As protests by civilians continue and are forcefully suppressed, it becomes essential to confront the state’s response to dissent. This episode engages with the relevance of protests in today’s political climate. Neha Dixit, an independent journalist based out of New Delhi, speaks to us about their experiences of reporting state violence and social inequity and the cost and consequence of speaking truth to power. She focuses on the intersection of politics, gender and Social Justice in South Asia through long form, investigative, narrative pieces. She has reported for publications including Al Jazeera, The New York Times, The Washington Post, among others.
Transcript
[Intro]
Sanchi
Hello everyone and welcome to our podcast, Uncuff India by One Future Collective. My name is Sanchi and my pronouns are she/her.
Uttanshi
My name is Uttanshi and my pronouns are she/her. We are your hosts today, and it’s so good to have you all listening in.
[Intro ends]
Sanchi
In today’s episode, we are going to discuss the prevalence of protests in India and explore whether and how state responses to them have changed over the years. This episode will also delve into the state’s reaction to dissent in the present civic and political setting of India – wherein the state has tried to use or legitimize the use of violence during protests. This is also abetted and enabled by complementary state machinery, which makes the possibility of questioning seem rather bleak, which has, in the past, been the bedrock of social justice and human rights movements.
Uttanshi
Thank you so much for sharing that Sanchi. To discuss this and to share their insights on the topic with us, we have Neha Dixit. Neha is an independent journalist based out of New Delhi, India and their focus is mainly on the topics of intersection of politics, gender and social justice in South Asia. Thank you so much Neha for taking the time out and being on this podcast with us. We’re really excited to hear from you and learn from you.
Neha
Thank you so much. I’m very happy to be part of this.
Sanchi
Yes, Thank you so much Neha for making the time and joining us today. So let us start right off and let us start simple and right at the base of the theme for today. So Neha, how would you describe the state’s response to protests at the moment and do you think it has changed over the years?
Neha
Thank you for that question. I do think in the last few years, since particularly 2014, I do think that we have seen a number of protests. in many forms. So whether it’s around caste, gender, attacks on religious minorities, there have been protests and it started out with a number of people sending back their awards in the name, in the name of award wapsi; then the Not in my name protests, the anti caste protests after Rohit Vemula’s death, and many other things. And I do think that the state’s response, I would say generally in the last 10 years, has been a consistent erosion of a number of democratic institutions. And so protests are a response to that. And so, which is why I would say that a number of things that are part of the society around us, the civil society around us, the democratic structures, the freedom of expression, the press, the other kind of activism that is involved, all of that, has been collectively suppressed by the state through various means. Whether it’s through physical assault, whether it’s through online harassment, whether it’s by slapping legal cases on people – it has actually gone to a level where you can’t really distinguish one form of assault from the other in actually silencing people out. Let’s look back at the 2012 anti rape movement, right. So there were lots of people who came out and so while there was no sort of mobilization around a political ideology or mobilization around certain issues, but definitely around gender – people from across sections were coming. And that was also a sort of sign against a kind of patriarchal system that has roots in what we are facing right now, which has also been an integral part of how the state has been responding to the society around us. And when there were Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013, when just before the 2014 general elections, we saw that there were lots of attacks on working class minorities in North India, particularly in the districts of Shamli and Muzaffarnagar. And soon enough, a government was elected that came into power with a very select commitment to political Hinduism. And so in that situation, I would say that the assault on the plurality, on the kind of diversity that we have and also, the movements that for all these years had been fighting against the regressive caste, class structures, they were all again suppressed because it did not gel with the idea of the current government in power, which wanted to establish a certain sort of political system in the country. And so there began the attacks on everybody who was dissenting against this sort of establishment.
Uttnashi
Thank you so much for sharing that, Neha. And as you were speaking, a couple of points that really stood out to me were of course the change in the government’s response to how protests and dissent is viewed. But I also want the listeners to take away a little bit more in terms of how the meaning of protest, what we protest for, how we protest even that has diversified over the years and there are many different narratives of how these protests are shaped and designed and executed are coming out in the past few years as well. Taking from that, I also want to understand Neha, what do you think has, you know, transformed or what do you think has enabled this transformation in the government’s response to protests? Like we’ve noticed it hasn’t always been like this. What factors do you think made the government’s almost default response to any protest be violence or assault? What do you think changed?
