Published by IndiaFacts
1. Mahasweta Devi
Books:
The Queen of Jhansi
Hajar Churashir Maa
Aranyer Adhikar (The Occupation of the Forest, 1977)
Agnigarbha (Womb of Fire, 1978)
Dust on the Road (Translated into English by Maitreya Ghatak. Seagull, Calcutta.)
Our Non-Veg Cow (Seagull Books, Calcutta, 1998. Translated from Bengali by Paramita Banerjee.)
The Book of the Hunter
Draupadi (1976)
Pronouncements:
Lalgarh is the region where the whole populace is below the poverty line; it is inhabitated by Dalits, Muslims and tribals. Nobody in Lalgarh possesses a ration card. The state government’s apathy aside, the Centre is victimising this area. People here are paying a price for the SEZ (Special Economic Zone) agreement between Jindal group and the West Bengal government.
Bhattacharya (the then WB CM) has sold Lalgarh for millions of rupees. But how many? We don’t have any information about it, just as we don’t know the amount Tata paid for the Singur deal.
All my life I have seen small people with small dreams. It looked like they wanted to put them all in a box and keep them locked up…but somewhere, some of them escaped, as if there has been a jailbreak of dreams. Like the Naxalites. Their crime is they dared to dream. And why shouldn’t they?”
I invite Chidambaram to arrest and jail me for 10 years if the central government thinks I am a Maoist…. I condemned police atrocities against the naxalites in the `70s and I am not scared that by supporting
the right cause I will be labelled a Maoist.
In the seventies, in the Naxalite movement, I saw exemplary integrity, selflessness, and the guts to die for a cause…..I thought I saw history in the making, and decided that as a writer it would be my mission to document it.
My India still lives behind a curtain of darkness, a curtain that separates the mainstream society from poor and the deprived. But then why my India alone? As the century comes to an end, it is important that we all make an attempt to tear the curtain of darkness, see the reality that lies beyond and see our own true faces in the process.
Bio:
Mahasweta Devi was born in 1926 in Dhaka to Manish Ghatak who was a well-known poet and novelist. Noted filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak was the youngest brother of Manish Ghatak. Mahasweta Devi’s mother Dharitri Devi was also a writer and a social worker whose brothers were very distinguished in various fields, such as the noted sculptor Sankha Chaudhury and the founder-editor of the Economic and Political Weekly of India, Sachin Chaudhury.
After the partition of India Mahasweta Devi moved to West Bengal and joined the Rabindranath Tagore-founded Vishvabharati University in Santiniketan, completing a B.A. in English, and then finished an M.A. in English at Calcutta University as well. She later married renowned playwright Bijon Bhattacharya who was one of the founding fathers of the IPTA movement.
She earned fame for spearheading the movement against the industrial policy of the government of West Bengal from late 1960’s. Specifically, she has stridently criticized the WB government confiscation of large tracts of fertile agricultural land from farmers and ceded the land to industrial houses.
2. Sandeep Pandey
Notable articles:
Aam Aadmi Party: Beginning Of A Novel Experiment In Politics
A Consceince Encountered
Our Response To Terror
Pronouncements:
The best course of action for the government of India would be to strengthen the civilian democratic government of Pakistan and not see it as its adversary. For only when the civilians government and the civil society will have any say in running the affairs of the Pakistani society can we hope for an order there. The military and intelligence cannot have an upper hand in any civilized society and definitely the terrorists have no place. But it is easier said than done. The Pakistani society has to cope with its problems. But the least we can do is to encourage the elements in there to help restore normalcy and democracy.
Why has nobody not raised the last piece of information that Hemant Karkare’s investigations had begun to reveal before his unfortunate death- the links between RSS and the ISI? Why were Bal Thakerey and Raj Thakerey silent during those three days? Have we forgotten that Bal Thakerey had offered to the then PM Vajpayee to send his Shiv Sainiks to fight the Pakistanis during the last build up at border? This time the enemy had obliged by coming to his doorsteps. But why did the Shiv Sainiks, or for that matter any group of combatants or non-combatants, not storm the Taj or the Oberoi to end the ordeal sooner?
Is it possible for a Class IV educated daily wage labourer from Pakistan to operate sophisticated electronic devices during the attack? Has the letter written by Ajmal Kasab to Pakistani High Commissioner asking for legal help actually written by him or like in plethora of other cases police got him to sign on what they wanted to be written?
