Jane Doe

In the early hours of Saturday, as I was passively browsing through the internet searching for a new thought to be preoccupied with, I stumbled upon a news post titled "Rajasthan: Kashmiris Called 'Terrorists', Thrashed by Fellow Students" and as it appears, this is not the first time that somebody has been viciously attacked for their Kashmiri identity. Last month a video showing a student from Kashmir tied to a pole and wearing women's clothes had been doing rounds on social media. Is it a mere coincidence that violent incidents targeting Kashmiris have been rising since the abrogation of  the Article 370?

Anybody who raises questions, questioning the authenticity of the policies introduced by the government in power is called a 'deshdrohi', an anti-national terrorist. What does one do when the nation's political climate dissuades one from asking questions and instead maliciously labels "its" people?

The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe.  Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political had announced that every political idea, image, and terms have polemical importance. They are centred around a particular conflict and are bound to a concrete circumstance. They transform into empty and ghostlike reflections when the situation vanishes and are inconceivable if one doesn't know precisely who is to be influenced, combated, discredited or negated by such a term.

The word Terrorism is notoriously difficult to define and so has been the philosophical interest of many, partly also because of the disagreement whether and when Terrorism, so-called, can be justified. (Teichman, 1989)

Imtiaz Dharker wrote the poem The Right Word after the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers when the profile of a terrorist was much discussed. The United States, after which, was serious about rooting out the rising threats to its vital interests and the lives of its citizens posed by international Terrorism of any stripe. Its priority was to formulate a comprehensive, uniform and above all functional definition of just what we consider Terrorism to be. (Carr, 2007)

Imtiaz Dharker's The Right Word reads like a debate she seems to be having with herself about the "terrorist", "martyr", "fighter" outside the door.

Outside the door,

lurking in the shadows,

is a terrorist.

Is that the wrong description?

Outside that door,

taking shelter in the shadows,

is a freedom fighter.

I haven't got this right.

Outside, waiting in the shadows,

is a hostile militant.

Are words no more

than waving, wavering flags?

Outside your door,

watchful in the shadows,

is a guerrilla warrior.

God help me.

Outside, defying every shadow,

stands a martyr.

I saw his face.

No words can help me now.

Just outside the door,

lost in shadows,

is a child who looks like mine.

One word for you.

Outside my door,

his hand too steady,

his eyes too hard

is a boy who looks like your son, too.

I open the door.

Come in, I say.

Come in and eat with us.

The child steps in

and carefully, at my door,

takes off his shoes.

How different descriptions of an 'object' or 'being' can completely change the preconception she tries to evoke by using ambiguous adjectives, forcing her readers to look at things from more than one perspective.

Carr writes that the word Terrorism in its essence is an aggressive activity: whatever one thinks of a strategy, it is a strategy employed in clashes between everything from rival factions to opposing nations. Small wonder that it is a phenomenon that fits entirely under the rubric of the war.  Warfare deliberately waged against civilians intending to crumble their will to support either leaders or policies that the agents of such violence find objectionable. (Carr, 2007)

The word terrorist creates a complex set of expectations. We think we know who "they" are, what motivates "them", what are "their" expectations, what "they" represent and a presumption about "their" appearance.  The poet writes that they are "lurking in the shadows", suggesting a hidden threat waiting for a moment to strike. The word terrorist in the subsequent paragraphs is recast as a freedom fighter, militant, a martyr, which invokes a different set of expectations. 

Haig Khatchadourian holds that there are no exceptions to the undebatable rule that Terrorism is always evil, while C.A.J. Coady seems to contend that Terrorism is fundamentally wicked. Noam Chomsky believes that the state is the primary perpetrator of Terrorism today, that Terrorism is state-sponsored covert warfare. In contrast, Anthony Kenny and several others argue that Terrorism must be defined as a type of unjust rebellion.

One man's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter; the question thus of who is a terrorist entirely depends on who the definer is, writes Ganor. This saying invites the readers to assess a 'terrorist' act from a Terrorist's perspective. The slogan paradoxically also holds that 'terrorism' is inherently wrong while freedom fighting is good, and such labelling will preclude it from being viewed as Terrorism.

A change in meaning is, essentially, always is about reevaluation: the transposition of some particular word from one evaluative context to another. A word is either advanced to a higher rank or demoted to a lower one.