Neha
Okay. Let me start by saying this, that in the last almost eight and half years, the people in power have criminalized any kind of defiance, any kind of disagreement, any kind of debate, any kind of discussion. All of these things are actually put out as criminal acts, and this has been normalized. Criminalizing any kind of discussion, debate, disagreement has been normalized by many people in power. For example, one of the cabinet ministers in the previous term of this government V.K. Singh – he actually, not just coined, but also normalized the word prestitute. And this word was actually supposed to be used as a slur against journalists who were critical of the government. And then they kept using this word. It started with prestitute and soon enough, when there was assault on JNU and when there was assault on Hyderabad Central University and many other such places, they also started coining other similar words like tukde-tukde gang, anti national, urban naxal, etc. So the list is endless and anyone who actually tries to have a rational conversation is clubbed in under these categories. Which is why I would say that the government actually is not open to any kind of disagreement because they want to establish, like I said, a Brahminical, patriarchal, political, Hinduism order in the country, which actually champions marginalization of everybody: whether it’s according to their caste hierarchy, or whether it’s according to the minority religion that they belong to. So it’s part of the larger agenda that the government has, the kind of ideology that it believes in. And so, which is why, it comes down very heavily on anybody who questions the establishment. And that’s where it comes from. I also want to add to this that the reason why the number of protests have grown in the last few years is not just because more people are protesting, it’s also because people do not see any kind of political alternative or any sort of electoral change or challenge or anything that remotely qualifies as a strong opposition that can bring these people down. So, which is why the government is very keen on quelling any kind of dissent, anywhere, in any part of the country. I do want to say that this template was made by the central government. But now all the other state governments, which may have different political parties in power, all of them are very happy following the same template. So which is why, they also keep using similar laws, similar draconian acts against activists, against filmmakers, against journalists, against artists everywhere. So it has been normalized now to not allow any kind of conversation that is different from what people in power are making.
Sanchi
Thank you so much for explaining that to us, Neha. I think I’m learning a lot about how the criminalization of defiance has happened in the last eight and half years and how it has become so normalized, and also how it is feeding into the larger ideology of Hindutva that we’re seeing around us now. So thank you for taking us through that. And since we are talking about how violence has become the answer, the government is resorting to more and more, I am also thinking about the nature and the magnitude of this violence. And here I’d like to ask you about two things. The first is, what forms does this violence that we are speaking about take? Is it always overt or does it differ according to time periods and settings? And second, is the impact of this violence felt and experienced differently by people of different identities? And here I’m talking especially about communities that have been historically marginalized. But in your professional experience as a journalist, if there’s something that comes up, then we’d like to hear that as well.
Neha
Thank you for that question. I would like to say that this sort of violence – it’s now everyday violence that people face. And like you rightly said, according to their identity, the degree of this violence changes from geography to geography, from place to place, from language to language, from caste to caste, from religion to religion. Let me give you an example. In 2016, I had done an investigation on how the RSS affiliated bodies traffic children from Northeast India and they take them to Punjab and Gujarat to indoctrinate them in political Hinduism. And this is similar to what happened in Canada and Australia where indigenous children were taken by Christian missionaries and they were sort of indoctrinated into Christianity and made to forget their own culture and traditions and language. Something similar was happening here and I traced the trail and I had documents and parents of these girls (and these girls were between the age group of three to 11), who confirmed that once the children were taken on the promise of free education and lodging, the parents just couldn’t contact their children any longer. So I traced those girls eventually in Punjab and Gujarat. Now let me give you an example. And finally when I traced those girls in Gujarat, so they were 31 of them, 20 in Gujarat and Surreen Nagar district and 11 in Patiala where these really young children, 6-7 year old girls were telling me how they want to do self immolation, kill Christian and Muslim invaders and stuff like that. And so while I was there and interviewing them, this person who was running this RSS school, he locked me inside the campus. So we were talking and because I’m a freelancer, I don’t have a press card, so there was no way I could prove to him that I’m a journalist. It was risky for me to, you know, actually tell him to Google my name because that would have got me in trouble more because of the kind of stories that I have done, they may not have liked it because it was critical of what was happening. And so eventually, after an hour, you know how this guy actually let me out? He said you are a Brahman woman, you are not going to do anything wrong, so you can go. And why I’m saying this is, is because I want to insist on the fact that it is your privilege, because of your caste, because of your religion, because of your gender identity, all of that is actually playing a role on an everyday basis to determine your place in this, you know, hierarchy of violence that is happening with people at every level. And it was very sad because once the story was out, a very fabulous Muslim journalist from Lucknow, he called me up and he said that, you know, you got away by doing the story. I could have never done it, just because of my name. And so what I want to say is that yes, these hierarchies are at work and your identity does play a big role when this happens. Also, I would like to say one more thing – that this violence, like I said earlier, is at many levels. So for example, for me in 2013 is when I actually started receiving a lot of online threats. My pictures were out like, you know, we’ve heard about this, what happens usually when women are attacked online. And so there were all these conversations about how you should be raped, whether it should be a steel rod, whether it should be a, you know, rosebush with thorns, all of those things. And then eventually it moved to legal cases. So, I have three legal cases against me and they are in Guwahati. I live in Delhi and so every three months I have to travel for these cases since 2016, so it’s going to be the 7th year now. Apart from that, last year somebody tried to break into my house after five months of physical stalking and actually identifying what exactly I was doing in those five months – whether I was sitting on the balcony or whether I was buying stuff from the market. And these people, some 150 – 200 phone numbers were used through Internet to tell me my exact location and to tell me whether they’re going to rape me or throw acid and eventually they tried to enter my house.
