How Tunisia inspired Kandinsky and enabled expressionist art

The Russian artist Vasily Kandinsky began his journey into the abstract during a stay in the North African country, inspiring others like Paul Klee and August Macke

Kandinsky's early works, like this piece, had not yet evolved to the elaborate abstract compositions he later became known for (Centre Pompidou)
By
Farah Abdessamad
29 November 2021 

The traditionally studded doors of Tunisia’s Sidi Bou Said village would have appeared dream-like to Vasily Kandinsky's artistic sensitivity.

For the Moscow-born painter, white symbolised the harmony of silence and blue was a heavenly colour.

Having arrived in the country with his German partner Gabriele Munter on Christmas Day in 1904, Kadinsky spent the next three months in Tunis, first at the Hotel Saint Georges, then the cheaper Hotel Suisse.

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Their perceptive photographs, sketches and gouaches capture glimpses of Tunisia’s capital city and beyond. The pair also briefly visited Sidi Bou Said, Hammamet, Sousse and Kairouan.

Even before he arrived in North Africa, Kandinsky was already making a name for himself. He had shown at the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1904 and taught in Munich between 1901 and 1903, where he met Munter, a fellow artist. However, Kandinsky’s artwork had yet to evolve into the elaborate abstract compositions for which he is now famous.

In Tunis though, we see in his brush strokes the waning influence of neo-impressionism and an increasing attention towards colour, permeating from the everyday motifs he chose.

Life in the city, though relatively brief, would have a lasting impact on his works even decades later.

Munter’s camera was a shared accessory that immortalised street life and memories. Years later, these photographs would help Kandinsky revive the colours and scenes of Tunis from afar, in the manner of postcards or a first sketch.

Kandinsky's Mohrencafe, 1905, is an example of his early gouache on board work (Christies)

Kandinsky recalled in 1938 how he had felt under the "strong impressions of the phantasmatic environment" in Tunisia. Munter affirmed this view in 1960, after Kandinsky’s passing, stating that he "already expressed a great interest in abstraction" when in Tunisia.

Specifically, Islamic art and Islam’s religious prescription against the pictorial representation of the divine may have further prompted Kandinsky to experiment with new forms and colour, to begin questioning the power of the non-objective and explore the idea of "form-feeling" that the painter would later develop, notably in his ground-breaking art theory volume, On the Spiritual in Art.
'Hearing' colour

Less than a week after Kandinsky’s arrival, Japanese forces seized Port Arthur and the Russo-Japanese War continued its uncertain, dangerous course. It’s amidst deep worry for the fate of his compatriots, including his enlisted brother, that Kandinsky attempted to engage with his surroundings, limiting contacts with outsiders.

He and Munter arrived in Tunis, a generation after the establishment of the French protectorate of Tunisia, in 1881. Unlike Algeria, the Bey remained in nominal authority while France, through its highest representative, the resident general, took over diplomacy and finances, as well as stationing its army on Tunisian soil.

Gabriele Munter's Calvacade photograph taken in 1905 shows Arab horsemen parading at a carnival in Tunis (VG Bild-Kunst)

The pair witnessed traditional celebrations during their stay - of Eid Al Adha for instance, which Kandinsky sketched in his Fete de Moutons (Tunisian Sheep Festival, shown at the 1905 Paris exhibition, now in the Guggenheim’s Founding Collection). The painting portrays recognisably Muslim and Jewish people, including children, near a modest ferris wheel. The festive event, a fete foraine or travelling carnival, seems to have taken place in Halfaouine Square and is blessed by a rainbow.

In her photographs, Munter also captures the equestrian "fantasia", in which skilled horse riders were selected to parade the streets of Tunis holding rifles. In that image, a prominent Tunisian flag is held by one of the riders. Another rider follows him, this time holding a French flag of the same size.

Kandinsky’s rendering of the scene conveys movement and folklore. In Arab Cavalry, published in 1905, he strips away historicity and space, and what remains evokes the timelessness and resonance of the wild steppes of his native Russia.

Arab Cavalry by Vasily Kandinsky (1905)

What they see matters as much as what stays hidden from them and absent. As non-French Europeans, their gaze is largely confined to public spaces - to alleyways, to squares such as Halfaouine, Bab el Khadra or Bab Souika, or parks such as the Belvedere.

Nevertheless they remain attentive to Tunisia’s diverse social and cultural fabric, for instance painting Black subjects, daily workers, and Sufi Marabouts, the latter being the tombs of local saints, religious guides or founders of a zaouia (religious establishment).

Orange Sellers (1905) is based on the Marabout of Sidi Sliman, which no longer exists. The painting contains touches of vivid colour and the placement of oranges like notes on sheet music in front of the Marabout highlights the idea that Kandinsky could "hear" colour as he possessed a rare ability called synesthesia.

Kandinsky's visually striking Arabs I (Cemetery) painting showcases his foray into abstract art (Hamburger Kunsthalle/Elke Walford)

Kandinsky and Munter works during their visit to Tunisia demonstrate that they were more interested in the contemporary Arab soul of Tunis than its classical past and the ruins of Carthage. They visit the Bardo Museum, located in a 19th century Beylik palace, and not the Byrsa Hill, the site of an ancient Phoenician citadel, which was the heart of Carthage before its destruction by Rome.

They painted the modern villas of Tunis and the tombs of the Beys, capturing a city at a standstill and transformation, between tradition and modernity. Even long after his sudden return to Europe due to family matters, Kandinsky regularly went back to revisiting his Tunisian memories, for example in the visually more daring Arabs I (Cemetery) painted in 1909.

Impact on other artists

Kandinsky and Munter created the Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) movement a few years after leaving Tunisia, in 1911, with other artists, such as Marc Franz, Paul Klee and August Macke. The symbol of the horse and its rider for this avant-garde group takes a spiritual connotation, one of artistic freedom, and inevitably refers to the Tunis cavalcade in its essentialised form.

Tunisia re-emerges in Expressionist art history, via two other artists affiliated with the Blaue Reiter, the Swiss Klee and German Macke. With a third friend, Louis Moilliet, a compatriot of Klee's, who had floated the idea of the trip since 1913, the artists visited Tunisia in 1914 on the eve of the First World War. Klee consigned his impressions in a diary, which provides us with rich insights on his artistic practice as well as daily life.

Kandinsky and Munter transcribed the domination of the French in Tunisia in symbolic terms, through flags and the official "Republique Francaise" insignia that would be included in (relatively few of) their paintings and photographs. Klee had also noticed the fleeting "Frenchness" of the protectorate.

