Given their history, I’m wary about the construction of yet another memorial in India. But the idea of a national war memorial, poised to leap from intent to drawing board, 55 years after it was first proposed is exciting. When completed, it will honour the nearly 22,500 men from the armed forces killed in the line of duty.
The government has invited submissions for designs for the memorial that is to come up near Delhi’s India Gate (incidentally, a British-built memorial to honour soldiers who died fighting for the Empire). This is an opportunity that not only democratises participation but, more crucially, democratises those we choose to remember.
Our soldiers deserve a memorial. Many like Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, who died of injuries sustained after getting caught in an avalanche in Siachen Glacier this year, come from humble farming families — India’s anonymous Everymen ready to die to protect our freedoms and borders. Continue reading “Memorials preserve history”
Given their history, I’m wary about the construction of yet another memorial in India. But the idea of a national war memorial, poised to leap from intent to drawing board, 55 years after it was first proposed is exciting. When completed, it will honour the nearly 22,500 men from the armed forces killed in the line of duty.
The government has invited submissions for designs for the memorial that is to come up near Delhi’s India Gate (incidentally, a British-built memorial to honour soldiers who died fighting for the Empire). This is an opportunity that not only democratises participation but, more crucially, democratises those we choose to remember.
Our soldiers deserve a memorial. Many like Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, who died of injuries sustained after getting caught in an avalanche in Siachen Glacier this year, come from humble farming families — India’s anonymous Everymen ready to die to protect our freedoms and borders.
So far, our story of memorial building has been, by and large, a sorry tale of brazen selfpromotion or a naked attempt at cornering valuable real estate. In the first instance, you have the frenzied building spree of four-time Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati who only recently announced that if voted back to power in the forthcoming state elections she would focus more on development than building memorials. Amen to that because I’ve lost count of the crores spent on putting up statues of BR Ambedkar, Kanshiram and, obviously, herself, throughout the state.
In Lutyens’ Delhi the farce of turning the homes of politicians into memorials and museums — at least five of them, including Jagjivan Ram and Lal Bahadur Shastri — has mercifully come to an end with a government order dated October 2014.
But in Mumbai, a bitter war has broken out over the demolition of the 72-year-old Ambedkar Bhavan on the night of June 25. The demolition apparently on orders by the People’s Improvement Trust, set up by Ambedkar, was to make way for a 17-storey building that will include a Vipassana centre and conference halls. Ambedkar’s grandsons, Prakash and Anandraj, are opposed to what they call the ‘commercialisation’ of the property. They want Ambedkar Bhavan to be rebuilt through public participation and the matter is in the High Court of Bombay.
Then there’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project, announced when he was still chief minister of Gujarat. The Sardar Vallabhai Patel statue, reportedly to be built at least partly by thousands of Chinese workers, will, at 182 metres, be the tallest statue in the world. Until the Shivaji project comes up, because the statue of the warrior king is planned to be 10 metres higher than the Sardar’s. The Rs 2,000 crore Shivaji project will also include an entertainment zone and multi-cuisine food courts.
My objection to these grand plans is not so much to the memorials as to Disneyfication of the lives and relevance of great men. Name schemes and projects — take your pick, sanitation, healthcare, irrigation, highways — after our great leaders. Name hospitals and schools after them. What does a statue achieve?
The construction of a memorial is an opportunity. Memorials traditionally honour people or values we cherish. It tells us who these people were and it tells us who we are as a people.
How best do we honour the memory of our martyred soldiers? In the days to come, I am hopeful that we will see blueprints of exciting, contemporary designs that will make sense of the tragedy of battle and death and pay tribute to the sacrifice of our soldiers. Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, I am hopeful that our memorial will become a beloved place for contemplation, an invitation to visitors to participate, perhaps go online to click on a name to learn more about those who laid down their lives for their country.
More than a mere structure, a memorial preserves history, helps in reconciliation and becomes a site of collective memory. It reminds us that for all our differences, we can still be one.
Atrocities against Dalits are hardly new, even if the sense of impunity to the gau rakshaks is. Dalits have been denied entry into temples, access to drinking water and beaten for the most minor ‘transgressions’. Beyond the politics lies the far greater moral question of social justice. How does any modern nation tolerate such widespread, blatant apartheid against its own citizens?
T he yatra is on the move. Starting on August 5 from Ahmedabad, the Azaadi Kooch March (march towards freedom) will cover 350 km to converge at Una where it all began with a video of Dalits being thrashed for skinning the carcass of a dead cow. Neither Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel’s resignation nor Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s belated condemnation of vigilante ‘gau rakshaks’ has made a dent. On Independence Day, if things go as planned, the procession will arrive at and unfurl the tricolour at Una.
The purpose is not to raise the flag as much as it is at ‘giving a message to the government that Dalits will not tolerate any atrocities’ 35-year-old Jignesh Mevani, a former reporter turned activist who is leading the march, told PTI.
Mevani wants alternative economic opportunities for Dalits. At every village the rally passes through, Dalits take an oath to never pick up a carcass again. But the implications of the padyatra go beyond Gujarat.
Dalits comprise 16.6% of the total population; in Gujarat it’s 7% and in poll-bound UP, 20.5%. This might explain the uncharacteristic alacrity with which the BJP expelled its vice president Dayashankar Singh for his offensive remarks against Mayawati.
The Dalit vote is impossible to ignore. An analysis by India Today magazine finds that the BJP’s Dalit vote share doubled from 12% in 2009 to 24% in 2014. But caste-based violence continues to plague India 69 years after Independence. Article 17 of our Constitution bans the practice of untouchability while the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities Act), 1989 provides for strong legal protection. Yet, the data is grim. The National Crime Records Bureau reports a 44% increase in violence against Dalits — up from 32,712 in 2010 to 47,064 in 2014.
Partly this spike is because of better reporting, partly it’s a backlash from upper castes as Dalits grow more assertive. “The upper castes are still stuck in a world where the Dalits and tribals are untouchables,” Kancha Illaiah, director of the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy told the website IndiaSpend.
But it is not just crime, including routine rape and systemic murder. It is not just the denial of jobs or the persistence of abhorrent practices like manual scavenging. It’s the ingrained and persistent practice of untouchability that grates. A November 2014 survey across 42,000 households across India by the National Council of Applied Economic Research and the University of Maryland found that one in four Indians admitted to practising some form of untouchability.
The focus on cow vigilantes is undoubtedly political. Emboldened by the BJP’s victory of May 2014, thuggish gau rakshak groups have crossed a line that could cost the BJP valuable votes in states like Uttar Pradesh and Punjab that have sizeable Dalit populations. It could also serve to create a new Dalit-Muslim political alliance that could potentially destabilise this government.
Atrocities against Dalits are hardly new, even if the sense of impunity to the gau rakshaks is. Dalits have been denied entry into temples, access to drinking water and even cremation grounds and beaten for the most minor ‘transgressions’. Beyond the politics lies the far greater moral question of social justice. How does any modern nation tolerate such widespread, blatant apartheid against its own citizens?
There is one difference and it lies in the nature of the protests. What we are witnessing in Gujarat could mark a new beginning of the annihilation of an old order. A new generation of a largely apolitical movement that is savvy on social media and articulate on various platforms, is no longer willing to tolerate the indignities heaped on their parents.
To dump the carcasses of cows outside administrative offices is a dramatic signal that sends an unambiguous message: Dalits can no longer be taken for granted. Patience for injustice is running thin, as it should. “My birth is my fatal accident,” wrote scholar Rohith Vemula in his suicide note. The march to Una aims to reverse that thought. Here’s wishing for its extinction.
