സിപി എം പ്രതിസന്ധിക്കുപിന്നില്‍

 സി പി എമ്മിന്‍റെ രാഷ്ട്രീയ പ്രതിസന്ധിക്ക് ഒരു വ്യക്തിയിലോ വ്യക്തികളിലോ കാരണം തിരയുന്നത് അപഹാസ്യമാണ്. ചരിത്രത്തെക്കുറിച്ചുള്ള തെറ്റായ അവബോധവും നവലിബറലിസം, നവമുതലാളിത്തം എന്നീ പ്രധാന വിഷയങ്ങളെ സംബോധന ചെയ്തതില്‍ വന്ന ഗുരുതര പാളിച്ചയുമാണ് സിപി എമ്മിനെ തളര്‍ത്തുന്നത്. ഒപ്പം വി എസിന്‍റെ നിലപാടുകള്‍ക്ക് ചരിത്രത്തിന്‍റെ അഭാവമുണ്ടെന്നും അത് പൊള്ളയാണെന്നും പ്രമുഖ പത്രപ്രവര്‍ത്തകനും മാര്‍ക്സിസ്റ്റ്‌ ചിന്തകനുമായ കെ പി സേതുനാഥ്. ടി പി ചന്ദ്രശേഖരന്‍ വധത്തിനുശേഷം ഇടതുപക്ഷ രാഷ്ട്രീയവുമായി ബന്ധപ്പെട്ട നടന്ന ചര്‍ച്ചകളില്‍ ഏറ്റവും ശ്രദ്ധേയമായ ഒന്ന്.

(ലേഖനം മാതൃഭൂമി വാരികയില്‍ പ്രസിദ്ധീകരിച്ചത്)

രണ്ടു പെണ്‍കുട്ടികളും കേരള പോലീസും ( Two Female Children and Kerala Police)

കടപ്പാട് : സമകാലിക മലയാളം വാരിക (Courtesy : Samakalika Malayalam Vaarika )

Meena Kandasamy's  letter to the Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy asking him to direct the Kerala police force to stop harassment of two female children because their parents are suspected of being Maoists

(some excerpts in English)

Last year, I had read the Open Magazine story about the manner in which two young girls 15-year-old Amy and 8-year-old Savera were being harassed by the Kerala Police for the sole reason that the state considers their parents as “wanted” Maoist sympathisers. I also read about the difficulties the children were put through at the behest of the police force that visited their home at untimely hours, raided the premises, and threatened them with all sorts of consequences and slandering. A few months ago, I got the opportunity to meet the girls and also become Facebook friends with them. In these circumstances, when I read about the continuing use of police threats and harassment against these children, I decided to take a chance, and write this appeal to you.

Perhaps you will read my letter with disdain and question the locus standi for my writing this to you. Perhaps you will question if I have roots in Kerala, or what is a rank outsider me doing by talking about the conduct of your police force. Perhaps you will say that I am doing this to create controversy. Perhaps you will say that everything cited in this letter is a conspiracy and a fabrication. Perhaps you will say that this letter is the result of my communist sympathies. Perhaps you will even levy the greatest possible allegation against me, you will dub me a Maoist sympathiser. I have decided to take a chance, and any amount of name-calling is not going to silence me in this regard. Allow me a little time to run you through the sequence of events.

I don’t think the Indian Constitution, or the Indian Penal Code, or any of the legal manuals empower the police force in India to advise children to commit suicide. In fact, from the little I know about the law, I think it is a crime to even attempt suicide. But the police force in Kerala needs to be reminded of this technical detail. But as
one learns from a fact-finding report, on 31 May 2011, Circle Inspector Ravindranath of Valappad Police Station, who has since been posted as a Security Officer at the Kerala High Court, had advised Amy and Savera’s seventy-year-old grandmother to take poison as well as to feed it to the children. The police, on that occasion had forcibly entered the premises of their home and had seized Amy’s cellphone without any warrant. They had also indulged in the cheap manoeuvre of trying to cast aspersions on Amy’s character. The fact-finding team
consisting of advocates from Tamil Nadu also detailed the difficulties that they had to face in order to go ahead with their independent inquiry. They had been detained and questioned at the Trissur East Police Station for 6-7 hours, after having been forcibly picked up from the guest house at which they were staying. This speaks volumes about the levels of surveillance to which the two girl children have been subjected.

Reading the fact-finding report (it can be found online here: http://goo.gl/V0tw0), or even the Open magazine article allowed me to have the naive belief that perhaps the bad publicity surrounding this misbehaviour of the police force would have put an end to their atrocious acts. However, this does not seem to be the case. I had no idea that the Kerala police could be so tenacious in their efforts to portray their cruel and extrajudicial side.

