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Under the influence of certain liberal religious sects, a sense of self-respect developed among the Namasudras. In fact, these liberal as well as radical sects under the leadership of charismatic gurus like Keshab Pagal or Sahalal Pir challenged the hierarchic Hindu caste system and preached a simple gospel based on devotion (bhakti) and spiritual emotionalism (bhava). In 1872-73, the Namasudras under the leadership of Dwarkanath Mandal, tried to bolster their self-esteem by undertaking a social and economic boycott of the upper castes. The failure of this movement led to the establishment of the Matua sect - an organised religious sect under the influence of Sri Harichand Thakur and his son Sri Guru Chand Thakur.
The namashudras joined the Matuya Dharam. Which Was a social reform movement altogether. Harichand and Guruchand Thakur emphasised on education. Guruchand Thakur established thousands of eductional institutions. The Matuya have no distinctions of caste, creed, or class. They believe that everyone is a child of God. The Matuya believe that male and female are equal. They discourage early marriage. Widow remarriage is allowed. They refer to their religious teachers as 'gonsai;' both men and women can be gonsai. The community observes Wednesday as the day of communal worship. The gathering, which is called 'Hari Sabha' (the meeting of Hari), is an occasion for the Matuya to sing kirtan in praise of Hari till they almost fall senseless. musical instruments such as jaydanka, kansa, conch, shinga, accompany the kirtan. The gonsai, garlanded with karanga (coconut shell) and carrying chhota, sticks about twenty inches long, and red flags with white patches, lead the singing.
Nandan Nilekani has a different Plan with his UNIQUE Identity Card, quite UNKOWN to even the most previlleged Indian Citizens, the Memebrs of the Parliament..
One of the most ELEGANT and EMPOWERED ladies in India, the BJP leader Mrs Sushma Swaraj asked the Home Minister of India,Chettiar Chidambaram to clarify the UNIQUE Identity Card Plan and also requested to differentiate between Unique I card and Multi Purpse national Identity card! She was speaking on the demands of Home Ministry and talked on details on the issues of national Security realting it to Development! She as well as Congress MP from Mumbai, Sanjay Nirupam whom we also saw recently in a Reality Show LIVE on TV, in BIG BOSS, emphasised that the NATOIONAL I Cards are very SENSITIVE for national Security despite INDULGING in Blame game with UPROARS!
But the issue was DIVERTED as Chidambaram as well as Extra Constitutional Elements running the Government of Indian Inc Illuminati like Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Sam Pitroda, Sunil Mitra, GP Goenka, Chndrashekhar, Mukesh Ambani, Ratn tata and so on, play a DIFFERENT ball game and know well how to kill the Constitution and by pass the Parliament to defend US as well as Desi LPG Mafia interests INTACT sustaing the Manusmriti Rule in this Geopolitics under TRIIBLIS Zionist World Order!
Nandan Nilekani took charge as the chairman of the Unique Identification Database Authority of India Thursday and started work on the government's ambitious project to provide a single identity number and card to each of the country's 1.17 billion people. On the other hand,Home minister P Chidambaram said in Lok Sabha on Wednesday that there was no plan to withdraw the army in militancy-hit Kashmir.
On the issue of withdrawal of para-military forces, he said that it could be done once the J&K police had enough strength to manage on its own.
The joint might of the opposition parties was once again visible on Wednesday as they castigated the government for delinking the terrorism issue from the Indo-Pak composite dialogue.
Initiating the debate, BJP's deputy leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, said that the PM Manmohan Singh was in a hurry to sell tea, potatoes and onions to Pakistan when not even a year has elapsed since the Mumbai terror attack. He has done this by delinking terror from the dialogue.
She reminded the UPA government that the way it was posturing with Pakistan was against the mandate it got in the recent Lok Sabha elections. The Congress-led coalition had garnered the votes while promising to take action against Pakistan, she added.
Chidambaram rebutted her assertion that the government had failed its promise of "zero tolerance" towards terror.
Every year, some 25,000 Bangladeshis entering India with valid visas do not return home while many more travel there illegally, raising security concerns for New Delhi, the Indian envoy to Dhaka said today."We know that around 25,000 Bangladeshis do not return after entering India every year; those who enter unrecorded are many more in number," Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty said.
He said New Delhi could not brush aside the issue of illegal migrants because of security concerns in view of increase in terrorist attacks in the region in recent times.
Meanwhile, The Supreme Court has admitted a petition alleging presence of 40 lakh illegal migrants in Voter’s List in Assam and issued notice to the Assam Government, Central Government and the Election Commission of India. The petition filed by Assam Public Works (APWs) came for preliminary hearing in the Court of the Chief Justice of India, KG Balakrishnan.
The Bangladesh government has dismissed a recent claim by the Indian High Commissioner here that every year 25,000 Bangladeshis go to India and stay there.
“[The] Ministry would like to inform all concerned that the information available with the government does not correspond with the observation of the High Commissioner,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson. “Moreover, Bangladesh has not received any official communication from the government of India in this regard.”
The Ministry spokesman also said Bangladesh-India relations were “multi-faceted and deep-rooted.”
The ministry’s statement came after Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty’s reported claim at a conference here to this effect.
“Those who enter unrecorded are many more in number,” said Mr. Chakravarty and added, “Our concern about illegal migration cannot be brushed aside.”
Mr. Chakravarty also said security was a major concern for his government in the recent times following the rise of terrorism in the region.
Clarification
The High Commission also issued a clarification and said Mr. Chakravarti’s remarks had been taken out of context and misreported, leading to a misunderstanding and unwarranted controversy.
Responding to these remarks, the High Commissioner mentioned that visa is a problem area because of two reasons: the large number (around 25,000) of Bangladeshi nationals who obtain visa but do not return, and the difficulties caused to genuine visa applicants by ‘touts and brokers’.
The High Commission also clarified that the Indian envoy was highlighting a well-known problem i.e. ‘touts and brokers.’
Hindutva
Experiment is being Extended countrywide thanks to the Nuclear
alignment of Global Hindutva with US Corporate Imperialism plus War
Civil War Economy and Zionist Israel. In our Home state the SANGH
Pariwar has launched yet another Hate campaign against partition victim
untouchable resettled refugees as it had been the old agenda of Hindutva
Politics which divided India. Caste Discrimination is translated into
ethnic cleansing in this divided geopolitics!.
Palash Biswas
Govind Ballabh Pant tried his best to cultivate the Forests in the Terai but the Hill People then refused to come down just because of adverse sustenance conditions in Terai as scores of Tribal villages had been wiped out due to Plague and Malaria. The Kham Bandobast was introduced just after independence, and powerful Politicians, Film stars, Industrialists, Bureaucrats, Army Officers, Business Families and other celebrates were allotted thousands of acres land per individual and the cluster of Big Farms grew like Mushroom in Nainital, Rampur, Bareilly and Pilibhit districts and Govind Ballabh Pant promoted this. The Big famers` lobby had been most influential in UP Politics which ensured the Chiefministership for their favorites until UP was divided. Beside Govind Balllabh Pant, Chandra Bhanu Gupt, ND Tiwari and Hemvati Nandan bahuguna from th hills were the Chief Minister of UP who never did try to initiate the process o f land Reforms in UP.Since a BJP MLA named Kiran Mandal crossed the fence and joined Congress resigning from his sitarganj seat to make place for the Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, the son of Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, the SANGH Parivar is in real form and relaunched its Anti Refugee Hate Campaign as it did in 2003 while BJP came to power and formed the first ever government in Uttarakhand led by BS Koshyari. All Bengali Refugees resettled during 1952 to 60 were decalred Bangladeshi Foeigners thanks to the Citizenship Amendment Bill moved by then NDA Home Minister LK Adwani, pased by the Parliamentary standing Committee chaired by Bengali Brahamin Pranab Mukherjee and which was enacted in the Parliament without any debate with the All Party support of SC ST OBC MPs, MPs from Bengal specifically. Only Genral Shankar Roy Chowdhary and rajyasabha Member from Assam Dr manmohan singh demanded Citizenship for all the Partition victims. The Sangh Parivar Attempted to eject out the Bengali Refugees from their resettlement as it did designing partition and making Congress, Muslim Leage and Gandhi just becuse these refugees from Bengal as well as Punjab had been pioneers of the liberation movenment led by Dr BR Ambedkar and Dr Ambedkar had been elected for East Bengal. The Constituency of Dr Ambedkar consisting of majority scheduled caste population in Jasore, Faridpur, Khulna and Barishal was included in Pakistan with an excellent arrangment with Redcliff Mission which never did any demographical survey to decide the borders as the Partion was meant to transfer the Power to the Brahaminical hegemony. United Uttarakhand resisted this and the attempt was foiled. Since this time, an agreement between Congress and the deserting BJP MLA Kiran Mandal ensured Land Ownership Right for Shaktifarm Refugees, RSS has invoked the Land Issue and land reform campaign provokes the sentiment against the Bengali Refugees in Particualr as they are bubed as bangladeshi in an intense Hate Campaign. The fact remains that the Refugees resettled in 36 colonies had the land right right in 1967 while Shaktifarm refugees had been deprived hitherto. while ND Tiwar who practiced Politics on Bengali and Sikh Refugee Vote Bank had been Chief Minister of UP three times and once in Uttarakhand.
The Centre has been asked to impose the Bengal model of land distribution across the country by a panel it appointed to suggest land reforms.The name of the game is Corpoare Ethnic Cleansing. Lad Acquisition amendment Act, Mining Amendment Act, Forest amendment Act, Illegal Unique Identity Project all are meant to eject out the SC, ST,OBC, Refugees, Slumdwellers from land so that Corporate Houses nd MNCs should capture the prime land in Aborigine humanscape as well as in Urban areas. maoist Menace is being used as agovernment remote controlled Multinational Project for Ethnic Cleansing as most of the Centarl India Land Property has been handed over all on the name of Industrialisation, Urbanisation and development. The iclusive development is nothing but redefinition of EXCLUSION on which micro minority Brahainical Hegemony banks on most. Exclusion is the key word. As it happened in UP and Uttarakhand the most of the land is captured by the microminority caste Hindu landlords. No land Reform initiative has been taken outside Bengal and Kerala after partition. The non-binding advice, which recommends rural land ceilings more stringent than those in Bengal, comes at a time the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government has tried to raise those limits to promote industry but seen its efforts stalled.
We have seen how Hate campaign against Muslims and Gujarat Genocide played the Cover for the Hindutva forces to industrialise and urbanise at the cost of SC, St and Minorities who had become the Foot Soldiers for the Corporate Fascist Hindutva Hindu rashtra Campaign which was originally intoroduced in Bengal and Reisisted by the SC Communities in Bengal led by Namoshudra alias Chandal, Paudra Kshatriya and Rajbanshi communities who are being victimised as linguistic Untouchable minorities all over the country. Bengali Refugees had been at home and well to do in UP and Uttarakhand so they did not Join the Marichjhanpi Movement. But Sangh Parivar back to their prepartion agenda of Hindu Rashta, are targeted systematically in a state like Uttarakhand yet agin after 2001 to 2003. This is the Escalation of Gujrat agenda which is not only Communal in nature but is quite Economic to defend the interst of Builder Promoter Mafia which is very strong in Uttarakhand and which has transfores the Sensitive Himalyan Zone into a suspended Atomic Explosion with destroying the Green, Nature and Environment. Hate campaign against minorities including Muslim, christian and Refugees help to communilise other sections of the society and it itensifies the onslaught against the Victims . It happend in Gujarat and Elsewhere and now the Peace zone in the Himalayas and the Terai has been targeted by the Sangh Pariwar. which has nothing to do with Land Reforms. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee had been
instrumental in the Land Reforms Program of the Fazlul Haq Government and thus Muslim leage got the support of the Peasantry consisting of SC communities and Mulsims which provoked the Sangh Pariwar for the Partition of India and the Sangh pariwar acomplished the task with Surgical precision.
The land panel, set up by the rural development ministry, also discourages the use of farmland for industry.But SEZ, NMIZ, Industrial corridors and Nuclear Clusters tell the different story.Stating that “land ceiling as a re-distributive programme is of as much relevance today as it was 50 years ago’’, the committee has recommended limiting personal landholdings to 5-10 acres of irrigated land or 10-15 acres of non-irrigated land.
In Bengal, the ceiling in non-irrigated areas is 17 acres and in irrigated areas, 12 acres. Left-ruled Bengal, Kerala and Tripura are the only states with rural land ceilings, the limit for irrigated land in Kerala being 15 acres. Some other states have tried and failed to enact land ceilings.
So, although the report on “State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms” was handed in last January, the Centre has been unwilling to reveal its contents given their controversial nature.
The standard reply from officials has been: “The ministry is going through the recommendations and will reveal them at the appropriate time.”
The commission was formed as a follow-up to the National Land Reforms Council, set up by the Prime Minister in 2008. It was headed by rural development minister C.P. Joshi and included experts such as A.K. Singh of Lucknow’s Giri Institute of Development Studies, B.K. Sinha of the National Institute of Rural Development and P.K. Jha of the School of Economic Sciences and Planning, JNU.But theNational Land Reforms ccouncil have never convened a formal meeting till this date.
Although the recommendations are not binding, sources said, the report is significant since the rural development minister heads the committee.
The panel has not mentioned the debate over whether smaller landholdings — a necessary impact of a ceiling — bring down productivity in the long run.
