[The rape has raised questions about the safety of India
 |
An angry protester points her
finger towards the
against alleged police inaction after a six-year-old was raped at a school, in
Published in Jamaica Observer
|
NEW
DELHIIndia
More than 4,000 parents and relatives of children who
attend the school in Bangalore , India
They carried placards that read “Enough Is Enough” and
“We Want Justice,” and walked more than two miles to one of Bangalore
The police said the girl was assaulted when she left her classroom to go to the restroom. They said she was recovering from the attack, but did not give further details.
The rape has raised questions about the safety of India
Angry lawmakers discussed the attack in the State
Assembly on Friday and demanded that the government of Karnataka State Bangalore
The parents have said that they will keep their children out of school until steps are in place to ensure their safety.
The police said eight members of the school’s staff had
been detained for questioning. The protesters squatted outside a police station
and refused to move until Bangalore
Official statistics say about 25,000 rapes are committed
every year in India
@ The New York Times
*
Prize-winning author questions position in India
By Jason Burke
 |
| Arundhati Roy |
Speaking at Kerala University Thiruvananthapuram , Roy , 52, described the generally accepted image of Gandhi as a
lie.
"It is time to unveil a few
truths about a person whose doctrine of nonviolence was based on the acceptance
of a most brutal social hierarchy ever known, the caste system … Do we really
need to name our universities after him?" Roy said.
The caste system is thousands of
years old but still defines the status of hundreds of millions of people in India. So-called untouchables, or Dalits, continue to suffer
discrimination.
The
author's comments provoked immediate outrage from descendants and some
scepticism from historians.
"Being outspoken is one thing but being so blase about your
ignorance is quite another," said Tushar Gandhi, great-grandson of the
world-renowned thinker and activist. "It's just an attempt to get
publicity."
Prof Mridula Mukherjee, an expert in modern Indian history at Jawaharlal
University Delhi , said Roy 's criticism was misplaced. "Gandhi devoted much of
his life to fighting caste prejudice. He was a reformer not a revivalist within
the Hindu religion. His effort was in keeping with his philosophy of
nonviolence and bringing social transformation without creating hatred,"
Mukherjee said.
Gandhi's stance is sometimes contrasted by commentators with that of
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a Dalit who grew up in poverty but went on to become a
prominent independence leader and India's first law minister, with
responsibility for much of the country's constitution. Roy
recently wrote a new introduction to Ambedkar's undelivered 1936 speech, The
Annihilation of Caste, in which she called Gandhi "the saint of the status
quo".
Mukherjee said Gandhi and Ambedkar "represented different
understandings of how to solve problems of caste oppression in India , but each was equally sincere".
The British government recently announced that a statue of Gandhi would
be placed in Parliament
Square .
The appointment of a little-known academic to the head of a national
research body has raised concerns that the new Hindu nationalist government in India may try to promote an ideological version of the country's
past.
The Bharatiya Janata party (BJP),
led by Narendra Modi, won a landslide victory in May, ending a decade of rule
by the centre-left Congress party. When last in power, between 1998 and 2004, the
BJP prompted controversy with its criticism of prominent historians and efforts to excise what ministers claimed was
a Marxist or western vision from textbooks.
Prof Yellapragada Sudershan Rao took up his post as chair of the Indian
Council of Historical Research last month. Rao was formerly head of history and
tourism management at a little-known university.
Rao immediately caused controversy with comments criticising alleged
Marxist influence on Indian historical studies and western-inspired methods of
research. He also told interviewers that he believed the Hindu literary epics,
the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, were historically accurate accounts of real
events.
Salil Tripathi, a columnist
in Mint, a local newspaper, wrote: "His appointment is
troubling … because he appears to believe that history is shaped by both faith
and reason. Faith matters, of course, but faith is part of a culture, it should
not dictate history. Faith is about unquestioned belief; history is about facts
and reality."
Romila Thapar, one of India 's most respected historians, said she feared "the ICHR
may now turn the clock back".
"Historical research in India is no longer limited to trying to prove that the
narratives of the ancient texts were historically accurate. We are now perhaps
more concerned with what they tell us about our past societies and
cultures," Thapar wrote.
BJP officials have denied any intention to change the way history is
taught in schools or elsewhere.
The decision in February by Penguin
to stop distributing an
academic work on the Hindu religion by US expert Wendy Doniger after a legal challenge from
conservatives prompted particular concern among liberal writers and thinkers in
India . The BJP government last week denied reports that it had destroyed
thousands of files, including some related to Gandhi's assassination by a Hindu
fanatic in 1948.
