Friday, September 30, 2011

முனைவர் சோ.ந.கந்தசாமி



அறிஞர் சோ.ந.கந்தசாமி எனத் தமிழறிஞர்களாலும் S.N.K என ஆங்கிலம் வல்லாராலும் அழைக்கப்பெறும் கந்தசாமியார் அவர்கள் 15.12.1936ல் அரியலூர் மாவட்டம் உடையார்பாளையம் வட்டம் செயங்கொண்டசோழபுரம் அருகில் உள்ள இலையூர் என்னும் ஊரில் பிறந்தவர். பெற்றோர் வை.சோ.நடராச முதலியார், மீனாம்பாள் அம்மாள். கந்தசாமியார் அவர்கள் தொடக்கக் கல்வியை இலையூரிலும், உயர்நிலைக் கல்வியை உடையார்பாளையம் பள்ளியிலும் பயின்றவர். பின்னர் அண்ணாமலைப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் இளங்கலை- பொருளாதாரம் பயின்றவர்.

சோ.ந.கந்தசாமியார் அவர்கள் முதுகலைத் தமிழ் இலக்கியம் தண்ணார் தமிழளித்த அண்ணாமலைப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் பயின்றவர்(1958). எம்.லிட் (1963), முனைவர் (1971) பட்ட ஆய்வையும் அண்ணாமலைப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் மேற்கொண்டவர். மொழியியல் பட்டயம், வடமொழிப் பட்டயம் உள்ளிட்ட கல்வியையும் அண்ணாமலையில் பயின்றவர்கள்.

தாம் பயின்ற அண்ணாமலைப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் தமிழ்ப் பேராசிரியர் பணியைத் தொடர்ந்து நடத்தினார். பின்னர் மலேசியாப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்திலும் (1979-85) தமிழ்ப் பல்கலைக் கழகத்திலும் (1985-1997), சில காலம் சென்னை உலகத் தமிழாராய்ச்சி நிறுவனத்திலும் தம் தமிழ்ப்பணியை அழுத்தமாகச் செய்தவர். இவர் அறிஞர் அ.சிதம்பரநாதன் செட்டியார், தெ.பொ.மீ ஆகியோரின் மேற்பார்வையில் கற்றமை குறிப்பிடத்தக்க ஒன்றாகும். பாலிமொழிப் பாடல்கள் பலவற்றை மனப்பாடமாகச் சொல்லும் ஆற்றலுடையவர். கல்வெட்டுகளிலும் நல்ல புலமையுடையவர்.

சோ.ந. கந்தசாமியார் அவர்கள் நாற்பதாண்டுகள் கல்விப் பணியாற்றியுள்ளார். இவரிடம் கற்றவர்களும், இவருடன் கற்றவர்களும் இவர் கல்வி கண்டு மருள்வது உண்டு. நினைவாற்றலில் வல்லவர். எடுத்துரைப்பதில் ஆற்றலாளர். மேடையை, வகுப்பறையத் தன் கட்டுப்பாட்டில் வைத்திருக்கும்படியான பேச்சாற்றல் வல்லவர். எதுகைகளும்,மோனைகளும் இவர் பேச்சில் சிந்திச் சிதறும்.

'அனைத்துப் பல்கலைக்கழகங்களுக்கும் அன்னைப் பல்கலைக்கழகமாக விளங்கும் சென்னைப் பல்கலைக்கழகம்' என்றும், 'எங்கள் மனசைக் கவர்ந்த பனசைக் கல்லூரி' என்றும் இவர் விளிக்கும் பாங்கு கற்றவர்களால் என்றும் நினைவுகூரத்தக்கன. இத்திறம் கண்ட கற்றார் களிப்புறுவர். இவர் தமிழ் ஆளுமைகளுள் குறிப்பிடத் தகுந்த மேலோர். நூலோர்.

கந்தசாமியார் அவர்கள் மருதூரில் புகழ்பெற்ற விடுதலைப் போராட்ட வீரர் முத்துக்குமாரசாமி அவர்களின் புதல்வியார் சமுனாதேவி அவர்களை இல்வாழ்க்கைத் துணைவியாக ஏற்றுக்கொண்டவர். கந்தசாமியார் அவர்களுக்கு ஆண்மகன் ஒருவரும், பெண்மக்கள் நால்வரும் மக்கள் செல்வங்களாக வாய்த்தனர். இவர்கள் அனைவரும் உயர்கல்வி கற்று நல்ல நிலையில் உள்ளனர்.

