Interrogating the Maoists and the Indian State: A Study of Salwa Judum in Bastar

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-301
Author(s):  
Himanshu Roy

Salwa Judum was a unique tribal-peasant movement that arose against the specific agenda of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) 1 (henceforth Maoists) in its full intensity in 2005 in the sub-region of Bastar ( baanstari, a Halbi word meaning the bed of or the land of bamboos) in Chhattisgarh. The movement began since January across different villages of non-Abujh Maad (the unknown hills of Madia/Koya tribes) sub-region that initially galvanised approximately 20,000 tribals. It was spontaneous and non-political (Prasad, 2012, p. 329). It was unique as the movement was against a ‘revolutionary’ group of Maoists and not against the state or against the zamindari system as most peasant movements in rural India were in the past. Its build-up was the culmination of suppressed anger of the tribals that had developed over decades against the Maoists also called ‘Naxalites’. It was a new and different phenomenon.

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nasir Salam

AbstractDengue has become a major public health problem in the last few decades with India contributing significantly to the overall disease burden. Most of the cases of Dengue from India are reported during Monsoon season. The vector population of dengue is affected by seasonal rainfall, temperature and humidity fluctuations. Rajasthan is northwestern state of India, which has shown several dengue outbreaks in the past. In this paper we have tried to analyze the effects of annual cumulative rainfall on Dengue incidence in one of the largest and severely affected states of India. Retrospective data for Dengue incidence and Rainfall for the state of Rajasthan was collected and Pearson’s coefficient correlation was calculated as a measure of association between the variables. Our results indicate that annual cumulative rainfall shows a strong positive correlation with dengue incidence in the state of Rajasthan. Such analyses have the potential to inform public health official about the control and preparedness for vector control during monsoon season. This is the first study from the Indian state of Rajasthan to assess the impact of annual rainfall on dengue incidence, which has seen several dengue outbreaks in the past.


2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-577
Author(s):  
Diego Maiorano

How do Indian citizens access the state? While a standard answer would be "through patronage," three recent books show that clientelism, while important, is just part of the story. Not just passive clients at the mercy of their political patrons, Indian citizens actively engage the state and their representatives to make claims and secure what is due to them. Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner's Claiming the State—Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India shows how rural dwellers navigate the local government system to access social welfare. Adam Auerbach's Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India's Urban Slums documents how local political workers make claims on behalf of their neighbours and provide their settlements with essential services. Jennifer Bussell's Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies persuasively demonstrates the importance of higher-level representatives in providing assistance to their constituencies. Together, these books not only demonstrate how political the daily life of ordinary citizens is, but also how the Indian state, while far from its Weberian ideal, is much more inclusive than previously thought.


1976 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicos Mouzelis

One of the most interesting features of Balkan politics during the interwar period has been the spectacular rise of peasant movements and parties which have had a profound influence on the social structure of these societies. The only Balkan country which did not experience a strong peasant movement was Greece. As I will try to argue below, the development of Balkan peasantism can be seen to a large extent as a political reaction to the strains and disruptions created by the increasing penetration of Western capitalism into this underdeveloped part of the world. Since this penetration was as strong in Greece as in the other Balkan countries during the interwar period, the failure of Greek peasants to organise themselves politically poses an interesting problem for anyone concerned with the past and present development of modern Greek society.


Author(s):  
Philip Altbach ◽  
Eldho Mathews

The system of higher education in the state of Kerala, on India's southwest coast, has developed under unique social and political circumstances. Kerala is by most educationally measures the most advanced state in India. Its current government is a coalition dominated by the Marxist Communist Party of India. The state's higher education future is complex but practical. Careful attention needs to be given to the organization of the higher education system.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2110427
Author(s):  
Tarik Anowar

Manoranjan Byapari is a famous Bengali Dalit writer whose family migrated from East Pakistan and took shelter in a refugee camp in West Bengal. In his autobiography Interrogating My Chandal Life, Byapari has given an account of Bengali Dalits’ victimization on the basis of caste in the pre-Partition Bengal and post-Partition West Bengal. In colonial Bengal, Dalits were known as Chandal or Untouchables. In 1911, their identity was recognized as Namashudras. After migrating to West Bengal, they were identified as Bangal and Dalit refugee. West Bengal and central governments did not warmly welcome the Namashudra refugees. They were sent to refugee camps which were crowded, unhygienic and did not provide adequate dole. Later they were sent to Andaman, Dandakaranya and other parts of India for their rehabilitation. In this dire situation, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) appeared as the Messiah to the Dalits and protested against the rehabilitation policy of the ruling government. The fake sympathy of the communist party had been revealed when they came in power in 1977 in West Bengal. Most of the communist leaders were upper-caste Hindus. In 1979, communist government secretly massacred the Namashudra refugees who were settled on the Marichjhapi Island. The state sponsored murder of Dalits remained undiscovered for many years. This study will examine the impacts of the Partition of Bengal on Dalits. It will further address how the state government provided different treatment to the Namashudra refugees for their lower caste identity.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2455328X2098737
Author(s):  
Suratha Kumar Malik

