Emergencies of Our Times: Subaltern Perspectives

The 50th anniversary of the internal Emergency in India: Reflections from the CISRS archives.

(This reflection was originally published in the CISRS Journal, Religion & Society, Vol. 67 No. 3, in September 2022)

Emergencies of Our Times: Subaltern Perspectives

Meena Kandasami

I have led to the emergency myself when my father was arrested and put in jail during the emergency. But, that’s another story. So, basically, overall, I want to talk about three things. I will go into detail later. First is what is emergency doing to the artists. You know, the prevailing political atmosphere, what is it doing to the writers, and how is it affecting the freedom of expression. The second thing that I want to talk about is that, I want to broadly draw a distinction between what is happening in a visible manner, because of the kind of assault that we face as artists, creative people, dissenters, and political poets. All these are sustained in a visible spectrum. What is that emergency that’s happening in places that are invisible? Last month I had an opportunity to go to Silger, an Adivasi village in south Chhattisgarh where there is a massive Adivasi protest that has been happening for over a year.  So, what is militarization, and corporatization do there, I will get back to this. This is also part of the discussion on emergencies of our times. How does t become part of the emergency? I think this is part of the new liberal economic policies that have pushed these people into a prevailing political atmosphere. The third thing that I want to bring in is the question of caste. We have been dealing with this question since the morning but not really going deep into it. But I do think that what is happening in India today is also the agenda to preserve the upper cast hegemony in terms of preserving the Sanatana Dharma.

Justice Chandru began discussing the emergencies of our time and lifted a piece of straw, saying it is the straw that will break the totalitarian governance. And he spoke about what happened to Father Stan swami in prison being denied a sipper. I really feel very heartbroken about father Stan Swamy’s death, partly also because I am a Tamil woman, and I am not sure father Stan swami is identified only as a Tamil person. He lived in Ranchi and identified himself with the Adivasis of Jharkhand, but you know when father Stan Swami was alive when father Stan swami was in jail when he was fighting all these cases, the Tamil political class maintained certain silence, you know, we all were not on the street, we did not do anything. But the minute when father Stan swami died, he became a Tamil. The Chief Minister attended his funeral. Literally, every single Tamil MP went to his funeral. So, the whole question of how conveniently he was a Tamil, once he became a martyr. Why we were not fighting when he was in jail? This is a kind of emergency in the sense that we accept the defeat, we accept that he is one of our own, but we do not do what we have to prevent this form of emergency and prevent the death of father Stan Swami. I think this is also the way in which we are being made timid, but also this is something that reflects on why the political class not reacting against the human rights violations, what makes people fearful and keeps them on a soft pedal on something like, especially the freedom of expression have been taken away.

In the Bhima Koregaon case, which started this morning at the standard of this day, I think it is an undeclared emergency because you have sixteen people who are the greatest human rights defenders in this country in prison on false charges. Just wanted to unpack in terms you know, all the technical evidence that is unraveled in this case, the first thing that was unraveled in this case, was all of the documents under which Rona Wilson was arrested were placed in his laptop through hacking. And the second thing that was revealed was Sudha Bharadwaj’s computer and Varavara Rao’s emails were hacked.  And you know the Wire website which came to reveal that the people like Varavara Rao never accessed their computers, but the files were placed on their computers and they were arrested. The article that appeared in Wire two days ago, says that when these accounts were hacked, the recovery email address that was given to one, each of these single addresses, was the address of a Pune police officer, and his phone number was given as the recovery phone number and they did a lot of cross-checking routed to public directories, where this information they corroborated everything said the same people who make the arrest, are the same people who are hacking this, people. The Bhima Koregaon conspiracy is not merely what the ten-thousand-page charge sheet claims, which alleges a conspiracy to assassinate the Prime Minister or to incite a mass movement. Instead, it primarily serves as a plot to silence the intellectuals of this country. Whatever the claims about conspiracy, the real objective appears to be an effort to suppress critical voices in our society.  And the PM would be reluctant to think that this Bhima Koregaon is all about sixteen people who are in jail but possibly it is all about the emergency that we all face today in India. 

Let me share here an experience to show how much shock waves are being felt in completely under-related fields. So, one of these is as I am a poet, and I was asked two years ago by the Penguin writing house to edit Varavara Rao’s poetry. And I said, my knowledge of Telegu is limited so I will bring on Varavara Rao’s nephew who is a translator, a poet, and the co-editor of the volume. So, this was the book that was commissioned by Penguin publishing house and then we went starting on this volume of poetry. We finished the book in 2020 and we submitted it. The whole year they said the legal opinion is not favorable; please wait it out. So, we just wait it out, then they said they sent it for a second legal opinion and then we wait it out. And finally, I think the first or second week of May the suggestions from the penguin legal team came to us what are the suggestions the penguin wants us to do? The book is called Varavara Rao, India’s Revolutionary Poet. The first suggestion from Penguin is if you want to use the word revolution you have to define what it is. What Penguin suggests to us, is as we have to define revolution as a democratic egalitarian concept pursued through peaceful non-violent means. This may not be Varavara Rao’s definition, but we were told not to use the word emergency, we were told not to use the word UAPA, we were told not to use the word Sangh Parivar, we were told not to use the word Hindutva, these are the words that are printed day in and day out. These are words that are used by everybody including by the Hindutva people. These are the words to hear constantly on TV, and these are the words we see constantly in media, but the fact is that this is why we call this an undeclared emergency because it is moved from outside by somebody forcing it on us as a kind of self-censorship.