Some aspects of the harassment reveal a pattern. On 31 May last year, they had threatened Amy and Savera that their father would be killed, his head would be crushed with boulders. This year, when Mr. Babu, a police officer from the Crime Branch paid a visit to their home on 24
July, he broke the news that their father had been killed. Such psychological harassment, especially for children who are not having the safety of living with their parents, is too traumatic. Their
grandmother, who takes care of the children is over seventy years old and she is a heart patient. Amy’s letter also chronicles how her friends are being hunted because they arranged a hostel for her in Kozhikode so that she could stay there and attend school. The picture
that emerges here certainly does not resemble the activities of a
democratic state.

I hope that you share my belief that two young children cannot be held responsible for the political beliefs of their parents. I hope you understand that neither the law nor any legal mechanism under the Indian Constitution would permit these psychological operations
carried out by the Kerala police force. With the firm conviction that writing to you would improve the situation, I request you to kindly direct the Kerala police to stop harassing the two girls. I also
request you to use the power vested in your office to take action against those police officers who have invaded the privacy and personal liberty of these children.

I hope that your act of kindness will bring them a little peace in an uncertain world. What has been done cannot be undone,
but if the police force is made to restrain itself, the much-maligned image of the state machinery will at least not suffer further damage.

The Hidden History of the Olympic Games

This programme reveals that behind the familiar face of the Olympic Games lies a hidden history of propaganda, international rivalry and social struggle

1968 Olympics Black Power salute

"The goal of Olympism is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world
by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any
kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with
a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on 
grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible 
with belonging to the Olympic Movement. "

Olympic Charter,
Fundamental Principles

In a world where discrimination of all sorts remains to be a reality, the Olympics can't escape it.  The spirit of friendship and solidarity can be realized only by acknowledging and addressing the realities existing.  The historic Black Power Salute or Human Rights Salute in the 1968 Olympics testified this. 

On the morning of 16 October 1968, U.S. athlete Tommie Smith won the 200 meter race in a world-record time of 19.83 seconds, with Australia's Peter Norman second with a time of 20.06 seconds, and the U.S.'s John Carlos in third place with a time of 20.10 seconds. After the race was completed, the three went to collect their medals at the podium. The two U.S. athletes received their medals shoeless, but wearing black socks, to represent black poverty. Smith wore a black scarf around his neck to represent black pride, Carlos had his tracksuit top unzipped to show solidarity with all blue collar workers in the U.S. and wore a necklace of beads which he described "were for those individuals that were lynched, or killed and that no-one said a prayer for, that were hung and tarred. It was for those thrown off the side of the boats in the middle passage.  All three athletes wore Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) badges after Norman, a critic of Australia's White Australia Policy, expressed empathy with their ideals. Sociologist Harry Edwards, the founder of the OPHR, had urged black athletes to boycott the games; reportedly, the actions of Smith and Carlos on 16 October 1968 were inspired by Edwards' arguments.

Both U.S. athletes intended on bringing black gloves to the event, but Carlos forgot his, leaving them in the Olympic Village. It was the Australian, Peter Norman, who suggested Carlos wear Smith's left-handed glove, this being the reason behind him raising his left hand, as opposed to his right, differing from the traditional Black Power salute. When "The Star-Spangled Banner" played, Smith and Carlos delivered the salute with heads bowed, a gesture which became front page news around the world. As they left the podium they were booed by the crowd

'Black America will understand'

At a press conference after the event Tommie Smith, who held seven world records at that time, said: "If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say 'a Negro'. We are black and we are proud of being black.

"Black America will understand what we did tonight."

International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, Avery Brundage, deemed it to be a domestic political statement, unfit for the apolitical, international forum the Olympic Games were supposed to be. In an immediate response to their actions, he ordered Smith and Carlos suspended from the U.S. team and banned from the Olympic Village. When the US Olympic Committee refused, Brundage threatened to ban the entire US track team. This threat led to the two athletes being expelled from the Games.

A spokesman for the IOC said it was "a deliberate and violent breach of the fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit. Brundage, who was president of the United States Olympic Committee in 1936, had made no objections against Nazi Salutes during the Berlin Olympics. He argued that the Nazi salute, being a national salute at the time, was acceptable in a competition of nations, while the athletes' salute was not of a nation and therefore unacceptable. Brundage had been one of the United States' most prominent Nazi sympathisers even after the outbreak of the Second World War, and his removal as president of the IOC had been one of the three stated objectives of the Olympic Project for Human Rights.

The three athletes and the OPHR proved that the rhetoric of equality and brotherhood will remain mere words unless they are practiced.  

To know more on Black Power Salute check

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salute#cite_note-11