The repetition or change in the description in "The Right Word" suggests that the poet struggles to paint an honest and legitimate picture of this person outside the door. This unsettlement is mirrored in the lines "Are words no more than waving, wavering flags?" Like a flag when it is nudged by the wind, wavers, sways, swells, words too can become partial or obscure. Words are not concrete and are washed by a tide of ambiguity. "Multiplicity of meanings is the constitutive feature of a word (Volosinov, 1973)".

Since words are already a physical impersonation of the natural world, Plato believed that both control and essential language investigation could only fix man's attention on a level substandard to reality. The inherent human element keeps the language from being utterly faithful to reality. And as already stated, because Plato feels that words imitate reality either closely or loosely, knowledge for him lies outside the domain of language. (Partee, 1972)

Plato maintained that the truth reflected by language might exist with varying degrees of accuracy. (ibid) "The reality of the signs is wholly a matter determined by that communication".  

All the endeavors by Americans to give a possible meaning to the word Terrorism, a meaning that the majoritarian body wants to communicate to its population, as mentioned earlier, reached a crucial stage after 9/11. The attack caused Americans, Left and Right, to hunker down further and adhere to their restricted definitions with more determination. Furthermore, the war in Iraq had befuddled America's ideas about whether Terrorism is a form of warfare- and if it is, regardless of whether it is ethically valid or lawful globally, or maybe even more. (Carr, 2007)

The "enemies" of America in Iraq, are they really terrorists or "insurgents"? Can they be both? Did the despicable behaviour of American gatekeepers at Abu Ghraib jail, or why should not the alleged killings of regular folks submitted by American soldiers in towns like Haditha, constitute Terrorism by uniformed troops?  Why do the meanings of words change with the concrete situation of its implementation?

 "The Country Without a Post Office", was an event held in Jawaharlal Nehru University, traditionally one of the most open spaces in India to take forward the discussion on subjects of atrocities, occupation and the quest for self-determination among the Kashmiris. A student's group affiliated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an association that claims itself to be a cultural organisation, caused disruption, chanting slogans claiming ownership of Kashmir. 

"We claim the whole area to be ours, but we do not treat the people with the same kind of love and affection as we should, as we do in the rest of the country. This is the reason for the continuing tensions and growth of militancy—be it in Kashmir or in the northeast," said Laxminarayan Ramdas, a retired admiral of the Indian Navy who too has been trolled for his views on nuclear disarmament and regional peace. (Kanga, 2019)

"Kashmir is ours, all of it," some said, and in retaliation, several Kashmiri students from the gathering responded with ", What do we seek? Freedom!". The scuffle escalated when someone yelled, "The battle will continue till India disintegrates!" (Peer, 2017)

It was alleged by prime time anchors of popular news channels that Umar Khalid and Kanhaiya Kumar, the president of JNU's student union, were raising anti-national slogans. They were also accused of being terrorist sympathisers and anti-national. The entire debate was essentially focused on speech. Now, what constitutes speech? Language. What constitutes a language? Words. And words, too, under the public and private realm are constituted as being political.

The poet uses the symbolism of the door; the open door can provide an opportunity for the two sides to connect. When the person "lurking in the shadows" is recognised as a child, they are welcomed.

Dharker contends that words can generate hindrance between individuals, concealing their likenesses and emphasising – or assuming – fundamental contrasts. Be that as it may, the right words can open up new spaces for companionship and comprehension.

Understanding another person's utterance means orienting oneself around it and finding a proper place in the corresponding context. Words essentially have no meaning, and it is all in the theme. Its meaning is inseparable from the concrete situation of its implementation. (Volosinov, 1973)

Dharker argues that it is necessary for us as human beings to reflect on other people's language, the stories they tell, and the experiences they have to enhance one's understanding at an individual or institutional level. Reflexivity is described as "feedback and static" within the research scenario. One can then infer that it is essential to focus on the social developments of the Other and the process of othering when directing explorations with individuals in the intersubjectivity realm.

In our  interactions between "Us" and "Them", "Us" and the "Other", the ethnographic descriptions of "Other" and "Them" are depicted by words like savage, "primitive" or "uncivilised", encounters accompanied by such preferences are bound to be adulterated.

 This means that the relationship between objects in the world and those who live in that world is no longer one of separateness: "representation and object are not distinct, they are intimately interconnected" (Woolgar, 1988).