We are so obsessed as a nation with nailing down Pakistan that we are losing objectivity.
The problems for India began with the demolition of Babri Masjid. The first bomb blasts took place, in Mumbai, soon thereafter. With India going nuclear and the right wing Indian government unilaterally declaring after the September 11 attacks that India would join US in the ‘war against terror,’ the terrorist incidents in India have increased. As we went closer to US and Israel we began losing friends in the Muslim world. It will be in our interest to reverse this entire process.
Actually, to feel secure from Pakistan there is only one option. To end the animosity with Pakistan . All outstanding issues must be taken up with the government of Pakistan and amicably resolved once and for all.But for this to happen conducive situation must exist in Pakistan . The democratic government must assert its control over the military, ISI and the terrorist outfits.
With the formation of Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi the country is going to witness a novel experiment in politics.
The biggest change that the AAP government will bring about is restraining corruption. Since AAP doesn’t need black money to finance its politics, there is no need for their leaders to become part of the existing corrupt political culture. AAP is the first party after the communist parties which has kept account of its political donations and expenditure properly and made them public.
The most amazing change that AAP is going to bring about is in the decision making process. People will be involved in most decisions taken in open meetings of mohalla sabhas. In a country where so far only the elite and that too in closed rooms has been taking decisions which impact the lives of majority of the people it is going to be a welcome departure.
(Link 1 and 2)
Bio:
Sandeep Pandey is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) Varanasi. Thereafter he did his Master’s in manufacturing and computer science from Syracuse University, followed by doctorate in control theory at the University of California, Berkeley, which he completed in 1992. He started teaching at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1992 and later founded a registered organisation named Asha Trust which currently has several centres/chapters across India.
Asha team launched a people’s group named Asha Parivar in 2008 that claims to focus on strengthening democracy at the grassroots in Hardoi district of Uttar Pradesh.
In 2002, he attended the opening session of a conference organised by the Communist Party of India, Marxist Leninist Liberation, (CPI-MLL).
In 2010, he visited Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh for people’s hearing on alleged atrocities by the local government. His visit was ostensibly opposed by some members of local tribal community.
3. Harsh Mander
Books:
Unheard Voices: Stories of Forgotten Lives
The Ripped Chest: Public Policy and the Poor in India
Fear and Forgiveness: The Aftermath of Massacre
Fractured Freedom: Chronicles from India’s Margin
Notable articles:
Gujarat’s Victims Completely Isolated
Questioning governance
Lamps Lit In Darkness
Counterfeit Peace In Gujarat
Visa Denial Hurt National Pride
Battle For The Idea Of India
Warriors Against The State
Barefoot: Violence and the State
Pronouncements:
Modi is no ordinary elected leader. He has become infamous for his role in the most brutal massacre since India became free, including the mass slaughter and rape of hundreds of women and children. In the past three years, he has remained completely unrepentant, and has deliberately subverted the process of justice, attracting unprecedented strictures from the Supreme Court.
Modi’s politics of hatred should not be legitimised even by association, by the international community. I welcome the US government’s decision, even as I harbour grave disquiet about the militaristic and chauvinistic policies and human rights abuses of the current US government itself, most notably in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The alacrity with which the UPA government sprang to Modi’s defence contrasts painfully with its prevarication to secure justice for those who not only survived the massacre, but continue to live with fear and grapple with economic boycott, and are threatened or bribed if they pursue legal justice. The PM’s statement in the Rajya Sabha that the charges against Modi are based on unproved allegations is appalling because Modi stands repeatedly indicted not just by more than 50 independent citizens’ reports by organizations and people of the highest credibility, but also by the Supreme Court and the NHRC.
I too have no doubt that ethically the most condemnable violence is by the State when it acts unjustly and lawlessly, because the modern democratic State assumes monopoly of the legitimate exercise of violence with the pledge that it will protect all citizens with fairness and justice.
(Link 1, 2, 3)
Bio:
Harsh Mander formerly worked in the Indian Administrative Service, serving in the predominantly tribal states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh for almost two decades.
He is a founding member of the National Campaign for the People’s Right to Information.
He is Founder-Chairperson of the State Health Resource Centre, Chhatisgarh, which established the Mitanin Community Health Programme, the fore-runner of the Asha Programme, and the Chairperson of INCENSE (The Inclusion and Empowerment of People with Severe Mental Disorders). He is also a member of the Working Group of the Project on Armed Conflict Resolution & People’s Rights, University of California, Berkeley.
