Ethical Kevin: Aditya Prakash

©Kevin Carter 1993

I was Kevin Carter. My life was a farce. This room is dark. I feel cold. I feel hollow like something has eaten the person I used to be. I can’t feel my body. I can’t identify with myself. I am a junkie drawing on his white pipe, lying on his saggy couch in his despicable dark room. I shouldn’t live.

Sixteen months ago, in the March of ’93, I was absorbed by the scene before me. A child lay in the dust. Its elbows were bent and its forearms lay like dried sticks on the ground. Its knees were bent too and its face was in the mud. It was one of several famine victims, but the scene was made special by the presence of a vulture. This creature was scrutinizing the child from about 10 feet away.

I was experienced enough as a photojournalist by this time, to know that the scene had dramatic potential. I carefully squatted down to have my subjects at eye level. The vulture and the child were straight ahead of me and the gap between them made things very literal: A child lying in the dust and a vulture waiting on clear ground. I needed a more compelling shot that intertwined the fates of my subjects. I shuffled slowly to the right, clicking frenetically, afraid that the vulture would fly away. An average shot would obviously be better than no shot at all. After twenty minutes of quiet trial my camera was looking straight at the vulture. The child lay in the foreground to the right. My angle had greatly reduced the spatial aspect between them. It had made the vulture a desperate devil that would start gnawing at the child alive, if it didn’t collapse soon. It was no longer a quiet scavenger contemplating whether it will feed on death. It was a certain killer. The child itself now embodied the suffering of millions of Sudanese. The brutal war and resulting famine had reduced them to bony carrion. Its little body was prostrated in the dust, begging for life. It was this spectacle that I clicked and the drama won me the Pulitzer Prize in April, three months ago.

My work had received the highest praise in the world of photography. The photograph compressed the sufferings of the Sudanese and delivered them to the desk of the informed civilian. Several newspapers had bought the rights to publish the picture. That beautiful picture would be the banner of several Aid Programs.

So, if I kill myself now it may seem like I died in exhilaration. A man, who for unsaid reasons, decides to jump off the mountain he has just summited, climbing the stairway to heaven with fulfillment. It is not so. The Pulitzer was no achievement. The incident was a mirror that showed me the worthlessness of existence. It was an omen that foretold my death.

*

I was never the same after April. My motivation for my job was internally being questioned. As I ran behind angry mobs and clicked pictures of brutalities, I felt like a plant. My passiveness to the situations I was photographing had begun to disconcert me. I had been photographing for a decade. I had always believed that my photographs would expose injustice and bring about change. South Africa’s apartheid had now ended but it wasn’t because of me. I had been as insensitive as the trigger happy madmen who had butchered people on the streets in civil war. They had shot people as I shot photographs. But their lives were more fulfilled than mine. They had achieved their purpose. I had lived inconsequentially all along. Their bullets had ended lives which my photographs could not save.

The crumpled copy of the St. Petersburg Times on the desk reads, “The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of [the girl’s] suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene”. I have read this line over and over again. With each reading, my soul seems to forge a stronger alliance with its author. My soul has defected from the sins of my self. It now finds solace among the various allegations that have shaken me over the past months. It seems to ask in unison with the confident blonde journalist at the press conference, “Why didn’t you help the child?” and my counter assertion that I did evaporates as distant echo.

As I countered this question with the excuse of professionalism in press conference after press conference, another journalist remarked, “It is understandable that getting the picture was priority but why could you not pick the girl up afterwards or at least shoo the vulture away?” After this, the buzz of dissent grew louder. The people were turning against me as I turned against myself. The barrier between my personal and professional life began to rot. I was left with desperate longing to unite with my daughter. I had never been a father to her. I never even married her mother.

*

“Do you know what happened to the girl?”, the jury of journalists had asked me. I was too weak to even attempt an answer. I had never been good to my little girl and I had not been good to someone else’s little girl. I had let her die in the desert and left her parents to mourn. I could only feel a wrinkly deflation of my self respect amidst the angry buzz. I didn’t care if the mob lynched me, like the several casualties I had photographed. I deserved it all.

All us photographers had wasted our lives. We could have saved a few people. We could have carried the wounded to hospital. Instead we chose to photograph. My colleague, Greg, won a Pulitzer for photographing a man who was stabbed multiple times and set on fire when he fell unconscious. The photograph was a cold piece of paper that hid the screams of the victim.