அறிஞர் சோ.ந.கந்தசாமி அவர்கள் வகுப்பறையில் மட்டும் புலமை புலப்படும்படி விளங்கினார் என்று இல்லை. இவர் இயற்றிய நூல்களும் என்றும் பயன்படுத்தத் தக்கன. தரத்தன. இவர் இந்து நாளிதழில் முப்பத்தந்து ஆண்டுகளாக எழுதும் நூல் மதிப்புரைகள் அறிஞர் உலகால் என்றும் போற்றி மதிக்கப்படுவனவாகும்.

இவர் இயற்றிய நூல்களை இலக்கியம், திறனாய்வு, மொழிபெயர்ப்பு, இலக்கணம், மொழியியல், தத்துவம் என்னும் வகைகளில் அடக்கிப் பார்க்கலாம்.

இலக்கிய நூல்கள்:

1.சங்க இலக்கியத்தில் மதுரை
2.திருக்குறள் கூறும் உறுதிப்பொருள்
3.இலக்கியமும் இலக்கிய வகையும்
4.தமிழிலக்கியச் செல்வம் (ஐந்து தொகுதிகள்)
5.திருமுறை இலக்கியம்
6.திருமுறையில் இலக்கிய வகை
7.உலகத் தமிழிலக்கிய வரலாறு (கி.பி.501-கி.பி.900)
8.மணிமேகலையின் காலம்
9.பரிபாடலின் காலம்
10.இலக்கியச்சோலையிலே

திறனாய்வு:

11.Bharathidasan As a Romantic Poet
12.Anthology of Book Reviews
13.தொல்காப்பியரின் இலக்கியக் கொள்கைகள்

மொழிபெயர்ப்பு:

14.English Translation of Sundarar Devaram Volume I (patikam 1-50)
15.Volume II (patikam 51-100) (Total 1026 verses)
16.16.திருமந்திரம் எட்டாம் தந்திரம் English Translation of Tirumantiram (Total 527 verses)

இலக்கணம்:

17.தமிழிலக்கணச் செல்வம் (இரு தொகுதிகள்)
18.தொல்காப்பியம் - எழுத்ததிகாரத் தெளிவு
19.புறத்திணை வாழ்வியல்
20.தமிழ் யாப்பியலின் தோற்றமும் வளர்ச்சியும் (மூன்று தொகுதிகள்)
21.கலித்தொகை யாப்பியல்

மொழியியல்:

22. A Linguistics Study of Paripatal (M.Lit.Thesis)
23.A Linguistis of Manimekalai

தத்துவம்:

24.தமிழும் தத்துவமும்
25.தமிழிலக்கியத்தில் பௌத்தம்
26.தமிழிலக்கியத்தில் அறிவாராய்ச்சியியல்
27.இந்தியத் தத்துவக் களஞ்சியம் (மூன்று தொகுதிகள்)
28.Budhism As Expounded in Manimekalai (Ph.D. Dissertation)
29.Indian Epistemology as Expounded in the Tamil Classics
30.Tamil Literature and Indian Philosophy
31.The Yoga of Siddha Avvai (Published in Canada)
32.Advaitic Works and Thought in Tamil
33.The Encounter Between saiva sidhanta and Advaita vedanta

அறிஞர் சோ.ந.கந்தசாமி அவர்கள் பல்வேறு நூல்களை எழுதியதுடன் அமையாமல் பல்வேறு நிறுவனங்களுடன் இணைந்து பல பொறுப்புகளை வகித்துக் கல்விப் பணியாற்றியுள்ளார். சாகித்திய அகாதெமியின் உறுப்பினராகவும், பல்கலைக்கழ ஆட்சிக்குழு உறுப்பினர், ஆய்வுக்குழு உறுப்பினர், தேர்வுக்குழுத் தலைவர், பாடத்திட்டக் குழுத்தலைவர், இந்தியப் பல்கலைக்கழகத் தமிழாசிரியர் மன்றத்தின் துணைத்தலைவர் உள்ளிட்ட பல்வேறு பொறுப்புகளை ஏற்றுத் திறம்படப் பணிபுரிந்துள்ளார்.இந்திய நடுவண் தேர்வாணையத்தின் (U.P.S.C.) முதன்மைத் தேர்வாளராகவும் பணிபுரிந்துள்ளார்.