He was appointed a Member of India’s National Advisory Council by the council President Sonia Gandhi in June 2010.
Mr Mander is a Sikh but has never spoken up for Indian Sikhs victimised in the1984 killings and still unserved by justice.
While still in the IAS Mr Mander arranged his deputation to Action Aid, a British multinational with a ‘subsidiary’ in India, that calls itself a charity but is actually in a global children exploitation industry. Mr Mander secured for himself favorable terms, even to getting Action Aid to shift its national headquarters from Bangalore to New Delhi, and to giving him a salary that was partly in pounds sterling. In return, Mr Mander used his official connections to drop a government enquiry into Action Aid implementing a communal agenda in India. Two years before he actually put in his papers from the IAS, he’d announced he was prepared to leave his own country’s administrative service to serve as an agent of Action Aid.
In late 1999, soon after he took over as country director of Action Aid India, Harsh Mander, decided to set ambitious targets for boosting Action Aid’s child sponsorship programme in India. In a memo entitled ‘ActionAid India: Towards Change’, Mr Mander announced: “If each region accomplishes overtime 10,000 case histories [Action Aid speak for number of sponsored children] each, 12 regions would account for 120,000 case histories, which would be roughly three times our existing work. This would also justify staff growth over time.”
Action Aid was rewarded by the then Congress governments of Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Delhi.
In 2001-02, Action Aid’s officially declared foreign money donation was Rs 71.2 crores, and is alleged of creating projects under the name of its own staff, it funneled money to favoured but non-FCRA recipients.
Post the Gujarat tragedy, Mr Mander penned an enraged article titled ‘Hindustan Hamara’ where he blamed the entire state administration of being complicit in the violence. However the Press Council of India claimed that Mander’s ‘Hindustan Hamara’ report ‘at several points reiterated rumours that were being circulated at the relevant time. The truthfulness of the facts mentioned therein had not been established at any point of time till then but Shri Mander had chosen to base his views and sentiments on them, and put pen to the opinion thus formed by him.’ The Council ruled that ‘it was expected of the author as a responsible serving officer as well as of the respondent paper of repute like the Times of India, to be more restrained and circumspect in pronouncing a denouncement of the whole system in a communally surcharged atmosphere.’ The Council admonished the Times of India for its ‘indifferent and irresponsible attitude…in a matter of great public importance.’ Mander violated almost every instruction of the Press Council’s guidelines on the reporting of communal violence.
Mr. Mander along with Teesta Setalvad rewarded with the ‘secular’ Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavana Award by the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation. Mr. Mander has given support to Sonia Gandhi’s contention to be PM in 2004. During that timeline St. Stephen’s College held up Mander as a role model for the Indian youth.
(Links: 1, 2, 3, 4 )
4. Anand Patwardhan
Notable articles:
Gandhi: Film as Theology
Terror: The Aftermath
The Good Doctor of Chhattisgarh
Destruction of Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan and the Babri Masjid
Pronouncements:
It is depressing. The fact that [Narendra Modi] is getting support from corporate India confirms that his dictatorial style of governance is seen as conducive to big business. Hitler and Mussolini also got full support from the business moguls of their time. But the Gujarat model is not sustainable. Land is being stolen from the poor and given virtually free to industrialists. Water from the Narmada dam instead of going to quench drought prone regions is pumped into the Sabarmati to grace the promenades of Ahmedabad. The Tata Nano loses money on every car but is subsidized by the state. With such sweetheart deals is it a wonder that the elite class is elated?
Without exonerating Tejpal, or doubting the word of the victim, what worries me is the uncanny timing of the event. The biggest story that was doing the rounds before the Tejpal case broke was one which involved Modi using vast resources of his administration including the ATS (anti-terrorism squad) to stalk one woman. Shockingly the personnel involved overlap with those accused in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case. Yet Snoopgate completely vanished once the Tejpal story came to the fore. And Tehelka, the one brave magazine, that consistently exposed the ideology, of religious hatred suddenly got silenced four months before elections…
If I were a Muslim in Pakistan I would have fought Islamic terror. But I am a Hindu living in a country where Hindus comprise an 80% majority and if inflamed and let loose, can commit genocide. Minorities can only commit suicide.
The development model that Modi follows can only speed us along our way, over the edge.
After decades of unpopularity, the rehabilitation of the RSS came from an unlikely source, the Gandhian Socialist JP. During the Bihar famine in the 1960s, JP encountered RSS cadre doing relief work. Impressed by their dedication, JP began to see them as potential allies in nation building.