The connection between objects in the world and the residents is not of distance. Johannes Fabian in Time and Other speaks of the denial of the simultaneous existence of the ethnographic subject and the self. (Fabian, 2014)

Reflexivity in this context is a detailed evaluation of the self. From its etymological roots, we know that 'reflexivity' involves looking once more, turning your gaze to the self; in effect, reflexivity involves mirroring your recollected self. It evokes an interpretive ontology that understands individuals and the world as interrelated and joined in a dialogic relationship that develops multiple versions of reality. (Shaw, 2010)

Heidegger's existential phenomenology – and his emphasis on Dasein – being on the planet – highlights our inseparable connection to the world in which we dwell and its effects on being human. He further argues that when we encounter new things, we experience them as already interpreted. Our understanding of who a "terrorist" is, this process of meaning-making is at the core of human experience; we are endowed with agency and the ability to make sense of our experiences actively and each other (Bruner, 1990), but we do this within the constraints of the world in which we live. 

We encounter and translate the world from a specific point of view, and we can never completely get away from this subjectivity. Gadamer (1975) talked about this as far as skylines; we each have our very own presuppositions, convictions, and inclinations. These make up our very own viewpoint (or circle) of comprehension, and how does one overcome this? By the process of continually reflecting upon our interpretations of both our experience and the phenomena being studied to move beyond the partiality of our previous understandings and our investment in particular research outcomes (Finlay, 2003).

References:

Bruner, Jerome Seymour. Acts of meaning. Vol. 3. Harvard university press, 1990.

Carr, Caleb. "Terrorism": why the definition must be broad." World Policy Journal 24, no. 1 (2007): 47-50.

Fabian, Johannes. Time and the other: How anthropology makes its object. Columbia University Press, 2014.

Finlay, Linda. "Through the looking glass: Intersubjectivity and hermeneutic reflection." Reflexivity: A practical guide for researchers in health and social sciences (2003): 105-119.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. "Truth and Method, 2nd (revised) ed." London: Sheed and Ward (1975).

Partee, Morris Henry. "Plato's theory of language." Foundations of Language (1972): 113-132.

Shaw, Rachel. "Embedding reflexivity within experiential qualitative psychology." Qualitative research in psychology 7, no. 3 (2010): 233-243.

Teichman, Jenny. "How to define terrorism." Philosophy 64, no. 250 (1989): 505-517.

Voloshinov, Valentin N., Ladislav Matejka, and I. R. Titunik. "Marxism and the Philosophy of Language [by] VN Volosinov. Translated by Ladislav Matejka and IR Titunik." (1973).

Woolgar, Steve. "Reflexivity is the ethnographer of the text." Knowledge and reflexivity: New frontiers in the sociology of knowledge (1988): 14-34.

https://thewire.in/rights/rajasthan-kashmiris-called-terrorists-thrashed-by-fellow-students

https://caravanmagazine.in/security/admiral-ramdas-pulwama-balakot-worse-than-kargil

http://www.wandemag.com/agha-shahid-ali-mastermind-post-office/

Nivedita Menon's small red paperback Seeing Like a Feminist draws the readers right in through its lucid account manageable in size and unambiguous in meaning. She unpacks some of the most complex challenges facing the women's movement in India and elsewhere, organized under six chapters. Menon uses the metaphor of vision, seeing beyond what appears ordinary and natural. She argues that the maintenance of gender hierarchy happens through the naturalization and routinization of everyday practices in the public and private spheres. When these protocols are not followed, intervention comes packed as violence.

She explains how raising one's kids "properly" in India means that we bring them up to follow gender-appropriate behaviour, facilitating the preservation of the institution of marriage. This is further reduced by conventional practices such as getting a girl married to a boy, taking after her husband's last name, and giving birth to his children. The family, which is also what the first chapter of the book is called, is unequally structured and is commonly found to be patrilineal, sees it necessary to ensure that the continuation of property ownership happens from the fathers to their sons,  and coming to the husband becomes her natural guardian after her father.

A heterosexual, patriarchal family as an institution focuses on the production and perpetuation of private property ownership and lineage forms that are reproduced generation after generation through the same-caste marriage practices. By policing a woman's sexuality, crucial identities remain untouched and pure. The production of legitimate children that fall under the same caste, religion or race by perpetuating patrilineal descent and virilocality, giving a woman a limited role as a wife is essential for the sustenance of the social order. Menon highlights how a woman's characterization as somebody incapable and fragile and therefore wanting protection physically and economically stands in contradiction with the image of a woman undertaking "heavy" manual labour as part of her domestic "responsibilities".