Many economists believe the debate has been clinched as Bengal, Kerala and Tripura witnessed marked rise in productivity after land reforms. After the land re-distribution in Bengal in the late 1970s, the yield had increased 60 per cent, with economists attributing it to the extensive cultivation possible on smaller plots and the new owners’ enthusiasm.
However, some others still argue that smaller holdings make it uneconomical to use expensive farm technology, such as tractors. But that argument applies only to advanced capital-intensive agriculture, a very small part of India’s agrarian economy.
Bengal’s Left Front government, the architect of the land reforms in the state, recently tabled a bill in the Assembly to relax the rural ceiling to facilitate commercial farming, farm products business and other industry. The bill has been sent to a House panel that has not been able to take a decision yet.
Joshi’s panel has made a slew of other recommendations (see chart). A potentially controversial one is the suggestion to scrap the exemptions to religious, educational, charitable and industrial organisations.
Various educational and religious institutions have been acquiring land across the country using the exemptions granted by state governments. The panel says religious institutions should be allowed only a single unit of 15 acres.
Criticising the widespread conversion of farmland for non-agriculture purposes, the committee says this has led to a fall in food production.
“The inequitable distribution of benefits from the new land use, insufficient quantity of compensation, and rehabilitation not operationalised properly are leading to enormous dissatisfaction among the project-affected people. This ultimately is leading to gruesome social unrest as witnessed across the country and such violence can escalate and spread… if the conversion of land is not addressed relevantly,” it says.
It recommends that cultivable land should be the last option when acquisition is done, and if such land has to be taken over, the consent of all stakeholders is a must.
The committee has also questioned the land re-distribution initiatives undertaken by various state governments apart from Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. It says “the land assigned to the poor were mostly uncultivable, and where cultivable lands have been assigned they were not under their possession’’.
It adds that the Bhoodan movement initiated by Acharya Vinoba Bhave in the 1950s faced major blocks since most of the land donated was not good enough for cultivation and in most cases, much of the donated land did not reach the poor. It asks state governments to do a survey to ascertain the current status of these plots.
Suggesting a new round of land redistribution, the committee says “the list of beneficiaries in fresh assignments should be selected by (the) gram sabha’’. It has suggested a single-window approach to redistribution of ceiling-surplus land.
The panel has also cited the “massive encroachments on government land’’ in the Sunderbans in Bengal and the Aravalli and Satpura regions of Madhya Pradesh.
The panel is also concerned that “the corpus of tribal land is in serious danger of erosion’’. It says 4.3 million hectares of forestland have been diverted for non-forest use and that 55 per cent of this diversion has taken place after 2001.
It recommends that the gram sabhas be recognised as the competent authority for all matters relating to transfer of tribal land.
According to the panel, the autonomous district councils in the Northeast have failed to perform their task. “There is an urgent need for codification of the traditional rights of the village councils.”
More than twenty million East bengal refugees coming over to India in different dates and phases since 1947 partition and riots over there, awaiting citizenship and rehabilitation, reservation, right to learn mother language and even minimum human and civil rights in different states of India. Meanwhile, the original citizenship Act of 1955 has been changed by a new act called Dual citizenship Act enacted last year with the objectives: preventing grant of Indian Citizenship to illegal migrants; grant of dual citizenship to foreigners of Indian origin and compulsary registration with issue of National identity card for all citizens of India.This new Act declares the government stand to deport all illegal migrants.This anti refugee Act was passed in the parliament with general consensensus. The SC/St MPs from Bengal also supported the bill bowing to respective party whip.
. The new act has abolished the right of citizenship by birth. Any person who has crossed the border after 18th july 1948 without valid passport and visa is considered illegal migrants.
The East Bengal refugees, even rehabilated in fifties, have not been granted citizenship as have been the refugees coming from West Punjab. The Bengali leadership never demanded citizenship for the refugees. BJP leaders and CPIM leaders in bengal speak in the same language about the Bengali refugees. Thirteen lac names have been deleted in Bengal in the last assembly elections as the concerned persons could not prove their Indian nationality. The situation is very grave as it is seen in the pilot project of national identity card in Murshidabad district in West Bengal. More than ninety percent of the population could not present the required documents to prove their citizenship. Elsewhere in the country, refugees and even the indian Bengali citizens in non Bengali states staying for employment are being deported. Rehabilated in fifties, the Dandakaranya refugees in Orrissa have been served the notice to leave India. In Orrissa the registration of new born babies in the refugee families are being denied birth certificates.
East Bengal refugees have been discriminated and victimised as nintey percent of them belongs to scheduled castes . In Chhattisgargh itself twenty two of total twenty six lac Bengali refugees belong to Namashudra caste. It is the same story elsewhere ,more or less. Other prominent refugee caste is the dalit Paundra, Pods, who are considered as par as the Namashudras. We have to know the social equation of erstwhile Bengal to understand the Bengali leadership behaviour. It is well known that Indian Dalit movement is rooted in East Bengal as well well as in Maharashtra. Namoshudra leader Jogendra Nath Mandal led the Dalit movement in Bengal. Mandal was responsible to send Ambedkar,defeated in Maharashtra, to the constitution assembly. Thus Hindu Dalit amjority areas like Jassore, Faridpur, Barishal and Khulna were included in Pkistan which destroyed the Dalit movement base in India. The Dalit refugees had been scattered all over in india with an objective to annihilate the main dalit foce like Namashudra and Paundras. Specific lower castes, or 'Scheduled Castes' (as they were known in British Indian official parlance), who lived in the border areas between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the West Bengal state of the Union of India. They maintained since the early twentieth century their distance from high caste Hindus and their politics and, often in alliance with Muslims, opposed them actively.
Mind you, before partition all the three interim governments were headed by Muslims- Fazlul haq, Najibullah and Sohrawardi.Only Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was a member in Haq ministery . Otherwise Jogendra Nath mandal or Kumud Bihari Mallick were the personalities on centrestage. Muslims in East Bengal were dead against partition. They wanted undivided Bengal.And bengal was the centrestage of national dalit Movement with mandal in helms. Shyama Prasasd Mukherjee had said, if not India, Bengal must be divided as Caste Hindus were wary of Muslim dalit Combination . This combnitation was broken with partition. The dalit base devasted and dalit movement sabotaged. Dalits were evicted out of their home in East bengal and scattered countrywide. marichjhanpi revived the danger of Dalit Population concentration in Bengal once agian and ruling brahminical Marxists aborted it mercilessly with Marichjhanpi Genocide. thus, the Ruling Caste Hindus with all the bogus Marxism, secularism and progressive posture kept mum on Marichjhanpi!
Kolkata Intelligentsia delebratly defends CPIM as they brand the Dandakaranya Refugees landed in Marichjhanpi as tresspasser Bangladeshi Nationals in a protected Forest Zone, Tiger Project. Mind you, Marichjhanpi never have been under protected Forest or Tiger project. Suman Mukhopaddhay of Teesta parer Britanto(play) and Herbert (film,written by Nabarun bhattacharya), refuses to consider Marichjhanpi a case of Ethnic Cleansing. I have seen his elitist subversion of the protagonist Bgaharu of the Debesh Roy Novel. Bengali Caste Hindu media and Intelligentsia call Nandigram killings a Genocide as caste Hindu Politics of Power Dominance as well as Resistance involved.Though, the victims happen to be either ST SC or OBC and Muslims! But Marichjahanpi was, all in all, a case of Political Betrayal by the communists who got them ousted of Dandyakarany Refugee colonies and Camps to constitute a favourable Vote bank to capture power. Communist Movement in Bengal got momentum with Refugee vote Bank. Thus, the Communists never spoke against continuous presecution of Minorities in East Bengal nor did try to stop the Refugee Influx at any point of time. Not only this, Communist leaders including Basu, have been claiming to fight for Rehabilitation of refugees. They protested Bidhan Roy`s initiative to send bengali refugees out of Bengal . Samar Mukherjee and jyoti Basu had been writing to the Centre and State governments to rehbiliatate the East Bengal refugees in Sundarvanas from the very beginning! They never mentioned Forest area or Tiger Project at that time! More over,Jyoti Basu, Ram Chatterjee and Kiranmoy Nanda with other prominent leaders visietd country wide with an appeal, West Benagl with a five coroer population with ten coroer hands would welcome the dalit Bengali refugees and they will be rehabiliated in West Bengal. As Basu took over in 1977, Ram Chatterjee and Nanda with other leaders visited Mana Camp and Malakan Giri to call the refugees to settle in Sundarva. They went there with messages from the Chief Minister! Earlier Basu himself addressed refugee leaders including satish Mandal in Bhilai.
My father Pulin Babu, with his experience as a communist refugee leader in West bengal and Orissa and Peasant Leader in Dhimri Block peasants Insurrection in nainital, as a rescuer in Assam and North East understood the betrayal game and some how convinced the North India Refugees of UP, Bihar, Assam and Rajsthan that dangers ahead and the communists would betray. As the communists never helped the refugeees in these states and they are in better status, they could not be trapped. Not a single refugee landed in Marichjhanpi from North India excluding MP.
At that time , I was a student in DSB college in naninital and have been involved with Chipko Movement. I quoted forest laws and explained Environment significance of Sundarvana as my father decided to oppose the campaign actively. I talked face to face Satish Mand , the man behind Marichjhanpi movementright in the Mana Camp, Chhattish Garghwhere the Marichjhanpi refugees retuned back empty handed losing near and dear ones in Marichjhanpi. Satish Mandal said that my father would have been killed in Mana camp as he spoke against such a campaign and communists. security forces saved his life. He and his associates regretted and accepted that it was a blunder. They explained how the communists mobilised the Marichjhanpi movement centred in and around all the major five refugee camps in MP and entire Dandakarany resettlement spanning four states MP (united), Orissa, Andhra and maharashtra!
Another fact remains, only,yes only Dandakarany resetlled Refugees from Malkan GiRi of Orissa, Andhra and Maharashtra with refugees stranded in Five Major camps of United MP landed in Marichjhanpi. Resetlled refugees lived in those colonies since fifties while the refugees form all those five camps crosed the border during and befrore Riots of 1964 in East Bengal. They were not Bangladeshi nationals, as the Ruling Hegemony with its media and intellegentsia have been claiming all these years.Branding the refugess as Bangladeshi Nationals or escaped masses from refugee camps justify the Eviction drive and translate the Genocide as a political blunder only. This is syastematic subvertion freinds!
I am amazed why a writer like Amitabh Ghosh could not care to cross check his information as he described Marichjhanpi under tiger project! He, though unlike other Caste Hindu intellectuals described it a Genocide. Utpal Dutta wrote a drama at that time to justify the genocide- Chakranta. Media flashed this Plot theory with branding the bonafied Indian citizens as bangladeshi Nationals. Different stories were afloat like extrmest camp and armed training and popular CPIM concept of CIA and foreign hand to dislodge the communist Government. Left Front partner RSP held the base in that area and local panchayats were captured by them. RSP activists helped the refugees. Basu called them in the Writers and directed them to detach with the refugees and the Party Machinery led by late Pramod Dasgupta hatched the eviction plan. before blocked Subhash chakrabarti visited Marichjhanpi and offered the refugees CPIM umbrella. But satish mandal refuged considering RSP and Janata dal cooperation. Janata Dal was the ruling party in the centre.JD MP Kashikanta Moitra was with them. Had the refugees joined CPIM, it would have been a different story as it has always been in thousands of refugee colonies. You may see the RSP leaders speaking out as Eye witness in Tortured Humanity, the Rights alert film!
nu jalais told me that the problem all along this subcontinent roots in Caste Discrimination and the Hegemony system. She agrred with my contention that it was a demographic readjustmant case and said this interesting. Even the then Police Super of North 24 parganas, the officer in chareg of the marichjhanpi genocide discuses the role played by Ram Chatterjee and other left leaders. Just see the film, HUMANITY TORTURED! Now samanat is also iconised like runu Guha Niyogi. Niyogi justified the Repression and killings during seventies in his book, AAmi Sada Aami Kalo. Samanto writes column in the Satesman as well as Paschim Banga, a WB GOV mag. The ex DGP writes on topics spanning police reforms to revolutionary activities in colonial India. Even Amiya samanta, accepts, had the Marichjhanpi refugees not been Dalits they would not be evicted so mercilessly. He also acceptes the facts of Food Blocked. All Eye Witnesses and all evidences are there! Who would stand for justice? Human Rights? For the deprived, persecuted, marginaliged, totured and killed Dalit Refugees?
All the Dalit Leaders and intellectuals shed tears on Marichjhanpi genocide! They oppose Citizenship act. They are associated with refugee Movement and different Dalit orgs. But they could not bring the War criminals to justice! They could not launch a Political or non Political movement. They claim to know everything! What they did all these thirty years? Just tried their best to get maximum favour of the ruling Hegamony or simply a stautus in Prliament , assembly or pachayat or a reserved post, promotion! They licked the Bottom of the Ruling Hegemony! My foot!
The partition victim Dalit East Bengal refugees- evicted from homeland to accomodate Caste Hindu Brahminical Hegemony with transfer of Power from apartheid generator British clonial rulers, deprived of human and civil rights, mother tongue and citizenship, targeted nationwide as branded as bangladeshi foriegn national thanks to Citizenship Amendment Act passed by Indian Ruling Class represented by all kinds of left, centrist and Right ideologies and parties and finally facing nationwide deportation drive thanks to brahmins of Bengal led by Defacto Prime Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Hindutva forces led by Sangh Pariwar and shiv sena -should thank Mr Prabhu Chawla , the editor- in - chief of India Today to publish a special report in India Today Bengali on Marichjhanpi Genocide, coinciding with 30th year of the first dress rehearsal of Genocide culture launched by the Regemented so called marxist ruling hegemony in West Bengal.