இவர்தம் தமிழ்ப்பணியறிந்த பல்வேறு நிறுவனங்கள் இவருக்குப் பல சிறப்புகளைச் செய்துள்ளன. அண்ணாமலைப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் பல்வேறு ஆராய்ச்சிப் பரிசுகள் இவருக்குக் கிடைத்துள்ளன. அண்ணாமலைப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தின் வெள்ளிவிழாக் கவிதைக்கு முதற்பரிசாகத் தங்கப் பதக்கம் பெற்றவர். திருக்குறள் கூறும் உறுதிப்பொருள்கள் என்னும் இவர்தம் நூலுக்கும், இந்தியத் தத்துவக்களஞ்சியம் என்ற நூலுக்கும் தமிழக அரசு சிறந்த நூலுக்கான பரிசு வழங்கிச் சிறப்பித்துள்ளது. இவர் அண்ணாமலை செட்டியார் தமிழிலக்கிய விருது பெற்ற பெருமைக்கு உரியவர். தருமபுர ஆதீனத்தின் சித்தாந்தக் கலாநிதி, குன்றக்குடி ஆதீனத்தின் தமிழாகரர், திருவாவடுதுறை ஆதீனத்தின் சித்தாந்தச் செம்மணி, மெய்யப்பன் அறக்கட்டளையின் சிறந்த தமிழறிஞர் விருது உள்ளிட்ட பல பட்டங்களையும் விருதுகளையும் தன் தகுதியால் பெற்றுள்ளார்.

அலுவல் முறையில் பணியிலிருந்து ஓய்வு பெற்றாலும் தொடர்ந்து ஆராய்ச்சிப் பணிகளிலும்,எழுத்துப் பணிகளிலும் ஈடுபட்டுள்ள பேராசிரியர் அவர்கள் மைசூரில் உள்ள செம்மொழித் தமிழ் உயராய்வு நிறுவனத்தின் முதுநிலை ஆய்வறிஞராகப் பணிபுரிகின்றார்.

சோ.ந.கந்தசாமியார் அவர்களின் தொடர்பு முகவரி:

முனைவர் சோ.ந.கந்தசாமி அவர்கள்
61,ஐந்தாம் தெரு,
நடராசபுரம்(தெற்கு).
தஞ்சாவூர் - 613007
தொலைபேசி : 04362 241027

கட்டுரை ஆக்கம் : முனைவர் மு.இளங்கோவன் 

An open letter on US broadcaster's deportation






We write to protest the denial of entry to David Barsamian by Immigration Authorities at the New Delhi airport in the early hours of September 23, 2011, and we write to draw attention to the growing arbitrariness of the Indian Government in dealing with dissent of any kind.
David Barsamian is a veteran broadcaster, and founder and director of Alternative Radio, a weekly one-hour public affairs program offered free to all public radio stations in the US, Canada, Europe and beyond. For more than 25 years Alternative Radio has provided information, analyses and views that are frequently ignored in other media. Structured around intensive interviews conducted by David Barsamian, these programs are carried by over 125 radio stations and heard by millions of listeners. He is the author of numerous books with Edward Said, Eqbal Ahmad, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy and Tariq Ali.
David is a friend for many of us, but he is an older friend of India. He first came as a young man in 1966, and has since returned innumerable times, immersing himself in its  music, languages and poetry. He has taught himself Urdu and Hindi, learned to play the Sitar, and closely follows events in the sub-continent.
When he was deported on September 23 he had a visa which was valid for another 5 years, and although he last visited in February 2011, he had no intimation or warning that he was in violation of any of the conditions under which his visa was issued. The only thing that the Immigration Officers were able to tell him was that he was "banned" from entering the country, and that the reasons were a "secret".
The deportation of David Barsamian unfortunately mirrors the manner in which Prof Richard Shapiro was arbitrarily stopped from entering India in November 2010. We are dismayed that this power to send people back from the airport is slowly becoming a weapon, used to discipline and silence people who draw any kind of attention to uncomfortable truths about India. A year later Prof Shapiro still has no formal response on why he was stopped, and when he can regain his right to travel to India, where he has family.
We therefore ask that the ban on David Barsamian and others like Richard Shapiro be revoked, and the Government of India not impede their return to India.
We demand that the right to travel and the right to free exchange of ideas between scholars, journalists, artists, and human rights defenders be respected and protected, and that government agents not authorize the denial of entry and eviction of visitors to India, or monitor their movement. Free exchange of ideas is one of the most basic human rights and values in free democratic societies. Freedom of travel is one of the most important avenues for furthering such exchange among peoples. Recognizing this, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which India has ratified, protects freedom of expression, right to travel and scientific exchange.

