Remembering K. M. Bahauddin

K. M. Bahauddin, former Aligarh Muslim University Pro-Vice-Chancellor, has passed away. Heartfelt condolences to the family.

Bahauddin and I were classmates at the Kottapuram High School at Paravur more than 70 years ago.

He was Principal of the Regional Engineering College, Kozhikode, during the Emergency and had testified before the court in the Rajan case.

Kerala remiss in implementing Forest Rights Act: a letter to Brinda Karat

Mr T.Madhava Menon, former IAS officer who headed the Tribal Mission of Kerala and is an ardent supporter of the Adivasis’ struggles for justice, has asked Communist Party of India (Marxist) Politburo member Brinda Karat to examine “independently and sympathetically” how her party’s government is implementing the Tribal Rights Act in Kerala.

Madhava Menon, who is a Senior Fellow of the International School of Dravidian Linguistics, Thiruvananthapuram, made the suggestion in a letter he wrote to Ms Karat on Tuesday in response to a statement by her.

The following is the text of the letter:

Madam,

I have been concerned with the condition of Scheduled Tribes people, especially those living in the Forests of Kerala. I was therefore heartened to read the report in The Hindu, Thiruvananthapuram Edition, 15 Feb 2011, in which you had condemned the Central Government circular proclaiming the Forest Department’s unrestrained powers to declare any forest as a “critical wild life habitat” without first observing the spirit of the “Forest Rights Act”.

You complimented the State Govt. of Tripura, as the only one that had implemented the Act in true spirit. On the other hand, you found Congress- and BJP-ruled States as being especially at fault. I am afraid you will have to add the State Govt. of Kerala, ruled under a Communist Party of India (Marxist) leadership, as equally, if not more remiss.

Recently, a renowned NGO conducted a case study of some Kanikkar settlements deep in the Thiruvananthapuram Forest division as a sample. The study was conducted among the forest dwelling Kanikkar in the Fourth and the Fifth wards of the Kuttichal Panchayat, and found the members of the Panchayat, the members of the Forest Rights Committee that has been constituted there, the ST Promoters, and the field level officers of the Forest Department not very knowledgeable about the provisions of the Act. No serious efforts had been taken to educate the concerned persons about these provisions.

Within the jurisdiction of the Forest Rights Committee (FRC) at Kottoor, there are 192 families living in 16 settlements. The members are 5 ladies and 5 men, with the ST Promoter as the secretary; he has received training from KIRTADS about the Act. He has conducted some meetings of the Ooru koottam-s where he has tried to transmit some awareness, by no means adequate. The FRC recieived 68 claim petitions. Significantly, 110 members from 8 settlements declared that they do not require any land allotment under this Act. The FRC recommended grant of lands in 43 petitions received by it, and has forwarded them to the regional (ITDP) and from it, to the District level.

The Survey team constituted by Government commenced to measure the land under actual possession of the applicant families, according to the records of a survey conducted in 1980 (for the purposes of implementation of the Forest Conservation Act). This was (rightly) opposed by the tribal people, because it obviously restricted their holdings under the compulsions of the Forest Department. They further (rightly) argued that they are entitled to the lands they traditionally used to enjoy before the Department encroached on their holdings. This fact, that the survey would limit the areas they would ultimately get to the areas allowed by the Forest Department, and not what they were entitled to under the Act, was one of the reasons why so few were interested in filing applications. According to the perceptions of the study team, the Kanikkar had always suffered from deprivation of even the basic requirements of good living, and health facilities, and had lost all faith in Government and its officials. They found that the benefits conveyed through the agencies of government are not according to their entitlements, nor aimed at their sustainable development.

In Mannarkat Forest Division, the DFO “vetoed” the recommendations of the Forest Rights Committee, on the ground that the tribal people were entitled only to such extents of land as had been “allotted” to them by the Forest Department according to a unilateral survey that had been conducted a few years back (before the enactment of the Forest Rights Act). This seems to be the accepted view of the Department and the Government. As you know, this is violently in conflict with the provisions of the Act, under which a tribal person has to establish his rights under a variety of evidences, including documents, descriptions, and testimony of earlier reports by anthropologists. His rights are certainly not limited to what the Department, during the course of “Historical Injustice”, compounded by the barbarism of the Forest Conservation Act 1980, deigns to “allot” to them.

The net result has been that the tribal persons are being offered only the lands within the “jundas” (boundary marks) erected by the Department after a survey, intended mainly for the strict implementation of the Forest Conservation Act. The result is that the State of Kerala, under the governance of your Party, leads all the rest in oppressing and denying the ST people their legitimate rights.
It is with considerable pain that I write this letter of condemnation of your Party’s government in Kerala. I had always felt that your Party was sincere in its posture of equity and social justice. Your Party, and especially yourself, were instrumental in the enactment of this Act, which is indeed a magna carta for the tribal forest dwellers. But your Party’s government in Kerala has made a travesty of it.