We have ‘nuclear scientists’ who are not even scientists. Kakodkar is not qualified as a nuclear scientist. He’s a mechanical engineer. Abdul Kalam is also not qualified. He is a PR man.
Nuclear India will become a fascist India. As more and more people oppose nuclear power, the government can only use repression to clear the land.
(Links 1, 2, 3, 4)
Bio:
Anand Patwardhan was born in 1950, in Mumbai, Maharashtra. He completed a B.A. in English literature at Bombay University in 1970, a B.A. in Sociology at Brandeis University in 1972, and an M.A. in Communication Studies at McGill University in 1982.
He is known to make controversial documentary films like Father, Son, and Holy War, War and Peace and Ram ke Nam, which shows Hindu Nationalists and the Indian polity in an exaggerated negative manner.
5. Praful Bidwai
Books:
Testing Times. The Global Stake in a Nuclear Test Ban, with Achin Vanaik
Religion, Religiosity and Communalism, with Harbans Mukhia and Achin Vanaik
India Under Siege. Challenges Within and Without, with Muchkund Dubey, Anuradha Chenoy and Arun Ghosh
Articles:
Government Imposing Koodankulam Plant On People
BJP’s Allergy To Democracy
Moving From Moditva To Sanity: The Stakes In Gujarat
India’s Veneer Of Religious Integration
Caught In Historical Cliches
A Critique Of Hindutva
Resisting Modi Through Mass Struggles
Saffron terror
Pronouncements:
Militant majoritarianism has held sway in India over the past 20 years and created great fear and insecurity among Muslims. Hindutva’s rise has deeply affected official thinking and given India’s counter-terrorism strategy an Islamophobic edge. A significant number of police and intelligence officials, both serving and retired, have embraced hard or soft Hindutva. Muslim alienation from the government has never been greater. This is especially so where Muslims have been harassed or treated with suspicion, as after the Batla House episode.
The lion’s share of the responsibility for this unacceptably deplorable state of affairs rests with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), many of whose members seamlessly walk in and out of the front organisations of the RSS, and whom the RSS uses at will.
India stands convulsed by Sonia Gandhi’s decision not to become Prime Minister despite a landmark electoral verdict in her favour. This great act of renunciation enhances her moral-political stature.
India must return to Non-Alignment and emphasise a non-hegemonic, multi-polar, peaceful and rule-based world order. Similarly, its security policy must be freed of BJP-style jingoism.
“Hindutva laboratory” Gujarat’s law-and-order situation is appalling. Its religious minorities and Dalits suffer extreme discrimination and exclusion. Like Muslims, its Christians face persecution. More than 100 Dalits were murdered in Gujarat over the past three years.
Savarkar was a deeply contradictory figure. In the normal, banal, sense of the term, he was of course a patriot, in that he loved his country. (Did not Hitler love his?) But the object of Savarkar’s admiration was the Hindu nation, not the syncretic, multi-cultural entity that India was and remains. Even in their early, militant, phase, Savarkar’s activities were driven by hatred of “foreigners” and “outsiders”.
Savarkar’s love for the “sacred motherland” never stopped him from making deals with the Raj. He had his differences with the RSS, and disdain for some of its ideas and practices. But these were eclipsed by their shared devotion to Hindu rashtra and Hindu-padpatshahi (Hindu overlordship or hegemony). More important, Savarkar pioneered the Two-Nation Theory. And he honed Hindutva into a sharp, vicious ideology, which the RSS carried forward through the Jana Sangh and the BJP. Savarkar opposed superstition, cow worship and yajnas. But that did not prevent him from joining hands with rank obscurantists.
Savarkar was no “Veer” (hero) and must not be glorified. His name does not deserve to adorn Port Blair Airport or the Central Hall of Parliament.
(Links 1, 2, 3, 4, )
Bio:
Bidwai’s first notable work in journalism was as a columnist for the “Economic and Political Weekly”, beginning in 1972. He then worked for magazines and newspapers including “Business India”, “Financial Express” and “The Times of India” between 1981 and 1993, eventually becoming its senior editor. He was “The Times group’s” most published journalist for 20 years.
6. Biju Mathew
Notable Writings:
Political violence in a globalized world: The case of Hindu nationalism
Byte-Sized Nationalism: Mapping the Hindu Right in the United States
As The Fires Die: The Terror Of The Aftermath
Bio:
Biju Mathew is an Associate Professor of Business Administration at Rider University in New Jersey.