Signed:

1 Abha Sur, Academic
2 Amar Kanwar, Film-maker
3 Amit Bhaduri, Academic
4 Amit Sengupta, Journalist
5 Anuradha Chenoy, Academic
6 Ania Loomba, Academic
7 Angana Chatterji, Academic
8 Anthony Arnove, Publisher/Activist
9 Aruna Roy, MKSS, Activist
10 Arundhati Roy, Writer
11 Arpita Banerjee, Academic
12 Ashok Prasad, Academic
13 Ajay Skaria, Academic
14 Basharat Peer, Writer
15 Biju Mathew, Academic
16 David Ludden, Academic
17 Deepankar Basu, Academic
18 Dibyesh Anand, Academic
19 Gyanendra Pandey, Academic
20 Harsh Dobhal, Journalist
21 Hussain Askari, Journalist
22 Jean Dreze, Scholar
23 Joel Geier, International Socialist Review
24 Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Academic
25 Kamala Visveswaran, Academic
26 Lalitha Gopalan, Academic
27 Manisha Sethi, Academic
28 Mirza Waheed, Writer
29 Nagesh Rao, Academic
30 Najeeb Mubarki, Journalist
31 Nitasha Kaul, Writer
32 Noam Chomsky
33 N Raghuram, Academic
34 Madhu Bhaduri, former Ambassador
35 Mridu Rai, Academic
36 Nurul Kabir, Engineer
37 Pankaj Mishra, Writer
38 Parvaiz Bukhari, Journalist
39 Philip Gasper, Academic
40 Pranav Jani, Academic
41 Prashant Bhushan, Lawyer
42 Rahul Roy, Film-maker
43 Sanjay Kak, Film-maker
44 Satya Sivaraman, Journalist
45 Shabnam Hashmi, Activist
46 Shripad Dharmadhikary, Researcher
47 Shohini Ghosh, Academic
48 Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Artist
49 Simona Sawhney, Academic
50 Sukumar Muralidharan, Journalist
51 Suresh Nautiyal, Journalist
52 Suvir Kaul, Academic
53 Saba Dewan, Film-maker
54 Snehal Shingavi, Academic
55 Sherry Wolf, International Socialist Review
56 Tariq Thachil, Academic
57 Vandana Shiva, Academic
58 Vijayan MJ, Activist
59 Vrinda Grover, Lawyer
60 Ravikumar, Writer


The dead begin to speak up in India


Kashmir is one of two war zones in India from which no news must come. But those in unmarked graves will not be silenced

Kashmir unmarked graves
A Kashmiri farmer walks past unmarked graves in Bimyar, west of Srinagar, in 2009. Photograph: Mukhtar Khan/AP

At about 3am, on 23 September, within hours of his arrival at the Delhi airport, the US radio-journalist David Barsamian was deported. This dangerous man, who produces independent, free-to-air programmes for public radio, has been visiting India for 40 years, doing such dangerous things as learning Urdu and playing the sitar.

Barsamian has published book-length interviews with public intellectuals such as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ejaz Ahmed and Tariq Ali (he even makes an appearance as a young, bell-bottom-wearing interviewer in Peter Wintonick's documentary film on Chomsky and Edward Herman's book Manufacturing Consent).

On his more recent trips to India he has done a series of radio interviews with activists, academics, film-makers, journalists and writers (including me). Barsamian's work has taken him to Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan. He has never been deported from any of these countries. So why does the world's largest democracy feel so threatened by this lone, sitar-playing, Urdu-speaking, left-leaning, radio producer? Here is how Barsamian himself explains it:

"It's all about Kashmir. I've done work on Jharkand, Chattisgarh, West Bengal, Narmada dams, farmer suicides, the Gujarat pogrom, and the Binayak Sen case. But it's Kashmir that is at the heart of the Indian state's concerns. The official narrative must not be contested."

News reports about his deportation quoted official "sources" as saying that Barsamian had "violated his visa norms during his visit in 2009-10 by indulging in professional work while holding a tourist visa". Visa norms in India are an interesting peep-hole into the government's concerns and predilections. Using the tattered old banner of the "war on terror", the home ministry has decreed that scholars and academics invited for conferences and seminars require security clearance before they will be given visas. Corporate executives and businessmen do not.

So somebody who wants to invest in a dam, or build a steel plant or a buy a bauxite mineis not considered a security hazard, whereas a scholar who might wish to participate in a seminar about, say, displacement or communalism or rising malnutrition in a globalised economy, is. Terrorists with bad intentions have probably guessed that they are better off wearing Prada suits and pretending they want to buy a mine than admitting that they want to attend a seminar.