The white pipe wouldn’t relax me anymore. The weed laced with Mandrax in the Dagga would mellow me on the job. But now it cannot help me from slipping into introspection. Every time I smoke up, I feel the void in me get bigger. People have died because of me and it has taken me ten years to accept this. I cannot forgive myself. I must live in solitude, shut away from horrible memories and the guilt of my actions.

But Jo’burg or any other place in the world cannot offer me what I am looking for. I had written to a friend on my return from Sudan that, “Jo’burg is dry and brown and cold and dead, and so damn full of bad memories and absent friends”. There is no solitude for a man on this earth. There is always the cruel company of memory. This is when "the pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist”.

***

Note: The quotation marks in Kevin’s internal speech are taken verbatim from his conversations with people. Kevin Carter died on July 27, 1994. This is a purely fictional account of what might have transpired in his mind before he decided to kill himself. This work is not meant to undermine his goodness as an individual.

Aditya is a second year student of the MA in Development Studies programme at TISS, Mumbai. 

Delayed justice: Note on the status of Plachimada Tribunal Bill 2011, Kerala: Divya Kalathingal

Brief history of the Plachimada Anti-Coca Cola struggle

Plachimada has become a bold name in the dictionary of peoples movements of India since 2002 because it symbolizes resistance against “global interests”.This is because of it’s unbowed struggle by the local people of that area - mainly Adivasis and Dalits and predominantly landless agricultural labourers. The local struggle has received consistent support from people of different walks of life against the biggest global water exploiter Coca Cola. 

Plachimada is a small village in the Perummatty Panchayat of Palakad district of Kerala. On contrary to their offer of development in the villages and jobs , water level of that area become sharply depleted, quality of the water changed, the villagers had forced to walk Kilometres to collect water , farmers were forced to give up their cultivation due to severe shortage of water etc. within six months of operation of the factory. In 2002, villagers launched an agitation against the plant.

Who is this Coca-Cola?

Coca-cola, an Atlanta based ‘soft drink’ company reintroduced in India after its ban of sixteen years. In 1977, Cola had to leave the country based on the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, but it was whole heartedly welcomed in India by the Liberalization policy in 1993..! It’s products range from Coca-Cola, diet Coke, Sprite, Fanta, Schweppes, Thums Up, Limca, Maaza, Citra, Gold Spot, Kinley water etc etc.. “The Coca-Cola Company received approval from the government in July 1996 to set up a holding company to invest US$700 million in downstream operating subsidiaries to engage in the preparation, packaging, sale and distribution of beverages. In July 1997, the holding company was permitted by the government to operationalize its bottling subsidiaries. The bottling subsidiary currently owns and operates twenty-six bottling plants and sixty distribution centers across India. The company claims that the Coca-Cola system in India directly employs over 7,000 workers. For every direct job in the system, seven indirect jobs are created in the supply chain. However this has not been materialized in Plachimada where only 30 odd locals are being given some casual jobs, that even as contract labourers. According to the company, over the past nine years, it has invested US$827 million in India, US$805 million of which has been invested in its bottling subsidiary. This makes Coke as one of the major investors in India. It seems that the company used unethical methods to overcome FDI ownership regulations, which stipulates that foreign companies must hold an initial public offering (IPO) when establishing a company, allowing locals to buy a stake.” (quoted from this document)

Banning of the “Soft drink”

A study conducted by the Centre for Science and Environment in 2003 shows Pepsico and Coca cola contain toxins including lindane, DDT, malathion -pesticides that can contribute to cancer and breakdown of the immune system. Water Analysis done by the Regional Analytical Laboratory shows that the water is not advisable to employ because of the high alkaline and chloride content. With the help of BBC team, the sludge was tested in the UK and test revealed the presence of cadmium and lead and it has started contaminating the water supply and its level was above the prescribed level of WHO. The involvement of international media could carry forward the struggle into the global level. Scientific studies emphasizing water contamination and pesticide presence in the cola also fuelled the struggle, and the people of Plachimada started an indefinite strike against the factory. Perumatty Gramapanchayat stood strongly with the people in the legal war, Panchyat cancelled their license many times. Later on GP was forced to renew the license based on a division bench verdict by the Kerala High Court. The Pollution Control Board disagreed to renew the license because the Company’s application was incomplete and they did not mention cadmium and lead in their solid waste list. In 2006, Kerala state Govt. banned the sale and production of Coca-Cola, along with other soft drinks, due to concerns of high levels of pesticide residue, but High Court of Kerala overturned the Kerala ban, ruling that only the federal government can ban food products..!!

