ofhuman misery are due to the surroundings inwhich the Psyche develops, and the obstacles,possibilities, adaptations and attractionsoffered by the social relations of thatenvironment, then they can only be eliminatedby a material change, which will makepossible a change of heart. This view isopposed both to that of religion and ofpsycho-analysis.

Aside altogether from the question ofrevolution, if the strife between man’s instinctsand environment can be cured by “education,”by a mental self-change, why has mantroubled to evolve factories, clothes, houses,

CHAPTER : IX

The Psyche and Phantasy

By CHRISTOPHER CAUDWELL

cooking, language, art, religion, science andpolitical organisations? These are all productsof the struggle between the instincts andenvironment and are all unnecessary if Freudand the religious teachers are right, sinceman’s conflict could be resolved merely by hisbecoming conscious of its causes.

Of course, faced with such an obviousinstance as the hunger instinct, Freud couldnot maintain that its conflict with reality couldbe pacified by any means other than thematerial therapy of food. But the logical basisof his theory is certainly idealist or “yogi,”and it is this which makes Freudians treatart, one of the instruments of men’s freedom,as something childish and escapist intendency. They do not see that the humanconflict between man and Nature (of whichthe neurotic conflict is only a special form)drives men to free association, and that art isa necessity of this association, the meanswhereby it remains free, and because it is freereaches heights and depths inaccessible to acoerced association.

The whole of psycho-analytical writingflounders in the marsh of bourgeoisepistemology, where subject and object appearas mutually exclusive opposites under ahundred will-o-the-wisp disguises and wherethe problems of mind are insoluble preciselybecause in the society which generates thisdiscussion “mind” has moved away from“matter” – subject and object have ceased tointerpenetrate actively and so establish inpractice their theoretical identity of opposites.

What is consciousness?Unconsciousness? Instinct? Reality? Mind?Illusion? Understanding of these concepts is


evidently vital for a psychology – and it is notsurprising that Freudism, with its naiveRousseauistic idealism, cannot achieve asatisfactory psychology.

The individual is born with certaininstincts, evidenced in action (response tostimulus) and changed in that action(conditioned response), That conditioningincludes consciousness: memory, images,thoughts, percepts and recognitions are theconditioning of instincts.

But not all conditioning of instincts isconsciousness. It is important to understandthat there is nothing mysterious inunconscious mentation. The repetition whichis subtly different, the circling rhythm whichis a spiral, the reaction which is changedbecause of what has gone before, is notpeculiar to mind or life, but is a generalcharacteristic of the process of reality. The like,Space, is generated by the ingression of theunlike, Time. Only when this process evidencesitself in the sphere of life do we call it psychic;but then we have no reason to call it conscious,any more than the purposeful activities of theautonomous nervous system are conscious.The thing to be explained and accounted foras an intruder is not unconsciousness butconsciousness. Only our immediate experienceof it can give us grounds for accepting it.

As soon as a mentation becomesconscious, it makes a qualitative leap andenters the sphere of free will. Consciousmentations are different in quality fromunconscious precisely because they areconscious. Consciousness is a real materialquality and not an epiphenomenon; it is thequality of freedom in mentation.

The behaviourists argue that we haveno right to deduce consciousness in others,and that their actions can all be explaineddeterministically by the sufficient stimulus.Their argument as to the non-existence ofmind is sound as long as it remains in thesphere of theory, just as is the subjectiveidealist’s argument as to the non-existence ofmatter. It is disproved in practice. Awareourselves of a qualitative difference in actions

when they are associated with consciousthoughts, we find, in our active intercoursewith others, that their actions show similardifferences. In so far as we depend on theirconsciousness in our transactions with them,and these transactions are successful, we provethe reality of their consciousness.

This in itself gives us the clue to whatconsciousness is. Consciousness is the productof association: not of herd association whichis mediated by instincts, but of association foreconomic production which is mediatedprecisely by consciousness – by specificadaptations of the psychic instincts. We cannever prove consciousness in terms of thetheory of the common perceptual worldbecause it is entirely that world. In the sameway we can never prove not-consciousness(matter) because it is entirely not that world.

Objects detach themselves as objectsfrom the flux of perception in so far as theybecome objects for social men. The sun, a mereunrecognised source of phototropism foranimals, becomes a socially recognised objectfor man, ripener of harvest, measure of theworking day, clock and compass of thehunter. The field of perception is organisedinto figure and ground only in so far as figureshave significance for the conjoint action ofmen. Instinctual appetite is the basis of hisorganisation, but it is lifted to a higher plane,it becomes conscious, as soon as it is anorganisation for society.

This is equally true of our affectiveworld. This flowing penumbra of instinctivemusic only acquires a pattern, onlybecomes conscious, to the extent that social lifeitself organises feelings, sentiments, passions,enduring trends, aims and aspirations whichdraw their stability from the relations ofassociated men.

In the fashioning of consciousness thegreat instrument is language. It is languagewhich makes us consciously see the sun, thestars, the rain and the sea – objects whichmerely elicit responses from animals. It is thiswhich makes us capable of appreciating truthand beauty: for truth is a relation between a


perception of reality and the commonperceptual world, and beauty is a relationbetween a feeling-tone of reality and thecommon ego.