David Barsamian did not travel to India to buy a mine or to attend a conference. He just came to talk to people. The complaint against him, according to "official sources" is that he had reported on events in Jammu and Kashmir during his last visit to India and that these reports were "not based on facts". Remember Barsamian is not a reporter, he's a man who has conversations with people, mostly dissidents, about the societies in which they live.

Is it illegal for tourists to talk to people in the countries they visit? Would it be illegal for me to travel to the US or Europe and write about the people I met, even if my writing was "not based on facts"? Who decides which "facts" are correct and which are not? Would Barsamian have been deported if the conversations he recorded had been in praise of the impressive turnouts in Kashmir's elections, instead of about daily life in the densest military occupation in the world (an estimated 600,000 actively deployed armed personnel for a population of 10 million people)?

David Barsamian is not the first person to be deported over the Indian government's sensitivities over Kashmir. Professor Richard Shapiro, an anthropologist from San Francisco, was deported from Delhi airport in November 2010 without being given any reason. It was probably a way of punishing his partner, Angana Chatterji, who is a co-convenor of the international peoples' tribunal on human rights and justice which first chronicled the existence of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir.

In September 2011, May Aquino, from the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (Afad), Manila, was deported from Delhi airport. Earlier this year, on 28 May, the outspoken Indian democratic rights activist, Gautam Navlakha, was deported to Delhi from Srinagar airport. Farook Abdullah, the former chief minister of Kashmir, justified the deportation, saying that writers like Navlakha and myself had no business entering Kashmir because "Kashmir is not for burning".

Kashmir is in the process of being isolated, cut off from the outside world by two concentric rings of border patrols – in Delhi as well as Srinagar – as though it's already a free country with its own visa regime. Within its borders of course, it's open season for the government and the army. The art of controlling Kashmiri journalists and ordinary people with a deadly combination of bribes, threats, blackmail and a whole spectrum of unutterable cruelty has evolved into a twisted art form.

While the government goes about trying to silence the living, the dead have begun to speak up. Perhaps it was insensitive of Barsamian to plan a trip to Kashmir just when the state human rights commission was finally shamed into officially acknowledging the existence of 2,700 unmarked graves from three districts in Kashmir. Reports of thousands of other graves are pouring in from other districts. Perhaps it is insensitive of the unmarked graves to embarrass the government of India just when India's record is due for review before the UN human rights council.

Apart from Dangerous David, who else is the world's largest democracy afraid of? There's young Lingaram Kodopi an adivasi from Dantewada in the state of Chhattisgarh, who was arrested on 9 September. The police say they caught him red-handed in a market place, while he was handing over protection money from Essar, an iron-ore mining company, to the banned Communist party of India (Maoist). His aunt Soni Sori says that he was picked up by plainclothes policemen in a white Bolero car from his grandfather's house in Palnar village.

Interestingly, even by their own account, the police arrested Lingaram but allowed the Maoists to escape. This is only the latest in a series of bizarre, almost hallucinatory accusations they have made against Lingaram and then withdrawn. His real crime is that he is the only journalist who speaks Gondi, the local language, and who knows how to negotiate the remote forest paths in Dantewada the other war zone in India from which no news must come.

Having signed over vast tracts of indigenous tribal homelands in central India to multinational mining and infrastructure corporations in a series of secret memorandums of understanding, the government has begun to flood the forests with hundreds of thousands of security forces. All resistance, armed as well as unarmed has been branded "Maoist" (In Kashmir they are all "jihadi elements").

As the civil war grows deadlier, hundreds of villages have been burnt to the ground. Thousands of adivasis have fled as refugees into neighbouring states. Hundreds of thousands are living terrified lives hiding in the forests. Paramilitary forces have laid siege to the forest, making trips to the markets for essential provisions and medicines a nightmare for villagers. Untold numbers of nameless people are in jail, charged with sedition and waging war on the state, with no lawyers to defend them. Very little news comes out of those forests, and there are no body counts.

So it's not hard to see why young Lingaram Kodopi poses such a threat. Before he trained to become a journalist, he was a driver in Dantewada. In 2009 the police arrested him and confiscated his Jeep. He was locked up in a small toilet for 40 days where he was pressurised to become a special police officer (SPO) in the Salwa Judum, the government-sponsored vigilante army that was at the time tasked with forcing people to flee from their villages (the Salwa Judum has since been declared unconstitutional by the supreme court).

