Dilip Simeon's blog

Crimes against women in Delhi shot up by over 70 per cent this year as compared to 2012, the Delhi Police told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.  Stringent measures were put in place after the December 16 gangrape incident, but statistics submitted by the Delhi Police disclosed that the number of such offences have doubled during the last five years. The number of cases of offences against women registered until October 15 this year is already more than the total cases registered last year.  The number of rape cases has doubled since last year. Until October 15, 2013, 1,330 rape cases have been lodged as against 590 registered during the same period last year.  Similarly, cases of molestation and eve-teasing have also gone up manifold compared to last year. While 727 molestation cases were registered in 2012, the number this year until October 15 is 2,844. Eve-teasing cases too have witnessed a three-fold jump from 236 last year to 793 this year. While 1,750 cases ...

The resignation of Professor Souvik Bhattacharya as the vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University has brought to the fore lack of autonomy and political interference in academic institutions in West Bengal. The situation is as bad as it was in the previous Left Front regime, with five vice-chancellors having quit their posts before Prof Bhattacharya since Mamata Banerjee took over. While Bhattacharya cited personal reasons, his comments about "unfulfilled dreams", "importance of holding on to honesty, integrity and ethics" and that there were "impediments in working" were clear pointers to what led to such a step. It was no coincidence that he didn't keep Education Minister Bratya Basu posted while sending his resignation to Governor M K Narayanan. Before quitting, he had been trying to ensure academic decisions at the university were taken by those qualified to do so. In October 2011, Amita Chatterjee had quit expressing disinterest in renewing he...

Just ice KG Balakrishnan, Chairperson National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) New Delhi Dear Sir, Date: 31 October 2013, 6.30 a.m. Gujarat Government cracks down on right to freedom of expression. · Activist and villagers detained and house arrests in wee hours of the 31 st  morning. · Gujarat Government says tribals and activists do not speak up when CM is around or go to jail, at Kevadia. On 30 October 2013, 4 activists, Rohit Prajapati, Trupti Shah, Amrish Brahmbhatta, Sudhir Biniwale, were put under house arrest by Rajpipla police even before they had reached venue.  They were followed by police vehicles right form Devalia chokadi when they were travailing from Vadodara to Rajpipla. When they reached the place in Rajpipla there are as standing guards out side the place as if they are criminals. No policemen talked with them why they are doing so, what are the charges against them. Meanwhile our activists and villagers from more than 7 villa...

Sardar Patel’s statue is at the cost of Narmada Valley and Sardar Sarovar Project itself Political Propaganda only to suppress failure of 70,000 crore SSP Arrests of peaceful protestors condemnable The pompous inauguration of the 2,500 crore rupees worth Sardar Vallabh bhai Patel Statue at Kevadia, Gujarat in the garb of ‘Unity and Progress’, is nothing but a Tourism Project of the Gujarat Government. which is being falsely claimed by the Chief Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi as a ‘Statue of Unity’, without explaining to the nation as for what and of whom is thus ‘Unity’ for, as also against whom !! While the Project conceives of tourists reaching out to the hillock and the statue, to have a glimpse of the Dam, the statue itself will be staring at the plight of thousands of adivasis and other families displaced, but not yet rehabilitated by the Sardar Sarovar Dam fully and fairly. With 50,000 families are still residing in the dam affected areas in the three states, in t...

After being accused of "sucking blood" from the poor, Bangladesh's only Nobel prize winner  faces a new state-backed hate campaign seeking to paint him as un-Islamic and a spreader of homosexuality Following years of attempts to discredit his legacy as a pioneer of micro-finance - since copied the world over as a development tool - the hounding has turned more personal and dangerous.  The perceived crime of the 73-year-old was to sign a joint statement along with three other Nobel laureates in April 2012 criticising the prosecution of gay people in Uganda.  Little remarked at the time, it has since been seized on by the Islamic Foundation, a government religious body, and amplified through tens of thousands of imams on its payrolls. Protests have been held, leaflets calling him "an accomplice of Jews and Christians" have been distributed, and a "grand rally" has been called for October 31 in the capital Dhaka to denounce him. "How can a st...

Friday 25 Oct 2013 Ms Suu Kyi won’t be visiting any civil rights groups in London – the organisations who supported her vigorously when she spent nearly two decades under house arrest. Nor is she expected to drop in on members of the sizeable Burmese community in the UK. To do so would lead to the sort of robust exchange of views that our modern-day saint now seems keen to avoid. As political heroes go, few rank higher that Burmese opposition leader,  Aung San Suu Kyi . Most people know her as a modern-day saint – the diminutive democrat who defied Burma’s ruthless military leaders. Yet an increasing number are beginning to question Ms Suu Kyi’s judgement. Remarks made in a BBC television interview this week in relation to that country’s brutal ethnic conflict between Buddhists and the minority Muslims have earned particular criticism. Observers and activists have accused Burma’s “icon of democracy” of factual inaccuracies and a surprising shortage of compassion. Ethnic ...