I hope that your Party will consider the issue sufficiently important to examine, independently and sympathetically, how your Party’s Government is implementing the Act in Kerala.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,

T. Madhava Menon.

Mr Madhava Menon can be contacted at tmadhavamenon@gmail.com

The return of a sex scandal

B.R.P.Bhaskar
Tehelka

With the Left Democratic Front’s term drawing to a close, Kerala is in election mode. The first sign of the poll season was a foundation laying spree. Then came a surer sign: a sex scandal. Many of the projects for which foundation stones are laid are not new. The sex scandal, too, is not new.

For three decades, the LDF, led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and the United Democratic Front, led by the Congress, have been voted to office in the state in alternate elections. As such, it is now the UDF’s turn. Having done well in the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and, rather unexpectedly, in last year’s panchayat poll too, the UDF was brimming with confidence. Having been drubbed in two successive elections and having lost two allies, the Janata Dal (S) and the Kerala Congress (Joseph), the CPI (M) was seeking to refurbish its image damaged by the differing signals sent out by Chief Minister and state party secretary throughout the life of this government.

Suddenly, a sex scandal that refuses to die darkened the political landscape, casting gloom over the entire UDF camp. The ice cream parlour case, as it is known, was one of half a dozen sex scandals that broke in the 1990s, in which the names of several VIPs cropped up. Its central character is P. K. Kunhalikutty, general secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League, the second largest constituent of the UDF. He was not among the accused in the case but he had to bow out of the last UDF government as one of the victims named him in a television interview.

Getting wind of another television bomb being readied by his detractors, Kunhalikutty announced at a news conference that K.A. Rauf, husband of his wife’s younger sister, was preparing a video to blackmail him and posing a threat to his life. When he was Industry Minister, Rauf had figured in media reports as a fixer. He admitted having shown him favours and vowed not to yield to blackmail again. Rauf appeared before television cameras immediately and confessed to his role in bribing girls to keep Kunhalikutty’s name out of their testimony. Malayalam news channel Indiavision aired a report which, it said, it had been working on for four months, based on information provided by Rauf. It included secretly filmed sequences in which a former government prosecutor refers to bribing of two judges who had handled issues relating the parlour case in the high court. The ex-prosecutor disowned the statement and the ex-judges denied the allegation.

The LDF quickly moved in to cash in on the fallout. The police registered cases on the basis of the media reports, the government explored the possibility of reopening of the parlour case in the light of the new revelations, and party leaders made it the main talking point.

The UDF was in disarray. It was Indiavision, which had first telecast the interview which cost Kunhalikutty his ministership in 2004. Its chairman, M. K. Muneer, who too is an IUML leader and former minister, distanced himself from the reports damaging to his senior colleague saying he does not interfere in the freedom of the editorial department and was unaware of what it was doing. Some elements in the UDF may not be unhappy over the developments as they can be used to rein in the IUML. Muslims in the northern parts having been slow in taking to family planning, the community’s population had registered considerable growth, leading to an increase in the number of Assembly seats from the region. As the dominant party of the region, IUML has a strong claim to the additional seats.

Sex scandals have been talked about at every election in the past 15 years. However, they have not impeded the swing of pendulum so far. Also, which front is in power and which front the VIP suspects belong to have made little difference to the handling of the cases.

Candlelight Vigil in solidarity with K. K. Shahina

The KK Shahina Solidarity Forum has planned a candlelight vigil at Thiruvananthapuram on Friday, January 15, 2011.

The Forum says in a communication:

KK Shahina, Kerala correspondent of Tehelka was framed by the Karnataka police under Section 506 (2) of the Indian Penal Code allegedly for trying to influence witnesses in the Bangluru bom case in which Abdul Naser Mahdani is an accused. Later She was later charged also under section 22 of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, a draconian law designed to silence voices of dissent and bury political freedom. The lower courts in Karnataka have denied her anticipatory bail.

Shahina is being punished for carrying out independent investigation into the charges slapped on Madani and for writing about a fragile and unfair legal system working against minorities. She is a journalist of considerable experience. We see her framing as part of arrests, illegal detentions, incarcerations and disappearances of human rights activists and political activists in the country in the recent past. None of the political parties in power in various states – the BJP, the Congress or the CPI(M) -- have been an exception in carrying out such violent acts. The case of Dr. Binayak Sen confirms our worst fears -- that nobody who exercises the right of free speech to expose the violent state will be spared.