It might sound something very amusing to welcome a gesture so insignificant in these days of Electronic channels, media boom and information explosion. Well, in North as well as south India, the resettled Dalit East Bengal refugees enjoy the support of local population. In Orissa, while Naveen Patnaik BJP plus BJD ruling combination tried to deport the Noakhali Partition victims resttled in Ram Nagar, Mahakal Para area near Paradip port, Oria speaking local residents constituted an Utkal Bangiya Suraksha committee to defend the helpless people. Local residents, Media and political parties jointly stalled the deportation move there. Though the struggle is going on as the Refugges resettled there in early fifties find their names missing in Voters` List. Ration cards are also stand cancelled.
In United Uttar Pradesh,where I originally belong as I was born in a refugee colony in Udham Singh Nagar (Nainital), the local population always stood by dalit Bengali Refugees. My father late Pulin kumar Biswas worked for the refugees lifelong. He was the President of All India Udvastu ( Refugee) committee. He as a Communist Leader led the Dhimri Block Peasants` Revolt in 1958 in the Terai of Nainital. The insurrection was repressed brutally by joint forces of third jat Regiment, Police and PAC. CH Charan singh was the Home Minister in UP then. Communist Party of India with General secretary Comrade PC Joshi disowned the movement as they betrayed Telengana. In UP, no one could a single instance of confrontation between bengali refugees and other communities. In Terai of Nainital, Pilbhit, Bareilly and Rampur a few corore partion victims Sikh and Punjabies as well as Bengalies live side by side with a bond of unbreakable fraternity and cooperation for six decades. My father was elected un opposed the Vice President Of Terai Cooperative Commitee in mid sixties with local SDM as President by virtue of his post. I want to emphasise that at that point, sikhs and punjabies were more powerful, more dominent and majority in number. bengali Dalit refugees were minority plus economically very weak. But the chemistry of Unity is working since the first day. The spirit of peasant movement works even after the deaths of all the leaders including my father and his comrades. We always enjoyed excellent relations with Hills. ND Tiwari and KC Pant became National Leaders with our help only.
In 2001, as UP was divided and BJP took over as the ruling party in the new state Uttaranchal. Chief Minister Nityanand Swami and His government branded all Bengali dalit refugees living there since 1952 as foreign nationals. Bengali refugees launched an unprecedented movement supported by all opposition political parties, communities, markets and media. This is the only occassion while West Bengal, its government, ruling front, media and people supported us. Because, we could convince Buddhadev Bhattacharya, the new Chief Minister that provided the dalit refugees were evicted out of Uttaranchal as planned by Sangh pariwar, they would come to West Bengal without any notice and Left Front had to face similar crisis as Marichjhanpi. Contrary to dandakaranya People the uttarakhandi Bengalies are more united and they might not repeat marichjhanpi genocide once again.
Finally, Uttaranchal BJP government had to give in.
This is all India scenerio barring spordiac clashes between tribals of Chhattish Gargh and Orissa. Of course, entire North East, particularly Assam, Tripura and Manipur showcase a different equation. And it is due to the identity crisis of natinalities there. In mainland , all Dalit Bengali refugees supported the nationality movement as in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattish gargh. Only Maharashtra and Mumbai are different cases where all North Indians are branded unwanted and the dominent Sangh Pariwar target all Bengali speaking people branding them as bangladeshi Nationals.
Here you are! In West Bengal, the Caste Hindu Ruling Hegemony never allows any space for dalit Bengali Refugees in any sphere of life. The irony is that a refugee, Dr man Mohan singh becomes prime Minister, another refugee Lal Krishna Adwani Deputy Prime Minister while another refugee Jyoti Basu ruled Bengal for two decades and a half while all dalit partition victims of east Bengal are branded as foreign nationals.
Mind you, it is India Today of Non bengali origin published the story. Not even any revolutionary little mag or sanhati.com or so called different, progressive and secular Bengali Intelligentsia highlighted the Genocide for long thirty years. For example, Mahashweta Devi had been active as a creative writer for so long. She wrote so many things on Insurrections of all kind and on also Naxalbari. She is writing daily on nandigram and singur. She writes on Rizwanur and Taslima so frequently! Why she could not take over the marichjhanpi issue in past thirty years? Sunil Gangopadhyaya, the Ruling Hegemony cultural head at present and the Shikhandi President of sahitya academy of India never had been a Marxist in the days of Tebhaga and food movement. Sunil along with Sandipan and Shakti ruled Kolkata in sixties with anarchist posture. Sunil visited USA during that period and befriended with Ginsberg. Sunil did the excellent work lifetime during Marichjahnpi blocked . He reported exclusively for Anand bazaer as Niranjan Haldar did. But, Sunil became a Marxist very soon and kept MUM all these years. rights Alert India could not get him face camera for its documentary on Marichjhanpi. Mr jagadish Chandra Mandal, worthy son of Maha Pran Jogendra Nath Mandal, wrote a Book, marichjahnpi in Bengali. Ananda Bazar published the review with lacs of circulation. But Bengal could not find a single voice to represent the massacred indigenous people and the plight of partition victims all these days.
An eminent Activist, a former associate of Sunil gango, the vice President of Bhasha Shaheed Smarak Committee, Ratan Basu Majumdar claimed that Bengali Intelligentsia did not know about the massacre! Is it so? Even after Anu Jalius`s EPW article, a few books on marichjhanpi, so much matterial available on net thanks to reasearchers lake Anu and Ross Mallick, a very significant novel like Hungry Tide by an eminent writer like Amitabh Ghosh, Sunil`s writings before three decades and the documentary, Humanity Tortured by Rights Alert India? Ratanda told me mahasheta devi would certainly write! has she written? I have been a keen reader of Mahashwetya Sahitya for almost three decades. I have been associated with his Mag Bhasha Bandhan, in which I could not get any space for those five corore Dalit bangali refugees scattered all over India!
While the Citizenship Amendment Bill was published on net, I passed personally the copies to top CPIM leaders. All of them assured they would oppose. While the bill was passed undebated in both houses of Parliament as only Dr Manmohan Singh,then a Rajya Shabha memebr fro Assam and general Shankar Roy Chowdahury urgued theat the refugees form east bengal should get Indian Citizenship. Dr Singh forgot that. NDA Home minister lK adwani presented the Bill. Pranab Mukherjee was the chairman of the standing committee on the Bill. All refugee orgs and individuals and activists opposed and communicated to Mukherjee. Mukherjee did not call any of us. Rather he boasted before a Refugee deputation that had he been the Home Minister he would have got deported all foreign National bengali refugees. So, he is executing his plan nowadays. Kanti Biswas, then a cabinet minister and Upen kisku a ST minister claimed on phone that CPIM opposed the Bill. We all know the reality.
Forget Marichjhanpi! More than Twenty Lac people in west bengal got their names deleted from voters`s List as they have been branded as Bangladeshi Nationals. Thousands have been dumped in jail in Krishnanagar, Burdwan, katoa, Nadia and Howrah. Thosand and thousand absconding. No news appeared in Kolkata Media. No intellectual protested.
I myself gave Mahashwetadi personally all relevent documents on Citizenship and Refugee Problems. She just told that she could not take over all the issues. She commented, Palash, you have to launch this movement!
The Indian academia and society by and large know Dr. B R Ambedkar either as the man who fatehred the Indian Constitution or as the Dalit leader who only championed the cause of the depressed classes exploited by upper class. However, Ambedkar was more than that. He was an outstanding economsit, who understood the subtleties and nuances of monetary system, fiscal management, agrarian structure, industrialisation and postulate on these aspects with a most incisine yet human apporach as he believed economy should be subservient to the betterment of every section of soceity.
My father late Pulin Babu, direct partition victim, landed in West Bengal just in 1947 and began his life Indian as a Gate Keeper in a Cinema Hall in DUTT PUKUR, North 24 parganas. Rest of the family joined him later as he was Unmarried and could not get a refugee card alone. The family got their place in Ranaghat Coopers camp. I met the people with whom my father spent his Duttapukur days in 1973.From Ranaghat he firmly stood as an Emerging Refugee leader and social activist. Meanwhile, he got in touch with Jogendra Nath mandal after he fled from Pakistan. He learnt Ambedkarite Ideology as well as Marxism with hisexperience and also learnt reading and writing from the Beginning as he could study in class two only as our Grand Father, UMESH Biswas was dead earlier and the KITH and Kin DISLODGED the family headed by my Grandma Shantidevi. Kalicharan Biswas was shantidevi`s father and he was a pragmatic man as myfather used toquote him ofetn.
My father used to tell us a tale very intersting. During drought time kalicharan Biswas lost almost everything including the Bulls and Farming tools. But his relatives were doing very well. One day, it began to rain. Kalicharan asked his well to do relatives for help to plough hai holding small. They REFUSED. kalicharan was helpless. But the wild BOARS ploughed the fields in the dark of night. kalicharan got the MOTTO that the BOAR Relatives are better! It was also my father`s motto that is why my VILLAGE Basantipur was out of the Peripherry of traditional Blood relations and Caste link. These People spent times troubled in ranaghat Coopers camp and CHARBETIA campin Orrissa together and NEVER Seaparated until DEATH.
Our Well TO DO Kith and Kin,Close Relatives were AFFLUENT enough to excahnge property and settled in 24 oragans, Nadia and Maldah. We NEVER tried to connect us with them and my Father lived and died for the EXTENDED Family of Indian Proletariates and Refugees across Caste and faith. It was his STRENGTH and perhaps I INHERITED. thus, I feel at Homeany where any Time, even amongst the BOARS! I believe, provided I visit some where else on thsi Planetor outer space, I wouldNEVER Be alienated!
My father could not learn IDEOLOGIES or History methodically. but he was closely rooted in folk and folklore. He was INDULGED into, directly and deep, people`s history, Economics and life. he was not concered with FREAKONOMICS!
My father told me that Harichand Thakur was the First man who demanded Land reforms. He toldme that Dr Ambedkar was an ECONOMIST and he was not limited in caste system! He could as he treated all REFUGEES worldwide as his Family and rejected the Caste and Religion line. He advocated to ANNIHILATE caste in Refugee Geopolitics as he considered all REFUGEES as DALIT and BLACK, UNTOUCHABLES!
While I approved land Reforms by the Marxist regime and PRAISED comrade Jyoti Basu for his works as Chief minister, my Father OBJECTED. He would talk about the ABOLISHED ZAMINDARI and Bhoodan Yagya and show me that it NEVER changed the Landscapefor Refugees, SC, ST,OBC and Minorities. He would tell about Holocaust, Exodus and displacement in MYTHICAL style which I would rather reject as SUPERSTITIONs. He insisted that Land reforms are not change the Demographic Equations as the problem of Small Holding is not addresed at all and FEUDALISM prevails with Manusmriti apartheid rule. He was right, we see Loan waivers could not help the Dyning Peasants in BIDARBHA and elsewhere! He was correct I realsied longafter his last rites Vedic while I read AMBEDKARITE Ideology and studied the Black Movement amidst SINGUR, Lalgarh and Nandigram Insurrections.I witnessed with AWE how LAND Reforms REVERSED in INTESIVE Drive of ETHNIC Cleansing for Indiscriminate Land acquisition to push ECONOMIC Reforms!
DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR was among the most outstanding intellectuals of India in the 20th century in the best sense of the word. Paul Baran, an eminent Marxist economist, had made a distinction in one of his essays between an "intellect worker" and an intellectual. The former, according to him, is one who uses his intellect for making a living whereas the latter is one who uses it for critical analysis and social transformation. Dr. Ambedkar fits Baran's definition of an intellectual very well. Dr. Ambedkar is also an outstanding example of what Antonio Gramsci called an organic intellectual, that is, one who represents and articulates the interests of an entire social class.
While Dr. Ambedkar is justly famous for being the architect of India's Constitution and for being a doughty champion of the interests of the Scheduled Castes, his views on a number of crucial issues pertaining to economic development are not so well known. Dr. Ambedkar was a strong proponent of land reforms and of a prominent role for the state in economic development. He recognised the inequities in an unfettered capitalist economy. His views on these issues are found scattered in several writings; of these the most important ones are his essay, "Small Holdings in India and Their Remedies" and an article, "States and Minorities". In these writings, Dr. Ambedkar elaborates his views on land reforms and on the kind of economic order that is best suited to the needs of the people.
Dr. Ambedkar stresses the need for thoroughgoing land reforms, noting that smallness or largeness of an agricultural holding is not determined by its physical extent alone but by the intensity of cultivation as reflected in the amounts of productive investment made on the land and the amounts of all other inputs used, including labour. He also stresses the need for industrialisation so as to move surplus labour from agriculture to other productive occupations, accompanied by large capital investments in agriculture to raise yields. He sees an extremely important role for the state in such transformation of agriculture and advocates the nationalisation of land and the leasing out of land to groups of cultivators, who are to be encouraged to form cooperatives in order to promote agriculture.
Intervening in a discussion in the Bombay Legislative Council on October 10, 1927, Dr. Ambedkar argued that the solution to the agrarian question "lies not in increasing the size of farms, but in having intensive cultivation that is employing more capital and more labour on the farms such as we have." (These and all subsequent quotations are taken from the collection of Dr. Ambedkar's writings, published by the Government of Maharashtra in 1979). Further on, he says: "The better method is to introduce cooperative agriculture and to compel owners of small strips to join in cultivation."
