Witch hunts

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Witch hunts remain a persistent scourge in rural parts of Jharkand state and adjoining areas of Chhatisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal. Periodically there are reports of a woman accused of causing misfortunes through black magic. Once accused, a woman faces hideous treatment, banishment and possibly death:

Recalling the trauma she faced, Ramani narrates: ‘I was tortured and forced to eat human excreta just because I was branded a witch by the ojhas (witch doctors).’ (Â…)

Vaisakhi, in her 50s, had also been brutally beaten up by a villager, who branded her a witch.

There are scores of women who have been branded witch by villagers and tortured. Many were killed, sometimes by beheading or dismembering their limbs.

Many like Ramani Devi are forced to drink urine or consume human excreta. Some are ostracised and thrown out of their villages. [Link]

These occurrences are most common in adivasi (or “tribal”) communities; but they have also been reported in non-adivasi settings. The victim may be a vulnerable woman, such as a widow, or one who has made herself inconvenient to the village power structure by asserting an economic or political right:

In Bijli village in Raipur district of Madhya Pradesh, a Dalit woman, Lata Sahu, contested against a backward-caste woman in the panchayat elections. Lata was prone to epileptic attacks. The Yadavs and Patels, who belong to the land-owning castes, got Lata’s sister-in-law to condemn her as a tonahi (witch). Lata was stripped of her clothes and paraded in the village.

In another case, in Tarra village in Raipur district, a woman was hacked to death after being branded a witch by her brother-in-law after she sought a right over her deceased husband’s land. In yet another case, in Gaandi village in Angara Block in Ranchi, two Dalit widows were tortured, resulting in the death of one of them, who was 75 years old. It began with the death of two children due to malaria and jaundice in September. An exorcist told the father of the children, Mahavir Baitha, that the two widows, Jeetan Devi and Dubhan Devi, were responsible for the deaths. In front of the son, the mother was tonsured, beaten, paraded and burnt. Earthen pitchers were broken on the heads of the two widows. [Link]

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A law changes the face of America

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National Public Radio’s All Things Considered is running a three part series this week that takes a look at the 1965 Immigration Act. As mentioned at various times on SM, this is the law which is responsible for many of our parents being allowed to legally enter the U.S., as well as the reason many of us are born citizens. The series by NPR is particularly relevant because one can draw comparisons between the immigration debate then and now. There are three to four million people standing in line waiting to get into America legally right now.

The FULL story is an audio story (and contains rich detail in the form of short interviews-12 min long). I am excerpting the abridged transcript below, although you are much better off listening to the whole story. First, one must remember the immigration laws before the 1965 Act:

“The law was just unbelievable in its clarity of racism,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University. “It declared that Northern Europeans are a superior subspecies of the white race. The Nordics were superior to the Alpines, who in turn were superior to the Mediterraneans, and all of them were superior to the Jews and the Asians.”

By the 1960s, Greeks, Poles, Portuguese and Italians were complaining that immigration quotas discriminated against them in favor of Western Europeans. The Democratic Party took up their cause, led by President John F. Kennedy. In a June 1963 speech to the American Committee on Italian Migration, Kennedy called the system of quotas in place back then “nearly intolerable…” [Link]

So Kennedy and the Democrats saw the political advantages to updating the racist laws in order to give an equal shot to everyone in the world, but Kennedy died before the ’65 act was passed. When Lyndon Johnson signed it into law he went out of his way to state that he didn’t think anything would come of it. Neither Johnson, nor most of the government, thought that people would really line up to come to the United States:

“This bill that we will sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions,” Johnson said at the signing ceremony. “It will not reshape the structure of our daily lives or add importantly to either our wealth or our power.”

Looking back, Johnson’s statement is remarkable because it proved so wrong. [Link]

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Cowabunga!