The police released Lingaram after the Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar filed a habeas corpus petition in court. But then the police arrested Lingaram's old father and five other members of his family. They attacked his village and threatened the villagers if they sheltered him. Eventually Lingaram escaped to Delhi where friends and well-wishers got him admission into a journalism school. In April 2010 he travelled to Dantewada and escorted villagers to Delhi to give testimony at the independent peoples' tribunal about the barbarity of the Salwa Judum and the police and paramilitary forces. In his own testimony, Lingaram was sharply critical of the Maoists as well.

That did not deter the Chhattisgarh police. On 2 July 2010, the senior Maoist leader, Comrade Azad, the official spokesperson for the Maoist party, was captured and executed by the Andhra Pradesh police. Deputy Inspector General Kalluri of the Chhattisgarh police announced at a press conference that Lingaram Kodopi had been elected by the Maoist party to take over Comrade Azad's role (it was like accusing a young school child in 1936 Yan'an of being Zhou Enlai). The charge was met with such derision that the police had to withdraw it. Soon after they accused Lingaram of being the mastermind of a Maoist attack on a congress legislator in Dantewada. But oddly enough, they made no move to arrest him.

Lingaram remained in Delhi, completed his course and received his diploma in journalism. In March 2011, paramilitary forces burned down three villages in Dantewada – Tadmetla, Timmapuram and Morapalli. The Chhattisgarh government blamed the Maoists. The supreme court assigned the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Lingaram returned to Dantewada with a video camera and trekked from village to village documenting first-hand testimonies of the villagers who indicted the police. By doing this he made himself one of the most wanted men in Dantewada. On 9 September the police finally got to him.

Lingaram has joined an impressive line-up of troublesome news gatherers and disseminators in Chhattisgarh. Among the earliest to be silenced was the celebrated doctor Binayak Sen, who first raised the alarm about the crimes of the Salwa Judum as far back as 2005. He was arrested in 2007, accused of being a Maoist and sentenced to life imprisonment. After years in prison, he is out on bail now.

Kopa Kunjam was my first guide into the forest villages of Dantewada. At the time he worked with Himanshu Kumar's Vanvasi Chetna ashram, doing exactly what Lingaram tried to do much later – travelling to remote villages, bringing out the news, and carefully documenting the horror that was unfolding. In May 2009 the ashram, the last neutral shelter for journalists, writers and academics who were travelling to Dantewada,was demolished by the Chhattisgarh government.

Kopa was arrested on human rights day in September 2009. He was accused of colluding with the Maoists in the murder of one man and the kidnapping of another. The case against Kopa has begun to fall apart as the police witnesses, including the man who was kidnapped, have disowned the statements they purportedly made to the police. It doesn't really matter, because in India the process is the punishment.

It could take years for Kopa to establish his innocence. Many of those who were emboldened by Kopa to file complaints against the police have been arrested too. That includes women who committed the crime of being raped. Soon after Kopa's arrest Himanshu Kumar was hounded out of Dantewada.

Eventually, here too the dead will begin to speak. And it will not just be dead human beings, it will be the dead land, dead rivers, dead mountains and dead creatures in dead forests that will insist on a hearing.

In this age of surveillance, internet policing and phone-tapping, as the clampdown on those who speak up becomes grimmer with every passing day, it's odd how India is becoming the dream destination of literary festivals. Many of these festivals are funded by the very corporations on whose behalf the police have unleashed their regime of terror.

The Harud literary festival in Srinagar (postponed for the moment) was slated to be the newest, most exciting literary festival in India – "As the autumn leaves change colour the valley of Kashmir will resonate with the sound of poetry, literary dialogue, debate and discussions …"

Its organisers advertised it as an "apolitical" event, but did not say how either the rulers or the subjects of a brutal military occupation that has claimed tens of thousands of lives could be "apolitical". I wonder – will the guests come on tourist visas? Will there be separate ones for Srinagar and Delhi? Will they need security clearance?

The festive din of all this spurious freedom helps to muffle the sound of footsteps in airport corridors as the deported are frog-marched on to departing planes, to mute the click of handcuffs locking around strong, warm wrists and the cold metallic clang of prison doors.

Our lungs are gradually being depleted of oxygen. Perhaps it's time use whatever breath remains in our bodies to say: "Open the bloody gates."

--
"Knowing is enough to mislead us"-  Maurice Blanchot
visit my website:
www.writerravikumar.com
http://nirappirikai.blogspot.com