HLWC and The Bill

In 2009, state formed a High Power Committee to consider the environment and other issues created by the functioning of the Coca Cola factory, but they limited their study by calling for people to take their loss and it remained as a compensatory package of Rs 216 crore to acquire from the company. Certain conditions cannot be revised in this area such as ecological damage caused by the company to the entire area and its impact on health, agriculture, employment and also the most important thing is that scarcity of potable water etc. cannot be covered by this package. The committee also recommended the setting up of a special tribunal to assess damages and to recover that amount from the company.

Some of the features of Tribunal:

• Tribunal consists of three members-Legal expert, Technical expert and Environment expert
• The word Dispute in the bill shall confirm into two prerequisites-One, Parties to the dispute shall be company on he one hand the residents of the Perumatty and Pattencherry Panchayt on the other side. State govt can expand the list of Panchayats as and when necessary. So the bill has the scope to include the nearby villages necessary. Second, the subject matter of the dispute shall be ‘any issue in respect of matters arising out of violation of the provisions of the laws relating to the environment, air and water pollution’.
• Tribunal has jurisdiction to ‘entertain applications for compensation or restitution of property damaged’. The bill provides that dispute pending before any court(except High Court or Supreme Court) or other authority shall be transferred to the tribunal.
• The Bill makes it mandatory for the Tribunal to apply the principle of sustainable development.

C.R. Bijoy, a social activist writes that the crucial issues such as governance rights in water resources of the local people and the criminal liability of Coca cola should have been the focus of Plachimada struggle, never been a matter of discussion. It has been more than two years since the Kerala Assembly passed a Bill to set up a Tribunal. Even though The Plachimada Coca cola Victims Relief and Compensation Claim Tribunal Bill, 2011 is not trying to give answers to all the damages that caused in Plachimada by the Coca Cola plant, it is not signed by the Indian president for the last two years. Kerala governor has sent this bill to the President for the approval, but it should go through the home ministry to the president. Other than sending the bill to the President, Chidambharam, Union minister has sent this to different departments for their suggestions, none of the depts turned against the bill. That bill was supposed to send to the President with feedbacks from the other depts.. Neither Indian president signed in this nor they have sent back this to the Kerala Governor by saying that it is under state Govt. Jurisdiction. The Kerala right regime has completely failed to materialize the bill by pressuring in the Central Govt. (Coca Cola was also brave enough to launch “safe drinking water” scheme named “Jeevadhaara” in Ernakulam Govt Hospital as part of their CORPORATE social responsibility in 2011)

How can the student community contribute?

Globally, there has been various campaigns against Coca cola’s pollution in two issues which are always getting highlighted, one is Plachimada and the other is murder of Trade Union leaders inthe Coca Cola factory in Columbia. Anti coca cola struggles always received a huge response from the student community across the world. Many universities of UK and USA denied permission for the coca cola vending machine in their campuses. It could only create one million dollar business loss to the company. Whatever limitations The Plachimada Tribunal Bill holds, it remains as the only relief for the victims of ground water depletion and environmental pollution. Many groups of Kerala are launching a continuous campaign to materialise the bill from this month onwards. Student community all over the world showed their solidarity for the struggle from the beginning itself. We can also be a part !

Be in solidarity with the people of Plachimada

Coca Cola -QUIT PLACHIMADA; QUIT INDIA

Divya is a 2^nd year M Phil Scholar at T.I.S.S, Mumbai

She can be reached at divyakmankada@gmail.com

Are we living in our own state? Are we safe in this country?: Yogesh Maitreya

This article is based on the author's fieldwork experience while working with Manuski, Pune in October 2013.

Disclaimer: All the names in the article have been changed.

Today morning, at the desk given by my Internship agency to work, I wrote the brief history of an atrocity where a nineteen year old (Schedule Caste) girl, was raped by two Maratha boys of her village. Before examining such incidences, the reality of atrocities in these hamlets of Maharashtra was just another story or tale for me. A story or a tale which we hear from a distance, from second-hand sources and, further, leave it to die in the mind. The narrations from the victims on paper has something shivering in it; it moved me to bleakness as I read further. The victim’s narration was such that one could hardly avoid the vulnerability of their social setting. Now, the deeper I look into the heart of my country, the gloomier I see the face of it. I see the air around me full of hostility. And I could no longer avoid questions which I always ask myself: are we living in our own country? Are we safe in this country when two Dalits are murdered every day in India?