During the process of framing the Constitution of the Republic of India, Dr. Ambedkar proposed to include certain provisions on fundamental rights, specifically a clause to the effect that the state shall provide protection against economic exploitation. Among other things, this clause proposed that:
* Key industries shall be owned and run by the state;
* Basic but non-key industries shall be owned by the state and run by the state or by corporations established by it;
* Agriculture shall be a state industry, and be organised by the state taking over all land and letting it out for cultivation in suitable standard sizes to residents of villages; these shall be cultivated as collective farms by groups of families.
As part of his proposals, Dr. Ambedkar provided detailed explanatory notes on the measures to protect the citizen against economic exploitation. He stated: "The main purpose behind the clause is to put an obligation on the state to plan the economic life of the people on lines which would lead to highest point of productivity without closing every avenue to private enterprise, and also provide for the equitable distribution of wealth. The plan set out in the clause proposes state ownership in agriculture with a collectivised method of cultivation and a modified form of state socialism in the field of industry. It places squarely on the shoulders of the state the obligation to supply the capital necessary for agriculture as well as for industry."
Dr. Ambedkar recognises the importance of insurance in providing the state with "the resources necessary for financing its economic planning, in the absence of which it would have to resort to borrowing from the money market at high rates of interest" and proposes the nationalisation of insurance. He categorically stated: "State socialism is essential for the rapid industrialisation of India. Private enterprise cannot do it and if it did, it would produce those inequalities of wealth which private capitalism has produced in Europe and which should be a warning to Indians."
ANTICIPATING criticism against his proposals that they went too far, Dr.. Ambedkar argues that political democracy implied that "the individual should not be required to relinquish any of his constitutional rights as a condition precedent to the receipt of a privilege" and that "the state shall not delegate powers to private persons to govern others". He points out that "the system of social economy based on private enterprise and pursuit of personal gain violates these requirements".
Responding to the libertarian argument that where the state refrains from intervention in private affairs - economic and social - the residue is liberty, Dr. Ambedkar says: "It is true that where the state refrains from intervention what remains is liberty. To whom and for whom is this liberty? Obviously this liberty is liberty to the landlords to increase rents, for capitalists to increase hours of work and reduce rate of wages." Further, he says: "In an economic system employing armies of workers, producing goods en masse at regular intervals, someone must make rules so that workers will work and the wheels of industry run on. If the state does not do it, the private employer will. In other words, what is called liberty from the control of the state is another name for the dictatorship of the private employer."
India's experience with neoliberal reforms since 1990 shows that Dr. Ambedkar's apprehensions regarding the implications of the unfettered operation of monopoly capital, both domestic and foreign, were far from misplaced. As has been documented and written about extensively, during this period of neoliberal reforms, there has been no breakthrough in the rate of economic growth. At the same time, there has been a distinct slowing down of the rate of growth of employment and practically no decline in the proportion of people below the poverty line. Agriculture has been in a crisis for some time now and the rate of growth of industry has also been declining for several years now. At the same time, despite a slower growth of foodgrains output, the government is saddled with huge excess stocks, which it seeks to sell abroad or to domestic private trade at very low prices.
The government and its economists, instead of recognising that the crisis is the product in large part of the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, propose a set of so-called second-generation reforms. At the centre of these reforms is the complete elimination of employment security. The war cry of the liberalisers is: "Away with all controls and the state, and let the market rule."
In this context, one cannot but recall Dr. Ambedkar's words that liberty from state control is another name for the dictatorship of the private employer. Whether on labour reforms or on agrarian policy or on the question of the insurance sector or the role of the public sector in the context of development, Dr. Ambedkar's views are in direct opposition to those of neoliberal policies.
It is indeed a pity that self-styled leaders of Dalit movements, who invoke Dr. Ambedkar's name day in and day out, do not examine carefully his views on key issues of economic policy and their contemporary relevance for the struggles of the oppressed. One may not expect much from those Dalit-based political forces which think nothing of cohabiting with the Sangh Parivar, but even many sections of the Dalit movement which proclaim a radical stance on social (and sometimes economic) issues do not raise the question of land or of the role of the state in the sharp manner in which Dr. Ambedkar does.
The Namasudras who were earlier known as Chandals (a term derived from the Sanskrit chandala, a representative term for the untouchables) lived mainly in the Eastern districts of Bengal. According to the census of 1901, more than 75 percent of the Namasudra population lived in the districts of Bakerganj, Faridpur, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Jessore and Khulna. Moreover, it has also been pointed out in several studies that a contiguous region comprising northeastern Bakerganj, southern Faridpur and the adjoining Narail, Magura, Khulna and Bagerhat districts contained more than half of this caste population. It was the Matuya leader Harichand Thakur who led the movement to abolish the foul noun for the dalits and the British Governmet prohibited calling anyone Chandal. The Chandals became Namashudra.
But the independence with partition of Bengal which ultimately came in the midnight of 14-15 August 1947 did not help the Scheduled Caste masses, as they feared. The caste hindu ruling class captured the statepower replacing Brtish. Many prominent groups like the Namasudras and the Rajbansis lost their territorial anchorage and, contrary to their hopes and in spite of their pleas, most of the Namasudra-inhabited areas in Bakarganj, Faridpur, Jessore and Khulna, like the Rajbansi areas of Dinajpur and Rangpur, went to East Pakistan, instead of West Bengal. The post-partition violence, as F.C. Bourne, the last British Governor of East Bengal reported in 1950, left many of them with "nothing beyond their lives and the clothes they stand up in". This compelled many of them to migrate as refugees to India, where being uprooted from their traditional homeland they had to begin once again their struggle for existence. The national leaders like Jawahar Lal Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad , Sardar Patel and others assured the partition victims everypossible assitance and rehabilatition.
The two most important communities which dominated Scheduled Caste politics in colonial Bengal were the Namasudras and the Rajbansis. The Namasudras, earlier known as the Chandals of Bengal, lived mainly in the eastern districts of Dacca, Bakarganj, Faridpur, Mymensingh, Jessore and Khulna. When these districts were ceded to East Pakistan, the inhabitants were forced to migrate across the new international boundary to the state of West Bengal in India. At the same time, a section of the Kochs of northern Bengal, living in the districts of Rangpur, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and the Princely state of Cooch Behar, came to be known as the Rajbansis from the late nineteenth century. Of those districts, Rangpur and parts of Dinajpur went to East Pakistan, while the rest remained in West Bengal. In other words, so far as the Namasudras and the Rajbansis were concerned, the international political boundary that came into existence in 1947 did not correspond by any means to ethnic boundaries, and resulted in the uprooting of these two groups of people from their territorial anchorage. Incidentally, according to the 1901 Census, the Rajbansis and the Namasudras were the second and third largest Hindu castes respectively in the colonial province of Bengal.Both of these two groups were considered untouchables among the Hindus of Bengal. Although untouchability per se was not as limiting a problem in this as in other parts of India, the Namasudras and the Rajbansis suffered from a number of disabilities, which created a considerable social distance between them and the high caste Bengalis who dominated Hindu society. Hence, when as a result of land reclamations in eastern and northern Bengal in the late nineteenth century, these two groups of people both experienced some amount of vertical social mobility, they proposed creating their own distinctive community identities.
As the Hindu nationalists began to invoke a glorious Hindu past as an inspiration for nation building, these people at the bottom of the social hierarchy began to look at the present as an improvement over the darker past. They regarded British rule as a good thing, seeing it as having overthrown the codes of Manu and establishing equality in an otherwise hierarchical society. The nationalist movement, therefore, appeared to them to be an attempt to put the clock back - an endeavour by the higher castes to restore their slipping grip over society. In 1906, a Namasudra resolution stated very clearly that "simply owing to the dislike and hatred of the Brahmins, the Vaidyas and the Kayasthas, this vast Namasudra community has remained backward; this community has, therefore, not the least sympathy with them and their agitation ...". In 1918 the Namasudras and the Rajbansis in a joint meeting demanded unequivocally the principle of "communal representation" to prevent "the oligarchy of a handful of limited castes". And when this was finally granted in the Communal Award of 1932, the leaders of both these communities greeted it as "a political advantage unprecedented and unparalleled in the constitutional history of India". But Gandhi, anxious to maintain the political homogeneity of the Hindu community, stood in their way. When Ambedkar finally succumbed to his moral pressure to sign the Poona Pact, the Rajbansi and Namasudra leaders condemned it as "Dr Ambedkar's political blunder"; for, by taking away the privilege of a separate electorate, it "ultimately led ... to the political death of millions of people at the hands of the so-called caste Hindus". Sometimes this alienation took the form of violent confrontation, particularly as the Namasudra peasants got involved in bazaar looting, house breaking and, in alliance with the Muslims, socially boycotting the high caste Hindus. In the case of the Rajbansis, passivity was the more dominant form of expression of their alienation, although from time to time they too participated in shop looting and no-rent campaigns against their high caste zamindars.
It should be noted that in undivided Bengal, the Zamidars belonged to Brahmin and kayasth communities whereas the peasants were muslims and dalits. Thus the dalit muslim allaince was a normal and scientific result of economic political tention in Bengal. It further resulted in the rise of Muslim League politics in Bengal as it was considerd as the best expression of revolt by Muslim peasants against caste hindu Zamindars. The dalit peasnt communities like Namashudra, Rajbanshi and Paundras saw nothing wrong in it.
Since the early years of the twentieth century both the Namasudras and the Rajbangshis sent requests to the colonial bureaucracy to bring them under the orbit of preferential treatment. Apart from extending preferential treatment to them in matters of education and employment, sympathies were also sought from the colonial bureaucracy over matters related to political participation. While the position of the Namasudra and Rajbangshi elite in the local bodies showed signs of improvement, their representation in the provincial legislature was still negligible. But more importantly, in order to gain special political privileges, the lower caste elite consciously advocated an anti-Congress and pro-British stance. At the same time, the lower caste elite, particularly the Namasudras who had actively opposed the swadeshi movement of the Congress, favoured a blatantly separatist line in the wake of the constitutional proposals of the 1910s and 1920s seeking greater devolution of power among various Indian groups. Almost immediately after the Mont-Ford proposals, the Rajbangshi and Namasudra elite pressed for greater representation for depressed communities in Bengal. As a result of these demands, the Reform Act of 1919 provided for the nomination of one representative of the depressed classes to the Bengal Legislature.
The peasants of these Bengali Dalit castes refrained from participating in Congress-led mass political agitations like the Non-Co-operation, Civil Disobedience and Quit India movements, led by Gandhi, because they were under the hegemony of the caste Hindu leaders. And then, finally, in the election of 1937 both Namasudra and Rajbansi voters rejected the Congress and the Hindu Sabha candidates and elected their own caste leaders in all the Scheduled Caste reserved constituencies. The process of alienation seemingly came to a conclusion with Dr B.R. Ambedkar forming the All India Scheduled Caste Federation in 1942 and declaring that "the Scheduled Castes are distinct and separate from the Hindus ...". The following year, its Bengal branch was started by a few enthusiastic Namasudra and Rajbansi leaders, their avowed political goal being to establish "the separate political identity" of the Scheduled Castes.
After the election of 1937, when the leaders of the Namasudra and Muslim communities were coming to a political adjustment and the first coalition ministry under Fazlul Huq had started functioning smoothly, their followers in the eastern Bengal countryside got involved in a series of violent riots in Faridpur, Mymensingh and Jessore between February and April 1938. Though rioting had been entirely due to local initiative of the peasants of the two communities over such issues as disputes over cattle or demarcation of land, the Hindu Sabha decided to take up the issues and make them items for a propaganda campaign. In an organised way rumours were spread, particularly in Jessore, that temples had been desecrated and images broken and an Assistant Secretary of the organisation was sent to the troubled area to conduct an enquiry on the spot. Religious emotions were thus fermented in a conflict which initially had nothing to do with religion
At a meeting at Agra in March 1946, Ambedkar had announced his support for the League demand, "Muslims are fighting for their legitimate rights and they are bound to achieve Pakistan". About a month later, in a press interview, he justified his demand for separate villages for the Scheduled Castes. This would not amount, he thought, to an encroachment on the rights of any other party. There were large areas of cultivable waste land lying untenanted in the country which could be set aside for the settlement of the Scheduled Castes. The echoes of this demand could be heard from distant places. In the Central Provinces some of the Scheduled Castes started talking vaguely about a 'Dalistan'; and in northern Bengal a few Rajbansis, supported by the Scheduled Caste Federation leader Jogendranath Mandal, raised the demand for 'Rajasthan' or a separate Rajbansi Kshatriya homeland. But the majority of the Scheduled Castes in Bengal, the Rajbansis included, seemed to be on the exactly opposite pole. Their responses to the partition issue clearly show that they had completely identified themselves with Hindu sentiments and apprehensions on this matter.
In Bengal Eaton shows that those from whom. Muslim converts were largely drawn—Rajbansis, Pods, Chandals, Kuchs, etc .Significantly, there was hardly any major social movement in Bengal between the tenth and the fifteenth century aimed at the elevation of the Antyaja jatis in the Hindu social scale. Only in 19th century, Harichand Thakur and Guruchand Thakur of Orakandi changed the scenerio with Matuya Dharama denying Brahminical Hindu religion.Matuya Hindu religious community, founded by Sri Sri harichand thakur of Gopalganj. The word 'matuya' means to be absorbed or remain absorbed in meditation, specifically to be absorbed in the meditation of the divine.The Matuya sect is monotheist. It is not committed to Vedic rituals, and singing hymns in praise of the deity is their way of prayer and meditation. They believe that salvation lies in faith and devotion. Their ultimate objective is to attain truth through this kind of meditation and worship. They believe that love is the only way to God.
