Via: A Khanna
think this may be interesting for some...
best,
akshay
Discussion-Meeting on Call Centre Work and of Struggles in some European
Call Centres
Workers' Solidarity invites you to a discussion meeting on call centre work
and struggles in Europe. The meeting would consist of two parts:
1) Presentation of a workers' self-inquiry project in Germany. In 1999, a
collective in Germany decided to work in various call centres in order to
understand the new work organisation and possible new forms of workers'
struggles. They made interviews, collected reports from different call
centres, translated strike news and published a call centre workers
newspaper. An activist, Marco, who was actively part the process will
present these experiences and the political background of a political
current
in Europe which developed the concept of workers' self-inquiry as a part of
revolutionary organising.
Here are some relevant links:
http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/kolinko/lebuk/e_lebuk.htm
(link to call center inquiry book)
http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/wildcat/64_65/w64opera_en.htm
(link to article on tradition of workers inquiry)
2) In the second part we want to discuss the global shift of call centre
work and different workers' struggles in the sector. Our main question
concerns the impact globalisation of call centre work has on the working
conditions and possible struggles in the various countries.
http://www.prol-position.net/nl/2005/03/bangalore
(link to article on global re-location of call centrers)
We will also distribute copies of a booklet - In Global Circulation: Life
and Struggles in European Call Centres - that Workers' Solidarity
published recently and that we want to distribute primarily among call
centre workers in Delhi. The booklet consists of reports from call
centres in Europe made by activists there, and descriptions of strikes
in some of those call centres.
Please do attend the discussion and pass on this info to others.
Date: 29 April 2006, Saturday
Time: 4 pm
Venue: Saheli office, under Defence Colony Flyover
Sreerekha, Naga, Manisha, others
for
Workers' Solidarity
Via: A Khanna
CANDLE LIGHT VIGIL
Sunday, 30th April 2006
6:30 PM onwards
Jantar Mantar
The violent and forced eviction of people from their natural habitat
and homes, be it in the Narmada Valley, the slums of Mumbai or Delhi,
or the adivasi areas of Orissa, is a matter of increasing alarm and
worry. It seems to be happening in a more and more systematic,
calculated and sinister way. The government is clearly promoting this
violent neoliberal paradigm of development at the cost of its people.
We cannot remain silent any more. We will NOT tolerate this violation
of democracy and human rights any more.
Peoples' movements and struggles from across the country must come
together and unite forces to fight this battle against injustice.
NO MORE FORCED EVICTIONS!!!! NO MORE SLUM DEMOLITIONS!!! NO MORE
DISPOSSESSION OF PEOPLE FROM THEIR HOMES, LANDS AND LIVELIHOODS!!!
Come light a candle on 30th April at Jantar Mantar
to express your
solidarity with people's struggles for their rights.
Please bring candles along with you to add to the lights of hope.
From Narmada to Mumbai, from Delhi to Orissa... our struggle is ONE.
This is a critical issue that concerns each one of us. Democracy is at
stake.
We must unite to speak truth to power!! The time is NOW!!
PLEASE BE THERE!!! PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW IN
DELHI!
In solidarity,
Delhi Solidarity Group for the NBA and other movements against displacement
for further details and route of march contact any of the following:
Chandralekha Roy 29232515
insafdelhi@gmail.com 9818030423
Pramod Kumar 'Anand' 9213140945
kritian@krititeam.org
9810191719
sama_womenshealth@vsnl.net
indianajonesiyer@vsnl.net
delforum@vsnl.net
rajendra_ravi@idsindia.net
varshabelais@yahoo.com
rawat_lhlrn@yahoo.com
jagori@jagori.org
Via: xavier cahen
pourinfos.org
l'actualité du monde de l'art / daily Art news
Via: Shuddhabrata Sengupta
Dear Siddharth,
I read with great interest your post on the secret history of Delhi,
especially the description of Suhagpura.
May I point out that the person you call Sarhad is actually a sufi poet
of Armenian Jewish extraction who went by the name of Sarmad. And yes,
it is indeed his grave (together with that of his preceptor, Hare-Bhare
Shah) that rests at the foot of the Jame Masjid.
Incidentally, the apocryphal story of the reasons for Sarmad's trial and
execution goes beyond the question of Sarmad's nakedness and open
homosexuality. It also includes his somewhat heterodox theological
views. It is said that Sarmad (although he claimed he was a devout
Muslim, following his conversion to Islam) would only recite one half of
the first segment of the shahada or the Islamic confession of faith.
Meaning instead of saying 'La Illaha il-lallah...', (there is no god but
god) he would stop after the La Illaha, implying the statement, 'there
is no god'.
