The open, uninterrupted and continuous persecution of civil rights activist/lawyer Teesta Setalvad (and husband Javed Anand) by the BJP government of Gujarat headed by Anandiben Patel — the hand-picked choice of prime minister Narendra Modi — is further proof that the prime minister has few qualms about hounding his actual and perceived enemies by abusing the State’s administrative services.
This proclivity was first highlighted during the anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 in Gujarat, when Modi reportedly ordered the police to stand by while BJP cadres and associated lumpens ran riot for over 48 hours, attacking and massacaring over 700 citizens of the minority Muslim community. In November 2013 in another scandal described as ‘snoopgate’, Modi reportedly deployed top police officials and agencies of the Gujarat government to spy and track a lady who had captured his fancy across several states. Now the Gujarat government says Setalvad has embezzled funds raised from the public to erect a monument commemorating the riot victims and fight their battles in court.
The burden of the police charge against her is that she put some of the expenses of the Gujarat riot victims’ trust — trusts are not eligible for issuance of credit cards — on her personal credit card, and claimed reimbursement. For the information of the Gujarat police and high court, this is a commonplace practice in business and industry.
Your editor, who was acquainted with Setalvad when she and Javed published and edited a high quality journal Communalism Combat from Mumbai, is also ready, willing and able to vouch for her character. Indeed, when your correspondent together with the late J.B. D’Souza filed a writ petition in the mid-1990s against the late Bal Thackeray for stirring up the Mumbai communal riots of 1992-93, our counsel was her father the late Atul Setalvad, assisted by Teesta. It’s impossible that there’s any substance in the embezzlement charge against her which requires ‘custodial interrogation’. It’s pure spite and vindictiveness.
Unreliable heart
Nobel laureate Dr. R.K. Pachauri is the latest addition to the infamous list of celebrated, influential and powerful alpha males which includes publisher-author Tarun Tejpal (Tehelka) and former Supreme Court judge A.K. Ganguly, accused of sexual harassment during the past year. According to a first information report (FIR) registered with the Delhi police, Pachauri is charged with outraging the modesty, sexual harassment, stalking, and criminal intimidation of a female employee of the Delhi-based The Energy & Resources Institute (TERI), of which he is director-general. The FIR alleges that Pachauri sent the woman researcher dozens of messages via SMS, e-mail and Whatsapp, in addition to making unwanted physical advances for over a year.
The curious reluctance of the highly educated and celebrated Nobel laureate to accept rejection has provoked a spirited debate in the cyber world. One view is that despite his impressive formal education (North Carolina University), Pachauri is a typical sub-continental, who believes women cannot resist the rich and powerful. Another is that Pachauri, a small-towner born in Nainital who made it big, believed he was doing the woman a favour by bestowing his attentions on her. Yet another viewpoint is that like many of his generation, Pachauri believed that women won’t speak up because of embarrassment and the social stigma attached to public disclosure of sex crimes.
Yet at a deeper level, behind Pachauri’s and similar cases is the failure of the nation’s educators and education system to include gender sensitivity, equality and life skills in school and college curriculums. Compounding this inadequacy is popular culture and Bollywood films, which promote stalking and molestation as normal courting behaviour.
The latest on this unsavoury contretemps is that even as the Delhi high court has banned Pachauri from entering TERI premises, the climate change crusader has been admitted into hospital for a cardiac ailment. His heart seems to have let him down again.
Language chauvinism damage
The foolish sub-nationalism of Karnataka’s politicians driven more by greed and self-interest than proclaimed linguistic pride, has contributed another straw towards the breakdown of the law and order machinery and spreading anarchy in the once garden city of Bangalore. Following the forcible imposition of Kannada and/or the mother tongue as the sole medium of instruction in government schools, a resentful and angry underclass unschooled in English has arisen in Bangalore, which meanwhile, has transformed into an international metropolis. As a result, Bangalore hosts some of the country’s top-ranked thoroughly international English-medium schools for the elite, and shabby, dysfunctional Kannada-medium schools for children of the poor and disadvantaged.
The outcome of this educational dichotomy is that millions of migrants who have streamed into Bangalore during the past several decades, are severely under-qualified for the city’s booming jobs marketplace, in which English language skills are mandatory. Betrayed by politicians who have disappeared into the footnotes of history to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth, migrants from the state’s rural hinterland unschooled in English have become an angry and resentful sub-nationalist majority within the metropolis, posing a law and order problem.
Moreover, despite the Karnataka high court and the Supreme Court having ruled that it’s the fundamental right of parents/students to choose their medium of instruction, the state’s politicians and bureaucrats insist upon the ban on English-medium primary schools, and are reportedly pressing for a constitutional amendment to maintain the status quo ante. Meanwhile, the modest hopes and aspirations of an entire generation of citizens of rural Karnataka have been wiped out. In the corruption-driven politics of the state, that’s unavoidable collateral damage.