Palash Biswas
Govind Ballabh Pant tried his best to cultivate the Forests in the Terai but the Hill People then refused to come down just because of adverse sustenance conditions in Terai as scores of Tribal villages had been wiped out due to Plague and Malaria. The Kham Bandobast was introduced just after independence, and powerful Politicians, Film stars, Industrialists, Bureaucrats, Army Officers, Business Families and other celebrates were allotted thousands of acres land per individual and the cluster of Big Farms grew like Mushroom in Nainital, Rampur, Bareilly and Pilibhit districts and Govind Ballabh Pant promoted this. The Big famers` lobby had been most influential in UP Politics which ensured the Chiefministership for their favorites until UP was divided. Beside Govind Balllabh Pant, Chandra Bhanu Gupt, ND Tiwari and Hemvati Nandan bahuguna from th hills were the Chief Minister of UP who never did try to initiate the process o f land Reforms in UP.Since a BJP MLA named Kiran Mandal crossed the fence and joined Congress resigning from his sitarganj seat to make place for the Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna, the son of Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna, the SANGH Parivar is in real form and relaunched its Anti Refugee Hate Campaign as it did in 2003 while BJP came to power and formed the first ever government in Uttarakhand led by BS Koshyari. All Bengali Refugees resettled during 1952 to 60 were decalred Bangladeshi Foeigners thanks to the Citizenship Amendment Bill moved by then NDA Home Minister LK Adwani, pased by the Parliamentary standing Committee chaired by Bengali Brahamin Pranab Mukherjee and which was enacted in the Parliament without any debate with the All Party support of SC ST OBC MPs, MPs from Bengal specifically. Only Genral Shankar Roy Chowdhary and rajyasabha Member from Assam Dr manmohan singh demanded Citizenship for all the Partition victims. The Sangh Parivar Attempted to eject out the Bengali Refugees from their resettlement as it did designing partition and making Congress, Muslim Leage and Gandhi just becuse these refugees from Bengal as well as Punjab had been pioneers of the liberation movenment led by Dr BR Ambedkar and Dr Ambedkar had been elected for East Bengal. The Constituency of Dr Ambedkar consisting of majority scheduled caste population in Jasore, Faridpur, Khulna and Barishal was included in Pakistan with an excellent arrangment with Redcliff Mission which never did any demographical survey to decide the borders as the Partion was meant to transfer the Power to the Brahaminical hegemony. United Uttarakhand resisted this and the attempt was foiled. Since this time, an agreement between Congress and the deserting BJP MLA Kiran Mandal ensured Land Ownership Right for Shaktifarm Refugees, RSS has invoked the Land Issue and land reform campaign provokes the sentiment against the Bengali Refugees in Particualr as they are bubed as bangladeshi in an intense Hate Campaign. The fact remains that the Refugees resettled in 36 colonies had the land right right in 1967 while Shaktifarm refugees had been deprived hitherto. while ND Tiwar who practiced Politics on Bengali and Sikh Refugee Vote Bank had been Chief Minister of UP three times and once in Uttarakhand.
The Centre has been asked to impose the Bengal model of land distribution across the country by a panel it appointed to suggest land reforms.The name of the game is Corpoare Ethnic Cleansing. Lad Acquisition amendment Act, Mining Amendment Act, Forest amendment Act, Illegal Unique Identity Project all are meant to eject out the SC, ST,OBC, Refugees, Slumdwellers from land so that Corporate Houses nd MNCs should capture the prime land in Aborigine humanscape as well as in Urban areas. maoist Menace is being used as agovernment remote controlled Multinational Project for Ethnic Cleansing as most of the Centarl India Land Property has been handed over all on the name of Industrialisation, Urbanisation and development. The iclusive development is nothing but redefinition of EXCLUSION on which micro minority Brahainical Hegemony banks on most. Exclusion is the key word. As it happened in UP and Uttarakhand the most of the land is captured by the microminority caste Hindu landlords. No land Reform initiative has been taken outside Bengal and Kerala after partition. The non-binding advice, which recommends rural land ceilings more stringent than those in Bengal, comes at a time the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government has tried to raise those limits to promote industry but seen its efforts stalled.
We have seen how Hate campaign against Muslims and Gujarat Genocide played the Cover for the Hindutva forces to industrialise and urbanise at the cost of SC, St and Minorities who had become the Foot Soldiers for the Corporate Fascist Hindutva Hindu rashtra Campaign which was originally intoroduced in Bengal and Reisisted by the SC Communities in Bengal led by Namoshudra alias Chandal, Paudra Kshatriya and Rajbanshi communities who are being victimised as linguistic Untouchable minorities all over the country. Bengali Refugees had been at home and well to do in UP and Uttarakhand so they did not Join the Marichjhanpi Movement. But Sangh Parivar back to their prepartion agenda of Hindu Rashta, are targeted systematically in a state like Uttarakhand yet agin after 2001 to 2003. This is the Escalation of Gujrat agenda which is not only Communal in nature but is quite Economic to defend the interst of Builder Promoter Mafia which is very strong in Uttarakhand and which has transfores the Sensitive Himalyan Zone into a suspended Atomic Explosion with destroying the Green, Nature and Environment. Hate campaign against minorities including Muslim, christian and Refugees help to communilise other sections of the society and it itensifies the onslaught against the Victims . It happend in Gujarat and Elsewhere and now the Peace zone in the Himalayas and the Terai has been targeted by the Sangh Pariwar. which has nothing to do with Land Reforms. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee had been
instrumental in the Land Reforms Program of the Fazlul Haq Government and thus Muslim leage got the support of the Peasantry consisting of SC communities and Mulsims which provoked the Sangh Pariwar for the Partition of India and the Sangh pariwar acomplished the task with Surgical precision.
The land panel, set up by the rural development ministry, also discourages the use of farmland for industry.But SEZ, NMIZ, Industrial corridors and Nuclear Clusters tell the different story.Stating that “land ceiling as a re-distributive programme is of as much relevance today as it was 50 years ago’’, the committee has recommended limiting personal landholdings to 5-10 acres of irrigated land or 10-15 acres of non-irrigated land.
In Bengal, the ceiling in non-irrigated areas is 17 acres and in irrigated areas, 12 acres. Left-ruled Bengal, Kerala and Tripura are the only states with rural land ceilings, the limit for irrigated land in Kerala being 15 acres. Some other states have tried and failed to enact land ceilings.
So, although the report on “State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms” was handed in last January, the Centre has been unwilling to reveal its contents given their controversial nature.
The standard reply from officials has been: “The ministry is going through the recommendations and will reveal them at the appropriate time.”
The commission was formed as a follow-up to the National Land Reforms Council, set up by the Prime Minister in 2008. It was headed by rural development minister C.P. Joshi and included experts such as A.K. Singh of Lucknow’s Giri Institute of Development Studies, B.K. Sinha of the National Institute of Rural Development and P.K. Jha of the School of Economic Sciences and Planning, JNU.But theNational Land Reforms ccouncil have never convened a formal meeting till this date.
Although the recommendations are not binding, sources said, the report is significant since the rural development minister heads the committee.
The panel has not mentioned the debate over whether smaller landholdings — a necessary impact of a ceiling — bring down productivity in the long run.
Many economists believe the debate has been clinched as Bengal, Kerala and Tripura witnessed marked rise in productivity after land reforms. After the land re-distribution in Bengal in the late 1970s, the yield had increased 60 per cent, with economists attributing it to the extensive cultivation possible on smaller plots and the new owners’ enthusiasm.
However, some others still argue that smaller holdings make it uneconomical to use expensive farm technology, such as tractors. But that argument applies only to advanced capital-intensive agriculture, a very small part of India’s agrarian economy.
Bengal’s Left Front government, the architect of the land reforms in the state, recently tabled a bill in the Assembly to relax the rural ceiling to facilitate commercial farming, farm products business and other industry. The bill has been sent to a House panel that has not been able to take a decision yet.
Joshi’s panel has made a slew of other recommendations (see chart). A potentially controversial one is the suggestion to scrap the exemptions to religious, educational, charitable and industrial organisations.
Various educational and religious institutions have been acquiring land across the country using the exemptions granted by state governments. The panel says religious institutions should be allowed only a single unit of 15 acres.
Criticising the widespread conversion of farmland for non-agriculture purposes, the committee says this has led to a fall in food production.
“The inequitable distribution of benefits from the new land use, insufficient quantity of compensation, and rehabilitation not operationalised properly are leading to enormous dissatisfaction among the project-affected people. This ultimately is leading to gruesome social unrest as witnessed across the country and such violence can escalate and spread… if the conversion of land is not addressed relevantly,” it says.
It recommends that cultivable land should be the last option when acquisition is done, and if such land has to be taken over, the consent of all stakeholders is a must.
The committee has also questioned the land re-distribution initiatives undertaken by various state governments apart from Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. It says “the land assigned to the poor were mostly uncultivable, and where cultivable lands have been assigned they were not under their possession’’.
It adds that the Bhoodan movement initiated by Acharya Vinoba Bhave in the 1950s faced major blocks since most of the land donated was not good enough for cultivation and in most cases, much of the donated land did not reach the poor. It asks state governments to do a survey to ascertain the current status of these plots.
Suggesting a new round of land redistribution, the committee says “the list of beneficiaries in fresh assignments should be selected by (the) gram sabha’’. It has suggested a single-window approach to redistribution of ceiling-surplus land.
The panel has also cited the “massive encroachments on government land’’ in the Sunderbans in Bengal and the Aravalli and Satpura regions of Madhya Pradesh.
The panel is also concerned that “the corpus of tribal land is in serious danger of erosion’’. It says 4.3 million hectares of forestland have been diverted for non-forest use and that 55 per cent of this diversion has taken place after 2001.
It recommends that the gram sabhas be recognised as the competent authority for all matters relating to transfer of tribal land.
According to the panel, the autonomous district councils in the Northeast have failed to perform their task. “There is an urgent need for codification of the traditional rights of the village councils.”
More than twenty million East bengal refugees coming over to India in different dates and phases since 1947 partition and riots over there, awaiting citizenship and rehabilitation, reservation, right to learn mother language and even minimum human and civil rights in different states of India. Meanwhile, the original citizenship Act of 1955 has been changed by a new act called Dual citizenship Act enacted last year with the objectives: preventing grant of Indian Citizenship to illegal migrants; grant of dual citizenship to foreigners of Indian origin and compulsary registration with issue of National identity card for all citizens of India.This new Act declares the government stand to deport all illegal migrants.This anti refugee Act was passed in the parliament with general consensensus. The SC/St MPs from Bengal also supported the bill bowing to respective party whip.
. The new act has abolished the right of citizenship by birth. Any person who has crossed the border after 18th july 1948 without valid passport and visa is considered illegal migrants.
The East Bengal refugees, even rehabilated in fifties, have not been granted citizenship as have been the refugees coming from West Punjab. The Bengali leadership never demanded citizenship for the refugees. BJP leaders and CPIM leaders in bengal speak in the same language about the Bengali refugees. Thirteen lac names have been deleted in Bengal in the last assembly elections as the concerned persons could not prove their Indian nationality. The situation is very grave as it is seen in the pilot project of national identity card in Murshidabad district in West Bengal. More than ninety percent of the population could not present the required documents to prove their citizenship. Elsewhere in the country, refugees and even the indian Bengali citizens in non Bengali states staying for employment are being deported. Rehabilated in fifties, the Dandakaranya refugees in Orrissa have been served the notice to leave India. In Orrissa the registration of new born babies in the refugee families are being denied birth certificates.
East Bengal refugees have been discriminated and victimised as nintey percent of them belongs to scheduled castes . In Chhattisgargh itself twenty two of total twenty six lac Bengali refugees belong to Namashudra caste. It is the same story elsewhere ,more or less. Other prominent refugee caste is the dalit Paundra, Pods, who are considered as par as the Namashudras. We have to know the social equation of erstwhile Bengal to understand the Bengali leadership behaviour. It is well known that Indian Dalit movement is rooted in East Bengal as well well as in Maharashtra. Namoshudra leader Jogendra Nath Mandal led the Dalit movement in Bengal. Mandal was responsible to send Ambedkar,defeated in Maharashtra, to the constitution assembly. Thus Hindu Dalit amjority areas like Jassore, Faridpur, Barishal and Khulna were included in Pkistan which destroyed the Dalit movement base in India. The Dalit refugees had been scattered all over in india with an objective to annihilate the main dalit foce like Namashudra and Paundras. Specific lower castes, or 'Scheduled Castes' (as they were known in British Indian official parlance), who lived in the border areas between East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the West Bengal state of the Union of India. They maintained since the early twentieth century their distance from high caste Hindus and their politics and, often in alliance with Muslims, opposed them actively.
Mind you, before partition all the three interim governments were headed by Muslims- Fazlul haq, Najibullah and Sohrawardi.Only Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was a member in Haq ministery . Otherwise Jogendra Nath mandal or Kumud Bihari Mallick were the personalities on centrestage. Muslims in East Bengal were dead against partition. They wanted undivided Bengal.And bengal was the centrestage of national dalit Movement with mandal in helms. Shyama Prasasd Mukherjee had said, if not India, Bengal must be divided as Caste Hindus were wary of Muslim dalit Combination . This combnitation was broken with partition. The dalit base devasted and dalit movement sabotaged. Dalits were evicted out of their home in East bengal and scattered countrywide. marichjhanpi revived the danger of Dalit Population concentration in Bengal once agian and ruling brahminical Marxists aborted it mercilessly with Marichjhanpi Genocide. thus, the Ruling Caste Hindus with all the bogus Marxism, secularism and progressive posture kept mum on Marichjhanpi!