The Tunisian independence movement before war mainly occupied the elite. In 1907, the Young Tunisians formed a political party and tried to increase the outreach of their message of liberal reforms and greater Tunisian participation in the country’s affairs with the launch of the bilingual newspaper Le Tunisien (Arabic edition launched in 1909).

Klee's Hammamet with its Mosque, (1914) is on display at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (Artists Rights Society)

With mounting social unrest in the context of the recent Italian takeover of Tripoli, further compounded by a French decision to regulate land ownership in a cemetery, French authorities declared a decade-long state of emergency from 1911 which forced the editor of Le Tunisien, Ali Bach Hamba, into exile. At the outcome of a trial, the French guillotined several pro-nationalist protesters.

This helps in understanding Klee’s caustic remark when he wrote in his diary on Easter Monday, 1914, just before travelling to Hammamet: "Tunis is Arab in the first place, Italian in the second, and French only in the third. But the French act as if they were the masters."

Klee encounters French people, who were mostly arrogant, mocking - the three artists were presumed to be Germans and treated as such - and unwelcoming. He describes in later pages, as Kandinsky had also mentioned, the rickety trains and a dilapidated highway - not so advantageous for the image of the French colonial project which was to modernise public works among other "civilising" feats.

Klee was attracted to architecture, cafe life, as places of socialisation, gossip and storytelling; he often painted in Halfaouine Square. His interest encompassed vistas and gardens. In Tunis, the three men stayed with a Swiss doctor and his wife, who also owned a secondary home in Saint-Germain, today’s Ezzahra, less than 13 miles away from Tunis on the seaside. In Ezzahra, in a villa not far from the beach and close to Boukornine mountain, Klee and Macke drew evocative watercolour sketches.

In Saint Germain near Tunis (1914), Macke stylises Boukornine in blue, pyramid-like forms in the backdrop of a panorama, which includes both Arab and French houses amongst an ebullient flora.

From a similar-looking vantage point, Klee’s chromatic values are obliquely deeper, the hues less saturated and his watercolour, View of St. Germain (1914), suggest a subdued reverence.

We explore Klee’s journey as a geography and as an inner progression, towards works that highlight colour and abstraction, such as in Hammamet with its Mosque (1914) and Before the Gates of Kairouan (1914). In these two luminous watercolour paintings, we feel the stroke of a blinding Mediterranean high-noon sun and the awe of a spectacular, kaleidoscopic landscape. His exploration culminates in density, richness, depth and saturation in In the Style of Kairouan (1914), painted shortly after his return from Tunisia. Years later, like Kandinsky, he would remember Tunisia and its southern gardens.

The Boukornine mountain is paid tribute to in August Macke's Saint Germain near Tunis, 1914 (Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munchen)

Tunisia uniquely altered Klee’s artistic journey, which he likened to an "intoxication". Both Macke and Klee encountered local artworks and presumably interacted with their styles.

It was in the holy city of Kairouan that Klee discovered colour and experienced almost an epiphany.

"Colour and I are one. I am a painter," he wrote on 16 April 1914, leaving Tunisia shortly after, explaining: "I had to leave to regain my senses."

Macke was killed in action in France early during the war in September 1914.

Championing inner expression

Klee and Kandinsky would teach together at the influential Bauhaus school, which was formed in Germany after the war. The institute emphasised modern art theory and also taught other disciplines, such as design and architecture.

Following the rise of Hitler and the confiscation of some of their artwork, which were considered "degenerate" by the Nazi regime, both artists eventually left Germany.

A 2014 exhibition marking the 100-year anniversary of Klee, Macke and Moilliet’s trip to Tunisia underscores the contribution Tunisia made to European Expressionism.

The combined legacies of Kandinsky, Klee and Macke, as pioneers of the non-objective, and champions of using the canvas as a gate towards inner expression and the spiritual, is immense and extends a sphere of influence over artists such as Mondrian, Rothko, Pollock and others.

And behind this chromatic liberation, somewhere, is the memory of Tunisia’s shores, its markets, towns and people and the distant drums of a darbuka reverberating in strokes, shapes and gradients, colliding in beauty beyond words and an un-representable truth.

Sufis strive to protect their heritage in war-torn Libya



Issued on: 22/08/2021 - 

A 2012 attack forced the Sufi seminary in the Libyan town of Zliten to close, but in recent years it has discreetly reopened to students of the mystical Islamic tradition Mahmud TURKIA AFP

Zliten (Libya) (AFP)

Bullet holes scar the minaret of the Sufi mosque in Libya's Zliten, but followers of the Muslim mystical tradition are working to renovate and preserve their heritage.

A handful of students sit cross-legged on the floor of the mosque in the Asmariya zawiya, transcribing on wooden tablets as their teacher chants Koranic verses.

Elsewhere in the complex, named for its 16th-century founder Abdessalam al-Asmar, scholars pore over old manuscripts on theology and Islamic law.

The zawiya -- an Arabic term for a Sufi institute offering a space for religious gatherings, Koranic education and free accommodation to travellers -- also includes a boarding school and a university.

Historian Fathi al-Zirkhani says the site is the Libyan equivalent of Cairo's prestigious Al-Azhar University, a global authority in Sunni Islam.

But despite Sufism's long history across North Africa, Libya's plunge into chaos after dictator Moamer Kadhafi was ousted in a 2011 revolt gave a free hand to militias.

They included hardline Islamists, who are deeply hostile to Sufi "heretics" and their mystical nighttime ceremonies aimed at coming closer to the divine.

"(Previously) dormant ideological currents, with backing from abroad, took advantage of the security vacuum to attack the zawiyas," Zirkhani said.

In August 2012, dozens of Islamist militants raided the site, blowing up part of the sanctuary, stealing or burning books and damaging Asmar's tomb.

But today, craftsmen are busily restoring terracotta tiles and repairing damage caused by the extremists.

Students at the Asmariya zawiya come from all corners of the Islamic world to study the Sufi tradition, which has a long history in North Africa 

Mahmud TURKIA AFP

The tomb is surrounded by scaffolding but still bears its green silk cover, delicately embroidered with gold.

The zawiya hosts several hundred students, including many from overseas, who enjoy free food and lodging.

"I came to Libya to learn Koran here," said Thai student, Abderrahim bin Ismail, in faltering Arabic.

Houssein Abdellah Aoch, a 17-year-old from Chad wearing a long blue tunic, said he was working hard to commit verses to memory.

"I'm hoping to memorise the entire Koran then go home and become a religious teacher," he said.

- 'Fear and mistrust' -

When the call to prayer rings out, all rise and head through an arcaded courtyard to the mosque for noon prayers.

Libya's longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi viewed the Sufis with suspicion but after his 2011 overthrow, Sunni extremists posed a greater threat to the mystics 

Mahmud TURKIA AFP

It is a scene repeated daily for hundreds of years, but the zawiya has had a turbulent few decades.