Here is the Case history in brief:

Her family lives in Barad, Beed, which is one of the districts in the state of Maharashtra. Beed is largely unknown to much of the Indian population; though Maharashtra is known for its being the “progressive”, “industrially developed” state, on the other hand, Beed is declared as an atrocities-prone area. According to the NCRB (National Crime Record Bureau), from 1994 to 2003 atrocities against Schedule Castes (SC) in Maharashtra outnumbered the list of criminal cases. And according to the study conducted by Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (Delhi) during 1990’s, the Marathwada region of Maharashtra which comprises Beed district, recorded “high incidences of caste bondage and previous records of atrocities against Dalits” NCRB’s 2012 data shows the record of 1091 cases of crime against SCs in Maharashtra alone. This case is one among them.

The girl, Aditi, was 19 years old and studying in Renuka Nursing Home, Beed in 2012. She has four sisters - among them two are married - and two brothers. Her father and mother are labourers. They belong to the Mang caste, constitutionally a Schedule Caste-the most vulnerable caste in the context of atrocities in Beed District. On the occasion of Mahashivratri on 20^th February 2012, the girl along with her sister Nanda went to attend a religious-procession at Pimpri. Further, their brother-in-law Mahesh - who married their sister Uttama - arrived to meet them at Pimpri. He had gotten to know from Uttama on Mobile-Phone that her sisters were already there. Uttama was in her parent’s house in Barad for the Mahashivratri Festival. She told Mahesh to go straightway to Pimpri, meet her sisters, and that she would join them at Pimpri, which she did by 2.30 pm.

After they came together at Pimpri, they paid a visit to a temple and went shopping. Mahesh spent almost all his money here and whatever money he had left would only enable him to travel to his wife’s house at Barad. He suggested that his golden earring would fetch some money and so he gave his golden earring to Aditi and asked her to go to Kaij and sell it to a goldsmith. And he with his wife Uttama and sister-in-law Nanda left for Barad.

As the golden earring had no receipt or acknowledgement receipt, the goldsmith in Kaij refused to purchase it. Aditi had no option but to return to her home by 6 in the evening. She only had enough money to reach Marasajog and she decided to walk the further distance. By that time her mobile phone’s battery got discharged. At this place both the accused, Bala Dhakane and Ram Munde age 22 and 23 respectively, along with four passengers in their Maruti Jeep MH-23-J-653 came and stopped their Jeep in front of Aditi. And offered her ride to her home. Aditi, who was helpless with no money and desperate to get home by night-time sat in the back seat of the Jeep. They drove the Jeep to Pimpri and dropped four passengers. From there, they headed up to Lavhari.

In the middle of the ride, they stopped the Jeep and Bala asked Aditi to come and sit in the middle seat. Bala too came and sat beside her there and forced himself on her. Ram who was at the driving seat left his position, meanwhile Bala had started to rape her. When, afterwards, she tried to get out of the Jeep, Bala pushed her back inside and this time Ram raped her. Later they threatened to kill her if she would inform anyone about the incident, and they dropped her off at Pimpri Phata and left. But this didn't end here.

When she filed the FIR, she was asked to undergo the medical examination to confirm the incident was rape. Along with Maharashtra Police employee Tandle, and Homeguard Asha Chate she had been sent to SRTR hospital in Ambejogai Taluka in Beed. Aditi was accompanied by her elder sister Pratibha. There, Homaguard Asha Chate started to harass her verbally, pressurised her by constantly blaming Aditi for the rape, started cursing and advising her to commit suicide to escape from stigma. By this constant pressure, Aditi had gotten demoralised. Later, on 24^th February 2012, she swallowed 9 to 10 tablets by 11 am when her parents were not at home. By night time, she had started vomiting and her head was aching, when asked what happened by her sister, she narrated the morning's incident. Her brother-in-law and sister Pratibha took her to the nearby Rural Hospital. Thus she was saved, with a wound which, perhaps, could not be healed. 

Yogesh is a 1st year student of the M.A. in Social Work (Criminology and Justice) programme at TISS, Mumbai.

On how to manufacture a captive national audience - Convention Centre and Us: Nidhin Shobhana

Illustration by the author.

When we visit the official website of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, the image of the grand, glassed convention centre with its confusing installation at the entrance, will surely tempt you. We associate glass structures with new ideas of mobility. These ideas are made possible by specific temporal and spatial developments. It’s often potrayed as the perceptive face of the institute.

Over the years its thick carpet has collected a lot of meaning. The politics of images, embossed on its circular outer wall has attracted a lot of attention among Dalit and Adivasi students on campus.

