Kunan-Poshpora, Thangjam Manorama, Waheed Parra, Coke Studio's Tu Jhoom and Mutton Paya Soup
This time we discuss how rape-and-murder by armed forces go unpunished and even unacknowledged, unlawful and arbitrary arrest of Kashmiri politician Waheed Parra, Karachi, Coke Studio and more.
It has been 26 years since four personnel of the Rajputana Rifles allegedly raped at least 23 women in Kashmir’s twin villages of Kunan and Poshpora. It was supposed to be a cordon-and-search operation to trace militants, but turned out to be the blackest of nights in Kashmir’s violence-ridden history. As per the 2012 Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (J&K SHRC) report – the men in the villages were first ordered to come out of their houses and taken to a separate location. Then members of the security forces who had “turned into beasts” forcefully entered these houses and “gagged the mouths of the victims and committed forced gang rape against their will and consent”. Even minor girls as young as eight years of age were not spared.
- 26 Years After Kunan Poshpora, Army Still Enjoys Immunity For Sexual Violence (Feb 2017)
Not to forget the rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama Devi by our armed forces.
When 32-year-old Manorama’s body was found, it bore scratch marks and a gashing wound on her right thigh, probably made by a knife. Her body, according to her relatives, bore other signs of torture, such as bruising. There were also gunshot wounds to the genitals, which lent credence to the theory that she was raped before being shot dead. A report from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory found semen stains on Manorama’s skirt suggesting that she may have been raped before her death. The police surgeon and forensics specialist who was a commission witness said that the nature of the bullet wounds suggested that the shots were fired at close range and that Manorama was lying down when she was shot. He also deposed that the body bore a number of other injuries that indicated that Manorama had been tortured before she was killed. No blood was found near the body despite the fact that Manorama had suffered at least six bullet wounds, raising suspicions that she was killed elsewhere and her body later dumped.
There was a widespread eruption of rage in Manipur after Manorama’s killing. On July 12, 2004, several civil society groups called a 48-hour protest strike. Tires were burnt and marchers carried placards demanding justice. A protest on July 15, 2004 made Manorama’s killing national news. A group of elderly women gathered in front of the 17th Assam Rifles headquarters and then stripped their clothes off, calling the army to come rape them as Manorama had been raped.
The women belonged to the Meira Paibi, literally “Torch Bearers,” but also often called the Mother’s Front, which had started out as a support group to address social issues, particularly problems of alcoholism among men and drug abuse among children. But as the armed conflict deepened, the Meira Paibi also became involved in activities to prevent human rights abuses, and joined the campaign to repeal the AFSPA. L. Gyaneshori was one of the women who took part in the protest. She told Human Rights Watch that:
Manorama’s killing broke our hearts. We had campaigned for the arrest memo to protect people from torture after arrest. Yet, it did not stop the soldiers from raping and killing her. They mutilated her body and shot her in the vagina. We mothers were weeping, ‘Now our daughters can be raped. They can be subjected to such cruelty. Every girl is at risk.’ We shed our clothes and stood before the army. We said, ‘We mothers have come. Drink our blood. Eat our flesh. Maybe this way you can spare our daughters.’ But nothing has been done to punish those soldiers. The women of Manipur were disrobed by AFSPA. We are still naked.
Soon the protests had spread all over the state, with many defying curfew orders. A number of government offices were torched. Many were injured as police tried to control the crowds. On July 24, 2004, five young men attempted self-immolation in front of the chief minister’s office, calling for the repeal of the AFSPA. Three of them were severely burnt.
In August, in an attempt to quell the protests, Chief Minister O. Ibobi Singh decided to withdraw the use of the AFSPA in Imphal city. But the protests continued, with demands to fully repeal the AFSPA. On August 15, 2004, there was another attempt at self immolation. This time, Pebam Chittaranjan of the Manipur Students Federation lost his life.