Kolkata Intelligentsia delebratly defends CPIM as they brand the Dandakaranya Refugees landed in Marichjhanpi as tresspasser Bangladeshi Nationals in a protected Forest Zone, Tiger Project. Mind you, Marichjhanpi never have been under protected Forest or Tiger project. Suman Mukhopaddhay of Teesta parer Britanto(play) and Herbert (film,written by Nabarun bhattacharya), refuses to consider Marichjhanpi a case of Ethnic Cleansing. I have seen his elitist subversion of the protagonist Bgaharu of the Debesh Roy Novel. Bengali Caste Hindu media and Intelligentsia call Nandigram killings a Genocide as caste Hindu Politics of Power Dominance as well as Resistance involved.Though, the victims happen to be either ST SC or OBC and Muslims! But Marichjahanpi was, all in all, a case of Political Betrayal by the communists who got them ousted of Dandyakarany Refugee colonies and Camps to constitute a favourable Vote bank to capture power. Communist Movement in Bengal got momentum with Refugee vote Bank. Thus, the Communists never spoke against continuous presecution of Minorities in East Bengal nor did try to stop the Refugee Influx at any point of time. Not only this, Communist leaders including Basu, have been claiming to fight for Rehabilitation of refugees. They protested Bidhan Roy`s initiative to send bengali refugees out of Bengal . Samar Mukherjee and jyoti Basu had been writing to the Centre and State governments to rehbiliatate the East Bengal refugees in Sundarvanas from the very beginning! They never mentioned Forest area or Tiger Project at that time! More over,Jyoti Basu, Ram Chatterjee and Kiranmoy Nanda with other prominent leaders visietd country wide with an appeal, West Benagl with a five coroer population with ten coroer hands would welcome the dalit Bengali refugees and they will be rehabiliated in West Bengal. As Basu took over in 1977, Ram Chatterjee and Nanda with other leaders visited Mana Camp and Malakan Giri to call the refugees to settle in Sundarva. They went there with messages from the Chief Minister! Earlier Basu himself addressed refugee leaders including satish Mandal in Bhilai.
My father Pulin Babu, with his experience as a communist refugee leader in West bengal and Orissa and Peasant Leader in Dhimri Block peasants Insurrection in nainital, as a rescuer in Assam and North East understood the betrayal game and some how convinced the North India Refugees of UP, Bihar, Assam and Rajsthan that dangers ahead and the communists would betray. As the communists never helped the refugeees in these states and they are in better status, they could not be trapped. Not a single refugee landed in Marichjhanpi from North India excluding MP.
At that time , I was a student in DSB college in naninital and have been involved with Chipko Movement. I quoted forest laws and explained Environment significance of Sundarvana as my father decided to oppose the campaign actively. I talked face to face Satish Mand , the man behind Marichjhanpi movementright in the Mana Camp, Chhattish Garghwhere the Marichjhanpi refugees retuned back empty handed losing near and dear ones in Marichjhanpi. Satish Mandal said that my father would have been killed in Mana camp as he spoke against such a campaign and communists. security forces saved his life. He and his associates regretted and accepted that it was a blunder. They explained how the communists mobilised the Marichjhanpi movement centred in and around all the major five refugee camps in MP and entire Dandakarany resettlement spanning four states MP (united), Orissa, Andhra and maharashtra!
Another fact remains, only,yes only Dandakarany resetlled Refugees from Malkan GiRi of Orissa, Andhra and Maharashtra with refugees stranded in Five Major camps of United MP landed in Marichjhanpi. Resetlled refugees lived in those colonies since fifties while the refugees form all those five camps crosed the border during and befrore Riots of 1964 in East Bengal. They were not Bangladeshi nationals, as the Ruling Hegemony with its media and intellegentsia have been claiming all these years.Branding the refugess as Bangladeshi Nationals or escaped masses from refugee camps justify the Eviction drive and translate the Genocide as a political blunder only. This is syastematic subvertion freinds!
I am amazed why a writer like Amitabh Ghosh could not care to cross check his information as he described Marichjhanpi under tiger project! He, though unlike other Caste Hindu intellectuals described it a Genocide. Utpal Dutta wrote a drama at that time to justify the genocide- Chakranta. Media flashed this Plot theory with branding the bonafied Indian citizens as bangladeshi Nationals. Different stories were afloat like extrmest camp and armed training and popular CPIM concept of CIA and foreign hand to dislodge the communist Government. Left Front partner RSP held the base in that area and local panchayats were captured by them. RSP activists helped the refugees. Basu called them in the Writers and directed them to detach with the refugees and the Party Machinery led by late Pramod Dasgupta hatched the eviction plan. before blocked Subhash chakrabarti visited Marichjhanpi and offered the refugees CPIM umbrella. But satish mandal refuged considering RSP and Janata dal cooperation. Janata Dal was the ruling party in the centre.JD MP Kashikanta Moitra was with them. Had the refugees joined CPIM, it would have been a different story as it has always been in thousands of refugee colonies. You may see the RSP leaders speaking out as Eye witness in Tortured Humanity, the Rights alert film!
nu jalais told me that the problem all along this subcontinent roots in Caste Discrimination and the Hegemony system. She agrred with my contention that it was a demographic readjustmant case and said this interesting. Even the then Police Super of North 24 parganas, the officer in chareg of the marichjhanpi genocide discuses the role played by Ram Chatterjee and other left leaders. Just see the film, HUMANITY TORTURED! Now samanat is also iconised like runu Guha Niyogi. Niyogi justified the Repression and killings during seventies in his book, AAmi Sada Aami Kalo. Samanto writes column in the Satesman as well as Paschim Banga, a WB GOV mag. The ex DGP writes on topics spanning police reforms to revolutionary activities in colonial India. Even Amiya samanta, accepts, had the Marichjhanpi refugees not been Dalits they would not be evicted so mercilessly. He also acceptes the facts of Food Blocked. All Eye Witnesses and all evidences are there! Who would stand for justice? Human Rights? For the deprived, persecuted, marginaliged, totured and killed Dalit Refugees?
All the Dalit Leaders and intellectuals shed tears on Marichjhanpi genocide! They oppose Citizenship act. They are associated with refugee Movement and different Dalit orgs. But they could not bring the War criminals to justice! They could not launch a Political or non Political movement. They claim to know everything! What they did all these thirty years? Just tried their best to get maximum favour of the ruling Hegamony or simply a stautus in Prliament , assembly or pachayat or a reserved post, promotion! They licked the Bottom of the Ruling Hegemony! My foot!
The partition victim Dalit East Bengal refugees- evicted from homeland to accomodate Caste Hindu Brahminical Hegemony with transfer of Power from apartheid generator British clonial rulers, deprived of human and civil rights, mother tongue and citizenship, targeted nationwide as branded as bangladeshi foriegn national thanks to Citizenship Amendment Act passed by Indian Ruling Class represented by all kinds of left, centrist and Right ideologies and parties and finally facing nationwide deportation drive thanks to brahmins of Bengal led by Defacto Prime Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Hindutva forces led by Sangh Pariwar and shiv sena -should thank Mr Prabhu Chawla , the editor- in - chief of India Today to publish a special report in India Today Bengali on Marichjhanpi Genocide, coinciding with 30th year of the first dress rehearsal of Genocide culture launched by the Regemented so called marxist ruling hegemony in West Bengal.
It might sound something very amusing to welcome a gesture so insignificant in these days of Electronic channels, media boom and information explosion. Well, in North as well as south India, the resettled Dalit East Bengal refugees enjoy the support of local population. In Orissa, while Naveen Patnaik BJP plus BJD ruling combination tried to deport the Noakhali Partition victims resttled in Ram Nagar, Mahakal Para area near Paradip port, Oria speaking local residents constituted an Utkal Bangiya Suraksha committee to defend the helpless people. Local residents, Media and political parties jointly stalled the deportation move there. Though the struggle is going on as the Refugges resettled there in early fifties find their names missing in Voters` List. Ration cards are also stand cancelled.
In United Uttar Pradesh,where I originally belong as I was born in a refugee colony in Udham Singh Nagar (Nainital), the local population always stood by dalit Bengali Refugees. My father late Pulin kumar Biswas worked for the refugees lifelong. He was the President of All India Udvastu ( Refugee) committee. He as a Communist Leader led the Dhimri Block Peasants` Revolt in 1958 in the Terai of Nainital. The insurrection was repressed brutally by joint forces of third jat Regiment, Police and PAC. CH Charan singh was the Home Minister in UP then. Communist Party of India with General secretary Comrade PC Joshi disowned the movement as they betrayed Telengana. In UP, no one could a single instance of confrontation between bengali refugees and other communities. In Terai of Nainital, Pilbhit, Bareilly and Rampur a few corore partion victims Sikh and Punjabies as well as Bengalies live side by side with a bond of unbreakable fraternity and cooperation for six decades. My father was elected un opposed the Vice President Of Terai Cooperative Commitee in mid sixties with local SDM as President by virtue of his post. I want to emphasise that at that point, sikhs and punjabies were more powerful, more dominent and majority in number. bengali Dalit refugees were minority plus economically very weak. But the chemistry of Unity is working since the first day. The spirit of peasant movement works even after the deaths of all the leaders including my father and his comrades. We always enjoyed excellent relations with Hills. ND Tiwari and KC Pant became National Leaders with our help only.
In 2001, as UP was divided and BJP took over as the ruling party in the new state Uttaranchal. Chief Minister Nityanand Swami and His government branded all Bengali dalit refugees living there since 1952 as foreign nationals. Bengali refugees launched an unprecedented movement supported by all opposition political parties, communities, markets and media. This is the only occassion while West Bengal, its government, ruling front, media and people supported us. Because, we could convince Buddhadev Bhattacharya, the new Chief Minister that provided the dalit refugees were evicted out of Uttaranchal as planned by Sangh pariwar, they would come to West Bengal without any notice and Left Front had to face similar crisis as Marichjhanpi. Contrary to dandakaranya People the uttarakhandi Bengalies are more united and they might not repeat marichjhanpi genocide once again.
Finally, Uttaranchal BJP government had to give in.
This is all India scenerio barring spordiac clashes between tribals of Chhattish Gargh and Orissa. Of course, entire North East, particularly Assam, Tripura and Manipur showcase a different equation. And it is due to the identity crisis of natinalities there. In mainland , all Dalit Bengali refugees supported the nationality movement as in Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattish gargh. Only Maharashtra and Mumbai are different cases where all North Indians are branded unwanted and the dominent Sangh Pariwar target all Bengali speaking people branding them as bangladeshi Nationals.
Here you are! In West Bengal, the Caste Hindu Ruling Hegemony never allows any space for dalit Bengali Refugees in any sphere of life. The irony is that a refugee, Dr man Mohan singh becomes prime Minister, another refugee Lal Krishna Adwani Deputy Prime Minister while another refugee Jyoti Basu ruled Bengal for two decades and a half while all dalit partition victims of east Bengal are branded as foreign nationals.
Mind you, it is India Today of Non bengali origin published the story. Not even any revolutionary little mag or sanhati.com or so called different, progressive and secular Bengali Intelligentsia highlighted the Genocide for long thirty years. For example, Mahashweta Devi had been active as a creative writer for so long. She wrote so many things on Insurrections of all kind and on also Naxalbari. She is writing daily on nandigram and singur. She writes on Rizwanur and Taslima so frequently! Why she could not take over the marichjhanpi issue in past thirty years? Sunil Gangopadhyaya, the Ruling Hegemony cultural head at present and the Shikhandi President of sahitya academy of India never had been a Marxist in the days of Tebhaga and food movement. Sunil along with Sandipan and Shakti ruled Kolkata in sixties with anarchist posture. Sunil visited USA during that period and befriended with Ginsberg. Sunil did the excellent work lifetime during Marichjahnpi blocked . He reported exclusively for Anand bazaer as Niranjan Haldar did. But, Sunil became a Marxist very soon and kept MUM all these years. rights Alert India could not get him face camera for its documentary on Marichjhanpi. Mr jagadish Chandra Mandal, worthy son of Maha Pran Jogendra Nath Mandal, wrote a Book, marichjahnpi in Bengali. Ananda Bazar published the review with lacs of circulation. But Bengal could not find a single voice to represent the massacred indigenous people and the plight of partition victims all these days.
An eminent Activist, a former associate of Sunil gango, the vice President of Bhasha Shaheed Smarak Committee, Ratan Basu Majumdar claimed that Bengali Intelligentsia did not know about the massacre! Is it so? Even after Anu Jalius`s EPW article, a few books on marichjhanpi, so much matterial available on net thanks to reasearchers lake Anu and Ross Mallick, a very significant novel like Hungry Tide by an eminent writer like Amitabh Ghosh, Sunil`s writings before three decades and the documentary, Humanity Tortured by Rights Alert India? Ratanda told me mahasheta devi would certainly write! has she written? I have been a keen reader of Mahashwetya Sahitya for almost three decades. I have been associated with his Mag Bhasha Bandhan, in which I could not get any space for those five corore Dalit bangali refugees scattered all over India!