One day, a close friend of mine, pointed out at the images on the walls and asked ‘Do you find Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar anywhere?’ He added that the images, which apparently highlight the diversities in India, choose a particular depiction, privileges a particular imagination. Imaging India’s diversity with the help of temples, M.K.Gandhi, Nehru, Thrissur Pooram and Kathakali reminds me of INCREDIBLE INDIA advertisements. This investment, possessive indeed, in potraying a particular kind of nonconflictual, harmonious diversity is not new. Sangh Parivar does the same.

The majority of students who enter TISS have long been consumers of this imagined community soaked in potions of uniformity, caste, masculinity and heteronormativity. They have received the required training.

The portrayal aims at warding off dissent. Differences which embody diversities are coloured with pleasant but desperate strokes of integration. The richness of the sight (thanks to affirmative action) made possible by incessant liberatory struggles, across the dimensions of the country, is overshadowed. Every social and spatial site, is then, very neatly, ‘taken care of' to produce a particular kind of response among students. In fact students become an annexe of this imagination. The image of diversity has many extensions. The persona and the poetics of the classroom can be read as an extension of this imagined unitary space called Nation. It forms a part of the Nation continuum.

Body becomes an important site of constructing this sweet portrait. By design, the institute will build a convention centre which facilitates a permanent seating arrangment. The chairs are fixed to the floor and you are fixed to the chairs. Fixed and arrested.

The permanence in the seating arrangement is assisted by an in built system of spatial surveillance. The semi-circle seating arrangment allows layered mutual surveillance. The corners however become sites of subversion. The teacher, especially the one who displays great faith in his charisma and dogma gets really disturbed by the creatures who occupy the corners. He believes in straightening them. He does not shy away from doing that.

The air is manufactured using a centralized system of air conditioning. In fact, A/C air has become a signature of power. It caters the extended image of the Nation; it caters the aspiration of the imagined national community.

Sam Pitroda was impressed by this image manufactured in the convention centre. He called the sight ‘bright, beautiful youthfulness’. The captive force of compulsory attendance was pushed under the carpet, as always.

Why do we need so many students in a classroom? Is it some sort of quality control measure? The national elite should look alike, should smell of the same perfume, should wear the same colour and should speak the same tongue. The norm excludes more than includes. Any deviance would attract straightening missionaries. A decentralized classroom would spoil the image of harmonious, conjugal sameness. It’s a threat.

Dissent, democracy and transformation are taught in such unhappy controlled spaces. We sleep, play games, crack jokes and try to take notes in silence. We do not discuss our internal conflicts, sense of hatred, and sense of betrayal or confront latent anger. Pleasure is a taboo in the classroom. There are a few teachers who long for greater engagements. Some try their best. However, they are crippled by the image; they are limited by the protocol of infrastructure.

They call it foundation courses. Yes, we find the foundations of a captive national audience in us. Constipated, sad, with a heightened sense of self.

And each time an aspirant looks at the image of the convention centre, s/he is tempted to join the ranks of the same captive national audience.

Nidhin was a student of M.A. Habitat Policy and Practice at TISS, Mumbai but dropped out in the third semester.

These are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions of the fieldnotes editorial team.

बुलबुला: Kadambari Sarita

Photograph by the author.

तो बस अभी.. हाँ बस अभी अभी.. कुछ तो हुआ.. कुछ जादूभरा...

हाथों में थे जूठे बर्तन और नारंगी स्क्रब और उस स्क्रब पर लगा झाग...

तभी उस झाग के चंगुल से खुद को छुड़ाकर एक नन्हा सा बुलबुला कुछ ऊपर उठा और उठता चला गया...

और वो उड़ता ही चला गया उस दरवाज़े की ओर जोकि गुसलखाने की तरफ खुलता था...

फिर वो नन्हा सा बुलबुला कुछ नीचे को आया, और हमारे दिल में एक धक्क सी हुई के अब ये न बचेगा...

और वो नीचे की ओर तैरता चला गया, ना जाने क्या था उसके अन्दर...

फिर ऊपर उठा थोड़ा यहाँ-वहाँ मटका और हौले-हौले वापस नीचे बड़े प्यार से नारंगी टाइल पर आकर उसकी दरार में घुल गया...

जाते जाते हमारे मन की बात को और पक्का कर गया कि यह जीवन चाहे एक पल का हो पर उसका सफ़र कैसा रहा यही मायने रखता है...

Kadambari is a second year student in the MA in Social Work programme at TISS, Mumbai.