He obtained a BA in Economics and Statistics from Nizam college, Hyderabad in 1984 followed by a Postgraduate diploma in Industrial Relations, from XLRI, Jamshedpur, India.
He is the co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), which supports violent and banned organizations that regularly carry out guerilla wars against the Indian state. In 2002, Mathew, along with other members of the left-wing goup FOIL started a group called ‘Campaign to Stop Funding Hate’(CSFH), which launched attacks on two US based Hindu organizations – the Indian American charity known as India Development and Religious Fund (IDRF) and the US Hindu youth organization known as Hindu Students Council (HSC). However no such action has been taken by FOIL against Islamic or Evangelical fundamentalist groups based in the US.
7. Ram Puniyani
Books:
The Other Cheek: Minorities under Threat
Second Assassination of Gandhi
Communalism: What is False: What is True
Communal Politics: Facts Versus Myths
Communalism: Illustrated Primer Hindu Extreme Right-Wing Groups : Ideology and Consequences
Fascism of Sangh Parivar
Fundamentalism: Thread to Secular Democracy
Articles:
Modi Sarkar: Politics Through Culture
Hiding the truth about caste
Mr. Modi, You Are Not Welcome: Wharton Debate
Is ‘Hindu’ Our National Identity?
Myth Of Clean Chit: Gujarat Carnage And Narendra Modi
Modi Wins 2014 Elections: Victory of Development or Divisiveness
Pronouncements:
Many times we express more by keeping silence than by speaking, so to say. The Pune techie Mohsin Sheikh’s murder allegedly by the Hindu Jagran Sena was part of the well designed communalization process. The violence in Saharanpur, Rampur and other parts of UP and some parts of MP are part of the process to communalize the assembly areas, which are going to face the polls soon. The silence of Prime Minister on these issues is more than eloquent. Rather it gives signal of sorts, which are not very healthy.
There are scattered incidents which give us the glimpse of the Modi Sarkar. The shrewdest part of the new Government is that it has solid backing of vast Sangh Parivar to speak in different languages; these different tongues make the whole picture of their agenda.
The major problem of the present rule is going to be the changes in education, which will alter the thinking pattern of the coming generations. The goal is to instill a pattern in consonance with the Brahminical norms, to promote orthodox medieval mind set and to undermine the scientific temper.
Both the Rig Veda and Manusmriti prohibited the lower castes from coming close to the upper castes. They had to live outside the village. Society was divided into four varnas during the Rig Vedic times and this developed into a rigid caste system by the time of Manusmriti.
Right from the beginning of Gujarat violence, the comments of National Human rights commission indict Modi for his role in orchestrating Gujarat Violence. Though Special Investigation team (SIT) commented that there is no case against Modi, in the findings of SIT, there has been a strong element which indicts Modi for his acts of commission and omission. The apologists of Modi will point that in Delhi the military was not called for three days, while forgetting that in Delhi violence was contained in three days and in Gujarat process of violence went on unabated till May 2002, starting from 27th February.
With Modi at helm, the RSS combine is going hammer and tongs in asserting that all Indians have to call themselves as Hindus. Keeping this in mind, in tune with ‘when asked to bend you crawl’ the Goa Deputy Chief Minister Francis Desouza, a member of BJP, said that Christians are Christian Hindus.
Savarkar also defined Hindu as one who regards this land as Holy land and father land, keeping Christians and Muslims out of the definition of Hindus. Hindutva as per him is a total Hinduness, common race (Aryan) Culture (Brahminic) and the land spread from Sindhu to sea. He also conceptualized Hindu Rashtra, as the goal of Hindutva ideology. This goal of Hindu Rashtra was picked up by RSS from 1925. The goal of Hindu Rashtra was opposed to the goal of Indian National Movement, which aimed at secular democratic India.
(Links 1, 2, 3)
Bio:
Ram Puniyani was born and raised in the central Indian town of Nagpur. He completed both MBBS and MD at the Nagpur Medical college.
Upon graduation he moved to Mumbai where, after a brief stint as a medical researcher, he found a permanent job as senior medical officer(SMO) at the Indian Institute of technology campus in Powai, Mumbai. After about 10 years of service as a physician, he diverted into the then fledgling Blood Rhealogy lab set up in collaboration with various Electrical and Mechanical Engineering faculty.