Kadhafi, who ruled Libya with an iron fist for four decades after seizing power in a 1969 coup, was suspicious of the Sufis.

"He infiltrated the zawiya with his secret services, creating a climate of fear and mistrust," said an employee, who asked to remain anonymous.

"Kadhafi chose to divide the Sufis to control them better."

But Kadhafi's authorities "loosened the stranglehold in the mid-1990s, which allowed the zawiyas to regain their autonomy," he added.

After Kadhafi's overthrow in 2011, another danger emerged. The attack in Zliten, on the Mediterranean coast east of Tripoli, was echoed across the country.

Islamist militants used diggers and pneumatic drills to destroy numerous Sufi sites across Libya -- attacks echoed in Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere.

Zirkhani says the people who attacked the complex in Zliten were "extremists known to the state".

But in the chaos of post-revolt Libya, they have never been held to account.

The zawiya has also suffered from a lack of funds as it seeks to rebuild and restore its treasures.

Zirkhani showed AFP dusty old manuscripts he wants to preserve for posterity.

The seminary has a large collection of old Islamic manuscripts that historian Fathi al-Zirkhani is eager to preserve for posterity

 Mahmud TURKIA AFP

"We have neither the means nor the know-how to restore them," Zirkhani said. "We need help from (UN cultural agency) UNESCO and European institutions."

But there are some signs of hope for Sufis in Libya.

The zawiya was closed for six years following the 2012 attack. But in 2018 it discreetly reopened, and Sufis have been able to exercise their customs more publicly.

Last October in Tripoli, they took to the streets of the old city to celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed -- a festival frowned upon by more austere currents of Islam.

© 2021 AFP

HISTORY: PUNJAB IN JERUSALEM

Muhammad Huzaifa Nizam 

DAWN

Published October 15, 2023 U

The Indian hospice in 1945 | Photo courtesy Ahmad Al-Ansari

To the average observer looking from a distance, the Islamic history of modern Pakistan appears to be a kaleidoscopic mesh of ever-shifting empires, forever-marching armies, and a saga of never-ending imperial objectives.

Upon closer inspection, one finds the nature of Islamic history in the Indus Valley is intertwined with pious men, known as preachers, Sufis, saints, and by other names, who traversed the region and introduced Islam to the locals. The nature of their wanderings connected people, cultures and languages, but also sought to connect distant lands.

One such connection, laid down around 800 years ago, has survived into our modern day. It is in the form of a building in the heart of Jerusalem, established by one of Punjab’s greatest saints and poets: Baba Farid.

The fall of Jerusalem

In the year 1187, soon after Crusader forces were annihilated on the plains of Hattin in Palestine, the gates of Jerusalem looked upon a victor who stood before them: Saladin. The Kurdish leader, by routing the Christian forces and annexing a large part of the Crusader state in Palestine, had fulfilled his long-term ambition of liberating the Holy Land.

But even with the physical liberation, much work was yet to be done in the spiritual domain. Decades of Crusader rule had led to many Islamic monuments being used for all kinds of purposes except for which they were made.

Hence, one of the first acts committed by Muslim forces was a ‘cleansing’ of the city, whereby Muslim monuments such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock (amongst many others) were rid of any remnants of Crusader rule.

A residential lodge in the holy city of Jerusalem is known by the name of Punjab’s most beloved poet, Baba Farid. How did this come to be?

With a new Muslim administration in place, the city of Jerusalem appears to have reclaimed its position among what can be considered a triad of sacred cities in Islamic history. The notion of a reunion of these holy cities, promoted by the Ayyubid monarchs, soon translated to the city becoming a place frequented by groups of Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca.

In addition, it became an important destination for many significant scholars, preachers and holy men of the time, who all wished to simply spend time in the holy city. While the Ayyubid administration was busy reviving Jerusalem, one such preacher whose feet would wander across the old city was still busy as a young man being tutored in the city of Multan.

A lithograph of Jerusalem in 1839 by Scottish painter David Roberts

The Saint from Kothewal

Born in the small village of Kothewal near Multan around 1173 CE, Farid al-Din Masud came from a family which had once enjoyed a significant position in the environs of Kabul, but which had migrated to Punjab generations ago owing to a fear of the increasing power of the nomadic Ghuzz tribes of Central Asia.

Raised in a deeply Islamic household, with a mother intent on cultivating a religious character in her son, Farid got his early Islamic education in a madrassa attached to a mosque in Multan where, amongst many things, he became proficient in Arabic and Persian.

But it was the language of the land where he lived which brought to him eternal prominence. Farid is amongst the very first people to have used the vernacular of Punjab to spread his message, which led to it travelling farther than the messages of those before him. He is, as a result, considered amongst the earliest poets of the Punjabi language.

It was in the same madrassa in southern Punjab that he came across the acclaimed Sufi Bakhtiyar Kaki, and was enrolled in the Chishti order. His unchallenged devotion towards his order and unparalleled proficiency in theological matters is said to have attracted many of the then non-Muslim groups of Punjab towards him and his message.

It was somewhere between his wanderings in Punjab and beyond to spread his message and his eventual settling down in the small town of Ajodhan (now Pakpattan) that it appears he arrived in the recently liberated city of Jerusalem.

Baba Farid and Jerusalem

Early sources on the life of Baba Farid are more or less silent on any visits or wanderings of the saint beyond his own region, which makes it difficult to reconstruct the occurrences of his stay in Jerusalem.

According to folk memory, much of the duration of the revered saint’s stay in the holy land was spent in the state of fasting and a good deal of his day would be spent praying at the Al-Aqsa Mosque or engaging in acts of devotion.

It is also said that he devoted some of his time to writing new verses of his own, which later became the bedrock of Punjabi poetry for centuries. On the few occasions he would not be occupied with praying or writing, Farid could be found meditating around one of the gates of Old Jerusalem known to the Muslims as Bab-az-Zahra and to the Christians as Herod’s Gate.

It was around this very Herod’s Gate that Baba Farid found a lodge inside a small khanqah. Also known as zawiyas, khanqahs were structures dedicated to Sufi orders, which served both as seminaries for the people associated with the order and as hospices for travellers. The immediate fall of Jerusalem saw the confiscation of many buildings belonging to the exiled Franks and turned into khanqahs, which further attracted Sufis and preachers towards Jerusalem.

It was a khanqah belonging to the Rifai order and present on a small hillock inside Herod’s Gate where Baba Farid found himself resting — unbeknownst to both him and the owners of the khanqah that his brief sojourn would completely alter the fate of this khanqah.