So why I’m telling you this is because there are no boundaries for this sort of violence any longer. It is instigated by an army online. It is executed by an army offline. And then there are also people within these institutions in this democratic country- there are people in these institutions, who take it one level further and harass you. And if you are from a marginalized community based on your identity, you can be further targeted if you do not fall into line. Another thing that I would like to say is that this is also a time when we see an increasing corporate political nexus in mainstream media. So, which is why, we see a lot of mainstream organizations are toeing the line of the government. Some examples are just – newspapers putting out press releases – but it’s no longer restricted to that. It’s actually glorifying whatever has happened. And as we speak right now, there is a lot of investigation that is happening in the Adani case. And if you do see all the mainstream anchors talking about it, they are actually acting as PR professionals for this particular corporate group because this corporate group is so close to people in power, the political party in power. So, which is why there is consistent killing of stories, new stories, and important information within newsrooms. And so while stories are being killed and filtered all the time because of this corporate political nexus and mainstream media, there is a lot of self censoring also happening for journalists. Like I said, if I have to deal with criminal cases for the last seven years, not everybody has those resources. So what this is also leading to is that everybody is self censoring themselves all the time. They are thinking about the consequences of putting out anything in the public domain: whether they want to deal with it, do they have the resources or not, and if you do not have the resources, then it’s even more difficult.
I’ll just give you one more example: which is that if you remember in 2019, a journalist called Pawan Jaiswal in Mirzapur, in Uttar Pradesh (UP) had done a story on how children are being served roti and salt as part of midday meal program instead of being served some nutritious food. And when he did that story, the UP government filed a case of criminal conspiracy on Pawan Jaiswal. Pawan Jaiswal was a local journalist used to freelance for various organizations and the moment this case was filed against him, the organization that he used to write for, distanced themselves from him, and said that we don’t know this person. Like we know that the revenue model of mainstream media now is that they have shut down all the news bureaus and they totally rely on a number of local journalists and pay them per news item that they submit. And so, which is why most of them do not have press cards, do not have a steady source of income. Pawan Jaiswal was also running a grocery store and so the UP government said that because he’s running a grocery store he did the story. Now this story is not some big scam that is being investigated against some political party. This is bare minimum, basic, ethical reporting that should have been done and no cases should have been filed. But in spite of that, when you start charging and slapping journalists and people within the space with criminal cases, it takes a longer time in the court of law to fight them. And it’s so unfortunate that Pawan lost his life last year also because he did not have money to pay for his medical expenses, forget supporting himself and the court of law.
Uttanshi
Thank you for sharing that, Neha. And also to speak about your experience as a journalist at a time like this, when we are trying to make sure that these stories are not unheard of, that these stories don’t get hidden in these active efforts by the state to hide them. And, you know, I’m just thinking about how, going back to your previous point, about how there are different forms of protests, there are different ways by which people are protesting and I’m thinking how, you know, certain professions by themselves have become an act of resistance. You know, as you were speaking, it really just seems like you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing professionally, right? As a journalist, I imagine that should be your role. That is something that you should be doing and you’re doing it well. You’re researching stories, you’re writing stories, you’re making sure that people are reading these stories. All of that seems like something that’s a part of your profession and what you do professionally. And I’m just thinking about how that by itself has become a way of protesting. And to that end, I really just wanted to ask you, how do you navigate this challenge? I presume that, there is definitely a challenge that you face as a journalist, your ethics of journalism as opposed to, this very real fear of safety, that has been a real concern for you given your own experiences, the experiences of other journalists in the country.