While the Citizenship Amendment Bill was published on net, I passed personally the copies to top CPIM leaders. All of them assured they would oppose. While the bill was passed undebated in both houses of Parliament as only Dr Manmohan Singh,then a Rajya Shabha memebr fro Assam and general Shankar Roy Chowdahury urgued theat the refugees form east bengal should get Indian Citizenship. Dr Singh forgot that. NDA Home minister lK adwani presented the Bill. Pranab Mukherjee was the chairman of the standing committee on the Bill. All refugee orgs and individuals and activists opposed and communicated to Mukherjee. Mukherjee did not call any of us. Rather he boasted before a Refugee deputation that had he been the Home Minister he would have got deported all foreign National bengali refugees. So, he is executing his plan nowadays. Kanti Biswas, then a cabinet minister and Upen kisku a ST minister claimed on phone that CPIM opposed the Bill. We all know the reality.
Forget Marichjhanpi! More than Twenty Lac people in west bengal got their names deleted from voters`s List as they have been branded as Bangladeshi Nationals. Thousands have been dumped in jail in Krishnanagar, Burdwan, katoa, Nadia and Howrah. Thosand and thousand absconding. No news appeared in Kolkata Media. No intellectual protested.
I myself gave Mahashwetadi personally all relevent documents on Citizenship and Refugee Problems. She just told that she could not take over all the issues. She commented, Palash, you have to launch this movement!
The Indian academia and society by and large know Dr. B R Ambedkar either as the man who fatehred the Indian Constitution or as the Dalit leader who only championed the cause of the depressed classes exploited by upper class. However, Ambedkar was more than that. He was an outstanding economsit, who understood the subtleties and nuances of monetary system, fiscal management, agrarian structure, industrialisation and postulate on these aspects with a most incisine yet human apporach as he believed economy should be subservient to the betterment of every section of soceity.
My father late Pulin Babu, direct partition victim, landed in West Bengal just in 1947 and began his life Indian as a Gate Keeper in a Cinema Hall in DUTT PUKUR, North 24 parganas. Rest of the family joined him later as he was Unmarried and could not get a refugee card alone. The family got their place in Ranaghat Coopers camp. I met the people with whom my father spent his Duttapukur days in 1973.From Ranaghat he firmly stood as an Emerging Refugee leader and social activist. Meanwhile, he got in touch with Jogendra Nath mandal after he fled from Pakistan. He learnt Ambedkarite Ideology as well as Marxism with hisexperience and also learnt reading and writing from the Beginning as he could study in class two only as our Grand Father, UMESH Biswas was dead earlier and the KITH and Kin DISLODGED the family headed by my Grandma Shantidevi. Kalicharan Biswas was shantidevi`s father and he was a pragmatic man as myfather used toquote him ofetn.
My father used to tell us a tale very intersting. During drought time kalicharan Biswas lost almost everything including the Bulls and Farming tools. But his relatives were doing very well. One day, it began to rain. Kalicharan asked his well to do relatives for help to plough hai holding small. They REFUSED. kalicharan was helpless. But the wild BOARS ploughed the fields in the dark of night. kalicharan got the MOTTO that the BOAR Relatives are better! It was also my father`s motto that is why my VILLAGE Basantipur was out of the Peripherry of traditional Blood relations and Caste link. These People spent times troubled in ranaghat Coopers camp and CHARBETIA campin Orrissa together and NEVER Seaparated until DEATH.
Our Well TO DO Kith and Kin,Close Relatives were AFFLUENT enough to excahnge property and settled in 24 oragans, Nadia and Maldah. We NEVER tried to connect us with them and my Father lived and died for the EXTENDED Family of Indian Proletariates and Refugees across Caste and faith. It was his STRENGTH and perhaps I INHERITED. thus, I feel at Homeany where any Time, even amongst the BOARS! I believe, provided I visit some where else on thsi Planetor outer space, I wouldNEVER Be alienated!
My father could not learn IDEOLOGIES or History methodically. but he was closely rooted in folk and folklore. He was INDULGED into, directly and deep, people`s history, Economics and life. he was not concered with FREAKONOMICS!
My father told me that Harichand Thakur was the First man who demanded Land reforms. He toldme that Dr Ambedkar was an ECONOMIST and he was not limited in caste system! He could as he treated all REFUGEES worldwide as his Family and rejected the Caste and Religion line. He advocated to ANNIHILATE caste in Refugee Geopolitics as he considered all REFUGEES as DALIT and BLACK, UNTOUCHABLES!
While I approved land Reforms by the Marxist regime and PRAISED comrade Jyoti Basu for his works as Chief minister, my Father OBJECTED. He would talk about the ABOLISHED ZAMINDARI and Bhoodan Yagya and show me that it NEVER changed the Landscapefor Refugees, SC, ST,OBC and Minorities. He would tell about Holocaust, Exodus and displacement in MYTHICAL style which I would rather reject as SUPERSTITIONs. He insisted that Land reforms are not change the Demographic Equations as the problem of Small Holding is not addresed at all and FEUDALISM prevails with Manusmriti apartheid rule. He was right, we see Loan waivers could not help the Dyning Peasants in BIDARBHA and elsewhere! He was correct I realsied longafter his last rites Vedic while I read AMBEDKARITE Ideology and studied the Black Movement amidst SINGUR, Lalgarh and Nandigram Insurrections.I witnessed with AWE how LAND Reforms REVERSED in INTESIVE Drive of ETHNIC Cleansing for Indiscriminate Land acquisition to push ECONOMIC Reforms!
DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR was among the most outstanding intellectuals of India in the 20th century in the best sense of the word. Paul Baran, an eminent Marxist economist, had made a distinction in one of his essays between an "intellect worker" and an intellectual. The former, according to him, is one who uses his intellect for making a living whereas the latter is one who uses it for critical analysis and social transformation. Dr. Ambedkar fits Baran's definition of an intellectual very well. Dr. Ambedkar is also an outstanding example of what Antonio Gramsci called an organic intellectual, that is, one who represents and articulates the interests of an entire social class.
While Dr. Ambedkar is justly famous for being the architect of India's Constitution and for being a doughty champion of the interests of the Scheduled Castes, his views on a number of crucial issues pertaining to economic development are not so well known. Dr. Ambedkar was a strong proponent of land reforms and of a prominent role for the state in economic development. He recognised the inequities in an unfettered capitalist economy. His views on these issues are found scattered in several writings; of these the most important ones are his essay, "Small Holdings in India and Their Remedies" and an article, "States and Minorities". In these writings, Dr. Ambedkar elaborates his views on land reforms and on the kind of economic order that is best suited to the needs of the people.
Dr. Ambedkar stresses the need for thoroughgoing land reforms, noting that smallness or largeness of an agricultural holding is not determined by its physical extent alone but by the intensity of cultivation as reflected in the amounts of productive investment made on the land and the amounts of all other inputs used, including labour. He also stresses the need for industrialisation so as to move surplus labour from agriculture to other productive occupations, accompanied by large capital investments in agriculture to raise yields. He sees an extremely important role for the state in such transformation of agriculture and advocates the nationalisation of land and the leasing out of land to groups of cultivators, who are to be encouraged to form cooperatives in order to promote agriculture.
Intervening in a discussion in the Bombay Legislative Council on October 10, 1927, Dr. Ambedkar argued that the solution to the agrarian question "lies not in increasing the size of farms, but in having intensive cultivation that is employing more capital and more labour on the farms such as we have." (These and all subsequent quotations are taken from the collection of Dr. Ambedkar's writings, published by the Government of Maharashtra in 1979). Further on, he says: "The better method is to introduce cooperative agriculture and to compel owners of small strips to join in cultivation."
During the process of framing the Constitution of the Republic of India, Dr. Ambedkar proposed to include certain provisions on fundamental rights, specifically a clause to the effect that the state shall provide protection against economic exploitation. Among other things, this clause proposed that:
* Key industries shall be owned and run by the state;
* Basic but non-key industries shall be owned by the state and run by the state or by corporations established by it;
* Agriculture shall be a state industry, and be organised by the state taking over all land and letting it out for cultivation in suitable standard sizes to residents of villages; these shall be cultivated as collective farms by groups of families.
As part of his proposals, Dr. Ambedkar provided detailed explanatory notes on the measures to protect the citizen against economic exploitation. He stated: "The main purpose behind the clause is to put an obligation on the state to plan the economic life of the people on lines which would lead to highest point of productivity without closing every avenue to private enterprise, and also provide for the equitable distribution of wealth. The plan set out in the clause proposes state ownership in agriculture with a collectivised method of cultivation and a modified form of state socialism in the field of industry. It places squarely on the shoulders of the state the obligation to supply the capital necessary for agriculture as well as for industry."
Dr. Ambedkar recognises the importance of insurance in providing the state with "the resources necessary for financing its economic planning, in the absence of which it would have to resort to borrowing from the money market at high rates of interest" and proposes the nationalisation of insurance. He categorically stated: "State socialism is essential for the rapid industrialisation of India. Private enterprise cannot do it and if it did, it would produce those inequalities of wealth which private capitalism has produced in Europe and which should be a warning to Indians."
ANTICIPATING criticism against his proposals that they went too far, Dr.. Ambedkar argues that political democracy implied that "the individual should not be required to relinquish any of his constitutional rights as a condition precedent to the receipt of a privilege" and that "the state shall not delegate powers to private persons to govern others". He points out that "the system of social economy based on private enterprise and pursuit of personal gain violates these requirements".
Responding to the libertarian argument that where the state refrains from intervention in private affairs - economic and social - the residue is liberty, Dr. Ambedkar says: "It is true that where the state refrains from intervention what remains is liberty. To whom and for whom is this liberty? Obviously this liberty is liberty to the landlords to increase rents, for capitalists to increase hours of work and reduce rate of wages." Further, he says: "In an economic system employing armies of workers, producing goods en masse at regular intervals, someone must make rules so that workers will work and the wheels of industry run on. If the state does not do it, the private employer will. In other words, what is called liberty from the control of the state is another name for the dictatorship of the private employer."
India's experience with neoliberal reforms since 1990 shows that Dr. Ambedkar's apprehensions regarding the implications of the unfettered operation of monopoly capital, both domestic and foreign, were far from misplaced. As has been documented and written about extensively, during this period of neoliberal reforms, there has been no breakthrough in the rate of economic growth. At the same time, there has been a distinct slowing down of the rate of growth of employment and practically no decline in the proportion of people below the poverty line. Agriculture has been in a crisis for some time now and the rate of growth of industry has also been declining for several years now. At the same time, despite a slower growth of foodgrains output, the government is saddled with huge excess stocks, which it seeks to sell abroad or to domestic private trade at very low prices.
The government and its economists, instead of recognising that the crisis is the product in large part of the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation, propose a set of so-called second-generation reforms. At the centre of these reforms is the complete elimination of employment security. The war cry of the liberalisers is: "Away with all controls and the state, and let the market rule."
In this context, one cannot but recall Dr. Ambedkar's words that liberty from state control is another name for the dictatorship of the private employer. Whether on labour reforms or on agrarian policy or on the question of the insurance sector or the role of the public sector in the context of development, Dr. Ambedkar's views are in direct opposition to those of neoliberal policies.
It is indeed a pity that self-styled leaders of Dalit movements, who invoke Dr. Ambedkar's name day in and day out, do not examine carefully his views on key issues of economic policy and their contemporary relevance for the struggles of the oppressed. One may not expect much from those Dalit-based political forces which think nothing of cohabiting with the Sangh Parivar, but even many sections of the Dalit movement which proclaim a radical stance on social (and sometimes economic) issues do not raise the question of land or of the role of the state in the sharp manner in which Dr. Ambedkar does.
The Namasudras who were earlier known as Chandals (a term derived from the Sanskrit chandala, a representative term for the untouchables) lived mainly in the Eastern districts of Bengal. According to the census of 1901, more than 75 percent of the Namasudra population lived in the districts of Bakerganj, Faridpur, Dhaka, Mymensingh, Jessore and Khulna. Moreover, it has also been pointed out in several studies that a contiguous region comprising northeastern Bakerganj, southern Faridpur and the adjoining Narail, Magura, Khulna and Bagerhat districts contained more than half of this caste population. It was the Matuya leader Harichand Thakur who led the movement to abolish the foul noun for the dalits and the British Governmet prohibited calling anyone Chandal. The Chandals became Namashudra.
But the independence with partition of Bengal which ultimately came in the midnight of 14-15 August 1947 did not help the Scheduled Caste masses, as they feared. The caste hindu ruling class captured the statepower replacing Brtish. Many prominent groups like the Namasudras and the Rajbansis lost their territorial anchorage and, contrary to their hopes and in spite of their pleas, most of the Namasudra-inhabited areas in Bakarganj, Faridpur, Jessore and Khulna, like the Rajbansi areas of Dinajpur and Rangpur, went to East Pakistan, instead of West Bengal. The post-partition violence, as F.C. Bourne, the last British Governor of East Bengal reported in 1950, left many of them with "nothing beyond their lives and the clothes they stand up in". This compelled many of them to migrate as refugees to India, where being uprooted from their traditional homeland they had to begin once again their struggle for existence. The national leaders like Jawahar Lal Nehru, Dr Rajendra Prasad , Sardar Patel and others assured the partition victims everypossible assitance and rehabilatition.