The current entrance to the Indian hospice | Photo by Satdeep Gill

The Zawiya Al-Faridiya

Soon after the departure of Baba Farid, the khanqah — previously occupied by the Rifai order as a hub for their activities — quickly transformed into a hospice and a lodge for all travellers from South Asia who entered Jerusalem.

This lodge was now known locally by two names: the Zawiya Al-Faridiya (the Lodge of Farid) and the Zawiya Al-Hindiya (the Lodge of Hind). Much like its two popular names, there are two popular tales which have survived to narrate how this change of association came to be, with one tale emphasising how the Chishti order of Sufism, to which Baba Farid belonged, eventually went on to buy the khanqah in the name of the saint.

The other speaks of how the then Ayyubid authorities of Jerusalem recognised the spiritual standing of the saint and, in this regard, decided to grant the zawiya either to Baba Farid directly or to some of his disciples who later visited the city.

With the turn of the centuries, the region saw much political upheaval, but the lodge appears to have managed to survive it all. It possibly remained a witness to the various later Crusades launched by the Europeans, to the Mongol horsemen galloping towards their ultimate doom in the plains of Ain Jalut at the hands of the Mamluks, and to the later march of the Ottomans who eventually defeated the Mamluks and established Ottoman rule in Palestine for centuries.

Despite all the conflicts and turmoil, the lodge finds itself in the small list of structures which, albeit in a decrepit state, managed to stay erect till the very end of direct Muslim control of the region.

Not much knowledge exists about the sheikhs and heads of the lodge during the many intervening centuries, but some documents from the Ottoman era which have survived down to our time point towards a connection of the lodge to Punjab in particular.

A document from 1681, revealed to an Indian researcher Navtej Sarna by the current sheikh, reveals details of a dispute about the leadership of the lodge between a Muslim carrying the nisbah Al-Hindi and a Muslim from Multan in southern Punjab.

Another document related by the same source provides a reference towards another Muslim from Punjab, as it speaks of a certain sheikh named Ghulam Mohammad Al-Lahori who is credited to have engaged with the Ottoman administration in 1824 and successfully conducted a transfer of properties, which resulted in the addition of seven rooms, two water tanks, and a courtyard to the original lodge.

It seems the lodge enjoyed prominence and stability under sheikhs from across South Asia during the many centuries of Ottoman rule, but the story takes a drastic turn when the Ottoman empire itself finally gave way in 1919.

Sheikh Nazir Hasan Ansari of Saharanpur | Photo courtesy Anis Ansari


A turbulent change of owners

The Ottoman Empire, which at the time was known as ‘the sick man of Europe’, was eventually dismembered by the end of World War I, with much of its former territories in the Middle East becoming occupied by European forces.

Palestine remained under the watchful shadow of the Union Jack and, thus, so did Jerusalem and the lodge of Farid. As the British occupation of Palestine set in, with time, the position of the Grand Mufti of Palestine was established by the Europeans, who also greatly strengthened it in pursuit of effective management.

By 1921, the position had come down to the hands of one Amin Al-Husayni, who undertook massive rebuilding projects and renovations in Jerusalem to bring it once again to the centre stage of the Muslim world. To accumulate funds for these projects, the Grand Mufti sent envoys to any and every possible Muslim patron across the world, many of whom at the time could be found in the form of Muslim rulers of princely states in British India.

It was during this very visit that the envoys from Jerusalem informed the leaders of the Indian Khilafat Movement of the existence of an ‘Indian Lodge’, which was in a decrepit state and desperately required a capable Indian person to look after it.

This Indian lodge was, in fact, the same lodge of Farid, and chosen by the Indian Muslim leaders to breathe a new life into it was a young man from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, named Khwaja Nazir Hasan Ansari.

Thus, the lodge came under the administration of the Ansari family of Uttar Pradesh, who still look after it. Nazir Ansari got a hold of the lodge in 1924 and, in a brief time, managed to completely renovate it and brought it to such a credible state that, for the next 15 years, it gave sanctuary to thousands of travellers and pilgrims from British India.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the lodge, which was housing pilgrims, now offered sanctuary to Muslim and non-Muslim soldiers of British India alike fighting in North Africa. It would later resume its duties towards pilgrims in the post-war period, until the British withdrew and the frenzy of war began once again.

A British soldier standing guarding at the Dome of the Rock during WWI

Conclusion

The end of the Second World War in 1945 was soon followed by the withdrawal of British authorities from both British India and the British Mandate of Palestine, with ironically two new states forming in both regions that immediately went to war.

With the exodus of the Palestinians, the war with the nascent Israeli state, and the refugees pouring in from West Jerusalem, the lodge eventually could not run on its own and help was sought. For this, Nazir Ansari reached out to the Indian embassy in Egypt and established an official relationship between the lodge of Farid and the newly independent Indian state.

Today, many decades later, the lodge proudly displays two Indian flags at its entrance, with a nameplate reading ‘Indian Hospice’. And though one could debate if the state of Pakistan has much more of a right to a connection with the lodge — owing to Baba Farid’s ancestry being in this country — it cannot be so, amongst a plethora of reasons, simply because Pakistan has no official ties with the state of Israel.

Perhaps, in the future, a shift in the circumstances of the Palestinians could lead to a linkage being established between the lodge and the homeland of the person who established it. For now, it suffices to know that there does exist in the heart of one of the world’s most important cities, a corner occupied by a piece of Punjab.

The writer’s areas of interest are Pakistan’s lesser known history and folklore. He is a Chitrali based in Peshawar. X:MHuzaifaNizam

Published in Dawn, EOS, October 15th, 2023

Miran Maa — the female saint of Lyari

Even at the peak of Lyari's gang wars, the shrine of Miran Maa was the one place no gang leader dared to desecrate in any form.

Amal Hashim 

Published May 12, 2022
A short drive past Baba-i-Urdu Road and the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital, Lea Market’s ghanta ghar [clock tower], numerous colonial era buildings and down narrow, winding lanes with speed breakers too high for a car to navigate comfortably, stands the shrine of Lyari’s only female saint — Miran Pir, also known as Miran Maa.

The area, Lyari, is one of the oldest quarters of Karachi and has of late, come to be known as one of its most violent. Per some historians, Lyari existed as a goth [small village] before present day Karachi was established in 1729 as a fortified trading post.

According to Zubair, the current khalifa of the shrine, his ancestor, Jamal Shah, bought the six acres of land on which Miran Maa’s shrine is located, when he moved here from Baghdad in 1645. However, apart from a house for his family, the land remained vacant until 1693 when Jamal Shah, honouring the wishes of his murshid, Ghous Pak — one of the most important Sufi saints — built a quba [empty structure in which he could demonstrate his power] and a mosque.

