Wheeling, Dealing, and Genocide
By AMITA KANEKAR
As Goans deal with the chaos, despair, and complete absence of governance of the present moment, a question comes to mind: what is the government for? (more…)
Author: Amita Kanekar
The real problem at the heart of Goa’s Devasthan Regulation
By AMITA KANEKAR
The Regulamento das Mazanias, translated as Devasthan Regulation 1933, which regulates the functioning of more than 200 prominent Hindu temples in Goa, is in the news nowadays. A public interest petition has been filed against this law for violating Article 15 of the Constitution by allowing only males to become members of the mazania (the body of mahajans), i.e. administrators of the temples that fall within the purview of the Act. This gender issue is the nub of the petition filed by law student Shukr Sinai Usgaokar, who also quotes Vivekananda about how a nation would not march forward if the women are left behind. (more…)
Do it behind a tree, says ODF Goa
By AMITA KANEKAR
One more Women’s Day goes by, marked by the usual greetings from politicians, commercial hoopla, and celebrations of Indian women, especially ‘successful’ ones. All of this, when compared to the fact that India ranks among the worst countries in which to be born a woman, looks like schizophrenia. But it’s not. It’s just caste, which means one thing for you and another for me. (more…)
300 crore…Whose money? Who’s celebrating?
By AMITA KANEKAR
So the Centre has given the Goa government 300 crore rupees to celebrate 60 years of “Liberation”. This generous gift, apparently three times what the state government had requested, throws up some questions. (more…)
Déjà vu at Sancoale
By AMITA KANEKAR
Doesn’t the news that a puja was conducted at the old Sancoale church frontispiece bring back memories? The choice of a religious space of a minoritised religion for the ritual. The justification that there was a Hindu temple there earlier. The selection of a ruined shrine, so that it can be argued that the place is not an active religious space at all. The focus on a precious monument, so that the message hits home to all and sundry, causes deep offence, and can become a powerful political issue. (more…)
A Refusal to Break Bread
By AMITA KANEKAR
It was widely reported – in practically all the Indian media reports on the farmers’ protest in Delhi of the past week – that the farmers’ representatives had refused the central government’s hospitality, even water. The protests, against the new farm laws which will open the doors to big corporate players in agriculture while ending the miniscule government support now available to farmers, started in Punjab months ago but garnered no response from the centre. With the protests having converged massively on Delhi now, and promising to become bigger and more widespread, the government has started talks with representatives of the farmer unions, but these talks, of which five rounds are over, have, according to the farmers, offered nothing. Except water, tea and lunch, all of which were refused by their representatives. They made do, instead, with refreshments brought from the langar at the main protest site at the Delhi-Haryana border. (more…)
Institutional Murders and Government Jobs
By AMITA KANEKAR
Even God cannot provide government jobs to all, declared the wise Pramod Sawant, making it clear that he at least has no ambition of even trying. Government positions and incomes are for a chosen few like he himself and his cronies. But he would like, he says, unemployed households to have an income of 8000-10,000 rupees a month, for which he has a scheme which will provide – not jobs – but suggestions for ‘self-reliance’. Can his own household survive on such a princely income? Obviously not. Is it what government jobs pay? Nowhere near. So, basically, our CM wants to ensure that those unemployed today earn starvation incomes tomorrow. (more…)
Crushing dissent, Yesterday and Today
By AMITA KANEKAR
There are many memes on social media that refer to today’s political situation in India as fascism. But, if this is fascism, most of it is not exactly new. The Hathras case, horrifying as it is, is not the first such case of brutal violence against people belonging to Dalit or Adivasi or other discriminated-against communities. It is also not the first time where people in government office – expected to uphold the law – have made efforts not only to derail the investigation, but to hound, arrest, and file draconian cases against those demanding justice and those supporting the family of the victim. Nor is it just a matter of the BJP; the Congress too has presided over brutalities as terrible, as at Khairlanji, and with the same callous disregard for both the victims and the truth, and a hammering of those who protested. (more…)
Of Rising Crime and our Favourite Scapegoats
By AMITA KANEKAR
Crimes in Goa tend to attract a standard public response. It may begin with a lament for a mostly fictitious and long-lost Goa where crime was unknown. But it surely continues into an abuse of our favourite scapegoats – the bhaile. And, as has been explained in this column before, although the word bhaile actually means outsiders, it is usually used pejoratively for only non-Goan labourers, not all non-Goans. (more…)
Amita Kanekar: Fear of Lions
Courtesy: Christine Machado, Navhind Times.
Q. What made you choose the Satnami Revolt as the focus for your new book?
I wanted to write about social revolutions, or attempted social revolutions. And professor Irfan Habib mentioned in one of his books that this peasant rebellion of 1672 was one of the few overtly anti-caste movements that South Asia has seen. So, given that caste is the root evil at the heart of most of South Asia’s problems, it seemed an interesting topic, also because few people know about it. (more…)