The publishing house doesn’t want these words to be printed, precisely as a method or this is the only way that we got into trouble. But then what it means of poetry, what remains of Varavara Rao who is eighty plus, what remains as his body of words? You know India is seventy-five years of independence but these are Seventy-five years in which Varavara Rao is consistently writing poetry, critiquing the existence of the state, critiquing violence and this is also something to show you the contrast between when you go to penguin random house website, you look at Varavara Rao, they published his earlier book, writings from prison it’s called captive imagination. On the website, they call Varavara Rao a Maoist ideologue.  He is the founder of the Virasam the revolutionary writers’ association which was inspired by the Naxalbari and the Sriikakulam Adivasi protest. This is how the autobiopics as you know can certainly feel the absolute shift into the temperament, the shift in what you call freedom of expression and this is also very interesting because when we speak about Penguin publishing house, I have two books that are coming with them.  so, all of this must be in an extremely defended position, as a young woman trying to get it published.  But the thing is these are the things you have called it all. This is not something that going for argument, something we have to speak out about. This is not about saying, ok all the literal people are my fathers, I have to ask them to protect me.  This is about you having to stand up for something like this, you have to stand up to fight for your rights when they say you can’t use words like this, you cannot use the words like revolution, you cannot use the words like Hindutva or Sangh Parivar.

And then something that also sparked my kind of interest outrage which there is a poem Varvara Rao wrote about India after the month of emergency the last lines of the poem says “dictator you know that the people will one day arise against you, your days are counted” something to that effect, and they say you have to remove the word dictator. So, we write back in our comments this dictator is Indira Gandhi, the poem is written in 1977, they say no; things can be misread you never know.  So, even when Varavara Rao is writing something in 77, they say that if you use the word like that it could be assumed to you are afraid of the present governance. So, this is the kind of absolutely incredible thought control that is going on and how is it going to affect it. Tomorrow you would go recipe for how to write. what words you are going to be allowed to use. And I really wanted to know, bring this other reasons as well, because another person who presents is Dr. Anand Teltumbde, and he is one of the foremost intellectuals in this country, but also one of the intellectuals who works on the question of caste and the question of the economic exploitation behind it capitalist exploitation that is going on now.

Anybody who from the left practice working on the caste question is immediately become suspect to this regime.  He is immediately put into jail by this regime and the most important task of this regime is to silence Dalit voices, It is a very clear signal of what is happening today as somebody says that we face fascism today. Hindutva fascism is here this is what came to blow, look at this and be careful and this is how he was taken away, and now he is in jail. The second thing is that I wanted to connect this with PM. Everybody speaks about him in terms you know we have to unpack how you know all of this separation, all of this emergency is also deeply interconnected with the Adani, Ambani projects, the team that it is connected with what they call resource extraction which is deeply connected with the corporates when they take away indigenous people’s land as we have seen in village-like Silger. Silger is that I stayed there for two days at least 40-50 thousand Adivasi people who walk by foot to be there and If you are there what you witness is that this village does not have any toilets, this village does not have a place where you have to answer the nature’s call openly.  This village does not have a single school. This village has a hospital that is at least 15 kilometers away. This village does not have a primary school. This village does not have electricity, but what they have is a CRPF military camp. Having a military camp is not what the people want, what the people want is all of the other things that are going to make a change to their daily life. And so, the regime in Chhattisgarh is very proud that in the last three years they constructed such military camps all over the state.

Why I call this emergency because the way in which people access public resources are being mediated through the military; so, they no longer, they are called military camps but they are called integrated development centers. Whenever they speak about the military camps, they say what comes up next is that the camp going to be a school, an Anganwadi, a hospital, and then the same military camp is going to be a youth center also. So, in order to access any public service, the people have to go to the military, and the military becomes the state completely absorbing the state where the state withdraws itself and allows the military to be the point of contact for the people. And this is really what is happening to the Adivasi people and what is burning in the Adivasi movements for justice. What is happening is that once again we put them at the mercy of the military and this is the emergency that you don’t speak about also because of two obvious reasons.  Anybody who speaks about the Adivasi issue is labeled as a Maoist.  I absolutely believe in democratic measures but knowing fully that anyone who raises the issues of Adivasi people, Adivasi rights, issues against Adivasi rapes by the military, anybody who speaks about these contradictory functions of the state will be designated as Maoists. In the midst of these basic necessities of the people, I had seen a highway. why is that?  For the movement of troops and for the movement of the resources of the corporates. So, what you see is that a kind of blunder, a corporate blunder that legitimizes the undramatized militarization, no respect for human rights and this is an emergency that we really have to speak about. At least let them know that Silger is not Delhi. One will wonder to know what is happening in the places is integrally connected with what is happening to people also. 