The shrine of Miran Maa. — All photos provided by author

Over time, a cemetery also named Miran Pir was added to it. As per Zubair, the name Miran Pir was one of the 11 names of Ghous Pak and the space was created for those who venerated him.

But how did a space associated with one of the holiest men in Sufi Islam become a woman’s shrine?

Legend has it

Miran Maa, also known as Bibi Pak — on account of her dying as an unmarried virgin — came to Karachi approximately 162 years ago. Legend has it that she was on her way back from Hajj to Gambat in upper Sindh — where she commanded a respectable following due to her affiliation with two important Sufi households — but fell ill and was given shelter at the home of one of her disciples. According to the Khalifa, she could see the minaret of the mosque from her room's window and instructed her brother and disciples to bury her within the quba built for Ghous Pak.

After her death, her disciples brought her to the space and tried to honour her wishes. However, they were stopped by the Khalifa of the time, Raza Muhammad I, who declared that, like everyone else she should be buried in the Miran Pir burial ground. The condition he placed for her burial inside the quba was that its doors should open by themselves, thus indicating that the space was meant for Miran Pir. Her disciples agreed.

According to Zubair, Raza Muhammad I instructed everyone else to leave while he stood near the mosque and kept an eye on the doors to the quba. When they miraculously flung open at some point during the night, he declared that Miran Maa could be buried there.

Since then, the space created in honour of Ghous Pak has come to be associated with Miran Maa, a female saint, who is venerated for her piety and connection to God. The people of Lyari — Sindhi, Baloch, Memon, Kutchi — pay homage to this shrine and its inhabitant. Newlyweds flock to the shrine immediately after their nikah to gain Miran Maa’s blessing; unwed women come to her shrine to ask for good marriage prospects; and people facing fertility issues, illnesses, or problems with their children prefer praying at the shrine rather than going to a doctor.

When we visited the Miran Maa shrine, we found the Khadima [female caretaker] sitting adjacent to its front door. With her back to the graves of the khalifa's ancestors, she was busy making amulets for “fever that doesn’t go away” and other illnesses. She invited us to go in and pay our respects to Miran Maa before talking to her or the khalifa, saying that was the adab [custom].

The female caretaker making amulets for some fakeers who visit the shrine regularly


Upkeep of the shrine

According to the khalifa, the shrine is washed and painted every year after the 12th of Rabiul Awwal — the third month of the Islamic calendar.

The current structure of Miran Maa’s tomb is new — the old Gizri stone and red brick structure was demolished in 2008 and replaced with more modern materials and elements — except for the carved wooden door and the engraved marble plaque on top of it.

The first thing one sees from the door is a great green umbrella held up by wooden pillars on the four corners of the grave, completely covering it on three sides. Only one side is left open, facing a wall, for women who are allowed to go inside. The khadima instructed us to walk around it in an anti-clockwise direction, saying that was the correct adab.

The air inside the tomb felt cooler than the weather outside even as the bright LED lighting bounced harshly off the glistening white tiles. Colourful streamers and Quranic calligraphy adorned parts of the walls. Amid all this, in the center, lay Miran Maa’s grave — the only part of the shrine that had been left untouched in the renovation process. Built of marble engraved with abstract and flower motifs, it was covered with a green chaadar, engraved with verses from the Holy Quran — and strings of roses.

The grounds on which Miran Pir’s shrine is located also hosts other asthanas — such as that for the Satiyoon Bibi (Seven Sisters) whose original tomb is in Sukkur, or for Shah Pariyoon (Royal Fairy), or even Khwaja Khizr, the fabled saint of Sukkur who is believed to have saved Rohri, Sukkur, and Landsowne Bridge during the 1965 war.

Interestingly, the figures to whom these three asthanas are dedicated to are revered by Hindus and Muslims alike, especially in their native regions. According to Zubair, the asthanas were built recently so that women who could not travel to the original resting places of these personalities could still pay their respects to them from here.

Asthana of the Seven Sisters. The woman seen here is a fakeer at this asthana and sits here from 8am till the shrine closes after Maghrib prayers every day.


A female saint?

The idea of a female saint in Islam has not found acceptability among all schools of thought. For instance, some Sufi teachings by saints such as Farid-al-Din Ganj-i-Shakar state that a female mystic or saint is just “a man sent in the form of a woman,” whereas others such as Suhrawardi and al-Ghazali do not believe that female mystics can exist.

On the other hand, Ibn Arabi challenges this idea by saying that men and women were equal in everything, including “all stations of sainthood”, going as far as to say that female mystics can also achieve the status of shaykh (spiritual guide).

Perhaps it is the teachings of Ibn Arabi that influenced Lyariites rather than those of al-Ghazali or Baba Farid when they gave so much importance to Miran Maa.

According to Zubair, even at the peak of the gang wars in Lyari, the shrine of Miran Maa was the one place no gang leader dared to desecrate in any form. In fact, while almost no part of Lyari was spared from the fighting, Miran Maa’s walls remained untouched and the gang leaders actually paid for renovations or any other work that was needed for the shrine, including the annual urs and the chaadar that is placed on her grave.

The space in the compound where the jirga was held.

As an unwritten rule, no fighting could take place within the confines of the shrine and no weapons were allowed inside. He added that the leaders would meet here, and any decision taken by the informal jirga that emerged was considered binding upon the participants.

Although Miran Maa’s story takes place well after the British conquest of Karachi, there are many other stories and shrines and temples that date back well into pre-colonial times. This article is a modest attempt at documenting what’s left of this rich inheritance before it, too, disappears.


The author is a Social Development & Policy graduate whose primary interests lie in researching the cultural and tangible heritage of Karachi.

Hinduism Is Fascism

Modern Hinduism is fascism and racism. It is the origin of what we would call modern Fascism. Based on a religious caste system that is Aryan in origin, it divides up the world into three castes, warriors, priests, merchants, and in a slave class; the Dalit's or Untouchables. India Caste System Discriminates

The influence of Hindu Fascism on the Occult is well documented. Especially in the racialist constructs of Madame Blavatsky and her Theosophical movement. It is the concept of the Secret Chiefs, of higher beings who contact select humans, usually Caucasian Europeans, while relegating other 'races' of humanity to lesser rungs in the celestial hierarchies. Hence the belief in reincarnation, karma, dharma, etc. gets interepreted as the need for these lesser races to evolve to be accepted into the divine prescence fo the Secret Chiefs.

Later Aryan racialists would look at India as the home of the purist of the Aryan social constructs, that is the caste system, which they equated with the Indo-European peoples and as dating back to the orginal Aryan/Germanic expansion into the region. Savtri Devil, Hitlers Priestess was such a Indo-Aryan revivalist. The underlying construct of Hinduism is of whiteness/light verus black/darkness, which appealed to the Aryan racialists.

