Mangaluru: Firebrand human rights activist Teesta Setalvad on Wednesday, October 25 was here in Mangaluru to attend a interactive session on ‘Talking peace in times of hate’ organised by SAMARASA, a group of vibrant citizens who work towards the cause of communal harmony and against collective silence on communal violence.
Addressing the like-minded gathering at Bishop Jathanna memorial auditorium, Setalwad called upon citizens to be peace warriors. Remembering activist and journalist late Gauri Lankesh, she said, “Last time when I was here, Gauri Lankesh was with me. Loss of Gauri is something we are still trying to come to terms with.” After observing a minute of silence in remembrance of Gauri, Setalwad said, “Gauri would have said why this silence, break this silence.”
Setalwad said that the silence caused by fear, aggression and hatred needs to be broken. “The environment of hatred is being rolled out by the forces sitting in position of constitutional authority. They own a religion and also an ideology that believes in overthrowing the Constitution today. We need to proclaim that even a dream to build Hindu Rashtra is anti-constitutional,” she said adding that it is the tradition and histories that we need to bring out, to be able to counter the agonizing tendencies that are trying to lay claim to patriotism and nation.
“We need to break this environment full of fear by fighting it out on streets. We need to fight forces that have launched psychological warfare. In public spaces, we need to strengthen our voices. The voices are powerful because, those who believe in non-violence and constitutional rights are either scared or silent,” she said adding that the fight is at many levels and that there is a need to figure out how one can take this multi-dimensional struggle to reclaim public spaces, to reclaim the upper hand over the police and the administration, to remind gently but firmly the police and administration that they belong to the constitution not to the party or power which might tell them what is right or wrong.
Pointing at political interference in education, she said that in last two years, 25,000 scholarships for UGC have been cut down. “By doing this they are closing doors for students who want to pursue higher education. Therefore, Institutions of democracy need to open up.”
“There is attack on Right to Information Act, there is attack on MGNREGA, a rural works programme which we got in 2005, Forest Rights Act, which we got in 2006, Right to Food Act, Land Compensation Act, all these laws that were passed, which we called rights based legislation, there are attempts to constitutionalise unconstitutional laws,” she said pointing that when Constitution was formed, B R Ambedkar had said that we are embarking on this dangerous journey, we are giving ourselves political independence, without giving ourselves social and economic independence. “We did not constitutionalise Forest Act and Land Acquisition act. The attack of this regime is on so many fronts, and therefore it is important to build alliances between all these struggles,” she opined.
Lashing out at the present central government for being pro-capitalists, she said that they are trying to transfer public resources to crony capitalists along with completely majoritarian supremists with communal vision under present government. “Even today there are attempts to sell Air India. What we are seeing today is complete undemocratic selling of public resources to private capital,” she said.
“Today the attack on religious minorities, the aggression and hatred is a very clever way to divert any discussion, from the complete transfer of public resources to private capitalists. We have been kept so obsessed with the hate politics and communal agenda, that we are not able to understand the socio-economic agenda of this government,” she said.
Talking about need to create peace warriors, she said that these peace warriors must take to streets every time someone tries to divide people. “Elections need to be fought on issues of hunger, of poverty, unemployment and not on who is God, who is a God for other and felicious issues that seek to divide us. The reason why we call this government, openly a proto-fascist one is because it is extreme right wing both at religio- political and economic level,” she said.
“We need to devote at least few hours to become active peace warriors or the peace makers. Do not become a victim of rumor mongers. Constantly talk the language of peace, courage, firmness and never reduce yourself to language of hate. We do not need it. Indonesia, though a majority Muslim country proudly celebrates its different Ramayana figures. Faiths have travelled across the oceans for centuries. Cultures have emerged. Business took these travels, religious monks took these travels, and assimilations took place. We are possibly the only region in the world that has so much multiplicity and pluralism. We have 22 official languages and Sri Lanka could not even have one. Today those ruling us do not understand the tremendous diversity epitomized in our constitution, which is the most glorious testimony of idealism and pragmatism that our founding fathers and mothers had,” she concluded.
Interactive session was held post her talk. Activist Vidya Dinakar, students from various colleges were present on the occasion.
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