And the other reason that I just want to touch point before going to something else is that when you look at the way everybody speaking about Agneepath I also wanted to speak about that at some points, it did not strike me as you know connected to this emergency but in some ways yes it is because when they come for Adivasi lands they are also coming for the destruction of Adivasi way of life, a way of life in which they the sense the elements of and egalitarianism, elements of equality, elements of corporation, elements of solidarity. So in one way, it is land right but on the other way, it is genocide. To the minute, you know people are removed from where they live, the way of life, the way of whatever it is, self-identity disappears, but the Indian government says to have expanded this, expanded this project to the cultural genocide, to also become a project of fratricide.  So, they recently announced that recruitment to the CRPF will be relaxed for Adivasis. So, they say that normally you have to be a 10^th standard pass to join the CRPF, they are going to say, if you are an Adivasi person you can only finish the 7^th standard or whatever the minimum qualification. So that you can join the CRPF with your minimum qualification. So, once they had a paramilitary force like Assam Rifles, going for fighting, now they are going to get Adivasi people to join CRPF as a brother against brother, sister against sister because another thing that really struck me was the amount of female CRPF cadre I saw there. So, you know one we talk about women’s development, the women’s empowerment but on the other hand, the women were inducted into these paramilitary forces more out literally how are they doing, and this is for me, is an emergency of this something we should also speak about.

I am coming back to the last point that I wanted to speak. So, the last thing that I wanted to speak about is that you know the emergency that the education system faces today. You know our young people are out in the streets, protesting the central vista and Agneepath schemes, burning buses and trains; because it is a question of their future, it’s a question of you know India has one of the world’s largest young people populations and there is no promise for jobs or employment. So you can understand.  but there is a very nefarious way and this is you must pardon me for you know kind of stretching the argument but this is text with Manu smriti the kind of change is the Modi government, Modi regime especially the 2.0 is introduced in terms of education has been every step to prevent rural students, Dalit students, Adivasi students backward class students from entering the education system. So, they have created this entrance exam like NEET. They have created this new common entrance exam CUET. They are going to create you know one nation one test kind of exam. So, all of these centralized examinations, what do they do? How does it going to impact the future of our subaltern young people? I come from a state which is pride itself on one of the highest gross enrollment ratios in higher education, Tamil Nadu has a rate higher than the United States even then what is going to happen when the majority of our people are denied access to resources?

What we talk about is a common test for 3^rd standard, 5^th standard, 8^th standard, 12^th standard something like that, so if a child is going to have to go through many common tests, you are creating a system of dropouts. And why is creating dropouts important for Manu Smriti and for Sanatana dharma what Hindutva stands for?  Hindutva stands not only for demolishing Muslim people’s houses, not only for what they do to the minorities, but it also stands for a social order, a social order that should not be disturbed. The social order says that a menial job should be done by the Shudras alone or by the Dalits and so when people get educated, they are no longer coming to the system to do jobs that they want them to do. So, the system, the education system has to be made in such a manner that you constantly create dropouts. So going to legitimize the caste system forever. This is the way they are inducting principles of the Manu Smriti. This is the way the denial of education is structured in lite. It may be an answer for everybody and say let’s open a coaching center for Dalit and Backward class students, but that is not the answer to the real question. It is not a question of having more coaching centers and equipping them to write national-level examinations.  These exams do not need to exist. Let me tell you frankly, it is a cast project, it is a project to uphold caste hegemony, Brahminic hegemony of knowledge. This is also the project that is going to limit the number of women accessing higher education in this country. When it comes to the question of coaching centers on top of schools is both an economic investment for the parents, but is also an issue, you know girls’ community, not many parents would be happy sending their girls to the coaching center as they would send their boys. Not many invest the same amount in girls’ education as they would in male children. So, in all of this also find this education system is slowly becoming exclusive and discriminative. They are taking off the Naxalism from the syllabus. They take off the emergency out of the syllabus. And they are doing it to the education system also. I think this is an emergency, because somebody like me standing before you today speaking in English, speaking about what concerns the country, is partly because of these principles of social justice in our education system. It’s because my father gets managed to get educated my grandmother was unlettered.  So, the fact is in one generation, two generations, you know your change. Your life changes what you acquire through your education. With your silence in the era of emergencies, it is prevented to the new generation. So, I want to conclude on this because, while it might not you know grab headlines and attention.  This is a very slow process that we work together and we have to call out Hindutva for what it is doing for all us. What it is doing to the Dalit people, what it is doing to writers and artists,  what it is doing to Adivasis, and what it is doing to women.

(Ilavenil Meena Kandasamy is an Indian poet, fiction writer, translator and activist from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. Meena published two collections of poetry, Touch and Ms. Militancy. From 2001 to 2002, she edited The Dalit, a bi-monthly alternative English magazine of the Dalit Media Network).

(This is an excerpt from her presentation given at the conference on Emergencies of Our Times on June 18, 2022, at CISRS House, Delhi.)