When asked how he reconciled his claim that he was a devout Muslim with
the incomplete recitation, Sarmad was reported to have said -
"the incompleteness of my recitation is a mark of my devotion. As of
now, I have gotten as far as being able to understand the 'La-Illaha' or
'There is no god' part of the statement. When I am able to comprehend
and understand the rest of the statement, I will definitely say it."
It is said that the decaptitated head of Sarmad did make the complete
recitation after the execution as Sarmad walked up the steps of the
Jamae Masjid with his head in his hands.
I have always found this figure very fascinating, because for me he
represents the possibility of a spirituality of robust unbelief. And
though I have never been blessed with faith, I have always considered
myself to be a distant (in time) shagird of Sarmad. Which means, that
whenever I go to Jame Masjid, I try and find the time to spend some time
in the small red cube at the foot of the stairs that looks towards the
Red Fort.
Hope to read more secret histories from you,
regards
Shuddha
Here below are two links that I found on Sarmad on the net.
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=257&letter=S
http://www.crda-france.org/fr/6histoire/par_pays/inde_sarmad1.htm
Via: Tapas Ray
Dear all,
Calcutta is voting today in the five-phase West Bengal Assembly elections,
and I cast my vote first thing in the morning. This election has been billed
in the media as unprecedented on account of the Election Commission's tough
approach and parallels have been drawn with the last Bihar election which
unseated Lallu Prasad Yadav, so some of you living outside West Bengal may
be interested in getting a glimpse of it. Since Ramaswamy has already given
you some information, I thought I might jump in with my two-bit.
It was a pleasure today to see that the streets around the booth were not
full of noisy, exuberant "party boys" as before and the situation inside
seemed orderly as well. Less than a year ago, while casting my vote in the
municipal elections, I had seen an agent inside the booth openly order
polling officials not to check the identities of voters too closely, so as
to "save time". The other agents, who were presumably representing rival
candidates, said nothing. The officials complied.
After coming out of the booth, I had complained about this to two leading
figures in the CPI-M unit of my locality, making it clear that I did not
know which party/candidate the agent concerned was representing. However,
these gentlemen had sprung to his defence, saying that indeed if identities
were to be checked meticulously, voting would go on for far too long.
It was good to see one of these gentlemen stand in queue with the rest of us
today. I want to make it clear that I have nothing personal against him - in
fact, I am grateful to him for having saved me from being beaten up by some
goons one day many years ago, when he and I happened to be travelling in the
same bus (by coincidence) and a nasty situation developed.
Having said that, I would like to make a few points regarding Ramaswamy's
post.
> Now the party is realising that this section has become redundant. They
> cannot do anything on
> election day. It is the people who will vote you in or out, so one better
> work for and with the
> people.
>
> As the criminal-lumpen section is redundant and thus unnecessary, they can
> also be dispensed with,
> and the deep toll taken by this nexus can be cast out.
I think it is too early to say the above. For one thing, there is no
guarantee that elections will be held in the same manner as today in future,
hence these criminal-lumpen elements may be needed later. Moreover, they are
needed not only on voting day but throughout the year, to maintain the
party's "hold" on people. This hold is not always ovious in relatively
affluent neighbourhoods like mine, but comes out of the closet at times. An
example may be appropriate here.
A little over two years ago, I was put in charge of a branch campus of a
college that is being set up in my neighbourhood. The building was being
constructed by a contractor, and we (the college authorities) had nothing to
do with the procurement of building material. However, at one stage, a local
CPI-M "boy" who supplies building material to builders, started visiting the
site and pestering us to force the contractor to buy sand, stone chips and
timber from him. (We were to learn, later, that he had also started using
the construction site for pleasure at night.)
He said "the party" (CPI-M) had asked him to "look after" our campus. I
called the local municipal councillor (of the CPI-M) to report the matter.
She said he was misusing her party's name, promised to tell him to stay away
from us and advised me to report the matter to the Chairman of the
municipality (also of the CPI-M), which I did. For good measure, I called a
senior functionary of the CPI-M local committee (commonly known as LC in
West Bengal), who also said that his party's name was being misused but
added, somewhat surprisingly, that I should tell the "boy" that we would
help him get the supply contract if he could get a writen recommendation to
that effect from him (this functionary). When I flatly rejected this
suggestion, he backed down. The "boy" came one day, touched my feet to my
great
embarrassment, and apologised. While he did not come again, at least in my
presence, he kept sending his associates, some of whom have made trouble now
and then and we have had to lodge complaints with the police more than once.