On 14th January we will walk wearing black gags and holding lighted candles in support of Shahina demanding immediate withdrawal of charges against her. The procession will start at 5.30 from Statue Junction and end at Swadesabhimani Square near the Martyr’s Column. Prominent artists, journalists and social activists will speak

Please join.

For more information, please contact Kuryachan TD 9447713466

Obscenity vision betrays a state of mind

The picture above is of a bronze statue that stands in front of the administrative building of the century-old, state-owned University of the Philippines at Diliman, Quezon City. It is named Oblation, which means offering. It depicts a nude male, standing with outstretched hands, as if to say "I have nothing to hide".

This nude figure has greeted students, faculty members and visitors at the entrance of the campus for more than 60 years. No one, male or female, has so far complained that it turns them on. Or that it arouses obscene thoughts in them. Even the conservative Catholic Church, which commands the loyalty of the bulk of the population of the Philippines, has not seen obscenity in it.

What prompts me to post the picture and write about it is the controversy in Kerala over the obscenity which some people have seen in the plant sculpture Sagara Kanya (Mermaid) in the Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) campus at Kochi, the cutting off of its breasts by the fast breeding tribe of self-appointed moral police and the reported finding of the pro-vice chancellor, Godfrey Louis, that Sagar Kanya is not an artistic work suited for an educational institution.

Apparently the last word on the subject has not been said yet. The university syndicate has reportedly set up a three-member committee to conduct a further enquiry.

Sagar Kanya was created by a gardener, Varghese, of Elamkunnapuzha, who, inspired by Kanayi Kunhiraman’s sculpture at Thiruvananthapuram, made out a female figure by growing and cropping plants. With the university gardeners tending it with care, it stood there for two decades without provoking any obscene thoughts in the students who passed through the portals of the institution during that period. Then, somehow, it started disturbing some employees and they complained to the registrar, N. Chandramohanakumar.

Cusat Express, a campus blog, quoted the registrar as saying "I received two complaints objecting to the nude figure of the mermaid at the Cusat garden. The complaints were forwarded by Women's Welfare Association of the Cusat and some Cusat employees."

A few days later Sagar Kanya’s breasts were cut off (See picture on left).

According to Cusat Express, Chandramohanakumar said he was against disfigurement of the work of art, “but as an administrator I was forced to act on it.” He claimed there was a Supreme Court order which discouraged educational institutions exhibiting such paintings and art works.

Cusat Express said university employees, including women, turned up wearing black badges in protest against disfigurement of Sagar Kanya.

Kanayi Kunhiraman recalled that some people had tried to assault him when he did his famous sculpture Yakshi at the Malampuzha dam site and said such people appeared to be still around. “Education at a campus that does not inculcate appreciation of art is purposeless,” he added.

Jose Joseph, New Delhi-based animator, painter and cartoonist, expressed his feelings in a cartoon published in his blog. It is reproduced below.

When the University of the Philippines celebrated its centenary in 2008, it had a distinguished woman, Dr Emerlinda R. Román, as its president. Another woman, Isabelita O. Ryes, was the editor of the centennial souvenir. And on the cover of the souvenir was a picture of Oblation.

Incidentally, as in Kerala, girl students outnumber boys in most departments in almost all universities of the Philippines.

Those who find the Cusat Sagar Kanya objectionable must be made to realize that the obscenity they see lies not in the clipped plants but in their own minds. Psychiatrists may be able to help there.

Congress in Kerala may be exulting too soon

B.R.P.Bhaskar
IANS

A landslide victory in last month's local elections has heightened the United Democratic Front's (UDF) hopes of returning to power in Kerala in next year's assembly elections but the Congress, which heads the alliance, may be exulting too soon. Its position is not as rosy as it imagines.

The credit for the UDF victory belongs not so much to the Congress as to its allies who helped consolidate minority support behind the UDF after the Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPI-M), which heads the rival Left Democratic Front (LDF), antagonised Muslims and Christians.

Kerala had created history in 1957 by voting the undivided Communist Party to office. It created history again in 1959 by staging a 'liberation struggle', which provided the centre with the excuse to dismiss the Communist government while it enjoyed majority support in the assembly.

The local election vote was 'liberation' by other means. All the forces which had joined hands in 1959 to oust the Communists from power came together again to end their reign over local bodies. The only exception was the Nair Service Society, the forward Hindu community's organization, which now officially follows a policy of equidistance from the two fronts.