Neha
OK, so let me start by saying that as a journalist, in spite of all that has been happening and legal cases and physical attack, I’d still want to say that I live in Delhi, I write in English, and I do have caste and religion privileges right now in this country. And so that still sort of gives me some padding. If I say something, there are five people who would listen to what is happening. And that is something that is not available to most journalists, right now, as we speak because like I said, most news organizations in the corporate media have shut down their news bureaus. And so anything that is coming from the ground to us, is coming through extremely lowly paid journalists who, for some disease, are actually still putting themselves out and facing risks every day. I would just really say that because there is no other way of putting it. I mean because you don’t get a salary, you are not protected, you are paid per item whatever you submit Like one of the greatest examples of this is COVID-19: when a number of workers were walking back home, we saw the media going out and capturing this hours of footage of people walking back home. But we don’t know what happened to those people once they reached home. That’s because a lot of local journalists who would use public transport, would require resources to actually go from one village to the other to tell us what is happening with those workers, they did not have the resources. And additionally, if you see at the first three months of the lockdown in 2020, in just three months there were 55 criminal cases filed against journalists from, you know, very remote towns and cities under Disaster Management Act, under Epidemics, Diseases Act, – just for reporting that there is lack of PPE kits or oxygen supply or stuff like that. And so why I’m talking about this is because these are the things that still are not part of the larger conversation about either journalism or about freedom of expression or even the breakdown of democratic structures. These are the people who bring out news and they are nowhere in this conversation. And so at that level, I would really say that… you know when people say why are people say why are some journalists still reporting? I would really say that they are all diseased. There’s no other reason why we are continuing to do this, because you cannot save yourself, your family members are under attack and there is no one, absolutely no one, determined to stop this. So in this scheme of things, I would really say I am quite privileged in that manner. Other than that there are various examples, like for me one story that I had done in 2019 on how there were thousands of encounters in 2017 in UP once Yogi Adityanath became the chief minister; and then they started putting out the number of these encounters as part of their achievement of the government every six months. And so they would say, after 2017 the first six months 1200 encounters were conducted. And there is absolutely, again, no conversation because now that number has risen to almost 7000, and out of which some 1200 people have lost their lives in police encounters. So once I met some 14-15 families of the people who had been killed and they were showing me pictures of how the dead bodies were mutilated, skulls were broken – I was out. And so these were clearly not chance encounters but properly planned killings by the police. These were extrajudicial killings and there was no inquiry. Once the story came out, the top cop from UP called me up to say “till when are you going to do this? I know where your mother lives”. So the impunity and the audacity at the same time to say something like this… maybe I don’t know till when am I going to continue… but there are lots of people who have lots of things to be responsible for and so they can’t go ahead with this. So it is absolutely difficult now to do any sort of groundwork. Also because, I would say… earlier I used to say as a freelancer – my strength is to be a freelancer because in times of people killing important investigations and news inside newsrooms, if one organization would refuse to publish my story, then I would give it to the other, and if the second wouldn’t, then I would I would give it to the third, so the story would eventually come out. But as we speak, in the last five years this has changed because now the organizations that have the money to publish and the resources to publish important critical stuff are not going to publish it and the ones who do not have the resources will publish, but that’s not going to support the kind of in depth investigation or in depth reporting that you want to do.
Sanchi
Yeah, that does sound like a difficult situation to be in, Neha. And just want to say, I don’t know if it makes a difference right now, but thank you for all the work that you’ve been doing. And since we are currently in a political climate where it is absolutely important for us to be raising our voices. I am then thinking about what happens next and how do we make sure that we as citizens can help out or maybe ensure the safety of dissenters. And do you think you could point us to some strategies of holding the state accountable that can be undertaken while ensuring the safety of anybody who tries to speak up?