Dalit: The Black Untouchables of India
Originally published in India under the title Apartheid in India, V.T. Rajshekar's passionate work on the plight of the Indian Dalits was first introduced to North American readers through the publication of DALIT: The Black Untouchables of India in 1987. This book is the first to provide a Dalit view of the roots and continuing factors of the gross oppression of the world's largest minority (over 150 million people) through a 3,000 year history of conquest, slavery, apartheid and worse. Rajshekar offers a penetrating, often startling overview of the role of Brahminism and the Indian caste system in embedding the notion of "untouchability" in Hindu culture, tracing the origins of the caste system to an elaborate system of political control in the guise of religion, imposed by Aryan invaders from the north on a conquered aboriginal/Dravidian civilization of African descent. He exposes the almost unimaginable social indignities which continue to be imposed upon so-called untouchables to this very day, with the complicity of the political, criminal justice, media and education systems. Under Rajshekar's incisive critique, the much-vaunted image of Indian nonviolence shatters. Even India's world-celebrated apostle of pacificsm emerges in less saintly guise; in seeking to ensure Hindu numerical domination in India's new political democracy, Mahatma Gandhi advocated assimilating those whom Hindu scriptures defined as outcastes (untouchables) into the lowest Hindu caste, rather than accede to their demand for a separate electorate. Rajshekar further questions whether the Brahminist socio-political concepts so developed in turn influenced the formation of the modern Nazi doctrine of Aryan supremacy, placing the roots of Nazism deep in Indian history.

At the Culture and the State Conference at the U of A three years ago there was a concurrent conference of Dalit's from across North America. It was organized by my comrade John Ames. It was there I picked up their materials denonucing Hinduism as Racism and Fascism. These texts advocated a secular socialist humanist perspective on the Dalit struggle against the feudalist religion and politics of Hinduism.

Many Dalit groups, taking their cue from civil liberties organizations, ignore much of the economic ground for untouchability. Communist leader Brinda Karat notes that “only Communist inspired movements, enabled by the active participation of Dalits, have led to concrete gains against casteism.” In West Bengal, she shows, the Communist government initiated land reform that now forms “the backbone of Dalit self-respect and dignity in the State.”Badges of Color

Dalit Voice - The Voice of the Persecuted Nationalities Denied Human Rights
Dalit Voice was the first Indian journal to expose this closely guarded secret and shock the outside world and make history. That is how Dalit Voice has become the organ of the entire deprived destitutes of India, the original home of racism. Started in 1981 by V.T. Rajshekar, its Editor and founder, Dalit Voice, the English fortnightly, has become the country's most powerful "Voice of the Persecuted Nationalities Denied Human Rights". A veteran journalist, formerly of the Indian Express, powerful and fearless writer, V.T. Rajshekar, had to face the wrath of the ruling class, arrested many times, several jail sentences, passport impounded and subjected to total media boycott.

The Dalits are not only literal shit collectors in India they are also the largest group of workers in the service sector including government and the public sector. The political activism of the Dalits has been to unite in unions, broad based populist political parties, movements for womens rights, etc. to confront the Hindu Caste State in India.

Dalit Rising

Ghettoised Indians of the gutter society, eternally condemned. Not anymore, writes Amit Sengupta. The uprising is not a revolution, but it is no less

Buddha Smiles: Mass-conversion of dalits to Buddhism, November 4, 2001 Delhi

The sun of self-respect has burst into flame Let it burn up these castes!
Smash, Break, Destroy These walls of hatred
Crush to smithereens this aeons-old school of blindness Rise, O People!
Marathi song, anti-caste movement, 1970s

In other words, five thousand years and more after, almost 60 years after ‘Independence’, dalits in India are a priori condemned, even before they are born. Even after they die when they are buried in separate village graveyards. Even when they become educated or employed, within or outside the politics of half-fake affirmative action.

Unlike in Punjab, with plus 30 percent dalit population, many of them economically well-off, not dependent on land, where Kanshiram begun his first mobilisation. The dalit-sufi secular traditions (they control dargahs) are as strong here, as is the old Ghadarite-Leftist-radical traditions — be it during the freedom struggle, or in the great sacrifices made against terrorism. The Mansa and Talhan movements are examples of organised dalit reassertion: political and ideological (see story).

In Bant Singh Inquilabi’s amputated limbs, lies the epic story of a nation defiled, like his raped daughter in Mansa. But the truth is that this ‘invisible nation’ is refusing to accept its fatedness anymore. As in Gohana in Haryana, in Bhojpur in Bihar, Ghatkopar in Mumbai, Talhan in Punjab, this rising is rising like a wave on a full moon night. It’s only that we only want to see the dark side of the moon.

The Politics of the Caste System and the Practice of Untouchability The Hindu religious belief that" ALL HUMAN BEINGS ARE NOT BORN EQUAL" is deeply entrenched in the psyche of the upper-caste Hindus, leading them to see themselves as a superior race destined to rule and the out-castes (the Untouchables or Dalits) an inferior race born only to serve. This system, which has resulted in the destitution of millions of people due to racial discrimination, has not changed one iota after 50 years of Indian independence.

"For the ills which the Untouchables are suffering, if they are not as much advertised as those of the Jews, and are not less real. Nor arc the means and the methods of suppression used by the Hindus against the Untouchables less effective because they are less bloody than the ways which the Nazis have adopted against the Jews. The Anti-Semitism of the Nazis against the Jews is no way different in ideology and in effect from the Sanatanism of the Hindus against the Untouchables.The world owes a duty to the Untouchables as it does to all suppressed people to break their shackles and set them free."

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar in a preface to his book,

"Gandhi and the Emancipation of Untouchables" - 1st September 1943

Man who redefined Dalit politics- The Times of India

October, 10, 2006

NEW DELHI: Kanshi Ram, the Dalit icon who changed the political landscape of north India, was cremated as per Buddhist rituals at a funeral conducted by his political legatee, Mayawati, after Delhi High Court turned down the plea of his family for staying the last rites.

For a man who single-handedly turned the politics of North India on its head by thrusting Dalits as a factor in the regional power-play, Kanshi Ram's end was rather sedate, passing away on Monday, at 72, after being confined to bed for almost four years.

As in life, Kanshi Ram, in death, did not miss to shock his main haters — the urban middle classes — as he pulled the subaltern in droves on to the Capital's roads, throwing them off gear in sweltering heat.

Post-independence, Kanshi Ram redefined Dalit politics in the idiom of defiance. Hailing from a Ramdasiya Sikh family of Ropar and employed as a research assistant in a defence ministry lab, he resigned over the right of Dalit staff to get leave to celebrate Ambedkar and Valmiki jayantis.