Even after seven decades of India’s independence, the status of the Dalits remain unchanged where caste system, along with the practice of untouchability, remains a universal phenomenon of rural India, and the state of Odisha is not an exception. Among various issues that the Dalits in the state are facing, the greatest problem is that they are not allowed to worship inside some of the temples even today, by the upper caste Hindus. Against this flagitious practice, voices from the marginalized concerned have been raised time and again. However, like other states, the state of Odisha has not witnessed a strong all-Odisha Dalit movement either in colonial or in postcolonial period. But this does not mean that Dalits in the state are silently tolerating all caste oppressions and are not conscious; rather, they have protested against the dominant castes from time to time. There are different phases of Dalit protest literature and movements in the state from precolonial period to the present day. The state has witnessed some small, sporadic and scattered Dalit movements, and protest literature against the caste system and untouchability in the past, but these remained limited within the form of literature and religion due to various reasons. In this juncture, an endeavour has been made in this article to articulate and unify these small sporadic Dalit movements and protest literatures into a theoretical account by building coherency and continuity in its nature and spirit.


Author(s):  
VICTOR BURLACHUK

At the end of the twentieth century, questions of a secondary nature suddenly became topical: what do we remember and who owns the memory? Memory as one of the mental characteristics of an individual’s activity is complemented by the concept of collective memory, which requires a different method of analysis than the activity of a separate individual. In the 1970s, a situation arose that gave rise to the so-called "historical politics" or "memory politics." If philosophical studies of memory problems of the 30’s and 40’s of the twentieth century were focused mainly on the peculiarities of perception of the past in the individual and collective consciousness and did not go beyond scientific discussions, then half a century later the situation has changed dramatically. The problem of memory has found its political sound: historians and sociologists, politicians and representatives of the media have entered the discourse on memory. Modern society, including all social, ethnic and family groups, has undergone a profound change in the traditional attitude towards the past, which has been associated with changes in the structure of government. In connection with the discrediting of the Soviet Union, the rapid decline of the Communist Party and its ideology, there was a collapse of Marxism, which provided for a certain model of time and history. The end of the revolutionary idea, a powerful vector that indicated the direction of historical time into the future, inevitably led to a rapid change in perception of the past. Three models of the future, which, according to Pierre Nora, defined the face of the past (the future as a restoration of the past, the future as progress and the future as a revolution) that existed until recently, have now lost their relevance. Today, absolute uncertainty hangs over the future. The inability to predict the future poses certain challenges to the present. The end of any teleology of history imposes on the present a debt of memory. Features of the life of memory, the specifics of its state and functioning directly affect the state of identity, both personal and collective. Distortion of memory, its incorrect work, and its ideological manipulation can give rise to an identity crisis. The memorial phenomenon is a certain political resource in a situation of severe socio-political breaks and changes. In the conditions of the economic crisis and in the absence of a real and clear program for future development, the state often seeks to turn memory into the main element of national consolidation.


Author(s):  
Walter Lowrie ◽  
Alastair Hannay

A small, insignificant-looking intellectual with absurdly long legs, Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) was a veritable Hans Christian Andersen caricature of a man. A strange combination of witty cosmopolite and melancholy introvert, he spent years writing under a series of fantastical pseudonyms, lavishing all the splendor of his mind on a seldom-appreciative world. He had a tragic love affair with a young girl, was dominated by an unforgettable Old Testament father, fought a sensational literary duel with a popular satiric magazine, and died in the midst of a violent quarrel with the state church for which he had once studied theology. Yet this iconoclast produced a number of brilliant books that have profoundly influenced modern thought. This classic biography presents a charming and warmly appreciative introduction to the life and work of the great Danish writer. It tells the story of Kierkegaard's emotionally turbulent life with a keen sense of drama and an acute understanding of how his life shaped his thought. The result is a wonderfully informative and entertaining portrait of one of the most important thinkers of the past two centuries.


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