> Something else has also emerged quite strongly. The real struggle is
> within the CPM, between the old > guard and the new generation, the latter
> led by Buddhadev Bhattacharya. The old guard and the CPM
> led by Jyoti Basu till 2000 (and with continuing but waning influence) -
> is basically an enemy of
> the people and of pro-poor development, an utter bankrupt, incompetent,
> corrupt. And Buddhadev is
> an enemy of this. Even if one is totally against all his current
> policies - e.g. land of poor
> farmers for foreign real estate developers, out and out embrace of
> "capitalism", he has to be seen
> as someone doing something, anything, rather than nothing.
There may or may not be a real struggle in the party. It is probably too
early to tell. However, if there is, it is not new and the old guard cannot
be lumped together as corrupt. The late Benoy Chowdhuri, who was Minister
for Land and Land Reforms, was a shining example of honesty and integrity,
and had openly castigated his own government (then led by Jyoti Basu) for
corruption.
I would like to make the point that by giving too much importance to these
so-called "inner-party struggles", we may be falling into a trap which the
CPI-M wants us to fall into - to reduce politics to "inner-party struggle"
rather than a multi-party struggle, with the rationale that the people's
aspirations can and will be met through struggles *within* the CPI-M as the
party of the working people rather than through multiparty democracy. This
has been the line in countries where "socialism" has won for some time.
There is a parallel with China here in West Bengal - economic
liberalisation. I think the present Left Front Government's capital and
foreign investment friendly policies need to be seen together with the
image of internal reforms being projected by the CPI-M to ralise that the
intention may be to have total one-party political control (in a limited
sense, of course, given that West bengal is within the Indian multiparty
system) with economic liberalisation and unfettered capitalist development.
A poor man's China, if you will.
> With the civil society and intelligentsia of the state completely >
> compromised, co-opted and
> bankrupt,
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a (then) Soviet diplomat in
Calcutta when the USSR was about to collapse. I forget the exact topic of
our discussion, but do remember his response to something I had said,
wondering why the people of the USSR did not behave in a way that seemed
logical to me. He had said that being in India, it would be difficult for me
to understand the psychology of people in the USSR, because they had
acquired a different mentality altogether due to Soviet rule, and political
behaviour that was natural in democratic societies, did not come naturally
to them. I think the same thing has happened in West Bengal, though
naturally to a much smaller degree. Therefore, one of the main tasks for Mr
Buddhadev Bhttacharya - assuming that he will be Chief Minister again - will
be to change the political atmosphere by bringing back a democratic
environment, and thus initiate a reversal of the psychological degeneration
that has set in among large sections of the people, the intelligentsia
included. This reversal will take time, but it's important to start it. It
remains to be seen whether he has a taste for such thoroughgoing change.
Via: Yousuf
Dear Sidharth
I read your posting with interest. Are you relying
only on the so-called "gossip" and "rumour", or are
you also looking at the documented texts. Because what
you call "secret" history is no secret for the
historians. Most of these events have been documented
in one text or another (Persian as well as Urdu). In
fact, even the oral histories that maybe common among
the present generation elderly people of old Delhi may
have originated from the documented texts. It would be
however interesting to look at what the texts say and
what versions are avaiable in the oral domain today.
You could also identify your sources.
Yousuf
--- sidharth srinivasan
wrote:
> Dear Fellows,
> I seem to finally be getting
> my bearings in
> understanding a "secret" history of Delhi. At times
> I even feel like a
> paparazzi voyeuristically peeping into the past.
> Somewhere, the
> filmmaker in me has to make a distinction between
> fact and fiction
> the fiction that is to inform my photo roman as well
> as the fiction
> that is intended to be the photo roman itself and
> the fact of history
> that weighs down on the monuments I am exploring. I
> have tentatively
> titled my film "Beeti Bahaar" hopefully it evokes
> the past and
> suggests a sense of nostalgia
>
> I recently met someone who gave me a lot of idle
> gossip regarding the
> Delhi of yore and also advised me very politely
> against making a
> tragic love story as it may unduly influence the
> youth of today
> which got me thinking that maybe I have a Rang de
> Basanti on hand!!!
> The Delhi of yore is a Mughal Delhi, a Muslim Delhi,
> by all accounts.
> Aside from the emperors, it is the poets and the
> pirs who created this
> beautiful city and the historicity of the capital
> stems from the
> folklore and myth surrounding these very people.
>
> Some of the gossip I gleaned from my encounter was
> rather colorful. I
> was informed by the gentleman that anything and
> everything imaginable
> actually happened and, despite never being
> documented, had been passed
> down from generation to generation through idle
> banter and gossip.