The Bravest Man I Know: Aditya Prakash

 

Image source: http://developingdemocracies.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/support-victims-of-torture/

The Incident
On the night of 28^th October 1991, the 2^nd Dogra Regiment of the Indian Army was conducting interrogations in Palhallan. Palhallan is a large village in the Baramulla district of Jammu and Kashmir.

People suspected of having links with terrorists were interrogated. The women and men were asked to come out of their homes. The women were asked to gather at the local dargah (shrine) and the men were lined up in the village school.

A major from the 2^nd Dogra handpicked Manzoor Ahmed Naiko to step forward. Others were also short listed for interrogation. Manzoor was taken inside the school and forced to strip. He was made to sit on a chair. His hands were fastened to his back.

‘Taaki main kuch na kar sakoon’

He was completely immobilized. The army personnel then asked him for his gun. Manzoor Ahmed said he had no gun. He tried to convince them that he was a shopkeeper and never owned a gun.

‘Main siyasati aadmi nahi hoon. Tab bhi nahi tha. Ab bhi nahi hoon. Bas Kashmir mein yeh zulm band hona chahiye’

The army personnel then tied a cloth drenched in oil around his penis and lit it on fire. The interrogation party watched behind their balaclavas as Manzoor shuffled in his seat in inexplicable pain.

‘Unhonen mere penis pe kapda bandh diya aur tel dalkar aag laga di. Unke chehre nahi dikh rahe the’

His shrieks did not find an audience. His voice was muffled by the cloth that ran tight through his mouth, gagging him. After this they asked him again,
“Where is your gun? Give us your gun and we’ll let you go”

Manzoor was searing with pain. He said, “My answer is still the same. I have no gun please let me go.”

The patrol made him get up and escorted him to a house. They tied his hands and legs and Manzoor noticed that he was in his own house. He knew the place. But the moments of comfort were few.  The army personnel tied his hands and legs again. Then they dunked him face first into the water. A rod was shoved in and out of his anus.

‘Woh andar bahar andar bahar karte rahe aur meri bleeding shuru ho gayi’

Manzoor Ahmed lay bleeding. The army’s interrogation was still incomplete. He was then laid down flat on the floor. Electrodes were placed all over his body.

The officer asked him, “Where is your gun?”

Manzoor channeled the little energy he had and as his voice was finding words, the officer slammed his boot on Manzoor’s wind pipe. He was then electrocuted several times. Every time he was asked and tried to reply, he was choked by the officer with his boot. The electrocutions were also interspersed with beatings. The army personnel battered his chest with their helmet of issue.

‘Meri sehat bahut acchi thi. Koi aur hota to mar jaata. Mere saath ek school teacher bhi tha jiske saath us din ye zulm hua. Usne vahin dum tod diya.’
 (I was very strong. That is why my body could bear the torture and see me through alive. There was a school teacher who also faced a similar torturous interrogation. He didn’t make it through)

The interrogated men were then collected and their hands were tied together. This file was then asked to walk out naked out of the school.

‘Mere pet mein swelling a gayi thi. Andar mera rectum phat chuka tha. Yeh swelling internal bleeding ki vajah se thi’

Manzoor was made to stand up and walk. His stomach has swelled because of the internal hemorrhaging. He collapsed after a few steps.

Someone said, ‘The army doesn’t need another death. He’ll die if he faces more. Leave him.’

The next day Manzoor Ahmed discovered that the 4000 rupees in his house had been robbed. His watch was gone. So were his 20 chicken and tempo.

The Injustice

This ordeal lasted an entire night with Manzoor Ahmed. The morning of the 29^th of October, Manzoor arranged himself to go to the SMHS (Sri Maharaja Hari Singh) hospital in Srinagar. This is the government hospital and the one Manzoor could afford. He was taken into their emergency ward.

Manzoor’s rectum was devastated. A colostomy was performed. A colostomy is a surgical procedure in which a stoma is formed by drawing the healthy end of the large intestine or colon through an incision in the anterior abdominal wall and suturing it into place. This opening, in conjunction with the attached stoma appliance, provides an alternative channel for feces to leave the body. [Source: Wikipedia]

He spent 10 days in hospital. But a few months later, the stitches opened. The puss that leaked collected to form a painful abscess. Manzoor sought correction at the same hospital. He was refused by the surgeon.