- The Killing of Thangjam Manorama Devi
More reading:
This The Week article - Body of lies
Also, I would highly recommend Anubha Bhonsle’s must-read book Mother Where’s My Country
There are of course other cases and so many of them from both Kashmir and Manipur, both places under AFSPA. The AFSPA in its original form was promulgated by the British in response to the Quit India movement in 1942. Today, it remains in force in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, J&K, and parts of Arunachal Pradesh. The Act, which has been called draconian, gives sweeping powers to the armed forces. It allows them to open fire’, even causing death, against any person in contravention to the law or carrying arms and ammunition. It gives them powers to arrest individuals without warrants, on the basis of “reasonable suspicion”, and also search premises without warrants. The Act further provides blanket impunity to security personnel involved in such operations: There can be no prosecution or legal proceedings against them without the prior approval of the Centre.
More Reading:
If you are into comics, here’s a short comic strip - The Injustice of India’s Military Justice System
There is this default urge in most Indians to trust, support and defend men in uniform especially since Modi came to power and disregard any criticism or allegations levelled against the army even if it is from its own ranks. This attitude needs to change. Army or gunmen should never be sacrosanct in a civilised society. Those with power and arms should always be viewed with suspicion. And without doubt, they should be punished for heinous crimes like rape and murder.
The fate of law in Kashmir
Waheed Parra believed in the Indian Constitution and Jammu and Kashmir’s place within the country. Yet, he has been in jail without trial for nearly two years under India’s anti-terrorism law—like more than 1,000 Kashmiris—getting bail once but rearrested the same day on the same charges; even though two terror cases he was supposedly involved with crumbled in courts or were closed.
On 20 July 2021, a Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) court in Srinagar rejected Parra’s bail for the second time in five months. The CIK is the anti-militancy intelligence wing of J&K Police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). On 9 January, 2021, an NIA court granted Parra bail on the same 10 charges brought against him under two laws.
“Legally, if a person has been granted bail in a case, he cannot be arrested or booked in the same charges again by any other security agency,” said Shariq Reyaz, Parra’s lawyer. “But in this particular case it’s happening repeatedly. This is a clear example of the law being misused to keep a person behind bars.”
Politically, there are two main “camps” in J&K, according to experts.
The first seek a resolution of the Kashmir conflict within the framework of the Indian Constitution and do not challenge the conditional accession of the former kingdom to the Union of India in 1947. The second seeks a solution outside the ambit of the Indian Constitution, either through United Nations resolutions or tripartite talks, involving Pakistan.
Parra fell squarely in the former camp and is therefore referred to as “pro-India” by experts and politicians alike. “Leaders like him are pro-India for they do not favour independence [of J&K] or merger with Pakistan,” said Srinagar-based author and political commentator, Gowhar Geelani.
The unionist or ‘pro-India’ camp in Kashmir has been selling the idea of resolution of the Kashmir conflict within the ambit of the Indian constitution as a pragmatic idea which has economic benefits apart from some immunity from prosecution, said Geelani.
“When the hardcore pro-India politicians are also treated in the same manner as their ideological rivals,” said Geelani, “The idea [they espouse] will automatically become less attractive [to people at large].”
Geelani said the targeting of politicians such as Parra would render “pro-India” politics in the Valley redundant.
On 25 November 2020, three days after Parra filed his nomination papers for the District Development Council (DDC) elections from South Kashmir’s Pulwama district, the NIA detained him.
He was arrested in an alleged conspiracy to support the Hizbul Mujahideen terror group along with a former deputy superintendent (DSP) of the J&K police, Davinder Singh. Police alleged that Parra had a conversation over phone with Naveed Babu, a militant arrested with Singh.
DSP Davinder Singh was arrested while ferrying two Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militants in a vehicle on the Srinagar-Jammu Highway on 14 March, 2020. Singh was dismissed from service on 20 May 2021, but the order said that “Lt Governor (Manoj Kumar Sinha) was satisfied that in the interest of the security of state, it is not expedient to hold an enquiry in the case of Mr Davinder Singh”.