T. J. Clark : PICASSO AND TRUTH From Cubism to Guernica reviewed by  JACK FLAM Picasso: Wizard of the real Because Picasso’s works of these years departed so radically from accepted norms, they were often greeted with hostility or puzzlement. In 1932, the psychologist Carl G. Jung famously compared Picasso’s paintings to the pictures made by schizophrenics, and called him an “underworld” personality who followed “the demoniacal attraction of ugliness and evil” rather than “the accepted ideals of goodness and beauty”. o artist has reinvented the visible world in a more radical way than Picasso. In his stringent early Cubist paintings, composed with fragmentary geometric planes rendered in earth colours, the differences between figure and ground are hardly distinguishable, testing the limits of representation. After the First World War, he developed a very different kind of painting, paradoxically both flat and suggestive of intangible depth, hard-edged and often brightly col...

The ravaging of the Peruvian Amazon by a wave of illegal gold mining is twice as bad as researchers had thought.  That is according to a new study using groundbreaking technology that’s discovered thousands of previously undetected small mines in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, near the Bolivian border, a global biodiversity hotspot.  Thanks to its stunning wildlife, the region is home to various nature and indigenous reserves and dozens of thriving jungle lodges that welcome tourists from around the world.  Yet it’s also experienced widespread devastation since the 2008 global financial crisis saw gold prices rocket. Thousands of   miners have flooded into the region,   dredging riverbeds and carving up vast tracts of the forest floor in remotes areas beyond the reach of the authorities. They have also poisoned the water table for miles around by dumping hundreds of tons of mercury, which miners use to extract gold from the soil.  According to the r...

PRESS RELEASE BY WOMEN RIGHTS ORGANISATION, LUCKNOW 29th October 2013, Press Club, Lucknow ATTACK ON AALI OFFICE AND ASSAULT ON AALI STAFF On the evening of 27th October 2013, the office of Association for Advocacy and Legal Initiative (AALI), women’s rights organisation based in Lucknow, was attacked by Ashish Shukla, BSP leader from Amethi (Uttar Pradesh), along with his family and goons. Around 5.00pm, the BSP leader Ashish Shukla, his wife Uma Shukla, son Akarsh Shukla along with 40‐50 men, barged into the premises of the house where the organisation is based and beat up the caretaker and his wife. The organization is based in the house of a retired High Court judge. They then forcibly entered the premises, beat‐up the two women AALI members, dragged them by the hair and abducted them. They took them to Khatu Shyam Mandir (Old Hyderabad Colony, Thana Mahanagar), where they were confined, badly beaten up and mauled for 45 minute...

IS ISRAEL an apartheid state? This question is not going away. It raises its head every few months. The term “apartheid” is often used purely for propaganda purposes. Apartheid, like racism and fascism, is a rhetorical term one uses to denigrate one’s opponent. But apartheid is also a term with a precise content. It applies to a specific regime. Equating another regime to it may be accurate, partly correct or just wrong. So, necessarily, will be the conclusions drawn from the comparison. RECENTLY I had the opportunity to discuss this subject with an expert, who had lived in South Africa throughout the apartheid era. I learned a lot from this.  Is Israel an apartheid state? Well, first one must settle the question: which Israel? Israel proper, within the Green Line, or the Israeli occupation regime in the occupied Palestinian territories, or both together? Let’s come back to that later. THE DIFFERENCES between the two cases are obvious. First, the SA regime was based, as ...

By  India United Against Fascism   28 October 2013 The systematic use of gang-rape as a weapon occurred in the Surat riots after the Babri Masjid demolition, and an ugly innovation was the videotaping of the gang-rapes. This was not a case of some random bystander filming the attacks, but a meticulously-planned spectacle with the venues flood-lit despite the fact that electric wires to the rest of the neighbourhood had been cut [1]. According to Praful Bidwai, Modi was the mastermind of the unspeakable atrocities against women in the 1992 Surat riots [2]. Modi is pictured there with Advani in their wake [3]. A decade later, the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 continued the grisly tale of gang-rape, sexual torture and mass murder; fake reports of sexual assaults on Hindu women were used to justify gruesome crimes against Muslim women and girls [4]. In some places, the rapists were actively supported or even instigated by Hindu women [5]. On this occasion, Modi presided over th...

In his 90-minute point-by-point rebuttal, Nitish said that Modi, in his "excitement" had given wrong information on Bihar's rich history. "It was said that Chandragupta belonged to the Gupta dynasty, while he is from Maurya dynastry," said Nitish. "The BJP leader... said Taxila was a great historical site in Bihar, but it is in Pakistan... It was said that Alexander came till the banks of the Ganga, but the fact remains that he was only able to reach Sutlej and had to return because of his failing health," said Nitish. Two days after  facing the brunt  of the attack at BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's "Hunkar" rally, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar  hit back  on Tuesday, comparing Modi to Hitler and saying that his desperate dream to unfurl the national flag at Red Fort would  remain unfulfilled .  "You (Modi) are telling people 'chun chun ke saaf karo' (wipe them out one by one). You can win by getting vot...