‘Government hospital mein jo doctor tha, usne mera operation karne se inkaar kar diya. Usne kaha ki sirf 15% chance hai recovery ka. Uska sochna tha ki agar operation nakaam hua to zindagi bhar iski baddua lagegi mujhe’ 

(The surgeon did not want to put his medical career at risk by performing a dubious surgery. The surgery had a thin 15% chance of success. Further, he was superstitious that Manzoor would curse him if the surgery went wrong)

Manzoor Ahmed then went to Delhi on his meager income to get treated at AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences). AIIMS is India’s leading government hospital. He traveled 900 km from his village for treatment. The way was mountainous as ever. He travelled in excruciating pain. All the while his feces were leaking from his side outlet.

When he reached they asked him his details on a form and once they learned he was a Kashmiri interrogation victim,  AIIMS shunned him. Manzoor had traveled for nothing.

The World Red Cross approached Manzoor Ahmed later and offered to treat him. The Medical Board in Srinagar refuses to give them the go ahead.

Twenty years hence in 2012, Manzoor Ahmed Naiko still suffers from leaking feces. This has restricted his life. He can no longer go to social gatherings for long for fear of soiling himself.

He knows medical terminology precisely, having learnt it the tough way.

The Person

Manzoor is a medium built man of 52. He looks young; like he is in his thirties. He claims his hair has just started graying.

A little boy of 5 is holding Manzoor Ahmed’s hand. All through this interview his sparkling green eyes have worn a blank expression. He has been patient. He tugs Manzoor’s kurta a few times letting him know this was not his scene.

‘He doesn’t speak Hindi does he?’, I ask.

‘No’, says Manzoor.

I am relieved.

Manzoor is an affectionate uncle. The child loves him likewise. He likes loitering about town with his uncle.

‘Yeh mujhe Daddy kehta hai aur apne baap ko Papa’, says Manzoor, ‘Aap ise mera beta, bhanja, pota, jo chahe keh lo’

The boy lives with him and Manzoor and his wife dress him up for school. They have three children of their own:

A daughter, Masrat Manzoor, 28, unmarried
A son, Naseer Ahmed, 26, MA in Urdu, unemployed
Another son, Javed Ahmed, 24, unemployed

Employment opportunities are so low that his sons have tried to get a job with the army and the police as well. That paradox belongs in hell. It is unnerving to see this vicious cycle of poverty.

They were refused because Manzoor was their father.

After everything, Manzoor has kept his quiet simplicity.

A morning in the life of Manzoor Ahmed Naikoo:

4:15 am Wake
4:55 am Pray (the morning Namaz)
6:00 Feed his cows
7:00 Tea
The rest of his day is as drab and normal as this morning.

Manzoor is still a believer. He shakes his head gently and disapproves when I suggest that God has been unkind to him. He says God tests his followers. This was his test.

‘Khuda ki aazmaish hoti hai bande par’

He laments that even as recently as 2010, 10 people were killed in his village as terrorist suspects. He says they were innocent.

He concludes by saying he is not a political person and likes to lead a quiet life. He says India judges Kashmiris and its other citizens by different standards.

‘Hindustan mein do aaine hain. Ek saare Hindustan ke liye aur ek Kashmir ke liye’

 The Questions

After Manzoor shared his hardship with me, I am awe-struck. His courage is palpable in the silence. It was inherent and not advertised. All I find apt to do is to give him an opportunity to cross question me. He had been frank and I want to be frank as well.

He asks me what I do for a living. He also asks me if I am Muslim. I say my parents are Hindu. He says he had nothing more to ask. He ends our interview with a smile and points me in the direction of my lodge at Dal-Gate.

Courage. Silent and Stoic.

All excerpts are what Manzoor Ahmed Naikoo told Adi Prakash in Hindi/ Urdu.


Aditya is a second year student of Development Studies at TISS, Mumbai. This interview was conducted as part of the fieldwork for his MA dissertation.

This piece was originally posted on Aditya's blog.

A Critique of the Eco-Feminist View of Science: Nilabh Kumar

Vandana Shiva, keeping it real?
Source: http://palabrademujer.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/shivabarcelona083atf5.jpg

Vandana Shiva criticizes science and scientific knowledge as the basis of ''maldevelopment'' and calls it a source of “violence”. According to her science is reductionist and inherently violent. Its purpose is uniformity, centralization and control. Development thus becomes scientific agriculture, scientific animal husbandry, scientific water management and so on. She says that all these processes are violent to both women and ecology. So this modern reductionist science is a patriarchal project aimed at displacing women as experts and bringing in fragmentation and reductionism in place of holism and complexity. She believes modern science has displaced all other beliefs and knowledge systems by its claim to universality and value neutrality on the basis of a logical method to know nature. She accuses western white males and particularly Francis Bacon, to have created this patriarchal, “masculine project” called science which subjugates both nature and women, saying it was created to bind nature to the service of man. It creates a dichotomy between “rational and emotional”, “objective and subjective”, “mind and matter”, “male and female” and so on. She says it was not neutral, objective, or scientific, but a masculine mode of aggression against nature and subjugation of women.

