South Asia Citizens Web

This a first fact-finding report about the terrible police firing that happened at the remote Narayanapatna police station in south Orissa on 20 November 2009. A leader of the Chasi Mulya Adivasi Sangha (Tribal Farmers’ association) was among the three killed. The CMAS has played a leading role in campaigns to prevent bauxite being mined from 2 or 3 mountains in south Orissa, understanding that when a mountain is mined for bauxite its water-holding capacity is killed and the land suffers an invasion of corporations that displaces tribal people from their land.

It is not an editor or a media house that is under threat. It is the right of free speech, the freedom to express one’s views, the freedom, within bounds of the law and decency, to cause offence.

Were dissent to die, democracy would be lifeless. Were free speech to end, the country would be akin to a prison. The very defence of the Shiv Sena speaks volumes. The tradition of trying to wrest the public space over to one group and deny others any voice at all is not new or novel to India or Maharashtra in particular.

The Indian political class of all religions including their caste categories is essentially lined up behind these two opposite types of Brahmins – secularists and supremacists.

At least this is what Mushrif’s book about Karkare’s mysterious death suggests in its core thesis.

Mushrif’s account of Karkare’s death on the first night of the gunbattle with terrorists hints at the possibility that the secular Brahmin had big enemies among Brahminist supremacists.

In defiance of the Myanmar Junta the representatives of the Ethnic nationalities and the Burman majority community had come together to fight for the lives of 34 Burmese freedom fighters, that democratic India had kept in jail for more than 12 years.

Goons of the Shiv Sena attacked IBN Network offices in Mumbai and Pune. Around 20-25 Sena activists barged into the office at Vikhroli carrying iron rods and baseball bats, slapped the receptionist and started beating up journalists, including women.

IBN Lokmat’s Editor-in-Chief Nikhil Wagle was also assaulted. The second attack on IBN’s office in Pune came within an hour of the first one in Mumbai. The Shiv Sena has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Mumbai is liberal to a fault in the sense that it has become tolerant in the extent of tolerating such violence. Majority of the attacks on the media, political leaders and institutions have been carried out by Shiv Sena. The Shiv Sena worship and encourage violence. So Mumbai’s youth become more and more involved in this and this is a very dangerous trend.