More than 2,300 Kashmiris have been detained under the UAPA since 2019 until July 2021, and about 1,100 remained in custody, the Indian Express reported on 5 August 2021. Parra was one of them.
Para was subject to abusive interrogations that lasted from 10 to 12 hours at a time, according to the UN letter.
“He was held in a dark underground cell at sub-zero temperature, was deprived of sleep, kicked, slapped, beaten with rods, stripped naked and hung upside down,” said the letter. “Para was examined by a government doctor three times … and three times by a psychiatrist. He requested medication for insomnia and anxiety.”
In December 2020, when Parra was still in detention, he won the DDC elections with 1,323 votes, defeating his rival, the BJP’s Sajad Ahmad Raina, who got 321 votes.
- Arrested, Denied Bail And Allegedly Tortured: The Story Of A Kashmiri Politician Who Had No Problem Being Indian
Imagine being a Kashmiri now. Imagine being a follower of Parra and his idea of India. How would you feel when you hear his arrest by the Indian state, and his torture? How easy would it now be to believe the other side that for long has been telling you to distrust the Indian state? Just think. What this government has been doing in Kashmir is atrocious and its effects will linger for too long in future. We are systematically alienating Kashmiris by each of such acts.
Remember Tokyo Olympics, those Modi photos bigger than Olympic winners? Well, found this gem by Abhinandan Sekhri from Newslaundry’s old podcast,
Facts of the case are following: In the last year, there was ten-fold rise in the NSC budget which is National Security Council. It was about 300 crores, it went from 33 crore to 333 crore and approximately 230 crores were cut from the outlets of sports. So that sporting budget, I can safely say, has gone to Pegasus…
Meaning? Our sports victories are not because of the government contributions but despite them. Except of course the state of Orissa and Naveen Patnaik who invested and have been supporting Hockey and Javelin for years now. Do listen to the above podcast, especially the first few minutes to get all the interesting details about the Olympics and the Indian sports scene in general.
Hindustan Times wrote about Naveen Patnaik and Orissa,
It was a game that Patnaik helped when not many others came forward. Like when Sahara backed out from sponsoring the Indian hockey teams in 2018, the Odisha government signed a ₹100 crore deal with Hockey India to sponsor the men’s and women’s hockey teams over the next 5 years. Describing the 5-year sponsorship deal as Odisha’s gift to the nation, Patnaik then described the game as a way of life in his state’s tribal region “where children learn to walk with hockey sticks”.
India to Karachi
“Around 9 am on 21 June, we were making placards for our protest, which was supposed to take place in front of Bilawal House”—the headquarters of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which heads the provincial government in Sindh—“to demand our just rights and fair compensation for the broken houses,” Asghar told me. “However, I received a call from someone and got to know that they are going to arrest me soon.”
Soon after he left, seven police vans, with at least ten plainclothes intelligence officers and around fifty policemen in uniform, raided the area. “They entered my office,” Asghar said, and “seized the banners, posters, all the files containing important data about the demolitions and the funds of a hundred thousand rupees we had painstakingly collected. All gone in seconds.”
Asghar managed to evade the policemen and reach the protest site. Only a handful of protesters had managed to reach Bilawal House, which was heavily guarded by anti-riot policemen. The protesters began chanting slogans against the PPP government, which, they allege, is working with the deep state to steal homes from Karachi’s working-class residents. Within five minutes, all the protesters, as well as several journalists, were arrested.
Standing on the rubble of his demolished house this June, 54-year-old Dilawar Hussain told me he had nowhere to go. The rickshaw driver used to live with his extended family in a fifty-square-metre house, which he had bought, in 1991, for four hundred thousand rupees. “Perhaps this is the change the government promised,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Imran Khan’s campaign slogan “Rok sako to rok lo, tabdeeli aayi re”—Stop us if you can, change is coming. The monsoon rains were fast approaching. “We are living under the open sky,” Hussain added, holding his grandchild. “We have no plans whatsoever. You need money for that, and I don’t have it.”