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NASA has inked a deal to launch two scientific instruments on an Indian rocket bound for the moon within the next two years. Even space is being outsourced:

The picture either means ‘satellite’ or ‘no head-in parking’

U.S. space agency NASA entered into an agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Tuesday to send two scientific instruments on board Chandrayaan-I, the country’s first unmanned moon mission scheduled for 2008…

[The U.S. instruments include] a mini synthetic aperture radar (miniSAR), developed by the agency’s applied physics laboratory and a moon mineralogy mapper, built by [NASA] Jet Propulsion Laboratory…

Chandrayaan-I will be launched from… Sriharikota on the east coast of Andhra Pradesh, using the new polar satellite launch vehicle… [Link]

The first payload will look for polar ice on the moon and the other will study the moon’s surface mineral composition. [Link]

NASA won’t be the only hitchhiker in the galaxy — the Europeans are also aboard:

… the Chandrayaan payload… will have 15-20 instruments, including 11 from India and three from the European Space Agency. [Link]

India’s own payload is a lunar surveyor:

The instruments will perform photo-geological mapping of the lunar surface apart from mineral content. [Link]

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‘Slumming’ Takes on a Whole New Meaning

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Via Albert Krishna Ali at The Other India, a Guardian article about a new tourism phenomenon in India: slum tours. It’s apparently a common enough practice in places like Soweto and Rio, but new to India. For 200 Rupees, tourists get a guided tour of the areas around Delhi’s railway station, where a few thousand homeless children live:slumtour.jpg

The tour guide instructs visitors not to take pictures (although he makes an exception for the newspaper photographer). ‘Sometimes the children don’t like having cameras pointed at them, but mostly they are glad that people are interested in them,’ Javed claims, adding that the friendly smiles of the tourists are more welcome than the railway policemen’s wooden sticks and the revulsion of the train travellers. He hopes the trip will get a listing in the Lonely Planet guides. Nevertheless there is something a little uncomfortable about the experience — cheerful visitors in bright holiday T-shirts gazing at profound misery. (link)

Really, what could possibly be uncomfortable about well-fed tourists paying to gawk at desperately poor children? Continue reading →

Rising Racial Tensions in the UK?

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Last week, a Sikh woman was confronted by an angry racist mob while walking in a park in Southeast London with her daughter and friend:

[They] were out on a walk and … decided to go home when a crowd of around 20 boys and three girls started shouting racist abuse… The three made their way to their car but were confronted by the rabble minutes later. They hurled sticks, full beer cans and stones at the car causing slight damage to the windscreen. [Link]

The BNP is “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples” While they got away unscathed, the racists also avoided punishment:

They escaped unhurt and called police. The victim says police told her no arrests could be made because officers said they were “outnumbered” by the horde of teenagers. [Link]

The victim was petrified because Southeast London was where, in 1993, 18 year old student Stephen Lawrence was beaten to death in a racist attack:

“All I could think during the attack was, ‘This is something like Stephen Lawrence went through. It feels like we’re going to get killed’. [Link]

Here’s my question to our British readers out there and those in the know – is this an isolated incident, or part of the rising tide of xenophobia? Is this incident part of the same phenomenon that led to the British National Party (BNP) doubling the number of council seats in the last election?

For those of you just tuning in, the BNP is a right wing nationalist party in the UK that was once a fringe party but which has ominously gained strength recently as anti-immigration sentiment in the UK has grown:

The BNP declares itself “wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples.” It seeks to restore the overwhelmingly white makeup of Britain before 1948; its leader has called Islam a “wicked, vicious faith” [Link]
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Fill Your Paper

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Are you a woman, lady, dame, womyn, broad, chick, butch, babe, femme, and/or girl in your 20s or 30s of South Asian origin?

Is writing a hobby, passion, interest, craft and/or obsession of yours?

Are you creative, intelligent, insightful, and dedicated enough to write your own damn words?

Do the words “Opal Mehta” make you want to hibernate in cold storage for at least a year while hooked up to an IV of rosé?