The two most important communities which dominated Scheduled Caste politics in colonial Bengal were the Namasudras and the Rajbansis. The Namasudras, earlier known as the Chandals of Bengal, lived mainly in the eastern districts of Dacca, Bakarganj, Faridpur, Mymensingh, Jessore and Khulna. When these districts were ceded to East Pakistan, the inhabitants were forced to migrate across the new international boundary to the state of West Bengal in India. At the same time, a section of the Kochs of northern Bengal, living in the districts of Rangpur, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and the Princely state of Cooch Behar, came to be known as the Rajbansis from the late nineteenth century. Of those districts, Rangpur and parts of Dinajpur went to East Pakistan, while the rest remained in West Bengal. In other words, so far as the Namasudras and the Rajbansis were concerned, the international political boundary that came into existence in 1947 did not correspond by any means to ethnic boundaries, and resulted in the uprooting of these two groups of people from their territorial anchorage. Incidentally, according to the 1901 Census, the Rajbansis and the Namasudras were the second and third largest Hindu castes respectively in the colonial province of Bengal.Both of these two groups were considered untouchables among the Hindus of Bengal. Although untouchability per se was not as limiting a problem in this as in other parts of India, the Namasudras and the Rajbansis suffered from a number of disabilities, which created a considerable social distance between them and the high caste Bengalis who dominated Hindu society. Hence, when as a result of land reclamations in eastern and northern Bengal in the late nineteenth century, these two groups of people both experienced some amount of vertical social mobility, they proposed creating their own distinctive community identities.
As the Hindu nationalists began to invoke a glorious Hindu past as an inspiration for nation building, these people at the bottom of the social hierarchy began to look at the present as an improvement over the darker past. They regarded British rule as a good thing, seeing it as having overthrown the codes of Manu and establishing equality in an otherwise hierarchical society. The nationalist movement, therefore, appeared to them to be an attempt to put the clock back - an endeavour by the higher castes to restore their slipping grip over society. In 1906, a Namasudra resolution stated very clearly that "simply owing to the dislike and hatred of the Brahmins, the Vaidyas and the Kayasthas, this vast Namasudra community has remained backward; this community has, therefore, not the least sympathy with them and their agitation ...". In 1918 the Namasudras and the Rajbansis in a joint meeting demanded unequivocally the principle of "communal representation" to prevent "the oligarchy of a handful of limited castes". And when this was finally granted in the Communal Award of 1932, the leaders of both these communities greeted it as "a political advantage unprecedented and unparalleled in the constitutional history of India". But Gandhi, anxious to maintain the political homogeneity of the Hindu community, stood in their way. When Ambedkar finally succumbed to his moral pressure to sign the Poona Pact, the Rajbansi and Namasudra leaders condemned it as "Dr Ambedkar's political blunder"; for, by taking away the privilege of a separate electorate, it "ultimately led ... to the political death of millions of people at the hands of the so-called caste Hindus". Sometimes this alienation took the form of violent confrontation, particularly as the Namasudra peasants got involved in bazaar looting, house breaking and, in alliance with the Muslims, socially boycotting the high caste Hindus. In the case of the Rajbansis, passivity was the more dominant form of expression of their alienation, although from time to time they too participated in shop looting and no-rent campaigns against their high caste zamindars.
It should be noted that in undivided Bengal, the Zamidars belonged to Brahmin and kayasth communities whereas the peasants were muslims and dalits. Thus the dalit muslim allaince was a normal and scientific result of economic political tention in Bengal. It further resulted in the rise of Muslim League politics in Bengal as it was considerd as the best expression of revolt by Muslim peasants against caste hindu Zamindars. The dalit peasnt communities like Namashudra, Rajbanshi and Paundras saw nothing wrong in it.
Since the early years of the twentieth century both the Namasudras and the Rajbangshis sent requests to the colonial bureaucracy to bring them under the orbit of preferential treatment. Apart from extending preferential treatment to them in matters of education and employment, sympathies were also sought from the colonial bureaucracy over matters related to political participation. While the position of the Namasudra and Rajbangshi elite in the local bodies showed signs of improvement, their representation in the provincial legislature was still negligible. But more importantly, in order to gain special political privileges, the lower caste elite consciously advocated an anti-Congress and pro-British stance. At the same time, the lower caste elite, particularly the Namasudras who had actively opposed the swadeshi movement of the Congress, favoured a blatantly separatist line in the wake of the constitutional proposals of the 1910s and 1920s seeking greater devolution of power among various Indian groups. Almost immediately after the Mont-Ford proposals, the Rajbangshi and Namasudra elite pressed for greater representation for depressed communities in Bengal. As a result of these demands, the Reform Act of 1919 provided for the nomination of one representative of the depressed classes to the Bengal Legislature.
The peasants of these Bengali Dalit castes refrained from participating in Congress-led mass political agitations like the Non-Co-operation, Civil Disobedience and Quit India movements, led by Gandhi, because they were under the hegemony of the caste Hindu leaders. And then, finally, in the election of 1937 both Namasudra and Rajbansi voters rejected the Congress and the Hindu Sabha candidates and elected their own caste leaders in all the Scheduled Caste reserved constituencies. The process of alienation seemingly came to a conclusion with Dr B.R. Ambedkar forming the All India Scheduled Caste Federation in 1942 and declaring that "the Scheduled Castes are distinct and separate from the Hindus ...". The following year, its Bengal branch was started by a few enthusiastic Namasudra and Rajbansi leaders, their avowed political goal being to establish "the separate political identity" of the Scheduled Castes.
After the election of 1937, when the leaders of the Namasudra and Muslim communities were coming to a political adjustment and the first coalition ministry under Fazlul Huq had started functioning smoothly, their followers in the eastern Bengal countryside got involved in a series of violent riots in Faridpur, Mymensingh and Jessore between February and April 1938. Though rioting had been entirely due to local initiative of the peasants of the two communities over such issues as disputes over cattle or demarcation of land, the Hindu Sabha decided to take up the issues and make them items for a propaganda campaign. In an organised way rumours were spread, particularly in Jessore, that temples had been desecrated and images broken and an Assistant Secretary of the organisation was sent to the troubled area to conduct an enquiry on the spot. Religious emotions were thus fermented in a conflict which initially had nothing to do with religion
At a meeting at Agra in March 1946, Ambedkar had announced his support for the League demand, "Muslims are fighting for their legitimate rights and they are bound to achieve Pakistan". About a month later, in a press interview, he justified his demand for separate villages for the Scheduled Castes. This would not amount, he thought, to an encroachment on the rights of any other party. There were large areas of cultivable waste land lying untenanted in the country which could be set aside for the settlement of the Scheduled Castes. The echoes of this demand could be heard from distant places. In the Central Provinces some of the Scheduled Castes started talking vaguely about a 'Dalistan'; and in northern Bengal a few Rajbansis, supported by the Scheduled Caste Federation leader Jogendranath Mandal, raised the demand for 'Rajasthan' or a separate Rajbansi Kshatriya homeland. But the majority of the Scheduled Castes in Bengal, the Rajbansis included, seemed to be on the exactly opposite pole. Their responses to the partition issue clearly show that they had completely identified themselves with Hindu sentiments and apprehensions on this matter.
In Bengal Eaton shows that those from whom. Muslim converts were largely drawn—Rajbansis, Pods, Chandals, Kuchs, etc .Significantly, there was hardly any major social movement in Bengal between the tenth and the fifteenth century aimed at the elevation of the Antyaja jatis in the Hindu social scale. Only in 19th century, Harichand Thakur and Guruchand Thakur of Orakandi changed the scenerio with Matuya Dharama denying Brahminical Hindu religion.Matuya Hindu religious community, founded by Sri Sri harichand thakur of Gopalganj. The word 'matuya' means to be absorbed or remain absorbed in meditation, specifically to be absorbed in the meditation of the divine.The Matuya sect is monotheist. It is not committed to Vedic rituals, and singing hymns in praise of the deity is their way of prayer and meditation. They believe that salvation lies in faith and devotion. Their ultimate objective is to attain truth through this kind of meditation and worship. They believe that love is the only way to God.
Under the influence of certain liberal religious sects, a sense of self-respect developed among the Namasudras. In fact, these liberal as well as radical sects under the leadership of charismatic gurus like Keshab Pagal or Sahalal Pir challenged the hierarchic Hindu caste system and preached a simple gospel based on devotion (bhakti) and spiritual emotionalism (bhava). In 1872-73, the Namasudras under the leadership of Dwarkanath Mandal, tried to bolster their self-esteem by undertaking a social and economic boycott of the upper castes. The failure of this movement led to the establishment of the Matua sect - an organised religious sect under the influence of Sri Harichand Thakur and his son Sri Guru Chand Thakur.
The namashudras joined the Matuya Dharam. Which Was a social reform movement altogether. Harichand and Guruchand Thakur emphasised on education. Guruchand Thakur established thousands of eductional institutions. The Matuya have no distinctions of caste, creed, or class. They believe that everyone is a child of God. The Matuya believe that male and female are equal. They discourage early marriage. Widow remarriage is allowed. They refer to their religious teachers as 'gonsai;' both men and women can be gonsai. The community observes Wednesday as the day of communal worship. The gathering, which is called 'Hari Sabha' (the meeting of Hari), is an occasion for the Matuya to sing kirtan in praise of Hari till they almost fall senseless. musical instruments such as jaydanka, kansa, conch, shinga, accompany the kirtan. The gonsai, garlanded with karanga (coconut shell) and carrying chhota, sticks about twenty inches long, and red flags with white patches, lead the singing.
Nandan Nilekani has a different Plan with his UNIQUE Identity Card, quite UNKOWN to even the most previlleged Indian Citizens, the Memebrs of the Parliament..
One of the most ELEGANT and EMPOWERED ladies in India, the BJP leader Mrs Sushma Swaraj asked the Home Minister of India,Chettiar Chidambaram to clarify the UNIQUE Identity Card Plan and also requested to differentiate between Unique I card and Multi Purpse national Identity card! She was speaking on the demands of Home Ministry and talked on details on the issues of national Security realting it to Development! She as well as Congress MP from Mumbai, Sanjay Nirupam whom we also saw recently in a Reality Show LIVE on TV, in BIG BOSS, emphasised that the NATOIONAL I Cards are very SENSITIVE for national Security despite INDULGING in Blame game with UPROARS!
But the issue was DIVERTED as Chidambaram as well as Extra Constitutional Elements running the Government of Indian Inc Illuminati like Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Sam Pitroda, Sunil Mitra, GP Goenka, Chndrashekhar, Mukesh Ambani, Ratn tata and so on, play a DIFFERENT ball game and know well how to kill the Constitution and by pass the Parliament to defend US as well as Desi LPG Mafia interests INTACT sustaing the Manusmriti Rule in this Geopolitics under TRIIBLIS Zionist World Order!
Nandan Nilekani took charge as the chairman of the Unique Identification Database Authority of India Thursday and started work on the government's ambitious project to provide a single identity number and card to each of the country's 1.17 billion people. On the other hand,Home minister P Chidambaram said in Lok Sabha on Wednesday that there was no plan to withdraw the army in militancy-hit Kashmir.
On the issue of withdrawal of para-military forces, he said that it could be done once the J&K police had enough strength to manage on its own.
The joint might of the opposition parties was once again visible on Wednesday as they castigated the government for delinking the terrorism issue from the Indo-Pak composite dialogue.
Initiating the debate, BJP's deputy leader of opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, said that the PM Manmohan Singh was in a hurry to sell tea, potatoes and onions to Pakistan when not even a year has elapsed since the Mumbai terror attack. He has done this by delinking terror from the dialogue.
She reminded the UPA government that the way it was posturing with Pakistan was against the mandate it got in the recent Lok Sabha elections. The Congress-led coalition had garnered the votes while promising to take action against Pakistan, she added.
Chidambaram rebutted her assertion that the government had failed its promise of "zero tolerance" towards terror.
Every year, some 25,000 Bangladeshis entering India with valid visas do not return home while many more travel there illegally, raising security concerns for New Delhi, the Indian envoy to Dhaka said today."We know that around 25,000 Bangladeshis do not return after entering India every year; those who enter unrecorded are many more in number," Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty said.
He said New Delhi could not brush aside the issue of illegal migrants because of security concerns in view of increase in terrorist attacks in the region in recent times.
Meanwhile, The Supreme Court has admitted a petition alleging presence of 40 lakh illegal migrants in Voter’s List in Assam and issued notice to the Assam Government, Central Government and the Election Commission of India. The petition filed by Assam Public Works (APWs) came for preliminary hearing in the Court of the Chief Justice of India, KG Balakrishnan.
The Bangladesh government has dismissed a recent claim by the Indian High Commissioner here that every year 25,000 Bangladeshis go to India and stay there.
“[The] Ministry would like to inform all concerned that the information available with the government does not correspond with the observation of the High Commissioner,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesperson. “Moreover, Bangladesh has not received any official communication from the government of India in this regard.”
The Ministry spokesman also said Bangladesh-India relations were “multi-faceted and deep-rooted.”
The ministry’s statement came after Indian High Commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty’s reported claim at a conference here to this effect.
“Those who enter unrecorded are many more in number,” said Mr. Chakravarty and added, “Our concern about illegal migration cannot be brushed aside.”
Mr. Chakravarty also said security was a major concern for his government in the recent times following the rise of terrorism in the region.
Clarification
The High Commission also issued a clarification and said Mr. Chakravarti’s remarks had been taken out of context and misreported, leading to a misunderstanding and unwarranted controversy.
Responding to these remarks, the High Commissioner mentioned that visa is a problem area because of two reasons: the large number (around 25,000) of Bangladeshi nationals who obtain visa but do not return, and the difficulties caused to genuine visa applicants by ‘touts and brokers’.
The High Commission also clarified that the Indian envoy was highlighting a well-known problem i.e. ‘touts and brokers.’
Palash Biswas
Writer, thinker, activist
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