What unfolded was a long-drawn mobilisation of Dalits, which changed political faultlines of the Hindi belt, marked by rebellious rhetoric and neat networking.

Kanshi Ram first targeted the better-off among Dalits, who had benefited from job quota. The result was the birth in 1978 of the Backwards and Minority Communities Employees Federation (BAMCEF), the first countrywide network of government employees from these categories.

APPRAISAL

KANSHI RAM

The Dalit Chanakya

If Ambedkar was theory, Kanshi Ram was practice. Roaring practice.

RAMNARAYAN RAWAT

Magazine | Oct 23, 2006

The dalit in India - caste and social class

THE dalit or "Untouchable" is a government servant, the teacher in a state school, a politician. He is generally never a member of the higher judiciary, an eminent lawyer, industrialist or journalist. His freedom operates in designated enclaves: in politics and in the administrative posts he acquires because of state policy. But in areas of contemporary social exchange and culture, his "Untouchability" becomes his only definition. The right to pray to a Hindu god has always been a high caste privilege. Intricacy of religious ritual is directly proportionate to social status. The dalit has been formally excluded from religion, from education, and is a pariah in the entire sanctified universe of the "dvija." (1)

Unlike racial minorities, the dalit is physically indistinguishable from upper castes, yet metaphorically and literally, the dalit has been a "shit bearer" for three millennia, toiling at the very bottom of the Hindu caste hierarchy. The word "pariah" itself comes from a dalit caste of southern India, the paRaiyar, "those of the drum" (paRai) or the "leather people" (Dumont, 1980: 54).

Barbaric Assault on Bant Singh (AIALA Leader)
Petition to Prime Minister of India

We the undersigned condemn the savage and barbaric assault by powerful Congress-backed Jat landlords which has left Bant Singh, Dalit leader of the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha (All-India Agrarian Labour Association) in Mansa, Punjab, with both hands and one leg amputated. Further we note that this criminal attack was planned in retaliation for Bant Singh’s sustained campaign against caste and gender based power and violence, and in particular, his struggle to bring his minor daughter’s rapists to justice. We stand by Bant Singh and his family in the face of this unspeakable tragedy and we believe passionately that such atrocities cannot be acceptable in 21st century India.




Dalit Religious Conversion

A Struggle for Humanist Liberation Theology

The development of Buddhist and Christian conversions as a political force for change is key to the Dalit philosophy. Rather than being absorbed into their new religion, the Dalit's use religious conversion to counter the hegemonic cultural domination of Hinduism. In that they adapt their new religious affiliations to meet their needs, ironically which are based on a humanistic and secular view of the world that oppresses them.

Hindus set to convert to Buddhism

Despite advances, India's lowest Hindu castes remain downtrodden

Tens of thousands of people are due to attend a mass conversion ceremony in India at which large numbers of low-caste Hindus will become Buddhists.

The ceremony in the central city of Nagpur is part of a protest against the injustices of India's caste system.

By becoming Buddhists low-caste Hindus, or Dalits, can escape the prejudice and discrimination they normally face.

The ceremony marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of Buddhism by the scholar Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

He was the first prominent Dalit - or Untouchable as they were formerly called - to urge low-caste Indians to embrace Buddhism.

Similar mass conversions are taking place this month in many other parts of India.

Several states governed by the Hindu nationalist party, the BJP, have introduced laws to make such conversions more difficult.

Dalit Theology-

Dalit-liberative hermeneutics is scientific and praxis-oriented.

The Travancore Pulaya mass conversion movement to Anglicanism in the latter half of 19th century was an expression of social protest. For thousands these conversions were protests heralding exit from the inhumanity of the caste system. These oppressed also saw the doors opening for them as a way out of the misery with the success of the anti-slave campaign championed by the missionaries.

Guru Ghasidas

Guru Ghasidas according to delivers of the Satnami panth was born on 18th December 1756 and died at the age of eighty in 1836. He was born in village Girodhpuri in Raipur district in a dalit family. Ghasidas was born in a socio-political milieu of misrule, loot and plunder. The Marath the local had started behaving as Kings. Ghasidas underwent the exploitative experiences specific to dalit communities, which helped him the hierarchical and exploitative nature of social dynamics in a caste-ridden society. From an early age, he started rejecting social inequity and to understand the problems faced by his community and to find solutions, he traveled extensively in Chhattisgarh.

Ghasids was unlettered like his fellow dalits. He deeply resented the harsh treatment to his brotherhood', and continued searching for solutions but was unable to find the right answer. In search of the right path he decided to go to Jaganath Puri and on his way at Sarangarh attained true knowledge. It is said that he announced satnam and returned to Giordh.On his return, he stopped working as a farm worker and became engrossed in Tapasya. After spending six months in Sonakhan forests doing tapasya Ghasidas returned and formulated path-breading principles of a new egalitarian social order. The Satnam Panth is said to be based on these principles formulated by Ghasidas.

Dissident Sects & Anti-Caste Movements:

Both Vedic ritualism and gnosis [supremacy of Brahmans] were bound to be called in question by the common people. The popular discontent found expression in dissident sects like Jainism (540-468 B.C.) and Buddhism (563-483 B.C.). There is no doubt that Jainism and Buddhism were the first attacks or revolts in general against the caste system.

Lord Buddha initiated a radical critique of contemporary religion and society. He was forthright in repudiating the caste system and the notion of ritual purity associated with it. One of his famous sayings runs like this:

No Brahmin is such by birth,

No outcaste is such by birth.

An outcaste is such by his deeds,

A Brahmin is such by his deeds.”

From out of the struggle between Vedic religion and heterodox movements like Jainism and Buddhism was born what is today called Hinduism, which reached its golden age in the Gupta period (300-700 A.D.). Many factors were responsible for this new development. Brahminism succeeded in integrating within itself popular religions. Popular deities were absorbed into the Vedic pantheon through a process of identification or subordination. Even Buddha was given the status of a vishnuite incarnation.

Dalit poems and sayings on evil brahminic system

Tell a Slave is a Slave!

Surely and invariably he will rebel!

For most of times Slaves know not they are Slaves!

Always they only keep enjoying and relishing their Slavery!

They say that had been their lives generations after generations!

That too over the many many millenniums!

Slogging in the fields and mines for the landlords!

Taking just a pittance in return and still be proud and happy!