Nivedita Menon finds the popularised definition of a family, i.e. husband, wife, and children, as limiting and problematic. She writes how the wife's unpaid labour supports the economy in any country, but their work is trivialized. They are forced into the responsibilities assigned by society, that of nurturing their children.

After talking about some of the well-known themes concerning the feminist movement in India- the sexual division of labour, the menace of dowry, and the public and private mediation through the family, she begins the next chapter called the Body.

She talks of the emergence of the "individual" and how its conception differs in the western and the non-western worlds that are separated spatially and temporally, and that the body itself renders itself visible not by nature but through different kinds of discourses undertaken in specific ways, i.e., through changing narratives of gender and sexual identities, the problematic nature of segregation based on sex in sports, disciplining masculinities for men.

In her next chapter on Desire, Menon presents an account of the perpetuation of heteronormativity in colonial India, carrying forward her earlier discourse on sexuality. Groups that had always adopted a position of marginality began their counter-narrative politics. The queer movement emerged to subvert the definition of normal and natural.

In her chapter on Sexual Violence, Nivedita Menon turns out to be one of the foremost struggles of the feminist movement in India. She wonders why and wants feminists to question why one marks rape as far more heinous than any other crimes, other forms of assault and injury. She also probes into the position of a prostitute or a slut or the incidents of rape in situations of conflict, which are normalized or often ignored in the hierarchical categories of "good" and "bad" women.

In her final chapter, Menon revisits some of the older debates to underlie the heterogeneity of women- the Shah Bano case, the controversial Uniform Civil Code and the constant tussle between Secularism and Hindutva. She critiques the pressure one feels to dress in certain ways is forcefully put under the categories of "imprisoning" and "liberating" and why it is important to rethink what would empower a woman in a particular context.

While addressing the questions of the agency, she argues how sex work, bar dancers, trafficking/migration, commercial surrogacy, pornography are issues that share the common thread of victimhood. Still, as a feminist, one must also question the common-sense assumptions of victimization. A survey on sex workers revealed that they were engaged in the work they did because it was, in fact, better than any other options in the market and offered more economic returns. She also writes at length on the lack of choices for women on topics surrounding her womb and how they must have an unqualified right to abortion.

One of the most admirable modes of feminist theorizing is the ability to rethink one's position. While revisiting the discussions on the women's reservation bill issues, sexual violence, and sex-selective abortion, Menon comes back to them with a summary and reformulation and never treats them as closed and resolved.

The fascinating bit from the book is the agent/victim riddle, such as the sex slave vs the empowered sex workers that take the argument beyond the constraints of the natural into somewhat active consideration of issues such as class and caste. Her book offers a surfeit of opportunities for engagement, both in delighted agreement and in the mode of contestation.

You come to me like the sweet whisperings of the devil's sins, and its tantalizing allure steals the drowsiness off my eyelids. I lay awake, squirming beneath the day's weight and banal nothingness.

Scampering across the desert in the absence of touch, smell or sight.

Yet overpowered by the scenery of futility and the monotones of grey. 

Engulfed in its dullness. Isolated.

Mounds and mounds of fine pebbles devoid of substance, veering at the whim of the wind, the thick air obscures vision.

Days turning, one behind the other, and bleak crevices receding,

And I wait in solemn silence,

For dawn to breathe life into the world.

Tall furnaces of human misery dissolve at a distance

You and I inhale and consume, tender moments - hands interlaced, peach kisses, wholly electric.

The sky changes colours,

the hues of yearning.

My body gleams under the warmth of your skin, the exuberance of my renewed spirit intoxicating.

Documentary:The Art of Political Murder

On 26th April 1998, shortly after midnight, the phone starts to ring incessantly. Ronalth Ochaeta answers. 

"They have killed him," the caller sighs...

Bishop Juan Gerardi, known as Guatemala's undaunted human rights activist, was assassinated two days after presenting the world with the REMHI - Recovery of Historical Memory Project in a report titled "Never Again - Guatemala", a vast undertaking outlining the mass murders committed during the Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996) and condemning the state military's atrocities against left-wing rebel groups and the indigenous Maya people.

In 1954, the US-backed CIA staged a coup d'état in Guatemala to overthrow Juan Jose Arevalo's democratically elected government to protect their economic interests after the Communist Guatemalan Party of Labour decided to let go of the United Fruit Company due to its exploitative labour practises. The coup intensified into a civil war which resulted in the death of 2,00,000, displacement of about one million, violent deaths, rape and torture of civilians.