Here the author seems to have gone too far, in the sense that one can't do away with science completely. Its presence in our lives, and everywhere is all pervasive. She needs to create a new science, which would replace the old. That is a project that is not really forthcoming in her work. Shiva doesn't indicate how and where is this new science that will solve our problems. Today, some people believe, and as also articulated so well by Sam Pitroda in his lecture, that we can not wish away science. Criticizing from outside without contributing to the creation or construction of the “new” is very easy, but it is very difficult to show the way or create the alternative. Shiva fails to show the way in what will replace this ''patriarchal, violent science''. She goes on to say, ''Both nature and enquiry appear conceptualized in ways modelled on rape and torture. '' Further she says, ''Nature came to be seen more like a woman to be raped, gender too was recreated.'' Science destroys eco-systems and knowledge systems by claiming to be the “expert”, the “knower”, even in the matters of daily lives where the traditional, indigenous knowledge systems existed and prospered in their own way.

She calls this reductionist science weak and inadequate to understand nature or women. Its a sweeping statement, that even all feminists won't agree to. These sweeping statements weaken the force of the argument and seem stereotypical. Shiva's book Staying Alive paints a picture that depicts traditional systems as perfect and unproblematic. It constructs a romantic traditional culture and depicts modern cultures as filthy and abominable. She does not answer or consider the high infant mortality rates, the low average life expectancy among “traditional” groups, the innumerable diseases and problems in “traditional” cultures which even they would be happy to get rid of. She has shown only one part of the picture. Vilifying science and progress summarily cannot lead anywhere. In my opinion, not everyone of us would like to go back to the ''romanticized past'' where everything is misleadingly shown as perfect.

She fails to recognize the violence in the local and traditional cultures where a woman who is taken by a ''ghost'' is cured by beating her and subjecting her to tortures. She has not looked at this aspect of traditional cultures. She fails to see that in the traditional cultures it's extremely difficult to add new knowledge to the existing set/collection of “knowledge” that is considered sacrosanct. It is here that traditional knowledge fails to be flexible and democratic and to stop inflicting pains and subjugating those who dissent. She writes "science resorts to suppression and falsification of facts and commits violence against itself." She deliberately does not acknowledge the fact that in science and other modern knowledge systems, there is at least a willingness to be democratic, and it is open to criticism, generally. This is why its body of knowledge keeps growing. She goes for an all out attack on science saying that science has this ''fact- value'' dichotomy. She calls science a ''perverse knowledge system''. This is a very radical stance that makes sweeping generalizations about women, men, science and nature. This stance has a lot of problems even within Feminism as liberal or other Feminist voices may not agree with this stance taken by the author.

She later contradicts herself saying that this science is not science but politics. And the politics can not be called scientific knowledge. Very true, if that is so, she is contradicting herself. she claims the laws of mechanics are not 'laws of nature' but value-judgements. This statement falsifies all knowledge acquired by mankind, scientific or traditional. Vandana Shiva should have devoted a few lines to explain this as even a “traditional” knower says the knowledge acquired has a “justification” that can be “verified”. Since even the traditional knowledge follow loosely the prescription of verification and justification, this would mean that all traditional knowledge are value-judgements too. Herein lies the self-contradiction of her statement.

Everyone today, including those who criticize science, use in their everyday lives the modern gadgets, technologies, and everything that science has brought into our lives. The ''critics of science'' do not go to the traditional systems of knowledge for treating diseases, for the hundreds of amenities from clothes to car, from plane to computer, from mobile to hair drier, from torch to CFL, from fast trains to clothes, from entertainment to watches, from in-vitro fertilization to artificial limbs, and the list can go on indefinitely. We can not imagine a world without the modern services of science that is so deeply entrenched in our everyday lives. She refuses to see the babas and sadhus who cheat and dupe people in the name of traditional knowledge systems. If the writer/activist has a heart attack or an ailment, she will rush to a most modern hospital, and not to an ayurvedic vaidya or a sadhu baba or a “traditional” healer. The criticism of science without showing a viable alternative is like destroying the bridge without an idea of how to make a new one.

Nilabh is a first year student in the MA in Women's Studies programme at TISS, Mumbai.

These are the personal opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions of the fieldnotes editorial team.