Neha
So what I would like to say is that, unfortunately, right now we’re only paying attention to extreme situations and extremely draconian laws that are used against the centers – and also high profile cases, not that they’re not important, But I would like to say that this is happening every day in every district. And how we define a dissenter, that in itself is actually so subjective according to the state, right? You could just be from a certain community and you may appear to be a dissenter to the state, regardless of you not doing anything that typically qualifies as protest or dissent in their eyes. I’ll give you an example, for example in UP, there are, again, in the first one year of the Yogi government, there were close to 150 NSA cases slapped against the people. This is the National Security Act and this was slapped against all of them. Most of them were working class Muslims or OBCs or people from the Dalit community, who were slapped with NSA, which is as draconian. Of course, all of you would know that the law is actually defined as no vakil, no appeal, no dalil. So the government is going to set up a body to decide whether you should be in jail or not. And so it’s not very easy to challenge it. And so I remember meeting a family in Bahraich in UP, again. The day I had gone – this was the family of a rickshaw puller who used to work in Delhi and his family was in Bahraich – and that day it was raining. His five children, his wife, were sitting outside their mud house. And of course the thatched roof was broken and there was a clay stove there, and on the clay stove there were five potatoes boiling with water and salt and haldi (turmeric). And that is all that they had to eat that evening. And this person, these children, their father, were supposed to be a threat to national security and had been in jail for the last eight months. So this is the kind of brutality of the state that is being unleashed on its citizens on the basis of which community you belong to… there could be no reason, but you will have to face this. And I think as all of us, as citizens, I think it’s really important to keep an eye out for these people who are just there – that person was just in jail. Nobody knew about it. And so it’s really important to keep an eye out each time there’s a figure, even if you see some figure, something that seems fake on WhatsApp just Google and figure out what is happening where. If we don’t keep an eye out for this, slowly we’ll see that a lot of people, anyway, are behind bars or facing the consequences for it. And there is no way to compensate for that any longer.
Even right now as we speak: for example, Khalid Saifi who’s been in jail since February 2020, and has been accused in Delhi riots and was an active member of the anti CAA protests. If you see when he was arrested, his three children, two teenage boys, another daughter was five (who is eight now) – how are those children? Those children have not been able to attend school for the last two years because they were being bullied in school by other children because of the charges that have been slapped against Khalid Saifi; their family has no income any longer. They have no resources. And what is the compensation for this? Who’s going to compensate for all these years that the children have lost? Who’s going to compensate for the mental health trauma that they’re facing so early in their lives? And they’ll have to live with that all through their adulthood. So these are the costs that people are paying for the kind of liberties I think some of us are still enjoying by being able to speak up. I think we need to listen to other people more and be at least… I don’t know. I don’t have anything to say except that just pay attention to what is happening around you. I think there’s been so much fatigue in the last few years. We’re all fatigued one after the other: there have been assaults on us in various phases and so a fatigue has set in amongst us and I think we have to shake that off a bit.
Uttanshi
Thank you so much for saying that, Neha. You know, and I think my biggest learning that I take away from this conversation with you is that it’s important that we do what we need to do in order to be able to get over that fatigue, to not look away when it’s not something as big as the worst case scenario happening. I think, especially when you spoke about how it catches our attention only when it’s extremely violent or when it is extremely regressive is not good enough. And how it got there because before each such instance there were hundreds of instances that we just chose not to look in the direction of, looked away saying that this is a small thing, it keeps happening, it’s something that’s casual. Thank you for this and for all the other very thought provoking instances that you have shared with us, stories from your life and your work that you have shared with us. It’s really been illuminating. And with this we come to an end for this episode. But before we close off Neha, I want to ask you if there are any closing thoughts, any parting thoughts that you would like to leave with our listeners before we close this episode?
Neha
You know, what I want to say still is that I’m still very hopeful about how things are right now in our country. Because even when we’ve seen, for the last almost 8-9 years, consistent assault on our rights, on our fundamental rights, on our rights of expression, on our right to dissent, all of that. Inspite of that we have consistently seen some sort of resistance from some quarter. So if there was an anti CAA protest, there was a farmers’ protest as well. If there was an award Wapsi protest, there was also Not in my name protest. If there was a Rohit Vemula, there were many other people, there was a Umar Khalid as well. So that really, really makes me hopeful. The fact that people are not taking it lying down. Someone from some quarter is always ready to stand up, to mobilize people and to say that whatever is happening is not right. And that is something that really gives me strength and makes me very hopeful. And I think we should all draw our strength from there.
Sanchi
Thank you so much for saying that, Neha. And this is not to romanticize anything that’s happening in India right now, but listening to you today, it has really been inspirational and it’s really been really powerful to have you with us today. Thank you so much for your time. I think all of our listeners will agree if I say that we’re taking a lot back. So thank you so much for joining us today!
[Outro]
Uttanshi
Thank you for tuning in today. Please leave us any questions you may have as voice notes on Anchor or in our DMs. We would love to hear from you. This podcast is brought to you by One Future Collective.
Sanchi
Yes, thank you so much. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram and Facebook at One Future Collective and at One Future_India on Twitter. And keep an eye out for future episodes out on every second and fourth Thursday of the month. Until next time!
[Outro ends]