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Shri Guptara's misquotation
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Shri Guptara has misquoted the piece below. The word "fascist" is in
inverted commas in the original. For obvious reasons, it is important to be
absolutely precise in such contexts.
Subroto Roy.
-----Original Message-----
From: prabhu.guptara@ubs.com <prabhu.guptara@ubs.com>
To: debate@indiapolicy.org <debate@indiapolicy.org>
Date: Thursday, February 03, 2000 12:35 AM
Subject: for your interest, re: the Chandrakant Shourie case
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>Please help make the Manifesto better, or accept it, and propagate it!
>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Following our earlier discussion of this matter, for your general
> information, I thought all of us might like to know of the following.
>
> prabhu guptara
>
>
>
>
> INDIAN GROUND WORK GRANTS £2000 TO VICTIM OF FASCIST ATTACK
>
>
> The UK Charity Indian Ground Work today announced a grant of £2000 for
> Mr Chandrakant Shourie, victim of the New Year's attack by fascists in
> the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
>
> The grant is in recognition of Mr Shourie's educational work and is
> meant to further his educational work.
>
> (The original press release which informed us of the attack is
> attached for your interest).
>
> Indian Ground Work is a charity whose funds are obtained entirely and
> wholly from donations by Non-Resident Indians.
>
>
> ENDS
>
>
>
> PRESS RELEASE
>
> Famous Indian Journalist's Nephew Suffers New Year's Attack by
> Fascists
>
> Arun Shourie's nephew suffers New Year Attack by Fascists
>
>
> RELEASE DATE: 12 JANUARY 2000
>
>
> Chandrakant Shourie, the nephew of one of India's most prominent
> journalists, Arun Shourie, was attacked by fascists on New Year's Eve
> in a remote part of Central India. Chandrakant, his wife, their son
> and friends and neighbours suffered in the attack which also damaged
> Mr Shourie's house and property.
>
>
> MAIN STORY FOLLOWS....
>
>
> Chandrakant Shourie's friends, Sudhir Mishra and Sanjeev Shrivastava
> and family were celebrating New Year together with them. At about
> 11.30 another neighbour, Jagat Ram with his wife and two small
> children, also arrived as they had also been invited. Mr Shourie came
> out to welcome them when Pappu Singh, Dibbu Singh, Ganesh Dheemar,
> Vinod Singh, Vasudev Singh and Sharad Singh attacked Mr Shourie.
> However, everyone in the house rushed out to Mr Shourie's rescue and
> when this was done, the party belonging to the house went back into
> the house, before going to report the matter to the Police.
>
> At 12.05 a.m. Mr Shourie returned from the Police Station along with a
> Police escort. As soon as he stepped out of the car at his gate, he
> was attacked afresh by Ashok Singh, Babu Lal Patel as well as some or
> all of the earlier attackers and possibly some others.
>
> On hearing the uproar, some of the friends and Mrs Shourie and son
> Ashish Shourie ran out, managed to rescue Mr Chandrakant Shourie
> again, brought him inside the house and locked him in one room for his
> own safety. The attackers then charged the house armed with sticks and
> other lethal weapons and started beating up everyone in sight
> indiscriminately.
>
>
> Mrs Shourie suffered a wound on her hand and was protected by others
> even at risk to their own lives. Son Ashish had to get 5 stitches on
> his right hand. Friend and neighbour Sanjeev Shrivastava was hurt in
> his hand also; Mr Shrivastava's father as well as his brother were
> badly beaten up and both sustained head injuries.
>
> "All this hapenned in the presence of the Police personnel" says Mr
> Chandrakant Shourie, "They were either unwilling or unable to protect
> us".
>
> Then began the process of lodging police records and undergoing
> medical
> examination. They returned home, exhausted and traumatized at 4.00
> a.m., unlike most people in the world on New Year's Night who were
> able to welcome the dawn of the year 2000 with street parties, or
> special excursions or safely in their own beds.
>
> Ten days after the incident, the main culprits are still roaming
> freely and are threatening the witnesses and going around saying that
> they will kill Mr Shourie, and cut him into pieces!
>
> What could cause such strange things to happen?