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions then, girl, it is time to get yours! Boys, you get to cheer loudly (including, but not restricted to, well-meaning tapori whistles). Zubaan, an independent feminist publisher based in New Delhi is accepting submissions for their “Book of New Writing by Young Women”, via Zigzackly, their criteria are as follows:

• The focus of the book will be on young writers in the 20s and 30s.
• The writers should be women of South Asian extraction, but may be based anywhere in the world. We are interested in non-resident Indian writers as well as those based in India.
• Stories can be of any length up, ideally anywhere between 2-5,000 words and should be complete stand-alone narratives.
• All submissions must be in English.
• The anthology will be of fictional writing, and we are keen to include a variety of genres – from humorous pieces to science fiction, fantasy, detective stories, and other forms which may fall under the general rubric of ‘speculative fiction’.
• Preference will be given to unpublished stories. [Link]

Emphasis on that brilliant sentence is mine. All submissions (along with a short bio) are to be emailed as word attachments to either Zubaanwbooks[at]vsnl.net or contact[at]zubaanbooks.com with the subject line reading “Submission for Young Writers Anthology”. Submissions are due by July 31st, 2006. ThatÂ’s one week less than three months from todayÂ…plenty of time to fix up some old pieces, create new ones, or turn that excellent blog entry of yours into short fiction. These SM pages are rife with prime examples of women whose writing deserves to be displayed within the pages of a freshly bound book. You know who you are, I am waggling my finger suggestively in your direction. Continue reading →

Run, Budhia, run (from your coach)

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Four-year-old running prodigy Budhia Singh collapsed due to low blood sugar during a 40-mile run last Tuesday:

The Running Man

Diagnosing Budhia’s collapse during Tuesday’s 65-km run as hypoglycemia, where blood sugar level falls, a doctor feared the boy could suffer serious injuries by the time he reaches 15 if there is periosteal tear on the bones. [Link]

Doctors have examined him and said he should not be allowed to ultramarathon until he’s older:

… the panel headed by the chief medical officer of Capital Hospital… is said to have noted that the boy’s serum urea, potassium and ALKP (alkaline phosphatase) levels were on the higher side. “Signs of under-nourishment, vitamin deficiency and pallor have been noted. The boy should not run, as reflected by the abnormal parameters of health…” [Link]

Heeding the doctors, the Orissa government has banned Budhia from marathoning or being coerced to run marathons:

Orissa government has barred him from running marathons and threatened action against anybody who makes the four-year-old participate in long distance runs… Budhia’s cardiological system was under stress and he was under-nourished with anaemia and angular stomatitis, the [doctor’s] report had said. [Link]

Some activists, disbelieving Budhia’s 40 mile feat, wonder whether he’s living up to his name:

… he may earn another distinction by becoming the youngest in athletic world to go through dope test. “The doctors have suggested dope testing for Budhia who ran such a long distance…” [Link]
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Pursuing the Hayats

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I wanted to provide SM readers with a quick update on the trials of the ice cream truck driver and his son from Lodi, California. As you may remember the father’s prosecution resulted in a mistrial due to a hung jury, while the son was convicted on one charge of providing material support to terrorists and three counts of lying to the FBI (he faces up to 39 years in prison). Last Friday the U.S. Attorney’s office said that it will have another go at the elder Hayat:

Federal prosecutors announced Friday that they will retry a Lodi man whose first trial on charges that he lied to FBI agents during a terrorism investigation ended in a mistrial last month after half the jury voted for acquittal on one of the counts.

U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. set June 5 as the new trial date for Pakistani American Umer Hayat, 48, on two counts that he made false statements about his son’s training at a terrorist camp in Pakistan in 2003-04 and about his own knowledge of such camps.

“In the post-9/11 environment in which we live,” said U.S. Atty. McGregor Scott, “lying to the FBI in the course of a terrorism investigation is serious misconduct. False information may result in agents losing valuable time to foil a deadly plot, or perhaps bringing the wrong person or persons under suspicion.”

