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Itty Abraham
Okay, I admit it. One of the compelling reasons to come and visit my parents during a brief one-week break in the middle of the semester was the possibility of watching an IPL 20-20 match in Chennai. A long way to come perhaps, but as a once avid cricket fan who has puzzled over the transformation of a once tranquil and languid game into its current supercharged avatar – cricket on steroids, you might say – there seemed to be no other way of understanding the changes of the last two decades (and not just in cricket) than direct observation. So, I trotted off to Chepauk last Sunday to see Chennai get hammered by the Deccan Chargers. Even from the stands one could feel the difference in temperament between the two teams. The Chargers had their game faces on from the first ball and carried themselves as a team; the Super Kings looked flat and insipid by comparison. When good things happened, the Kings celebrated of course: but when the going got rough, they played like atomized individuals. More than anything else, this was a failure of captaincy and coaching, and, in hindsight, the outcome could have predicted right away. But before I get carried away as an armchair critic, I should note that this little note isn’t about cricket per se, but my encounter with the New World of T-20 and more. Perhaps the first indication of change was my young driver, who didn’t know where ‘Chepauk’ was. This would have been impossible in the Madras I grew up in, when the stadium was a universal landmark, and memories of watching, say, Roy Fredricks flicking sixes over the fine leg boundary (in the first over) were something to be treasured for life. (Yes, I know I’m dating myself). Of course the driver knew how to get to Wallajah Road, but he was far more aware of the new Tamil Nadu Assembly building than the old stadium. ….More More… A S Ajith Kumar
Heartening to see that tremendous support has been building up for Chitralekha’s fight for justice. It must be the online activities which created such great support for the cause. (for instance, the request for endorsement in fishpond). But unfortunately there is something disturbing. While all these activities where going on DHRM leader V V Selvaraj was arrested with all the standard police-media hype. There wasn’t much remonstration. The delayed arrest of Selvaraj indicates that the police might have waited for the protests against the anti Dalit measures of the State and police to cool down. Lack of a consistent protest must have helped them. Why is it that’we’ like to remain in the safer zones? Heidi Huffman
It has been a long time since I have written on the computer this way. I usually keep a small notebook to jot down thoughts but it is not anything cohesive with complete sentences. a & s
We a group of concerned academicians and activists belonging to the Kerala Feminist Network have come to know that Chithralekha, a Dalit woman who is making a living as an auto driver, has been harassed by the CITU and the police in Payyanur, Kannur District, Kerala, on 20th January 2010. It is also extremely disconcerting to note that while the general apathy of the police continue, the trade unions of the CPI (M) has resorted to other ways of demoralizing the struggle of a woman for just and equal, civil, political and human rights. BACKGROUND Chithralekha, a Dalit woman, from Payyanur in Kannur, Kerala, was one of the first woman auto drivers to enter a workplace dominated by men from higher castes. Right from the beginning there was a strong resistance to her and there was a three month delay in giving her a membership of the union. Later, when she went on to become an efficient and extremely popular auto rickshaw driver, the resistance against her took a violent turn. Soon she was subject to many acts of workplace harassment by her fellow auto drivers. On one occasion, the hood of her auto was torn off, she was called derogatory caste names, and a fellow driver even tried to run her over with his vehicle. Chithralekha protested against this, lodging complaints with the police and even managing to get one of the workers arrested with the help of a local Dalit activist. In the course of her protest, she also brought to light the fact that her district and locality still practiced untouchability, albeit in modern forms. Once the issue went outside the purview of the local auto stand, the CITU and the local CPI (M) goons adopted a new tactic and started tarnishing her image with wide spread poster campaigns. Through these posters, Chithralekha was branded as a sexually loose woman, a woman who drinks, whose mother was a sex worker, who talks like a man, who does not listen and who does not know how to behave. With such a campaign, Chithralekha lost all support in the locality. ….More More… Thufail PT
On November 5, 39 year old US army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan Malik entered the Fort Hood army base in the United States with an automatic pistol in his hand and started spraying bullets at the crowded medical processing centre for soldiers serving overseas until being shot by a woman soldier. Thirteen people were killed and thirty wounded. The day after the incident The Guardian in UK appeared with the following headline: “Fort Hood army officer shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before shooting rampage”. By the time the US news broadcaster CNN had begun to air the images that showed Hasan in traditional Muslim clothing, including a prayer cap that it said was taken hours before the killings. (Indian viewers will recollect Delhi police’s act of making the persons arrested on the charges of bomb blasts in 2008 wear kifayah while bringing them to the court. This was in violation of the law that says only black or white mask should be used to cover a culprit’s face). The same day The Telegraph reported that Major Malik “had allegedly called for Muslims to attack Americans over the Iraq war”. And The Washington Post quoted the staffers of Maj. Malik’s previous posting, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, as saying that “he (Maj. Malik) embraced his religion with intensity”. The blog sphere carried even lethal rampages motivated by Islamophobia. Extreme rightist American bloggers like Ralph Peters and Michelle Malkin went further to use the opportunity to annihilate the ‘enemy’. On November 6, even before the investigation moved on its track, Peters declared that “Forthood is 9/11”. He further stated in his blog that “(Maj. Hasan) refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; he had listed his nationality as “Palestinian” in a Muslim spouse-matching program and paraded around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit”. Malkin went even beyond that: “Fort Hood terrorist Nidal Hassan is awake and talking on the hospital bed. … Wonder if he asked for a Qur’an yet.” ….More More… |
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