The Catholic Church's Human Rights Office ("ODHA"), chaired by Ronalth Ochaeta and under the guidance of Bishop Gerardi, began documenting the abuses committed all through the war. The report symbolised individual and collective responsibility, a sharp reminder to ensure that such horrific events do not occur again and emphasize that one shall not submit to authority. The assassination of Gerardi, on the other hand, shifted the liberal climate. It was evident that by killing him, the oppressor hoped to dissuade witnesses from coming forward with their accounts; victims who were hesitant to speak earlier were now petrified.

Who is safe if a Bishop on a quest for truth can be assassinated?

The REMHI report was no longer the object of discourse, and the focus shifted to Gerardi. The truth was shrouded in conspiracies and deception. His death roused a carnival, with the authorities implying that Gerardi led a double life and that his death was a crime of passion. The narrative took off since it had all the elements to entertain. The witness testified that he had seen a shirtless guy leave the church residence at an ungodly hour, hinting that it was a "domestic crime", crafted and executed by Mario Orantes, with whom Bishop Gerardi shared parish responsibilities. The plot began to devolve into absurdity. Balu, the German shepherd, was charged with the murder. The latest theories quickly fell apart when Jack Palladino, a private investigator summoned by the Amnesty International and Catholic Church, conducted an autopsy that confirmed no penetrations were made into the skull. 

Alvaro Arzu was the president at the time of the assassination. Bishop Gerardi was bludgeoned to death, his face deformed beyond recognition inside a security circle two blocks from the presidential house of Guatemala's most powerful man. The intelligentsia knew the public ministry's investigation was skewed and had no interest in exposing the truth. The public prosecutor had a working relationship with the army.  

The crime scene was severely mismanaged, and there were no protocols in place. There have been severe errors in the management of the crime scene and evidence. People were allowed to pass through unchecked, and prosecutors were altering the crime scene. As a result, the ODHA had their own investigation team overseeing the probe, ensuring that the process was fair and transparent.

One of their investigators, Arturo Aguilar, remarks that the first premise is bound to be of a political nature and that one's job as an investigator is to pursue facts unbiasedly. The identity of the perpetrator was a source of much consternation. Various theories circulated, and anonymous calls were made to speculate on the identity of the assailant. 

Bishop Gerardi exemplified justice in a country devoid of it. He was a strong and commanding figure who was willing to hear what the others had to say.  Guerrillas and the army had achieved political "peace" through force, intimidation and fear, but the church built consensus from within. He sought out the afflicted population to continue the Mayan ethnic cleansing investigations for the REMHI report. He hoped for the evidence to come from them. For them to speak their truth to power, to be resilient in the face of government agents and their atrocities, to articulate the quiet agony they had never spoken of since the genocide.  935 massacres were recorded, with details on how the individual forces carried out their missions.

The bishop was the state's adversary for shattering the efforts of the Government from producing passive citizens and for his statement against the state's relentless breaches of human rights. He was slandered by the military intelligence and was subjected to a failed murder attempt in the past. The army barred him from returning to the Guatemalan territory, and he was exiled to Costa Rica.

The government, army and media nexus birthed a culture of impunity. They truly believed that they are above the rule of law. 

However, three military officers were convicted on 8 June 2001 of Gerardi's assassination and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment: Colonel Byron Disrael Lima Estrada, Captain Byron Lima Oliva and José Obdulio Villanueva, as well as the priest Mario Orantes. The judgement was unprecedented. It was a long and gruelling battle against forces wielding a kind of power that no one in their right mind would resist. One day before the trial would begin, the house of one of the three presiding judges was bombed. Subsequent attempts designed to intimidate her, frighten her into resigning to further delay the judicial process were carried out. But she walked into the courtroom the next day. The terror and trepidation, as well as the knowledge of their impending doom, was evident in the eyes of the men on trial. Bishop Juan Gerardi death was a political murder.

This was a watershed moment in contemporary Guatemalan history. It signalled the end of a corrupt, brutal, and racist administration and the emergence of optimism and resilience. Justice prevailed, but the devastating effects of the war persist. The United States' intervention to contain communism was far more important than upholding human rights and civil liberties and it has worsened the social divisions in Guatemala. This interference is held responsible for the rightward shift in the governments that been voted to power ever since.