He is associated with various groups like All India Secular Forum, Center for Study of Society and Secularism and ANHAD, which are known to give platform to men like Kancha Ilaiah and John Dayal.
8. Mallika Sarabhai
Note:
She has endorsed the statements of individuals like Harsh Mander, Teesta Setalvad and Mukul Sinha against Narendra Modi on the Gujarat carnage but our research did not yield many notable article exclusively penned by her. The ones important are given below:
The Bus Trip
FEMINISM? Who’s that?
The Report Card
Anna and after
Give Something Back
Oh our pure Indian culture!
A Call to The People of Gujarat from a Daughter of Gujarat
Pronouncements:
Have all of us become mute? Does this shaming of women not demand a stand from each and every one of us? What worse will we wait for before it hurts, before we are pushed out of our self serving apathy? Of what use are the cries against female foeticide when our young women are mauled with such impunity? What is the point of the farce in the name of increasing female literacy, if the very institutions of learning rape Saraswati.
I begin with a heartfelt salute to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. Not because they are on the richest of the rich list, with the Mittals and Ambanis breathing down their backs. No not at all. And not even because they have, by giving away all their hard earned wealth for the common good, become the ideal mahapurush of our Sanatan Dharma.
This is the time for the Gujarati’s inventive spirit to come to the fore. We need to find out of the box ideas to shame the corrupt, to make them squirm. We need to find ways of celebrating those who do not become corrupt, who do not give in to greed or to short cuts or to bribing for convenience or privilege.
(Source)
Bio:
Mallika Sarabhai was born to famed scientist Vikram Sarabhai and Mrinalini Sarabhai. She completed her MBA from IIM Ahmedabad in 1974 and received a PhD in Organisational Behaviour from the Gujarat University in 1976.
She is famous as a choreographer and dancer.
Mallika Sarabhai gained recognition in feminist circles through her performance in the solo Shakti: The Power of Women.
She played the role of Draupadi in Peter Brook’s adaptation of The Mahabharata which made her famous worldwide.
Mallika Sarabhai also wrote the script for the play ‘Unsuni’ based on Harsh Mander’s book ‘Unheard Voices’.
On 19 March 2009, Mallika Sarabhai stood against L K Advani for the Gandhinagar Lok Sabha seat, as an independent candidate. Although she said that although the Congress never offered to make her its candidate for the 2009 election, in the past she had won from the Congress to contest election, the first being in 1984 from Rajiv Gandhi. She eventually lost to L K Advani by a huge margin and forfeited her election deposit in the process.
She joined the Aam Aadmi Party on 8 January 2014, calling herself the party’s “foot soldier”.
9. S P Udaykumar
Notable articles:
The Koodankulam Struggle: Why We Fight
The Silent And Telling Emergency In India
Is This A Democratic Country?
Pronouncements:
All we ask is abandon nuclear power.
Apart from Kejriwal, MDMK chief Vaiko, Naam Tamizhar Iyakkam founder Seeman and VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan and other political leaders told me not to surrender. They told me, “You are not a criminal, why should you go to jail?”
Although India is a democracy, our central government has been keen on safeguarding the interests of the MNCs and pleasing some powerful countries such as the United States, Russia, France etc. The welfare of the ‘ordinary citizens’ of India does not figure on their list of priorities.
To put it all in a nutshell, this is a classic David-Goliath fight between the ‘ordinary citizens’ of India and the powerful Indian government supported by the rich Indian capitalists, MNCs, imperial powers and the global nuclear mafia.
Bio:
Since 2010, S P Udaykumar, has been leading struggle to stop the Kudankulam nuclear power project, operating from Idinthakarai church with support from prominent Christian leaders and NGOs in Tamil Nadu and Kerala . He has over 350 criminal cases filed against him that include charges of sedition and waging war against the nation.
From Vicky Nanjappa’s article “IB alerts government over ‘mischievous’ NGOs” :
The NGO found at the Kundankulam nuclear plant in Tamil Nadu. The protests that erupted against the plant had puzzled several intelligence agencies. The IB had then submitted a report to the then MHA about a US-based that was allegedly orchestrating the villagers’ protests.
These NGOs have been set up with the help of funds from the US, UK, Germany and other countries only to ensure that some of the developmental projects run into troubled waters, the report points out.”
Earlier these NGOs created rifts on the basis of caste discrimination, religion and human rights. Today they have been tasked to stall major projects by staging protests.
This article Nine anti-India activists you must beware of appeared first on IndiaFacts.