Tabla de contenidos para October 2022 en The Caravan

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An affidavit submitted in late August to the sessions court in Maharashtra’s Nanded district by Yashwant Shinde—a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the former head of the Bajrang Dal in the state—is a watershed moment in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s claimed record of combating terrorism. Shinde in his affidavit—as well as in subsequent interviews—claims that he, along with several others, was trained in making bombs and conducting blasts in the lead up to multiple national elections, including in 2004 and 2014. Shinde said that they were trained by members of the RSS and the Vishva Hindu Parishad. He also claims that these RSS and VHP members facilitated members of the Indian Army in training them in the use of modern weaponry. So far, the RSS has not conclusively…

FOR THE FIRST TIME in forty-five years, on 15 June 2020, India and China recorded the death of Indian soldiers on the Line of Actual Control—the contested border between the two countries, which stretches from the Karakoram Pass in the west to Myanmar in the east. The deaths occurred in the Galwan Valley, in Ladakh, and these were the first military casualties in the territory since the 1962 Sino-India War. The full details of the incident are shrouded in ambiguity, but it involved Chinese soldiers pitching tents around the Galwan Valley and their forceful eviction by the Indian Army—there is little clarity on whether China’s People’s Liberation Army had agreed to abandon these positions. This led to a clash which claimed the lives of 20 Indian soldiers and at least…

I FIRST LEARNT about Jewish communities living in India while traveling through the country in 2017. A friend from Assam told me about “Lost Tribe” Jews in neighbouring Mizoram. Those who identify as members of Lost Tribes believe that they are the descendants of the ten Jewish tribes that were exiled from ancient Israel after the Assyrian empire conquered it around 722 BCE. I had previously been aware of the existence of Lost Tribe Jewish communities around the world but had not actively given it much thought. I was raised in a Jewish family—my parents are observant Jews, but I had never fully embraced the religion. However, I was curious to learn more about these communities in India who identified so strongly with the Jewish faith—something that I had simply…

THE LEDE 8 María Elorza Saralegui is a freelance journalist and illustrator who reports on the environment and human-rights issues. Her work has appeared in Euronews, Nature Italy and Reporter, among other outlets. PERSPECTIVES 10 Bharat Bhushan is a journalist based in Delhi. 14 Puja Sen is the associate editor at The Caravan. REPORTAGE AND ESSAYS 18 Sushant Singh is a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and a visiting lecturer at Yale University. 34 Sagar is a staff writer at The Caravan. 50 Parni Ray is a Kolkata-based writer and a fellow at South Asia Speaks. PHOTO ESSAY 64 Daniel Tepper is a photographer and journalist living in New York. BOOKS 84 Karthik Malli is an independent researcher and writer whose work focusses on the intersection of language, writing, history…

In June, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Roe vs Wade, a landmark decision that had made abortion a constitutional right in the country. Given this massive setback to reproductive rights in the world’s oldest democracy, many in India took the opportunity to congratulate themselves on having more progressive abortion laws. The next month, however, the Delhi high court refused a 25-year-old woman the right to terminate her pregnancy because she was unmarried. The high court bench was interpreting the main abortion law—the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971—which allowed certain categories of women the right to abortion under very specific conditions. The judges argued that, in her case, aborting the foetus would be equivalent to “killing the child.” On 29 September, the Supreme Court of India stepped…

In a series of four interviews over the course of September, Yashwant Shinde, a former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak—full-time worker—spoke to Sagar, a staff writer at The Caravan. Shinde explained how he was trained to carry out covert operations in Pakistan and conduct bombings across India that could be blamed on Muslims. In 2003 and 2004, he alleged, his fellow trainees bombed mosques in the Maharashtra towns of Jalna, Purna and Parbhani. Others who allegedly helped facilitate the conspiracy have been tied to a bombing campaign that killed more than one hundred and twenty people over five years. Most of Shinde’s claims line up with the details of these cases in media reports and court records. It is not possible to fully verify Shinde’s claims unless they are tested against…

THE FIRST FEW PAGES of Jotirao Phule’s Gulamgiri or Slavery, published in 1873 and widely considered to be his most important text, opens with a dedication to “the good people of the United States as a token of admiration for their sublime disinterested and self sacrificing devotion in the cause of Negro Slavery”—a reference to the abolition of slavery in the United States, in 1865, that sets the tone for the text’s arguments. Phule goes on to quote Homer on slavery and two Western writers on the detrimental role of Brahmins in Indian society. This is followed by a preface written in English, which was intended for the colonial authorities and written in the formal prose style already customary in English but not yet in Marathi. He gestures to the…

Nisrin Mohamad Amam’s life in Denmark has been marked by letters. One of the last ones arrived on 31 January this year. For months, rumours about a new immigration policy had been going round her neighbourhood, near the town of Ebeltoft in northern Denmark, but she had been sceptical—until the letter arrived. That day, she learnt that the Danish Immigration Service was challenging an extension of her residence permit. Amam had fled her home in Damascus with her two sons after the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011. According to the new immigration policy, the DIS’s letter stated, Damascus was now deemed safe for refugees to return to. “We thought Denmark was a good country, that they respect human rights and allow family reunification,” Amam said. When she arrived…

I think what we need a lot more of is free, thinking press. Press which is unafraid, press which actually explores and gets into the nitty-gritties, which isn’t just there as one of news but continues to explore and dig deep, and is unafraid to do so. And it is that to my mind that Caravan represents, and which we need more of—good, well-reasoned journalism, which is unafraid and which has a voice. So keep it up! NAINA LAL KIDWAI, Chairperson, Max Financial Services I read Caravan because I find it to be a journal that tells, investigates, and delves into important stories, on what’s going on in the country today. Caravan is not influenced by corporate interest or political alignments, and investigates in a genuine sense the real stories…

BORIS JOHNSON, THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER of United Kingdom, landed in Ahmedabad early on 21 April this year. It was his maiden visit to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The day began with a visit to the Sabarmati Ashram, once the residence of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the starting point of Gandhi’s march, to protest the British monopoly on salt, at the coastal village of Dandi. Johnson garlanded Gandhi’s portrait, spun the charkha and scribbled in the guest book that the father of the nation was “an extraordinary man.” He then breezed off to Swaminarayan Akshardham—one of the largest temple complexes in the country and, with its own IMAX theatres, exhibition halls, audio-animatronics shows, research centres and air assembly ground, a landmark of corporate Hindutva. Johnson then…

IN SEARCH OF THE DIVINE LIVING HISTORIES OF SUFISM IN INDIA Rana Safvi The academic and author Rana Safvi examines the historical roots of Sufism, as well as facets of its devotional music, art and architecture, looking at textual sources as well as drawing on six years of research, including her visits to dargahs and conversations with devotees. HACHETTE, ₹599, 432 PAGES TAGORE’S UNIVERSITY A HISTORY OF VISVA-BHARATI 1921-1961 Swati Ganguly This book presents the extensive history of Viswa-Bharati, founded by Rabindranath Tagore. It draws on archives, memoir and oral sources to examine the first four decades of community-building and scholarship at the institution, as well as the involvement of various scholars from around the world. PERMANENT BLACK, ₹1200, 508 PAGES THE PEOPLE OF INDIA NEW INDIAN POLITICS IN THE 21ST…