After deliberating for more than a week, jurors in the first trial reported April 25 that they were hopelessly deadlocked. According to prosecutors, the jurors split 7 to 5 in favor of conviction on one count and 6 to 6 on the other. [Link]

This wasn’t about just one holdout juror. Half the jury thought that there was reasonable doubt, especially considering the fact that the father was accused of providing misleading statements in order to protect his own son AND the fact that the FBI used shady interviewing techniques. Umer Hayat’s attorney sounded confident with respect to the outcome of a second trial:

“Continuing to pursue Umer Hayat on the charge of lying will have a chilling effect on people in the community coming forward and talking to the FBI,” Griffin said. “Umer Hayat did not have to go to the FBI. He voluntarily went to the FBI to talk with them and then found he was being accused of being a terrorist. When they couldn’t prove that, they accused him of being a liar.” [Link]

As a side note, Hayat’s homecoming upon his release was bittersweet:

Hayat’s homecoming was a mixture of joy and sorrow: Moments after learning of his immediate release Monday morning, Hayat’s attorney told him that his father, who had lived with him in Lodi, died Saturday. [Link]

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Brown illegals look like Ahnold

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In our earlier discussion about immigration reform, many readers asked “What does this have to do with us?” and “Why should legal South Asian-Americans care about illegal immigrants?” The short answer is an apparent non-sequitur: Ahnold Schwarzenegger.

Once an illegal, now a governor, someday a President?

Ahnold’s immigration history is similar to that of many illegal desis. Like them, he didn’t wade across the Rio Grande. Instead he entered the country legally and then violated the terms of his visa.

Ahnold first came to the US in 1968 on a B-1 Visa with the following rules:

“a non-immigrant in B-1 status may not receive a salary from a U.S. source for services rendered in connection with his or her activities in the United States” [Link]

However, in his own autobiography, Schwarzenegger said that bodybuilding supremo Joe Weider gave him an apartment, a car, and a salary of $200/week during this period.

A year later, Weider was able to sponsor Schwarzenegger for a H-2 visa, which allowed Schwarzenegger to work, but only in the area related to his visa. However,

…he violated the terms of his H-2 work visa by launching this bricklaying business in 1971… immigration attorneys across the country said Schwarzenegger would have been barred by visa restrictions from starting his own business… “That would be considered a violation of your status, and he would have been subject to deportation.” [Link]

None of this caught up with him though. We all know the Schwarzenegger Cinderella story – he made it big in bodybuilding, endorsements, real estate, and movies. He was never deported, and instead became a US citizen in 1983 (he still retains Austrian citizenship on the side). He married a Kennedy, hobnobbed with Reagan and Bush, was elected Republican governor of California, and is now angling to become the President of the United States. All of this was possible precisely because his previous immigration irregularities were overlooked. However, if the Sensenbrenner bill (1, 2) becomes law, others will be denied this chance and become felons. Continue reading →

Early Bengali Science Fiction

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Speaking of Satyajit Ray, I thought I might risk going out on the limb of historical obscurities and share an article by Debjani Sengupta (PDF) I came across that talks about early Bengali science fiction writing.

The article is from the journal Sarai, which is published in Delhi. Some of the articles offer some truly impenetrable jargon -– even with writing on familiar topics (Bollywood, Call Centers, and so on). But there are also a number of well-written and informative articles on things like Parsi theater in Bombay in the 1800s that I would highly recommend.

On to Bengali science fiction. Even the fact that it existed as early as the 1880s may be a little shocking, since most studies of Bengali literature tend to center around Tagore — who was extremely doubtful about modern technology. (Read his account of flying in an airplane here.) But the effects of the industrial revolution were being felt in urban India in the 19th century just as keenly as they were in Europe and the U.S., and at least some Indian writing reflected that. Probably the best, most enduring writing in this genre came from a single family –- Sukumar Ray (in the 1910s and 20s) and his son Satyajit Ray, who was a highly accomplished writer when he wasn’t making making world class art films. Continue reading →