Thus we see that what makes thedifference between the unconscious brute thata man would be if reared like Mowgli by awolfish foster-mother, and the conscioushuman he in fact becomes in society, is theactive relation between his personal experienceof reality and the common perceptual worldand common affective ego. Science and artexpand and develop this world and this ego.They are not contained in them; they aresecreted in the whole complex of a workingsociety. Science and art may for variousreasons in some respect oppose or deny theperceptual reality and affective attitude givenin concrete social experience. In such a casescience or art seems to conflict with a man’sconsciousness.

The common world and the commonego are generated by the active struggle ofassociated men with Nature, as a livinghistorical development; and the consciousnessof an individual is formed in organicconnection with this struggle. Once again werepeat that the common perceptual world andthe common ego do not stamp a standardisedpattern on the genotype: like the society ofwhich they are products and reflections theyare the means whereby the genotype realisesits individual differences in the psychic sphere.

It is for this reason that consciousnessand conscience have so close a connection:for the conscience – the imprinted summaryof the ethical laws of society – is a specialintegration of the individual consciousness, justas truth, beauty and reality are otherintegrations, playing similar social roles.

This is not to say that there cannot be aconflict of conscience, divided aims and thelike. On the one hand man’s struggle withNature is never absolutely victorious, and justas “accidents,” like an earthquake or an attackof malaria, may reveal the relativity of anyvictory, so in the psychological spheremadness, murder, neuroses or melancholy

reveal that man’s adaptations do not extendto the full conquest either of himself or Nature.Man is not yet completely free. Theconsciousness is not completely integrated –different layers may have different trends.

In addition man’s struggle with Natureis complicated by contradictions generated inthe very instrument of his freedom, society.This gives rise to local stresses and strains,giant upheavals, revolutions, or the ruin anddecline of whole societies. This is necessarilyreflected in man’s consciousness – moralproblems; feelings of sin, worthlessness anddespair; widespread death thoughts; vastspiritual needs; loss of faith – these emotionalpangs are part of the travail of society.

In a primitive society where man is asyet undifferentiated, conscience andconsciousness are similarly simple, direct andhomogeneous, and for this very reason lackingin depth and vividness. Primitive communitiesseem to have “collective representations” anda participation mystique. When thisconsciousness is attacked, there is nocomplexity or balancing of forces to softenthe blow; the collapse is complete. Theprimitive who is once convinced that he hassinned or is bewitched will promptly die – afact well-attested by field anthropologists. Theshallowness of his consciousness is revealedin the simplicity of his dissociation, the easewith which his psyche can be precipitatedinto hysteria, his high degree of suggestibilityand the “all-or-none” nature of his emotionalreactions – all symptoms pointing to amentation more unconscious and instinctivethan that of “civilised” differentiated man.

We are born not merely primitivesbut brutes. Our instincts are not adaptedgenetically but by the social environment. Wehave already pointed out that this is the wholemeaning of consciousness. Because ourinstinctive adaptations are acquired, ourmentation presents different levels ofunconsciousness and is more or lessinstinctive. It has an outer layer of civilisation,below it a more primitive layer, and still lowera merely animal core. This has long been

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generally known; but it was the achievementof psycho-analysts, while in generalmisunderstanding the social basis ofconsciousness, to understand the importanceof unconscious mentation and to devise atechnique for probing it.

Because the interpenetration of subjectand object is complete, because life andexperience is always the struggle of theinstincts with the environment, all mentationnecessarily has in it a component of outerreality and an instinctual component. This isnot peculiar consciousness but is a feature ofall living responses. The fact that even theautonomous nervous system responds to andmay be conditioned by environmentalinfluences reveals that it too has a “reality”component in its mentation. Hence the wholefield of neural activity is interpenetrated bothwith environmental or acquired effects andinnate or instinctive effects. Previouspsychology was chiefly concerned withacquired effects – the “real things” in theconscious field: even the sentiments, feelingsand instincts of earlier psychology wereregarded objectively and figured as real things.Psycho-analysis therefore found a whole newfield to conquer – the exploration of theinstinctive or innate elements in mentationconsidered not objectively but in action, i.e. intheir own terms. Unfortunately they went tothe other extreme and rejected all the objectivecomponents, with the result that life reduceditself to a blind dynamic libido. This libidoseemed something preformed whichwandered into the world like a Christian soulincarnate, instead of arising from a process inreality itself.

When we divide man into instinct andenvironment, we must remember that man’sinstinct itself is the product of environmentaladaptation (natural selection) but that this isinborn biological adaptation, whereas man’sconscious adaptation is to the socialenvironment and is therefore acquired culturaladaptation. Conflicts may arise between thesetwo layers of adaptations – the biological orinstinctive, the cultural or conscious. In normallife each has its own sphere. Purely biologicaladaptations attend to man’s digestion, purelycultural adaptations to man’s design of ahouse; but in so far as they overlap a mutualdistortion may arise. Man’s digestion may beupset by an ugly house; his design of a housemay be done for money – i.e. to feed himself.Cooking becomes an art. Art a bread-and-butter activity. It is this distortion andoverlapping which psycho-analysis hasstudied. Since the biological instincts are closelyconnected with the generation of emotion andthe feeling-tone in consciousness (the exactconnection has not yet been satisfactorilyestablished), the study by psychoanalysis ofthe distortion of the consciousness (includingthe volition) by the instincts has been largelya study of the influence of emotionalassociations and complexes on men’s thoughtsand actions. And since we have alreadydiscussed the organisation of the affectiveelements of consciousness into a common egoby art, it is plain that the discoveries of psycho-analysis must be an important aid in theunderstanding of art.

to be continued...Courtesy—Illusion and Reality

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