>
> Of course Hindi cinema immortalized Jahan Ara's love
> for her childhood
> friend Mirza Yusuf Changezi in the 1964 film JAHAN
> ARA by Vinod Kumar
> starring Mala Sinha, Bharat Bhushan and the great
> Prithviraj Kapur as
> Shah Jahan. In the film Jahan Ara's mother, Mumtaz
> Mahal's death
> disrupts the romance between the two lovers. Before
> dying Mumtaz Mahal
> makes Jahan Ara promise that she will take care of
> her father in her
> absence. As a result of this the princess is unable
> to commit herself
> to Yusuf and he wanders the earth waiting for Jahan
> Ara to return to
> him.
>
> According to other sources Jahan Ara and her
> admirer, who was a poet,
> only glanced at one another once, and it was love at
> first sight.
> Pigeons flew back and forth from the princess to the
> poet carrying
> messages of love and poems brimming with romantic
> yearning. Though the
> classic film suggested that they consummated their
> affair, in all
> probability they never actually met. Jahan Ara's
> lover apparently died
> of a broken heart.
>
> Rumor also has it that Jahan Ara had an illicit
> affair with her father
> Shah Jahan because she resembled his dead wife
> (Mumtaz Mahal). This
> story would be in keeping with the film, as Jahan
> Ara was being true
> to her word and in effect "looking after" her
> father.
>
> The Mughals were very wary of marrying off their
> daughters for obvious
> reasons of property and dispute. As a result many
> princesses remained
> spinsters till their dying day. The Persian couplet,
> Bar mazare ma
> gariban ne chirage ne gule/Ne pare parwana sozad ne
> sadai bulbule is
> by Zaib-un-Nissa, Aurangzeb's eldest daughter, who
> was a poet and
> wrote under the pen name Mukhfi.
>
> She earned the wrath of Aurangzeb because of her
> emotional attachment
> to Aqilmand Khan, also a poet, and her suspected
> involvement in the
> revolt by his younger son against him. She was
> jailed for nearly a
> decade and remained unmarried until her death at the
> age of 63.
>
> Behind the Red Fort is an area called the Suhagpura
> where many young
> women who had been with the emperor only once but
> were nonetheless
> married to him, resided. Needless to say, often
> their biological and
> emotional instincts got the better of them and they
> embarked on
> illicit affairs with commoners and outsiders as a
> result of which they
> were impregnated.
> Yunani medicine, it is believed, could re-join a
> severed arm to the
> shoulder, and was used in aborting these discarded
> wives lest the
> emperor discover their indiscretion. The fetuses of
> the countless
> illegitimate heirs to the throne were all
> clandestinely buried behind
> the Suhagpura and the burial ground is still in
> existence today.
>
> I also learnt of the story of Sarhad Shaheed, a
> story that you know of
> perhaps, but one that really fascinated me. Sarhad
> was an Armenian
> merchant from Sindh who used to come to Delhi to
> trade. In Delhi he
> fell in love with a Baniya boy. However the young
> boy was married off
> and Sarhad was heartbroken. He renounced the world
> and became a mystic
> wandering the streets of the capital. He even
> removed all signs of
> clothing from his body and took to walking around
> naked, singing sufi
> hymns.
>
> Word got round to Aurangzeb who ordered him to offer
> prayers clothed
> at Jama Masjid. But Sarhad refused to comply.
> Finally he was taken
> captive, forcibly clothed and made to stand in front
> of the head
> maulvi at Jama Masjid. While prayers were being
> offered Sarhad could
> divine that the maulvi's mind was on other matters
> namely, the lunch
> waiting for him at home and he loudly proclaimed in
> front of the
> congregation "Mulla ki neeyat mere pair ke
> neeche!!".
>
> Aurangzeb ordered him to be beheaded in public in
> front of the jama
> masjid. But miraculously, after being beheaded his
> headless body
> started to dance holding its own decapitated head in
> its hands.
> Aurangzeb was disturbed and the public thought that
> calamity had
> struck. The king begged forgiveness and requested
> sarhad to stop
> dancing, which he did. To this date his grave,
> painted bright red (to
> symbolize his blood), lies at the foot of the Jama
> Masjid and is
> called Sarhad Shaheed.
>
> All for now, am following up on a few more leads and
> studying a bit
> more closely the poetry of the time
till the next
> posting
>
> Warm Regards,
> SIDHARTH
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> MR. SIDHARTH SRINIVASAN
> Reel Illusion Films
> New Delhi/Mumbai
> India
> _________________________________________
> reader-list: an open discussion list on media and
> the
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