Khurram Ali, the convenor of the KBT, called the demolitions a neoliberal phenomenon, in which the state keeps pushing the poor to the peripheries of the city after they have invested in the land to increase its value. “In coming years, no working-class people will be able to afford living in the city if they don’t resist against these plans funded by imperialist powers such as the World Bank,” he told me.
Siddiqa added that the military has “created an atmosphere where, if one speaks against the army, it’s considered speaking against the country. That’s because of the sheer rhetoric of nationalism that has crept into our society.”
- Demolition Row, Karachi’s double standards over land encroachment
That talk of Pakistan reminded me of this recently released Coke Studio tune ‘Tu Jhoom’ by Abida Parveen and Naseebo Lal.
I especially like the first stanza from Naseebo Lal, that earthly no-nonsense Punjabi voice. And to remember how recently she was trolled, bullied and made to cry for her (still remarkable) anthem for PSL, it’s quite heartening to see her in her element here. Also, if you have been following Coke Studio for some time then you’ll notice some changes in this video and other videos released from this season. The focus on theatrics, dance groups, moving bodies and camera work significantly focussed less on singers, unlike previous seasons. That’s because the crown of Coke Studio has shifted from Rohail Hyatt to Xulfi. While the moving camera is distracting (especially in the second offering - Kana Yaari), the bringing together of Naseebo Lal and Abida Parveen and how beautiful that turned out, I’m hopeful of extraordinary magic from the CS stage. What are your thoughts?
I was already feeling so good about this year with this song but then Charlie Puth decided to drop a new song that he has been teasing since May last year and I must warn you, it’s worth all that teasing and wait.
The way that turn me on like a light switch hits, my god, it’s so satisfying.
Did you know Canadian dollar coins have the Queen on one side and a loon on the other, that's why they are called looneys? Here’s how the birdies sound…
Have you wondered about bird flight? Observed how different birds take off differently? You see a lot of ocean birds almost run along the surface as they take off. The thing that does spring to mind is that a lot of ocean or migrating birds have long narrow wings, compared to the shorter wide wings of chickens and many other birds. Similar to aeroplane wings, long narrow bird wings are good for efficient long-distance flight, while a short wide wing is better for manoeuvrability. A lot of bigger birds with big wingspans don't take off straight up the way chickens and small songbirds can. In fact, I think I usually see large birds jump off of high perches downward to gain speed quickly.
Lives Well Lived
Kamal Khan, a reporter with NDTV passed away recently. And in a surprising turn of events, there were so many articles, tweets and obituaries in his honour and praise. Surprising because it is so unlike that reporter’s passing away registers with people at large but Khan’s death did. Here, Ravish Kumar from his channel pays him tribute and tries to explain the aura of Kamal Khan.
I would highly recommend you watch the following report of Kamal Khan done on Ayodhya and reminiscence what we have lost in his passing.
In case you wanted to set up your own shell company…
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgn, Businessman Gautam Adani's brother Vinod Adani, BJP MP Jayant Sinha, Anil Ambani, Sachin Tendulkar, Nirav Modi, Niira Radia, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw are some of the names from India found in one or more of Panama, Pandora or Paradise paper leaks. These are people who allegedly hold wealth outside of their countries through the use of shell companies. Years ago NPR’s Planet Money set up their own shell companies to show how easy it is to set up these entities offshore. Here’s their podcast on how they went about it. Do listen.
That’s all for this one. Hope you are doing well and taking care of yourself and your dear ones in this pandemic caused by viruses and our wits. If you are infected or are down with fever, I strongly recommend a hot cup of mutton Paya soup along with meds to speed up your recovery. If you are in Bangalore or any other city where Dindigul Thalappakatti operates, just order from them. Oh, I like this ad of theirs very much.