>
> When Chandrakant Shourie graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering
> Degree from one of India's premier Engineering Institutes (BIT
> Pilani), he surprised everyone by idealistically deciding not to
> pursue a career in engineering or computing or management but to move
> to Nagod, one of India's most remote and backward places in India
> (1000km south-east of Delhi), to set up a school for the most
> disadvantaged groups of people there. The Shouries belong to the
> Brahmin caste (the top caste, of priests) which has traditionally been
> scholarly and idealistic. But with financial support only from a few
> family friends, the "school" was much too idealistic and not at all
> scholarly. At the start: Mr and Mrs Shourie's bedroom served as the
> only classroom and the school library was the few books that the
> family itself possessed which they shared with the students who came
> to them.
>
> But for the poor and the oppressed in Central India - that is, the
> lower castes, the Shudras, the virtual slaves and the untouchables -
> even that little was an enormous boon! No one had taken interest in
> their troubles for hundreds if not thousands of years.
>
> These "lower caste" people have very little education and capability.
> The higher caste people (Thakurs) enjoy all the priveleges and hold
> all the power in the administration and the police. So when an
> injustice is perpetrated, the poor have no voice.
>
> Over the twenty years that the Shouries have run their school in
> Nagod, some of these poor people have started turning to the Shourie
> family for help, and in a number of cases they were able to help the
> poor people get redress through proper legal and administrative
> procedures . The people have begun to trust them and come to them in
> their times of trouble. As they help the poor, the Shouries have begun
> to be seen by the ruling castes as a challenge to their centuries-long
> hold over the poor people.
>
> According to Mr Shourie, "This incident was designed to send a message
> to the poor and the oppressed: 'if we can do this to an educated
> Brahmin like Mr. Shourie in his own home, you poor people are
> certainly not safe from us and should expect no help from them'. This
> incident has nothing to do with personalities but with principles. It
> is a sign of the desperation of the old order as it continues to try
> to prevent education and liberty and market forces from eroding the
> reign of terror which the ruling caste has exercised over this land
> for centuries. If they kill me and my wife and my entire family, will
> they prevent education and liberation from coming to this dark part of
> India? By disabling or removing us from the scene they will limit or
> deprive the poor people of the little help that we have been able to
> give them. But the powerful and the mighty should realise that history
> is against them and they should do as feudal elites in Northern Europe
> for example did when they were in a parallel situation. The Northern
> European elites chose to go along with change and even sponsor change.
> That way their whole land benefited and they themselves are still
> there as the richest sections of their societies. But in other parts
> of Europe, for example Russia, the elites did resisted change. The
> result was that their whole land still suffers from backwardness and
> their traditional elite classes have in any case been completely
> eliminated. In a globalising world, there are new opportunities, we
> should be working together to produce more wealth for everyone, not
> continuing the centuries old game of mystification and oppression".
>
> Mr and Mrs Shourie's work is extremely highly regarded and the
> prize-winning Indian author Vishal Mangalwadi dedicated his book on
> the New Age to them.
>
> The left-wing threat from Marxist and Maoist groups in the Sixties and
> Seventies has now been replaced by the threat from fascists who want
> to take over the country, destroy the tradition of Hindu tolerance,
> replace the secular constitution, and take India back into some
> version of the middle ages.
>
> Fascist activity has been building gradually over the last several
> years but the last year was the worst year on record.
>
> This new year attack threatens even more fascist activity for the
> festive year 2000.
>
>
> BACKGROUND NOTES:
>
> The Thakurs are the caste of erstwhile feudal landlords of the whole
> of Central/Eastern Inda. They have enslaved the people through fear
> and deception for ages. Many of them are very insensitive and brutal
> people. They are often used by the other high caste people to spread
> terror amongst the poor and the backward caste people. Their rule over
> the people lasted right through the centuries of the Mughal period as
> well as through the centuries of British rule because the British as
> well as the Mughals preferred to rule through existing structures. It
> is only now as Independent India has been able to mobilise resources
> for national reconstruction that the unassailable power of the Thakur
> caste has come under challenge as a result of communication,
> education, transportation, modern finance and market forces and so on.
> Most of the attackers of Mr Shourie were Thakurs (indicated by the
> surname "Singh" in this part of India, but not to be confused with
> "Singh" families from the Punjab who follow the Sikh religion).
>
>
>
> Contact details:
> Mr and Mrs Chandra Kant Shourie, Tel: + 91.7673 -32354; email:
> cshourie@rediffmail.com
>
>
> ENDS
>
>
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This is the National Debate on System Reform. debate@indiapolicy.org
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