In the local elections of 2004, the LDF had secured control of all five city corporations, 12 of the 14 district panchayats, a large majority of the municipalities and block panchayats and two-thirds of the village panchayats. This year, for the first time, the UDF seized control of a majority of local bodies at all levels with the exception of city corporations, where the LDF was able to retain a slender 3-2 lead.

The LDF victory in the 2006 assembly poll came as a hat-trick after successive wins in the Lok Sabha and local elections. In the past three decades, people have voted the LDF and the UDF to power in the state alternately. After successive drubbings in Lok Sabha and local elections, the LDF now faces the possibility of a reverse hat-trick.

The local elections victory has boosted the image of the state Congress leadership, now firmly in the hands of Leader of Opposition Oommen Chandy and Pradesh Congress Committee president Ramesh Chennithala.

For decades, the party had witnessed continuous infighting between an 'I' faction, named for Indira Gandhi, and an 'A' faction, named for A.K. Antony. Oommen Chandy inherited the 'A' faction when Antony moved to the centre. Ramesh Chennithala, a former protege of K. Karunakaran, gathered around him the remnants of the 'I' faction when the veteran walked out of the party, peeved with his neglect by the high command. With Sonia Gandhi backing them to the hilt, the Chandy-Chennithala 'jodi' established a condominium.

Karunakaran, 92, is back in the party but too old and weak to challenge the duo, whose clout is evident from the way they have delayed the return of his son and former state Congress president K. Muraleedharan. He had left the party with Karunakaran but did not return with him. When he finally expressed readiness to return Chandy and Chennithala reacted coolly and the high command did not want to go against their wishes.

While the Chandy-Chennithala combine is in an unassailable position within the Congress, the party's position in the UDF has weakened. The party's electoral performance under them pales into insignificance beside the strides made by its partners, the Indian Union Muslim League and the Kerala Congress (Mani).

The League is in a position to wield power on its own in many local bodies in its stronghold, the Muslim-majority Malappuram district, which happens to be the most populous one in the state. Unable to agree on the division of seats, the Congress and the League had opposed each other in some parts of the district. The League trounced the Congress in those areas. That puts the League in a commanding position.

In areas with a concentration of Christians, the Kerala Congress similarly outperformed the Congress. Its leader, K.M. Mani, had once described the party as one that "splits as it grows, and grows as it splits". He recently strengthened it by wooing back the breakaway factions led by P.J. Joseph and P.C. George, which were in the LDF during the last assembly elections and had helped it attract Christian votes.

Across the state, the UDF polled 15.65 lakh votes more than the LDF. Malappuram alone contributed a lead of more than four lakhs. Kottayam and Ernakulam districts, which have significant Christian populations, provided a lead of more than three lakhs.

The Church, which runs many schools and colleges, was annoyed with the LDF government's education policy. It reportedly played a role in the merger of the Kerala Congress factions. The CPI-M distanced itself from its former Muslim supporters since the Lok Sabha results showed that the association with some of them had cost it many votes. The bid to make up the loss of minority votes by appealing to majority sentiments did not succeed.

The change of government in the state every five years has been made possible by a swing of the pendulum in the southern districts of Thiruvananthapuram, Kollam and Alappuzha. As the minority parties command little influence in the region, elections there are a direct trial of strength between the CPI-M and the Congress. The LDF's lead of about 80,000 votes over the UDF in these districts is something the Congress has to worry about.

കവി അയ്യപ്പന്റെ യാത്ര അവസാനിക്കുന്നു

കവി എ. അയ്യപ്പന്റെ യാത്ര അവസാനിച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു.

അയ്യപ്പൻ എപ്പോഴും യാത്രയിലായിരുന്നു. യാത്രയ്ക്കിടയിൽ ചില അവസരങ്ങളിൽ അദ്ദേഹത്തെ കണ്ടുമുട്ടിയിരുന്നു.

ചെന്നൈയിലെ ആശാൻ മെമ്മോറിയൽ അസോസിയേഷൻ അയ്യപ്പനെ ഇക്കൊല്ലത്തെ ആശാൻ സ്മാരക കവിതാ പുരസ്കാരത്തിന് തെരഞ്ഞെടുത്തതായും സമ്മാനദാനച്ചടങ്ങ് ഒൿടോബർ 23ന് നടത്താൻ തീരുമാനിച്ചതായും വായിച്ചപ്പോൾ ആ ദിവസം അവിടെയുണ്ടാകുമെന്നതുകൊണ്ട് വീണ്ടും കാണാൻ അവസരമുണ്ടാകുമെന്ന് കരുതി.

പക്ഷെ അദ്ദേഹം പുരസ്കാരം വാങ്ങാതെ യാത്ര മതിയാക്കി.

അയ്യപ്പന് ആദരാഞ്ജലികൾ