Listen to this! This is what the landlords, who had raped butchered killed otherwise murdered in cold-blood, and burnt SC&ST Dalits say –

We had all along for generations employed them paid them given them grains, fed them and looked after them! Now they had forgotten all that, to believe in the Govt, go for Education, seek Govt Employment, trust the Parties, run behind the Party Workers, follow the useless Leaders, pin their Hopes on the meaningless Govt Programmes, lean on the fake NGOs, and repose faith in all those stupid Activists! And, they have turned against us, we who have been feeding them for Generations! We can’t understand this! Hence we had to teach them a Lesson! Discipline them! Put them in their Places! They are like our Children! They are our Responsibility! And in fact it is our Duty to Discipline them, and bring them back to the right path – their old ways!

That is it. The Landlords want now to reclaim the SCs&STs, bring them back under their total and tight control, and keep them in their fold, as in the good old days! The old bondage and slavery!

Yes, it is true! Many SC&ST Dalits still toil as Slaves to crude cheap landlords and goons! They don’t realise their status and slavery. They don’t know that the World had changed!

One need not be surprised or feel shocked by this ignorance, and lack of knowledge or realisation of the World. After all they are poor rural labourers of backward feudal areas! But even the educated and employed SC&ST Dalits are not aware of all their Dues and Rights! In fact the depth of their ignorance is shocking! If the Dalits’ Knowledge of Dalit Issues are so shallow, what can we say of others understandings of Dalit Problems! It is for this reason that any writings on Dalit Issues, and Dalit Views have to be in so much of, perhaps what appears to be too detailed! That includes Dalit Poetry on Dalit Issues and Problems! Hence, the Prose like Poetry, or Prose rendering of Poetry! That may not matter, but that also so inevitable!

Dalit Womens Struggles

The oppression of women is a double burden in slave societies, and amongst the Dalit's women have played an important role in linking their struggles with that of being Dalits and women. It has created a syncratic feminism that is reflected in the movement regardless of their religious affiliations. Again emphasising the humanist nature of Dalit relgious conversion.

Ruth Manorama, voice of Dalits
Ruth Manorama is a women's rights activist well known for her contribution in mainstreaming Dalit issues. Herself from the Dalit community, she has helped throw the spotlight on the precarious situation of Dalit women in India. She calls them "Dalits among the Dalits." A peacewomen profile from the Women's Feature Service and Sangat.

DALIT WOMEN: The Triple Oppression of Dalit Women in Nepal

Terai Dalit Women - Violation of Political Rights

Attacks on Dalit Women: A Pattern of Impunity - Broken People ...

FEMINIST DALIT ORGANIZATION

Dalit Women Literature Review

Dalit Feminism By M. Swathy Margaret

EMPOWER DALIT WOMEN OF NEPAL is a small human rights organization for Dalit women, the “untouchable” women on the lower rungs of Nepal’s caste hierarchy.

Five pledges for dalit shakti By Freny Manecksha
Martin Macwan’s Dalit Shakti Kendra in Gujarat provides vocational training to dalit youth. More importantly, it gives them a sense of identity
It began as a small agitation in Ranpur, Dhanduka taluka, Gujarat. Women of a particular dalit sub-caste, who still performed the menial task of manual scavenging despite legislation against it, had asked the panchayat for new brooms but were refused on grounds that there was no budget for it. This was a seminal moment for Martin Macwan, a dalit activist who had set up the Navsarjan Trust in 1989 against scavenging. “What totally devastated me was that they were not agitating against the practice. They were merely begging the panchayat to give them more brooms to prevent their hands from being soiled with shit. They didn’t dream of eliminating scavenging.” (Mari Marcel Thekaekara in Endless Filth, Saga of the Bhangees)

Globalization and the Dalit

The Green Revolution in India as well as the later developments around GMO's etc. have had a disproportionate negative impact on the Dalit's agricultural communities. Modernization and industrialization have not benefited these peasant economies, as much as chaining the Dalits to their landlords.

Free Trade – A war against Dalits & Adivasis

Dalits and Adivasis have never been the part of the conventional trade systems. Today they are faced with the horrible hostility of trade and market policies. In recent times trade entered the scene on mass scale through the principles of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. Mega industrial production still plays the key role in all trade deal not only at the national level but also at the international level.

Industrialisation, which made a colourful and dreamy entry, is turning out to be the worst form of human development. The steady economic growth of industries with active support from the state machinery is directly proportional to the unchecked exploitation of masses. Most of them belong to marginalized communities such as Dalits, Adivasis, women, working class, etc. Though during the independence struggle “land to the tillers” and “factory to the workers” prominently came on to the national agenda, nowhere in India had we witnessed the later one being implemented in the post independence era. Resultant displacement, migration, repercussion of workers, loss of land and livelihood, pilfering state revenue, forest resources, etc. has outgrown to monstrous level.

This has amplified particularly with WTO taking the centre stage of all sorts of trade related agreements and transactions at the international level. Trade is no longer buying and selling of goods and services but it encompasses issues like Intellectual Property Rights. With this the global market has wide open for exploration and exploitation of resources under the aegis of free trade. Industrialised nations found their tools to maintain supremacy on world trade. Prophets of trade and commerce argue that free trade maximises world economic output. This is what is considered to be progress. But what we have been witnessing with the Dalits and Adivasis in India is diametrically opposite to these claims.


Dalit woman shows the way to better yields


Dalit Academic Perspectives

A Dalit Bibliography

558, February 2006, Dalit Perspectives

Seminars and Workshops of Deshkal Society | Seminars on Dalit


Dalit Resources

Nepal Dalit Info

CounterCurrents.org Dalit Issues Home Page

Dalit Freedom Network: Abolish Caste, Now and Forever

Dalit foundation - Accelerating change for equality

Dalit Welfare Organisation (DWO)

Dalit Human Rights

Punjab Dalit Solidarity-A blog

National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR)

The Bhopal Dalit Declaration

International Dalit Solidarity Network

Formed in March 2000, the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN) is a network of national solidarity networks, groups from affected countries and international organisations concerned about caste discrimination and similar forms of discrimination based on work and descent.

IDSN campaigns against caste-based discrimination, as experienced by the dalits of South Asia to the Buraku people of Japan, the sab (low caste) groups of Somalia, the occupational caste people in West Africa and others.

The work of IDSN involves encouraging the United Nations, the European Union and other bodies to recognise that over 260 million people continue to be treated as outcasts and less than human and that caste-based discrimination must be regarded as a central human rights concern. IDSN insists on international recognition that "Dalit Rights are Human Rights" inasmuch as all human beings are born with the same inalienable rights.

IDSN brings together organisations, institutions and individuals concerned with caste-based discrimination and aims to link grassroots priorities with international mechanisms and institutions to make an effective contribution to the liberation of those affected by caste discrimination.

More than 260 million people worldwide continue to suffer under what is often a hidden apartheid of segregation, exclusion, modern day slavery and other extreme forms of discrimination, exploitation and violence.

See:

India



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