Author: Amita Kanekar

Popular Essays

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…)

Popular Essays

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…)

Popular Essays

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…)

Popular Essays

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…)

Books, Interventions, Interviews

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…)

Books, Reviews

Review: Fear of Lions

Courtesy: Percy Bharucha, National Herald.

A botched-up hunt and the summary execution of a rude peasant seem to be just another day in the life of a nobleman. Unbeknownst to them, this sets into motion a complex chain of events leading to an insurrection that questions dharma and challenges the very foundation of Hindustan. One so insidious that it forces the couch-potato badshah Aurungzeb out of the comfort of Shahjahanabad and into battle.

Amita Kanekar’s second novel, Fear Of Lions, chronicles a period of change and unrest 12 years into the rule of the pious Aurangzeb Alamgir. Having deposed of his father and brothers, he introduces austerity measures that disrupt the hedonistic lifestyle of his courtiers. Science had just begun making inroads – aided by the firangi traders and priests – into a society so far run by tradition and faith. Their insistence on aql rather than taqleed (proof over faith) found unwelcome appeal amongst those that had been relegated by birth as the lowest of the low. Under Aurungzeb, modernism clashed with the traditions that had formed the social fabric of India’s agrarian economy. The ancient Indian order that defined identity and kept the peace between the subjugated and the landowners, the menials and the noblemen, the unseeables and the Kshatriyas, the Mughals and the Rajputs; and allowed for the rules of unjust taxation, unpaid labour and lifelong debt was now forced to contend with a group of guerrilla peasants led by a mysterious priest and a witch, both followers of the mystic Kabir.

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Interventions, Webinars

Amita Kanekar: “Migrant Labourers and Goa’s Political Economy”

Organized by the Dept. of Political Science, Goa University. The abstract states, “Discussion aimed to reflect on the issues of Migrant labourers in Goa and how they can be contextualised in Goa’s Political Economy. It also deliberated on how the Goan industry as well as government is dealing with the crisis caused due to Coronavirus with regards to Migrant labourers and what will be the way forward. Prof. Rahul Tripathi, HoD of Dept of Political Science, Goa University chaired this open webinar discussion. Blaise Costabir – Chairman CII Goa Council and Amita Kanekar – Architectural Historian & Novelist joined as Lead Discussants.”

Popular Essays

What’s New about the New NEP?

By AMITA KANEKAR

India’s third National Education Policy (NEP) has been described as making ‘sweeping changes’ in the education system of the country, causing excitement, surprise and dismay in various quarters, and animated discussions in the media. But, announced at a time when schools and colleges across the country are closed, and education has gone online only to fail miserably for the majority of students, the first sense one gets is of a government bizarrely out of touch with reality. A closer look reveals that there is actually little that is new in this new NEP, and nothing at all that addresses the big problems of Indian education. (more…)

Popular Essays

Thinking BLM, Thinking India, Thinking Goa

By AMITA KANEKAR

The widespread protests that have rocked the US and other places, following the killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, have given the world a lot to think about. Disbanding and de-arming of the police, and even replacing them by citizens’ forces, are issues that are being seriously considered in the US today. Not just racist violence, but everyday racism is also being called out, as also racism in all kinds of popular culture, including the continued celebration of well-known slave-owners and slavery-supporters in public statues, with the consequent result of great many of them literally losing their pedestals. (more…)

Popular Essays

Our ‘Varan-Bhaat’ Lockdown Culture

‘But this is varan-bhaat, a traditional and healthy food’, was a response to the criticism on social media of a meal served at one of Goa’s shelters for stranded workers – the pictures showed paper plates containing just rice and dal. The reaction, though, was not completely wrong. Varan-bhaat is indeed traditional among some savanas, and may even be healthy if you do little work and have access to other nutrition – as again is the case with savarnas. But does it work for all? Or does this not matter? (more…)