News Wrap

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Of late there have been lofty articles and debates on the BJP, Congress, CPI, CPI (M), CPI (M-L) debacle in the West Bengal Assembly polls, of April–May 2021. The sovereign nation ideas of Mohammad Ali Jinnah would only expedite united action by secessionists, splitists and Islamic federations for the Balkanisation of what remains of India that is Bharat, from Jammu and Kashmir to Southern India. The military powers in Pakistan are still suffering from complexes, after India in 1971, snatched military power from East Pakistan, and handed freedom to Mukti Bahini, for the creation of Bangladesh. In 1947, the Bengali Hindu intelligentsia, did not oppose the creation of East Pakistan, as in a united sovereign Bengal, the likes of Roy, Sen, Basu, Bhattacharjee and Banerjee would not have had the remotest chance of becoming the chief minister. Left consciousness, complete left unity and honesty would govern political events. Many vociferous chief ministers would be in prison, when there is legal cognizance taken of money trails.

Poll Bribery In Kerala
Kerala BJP president K Surendran was named as the first accused in a poll bribery case, registered by Sultan Bathary police station, in Wayanad district, of Kerala, on 17 June 2021. Former state president of the Janadhipathya Rashriya Party, C K Jana, is the second accused in the First Information Report registered under IPC Sections 17be (punishment for bribery) and 17if (punishment for under influence in an election).

Genocidal Subjugation
Since late 15th Century, white European colonialists successfully perpetrated genocides on Native Americans. The original inhabitants of North and South America were physically eliminated. The culture of the original inhabitants was erased and comodified. A recent study estimates that in 1492 the indigenous population of the Americans was around 60 million. By way of comparison, Europeans population at the time was 70 to 88 million. Once the Europeans reached the Americas, about 56 million Native Americans had died. The wholesale elimination of 90 percent of the American population, represented 10 percent of the global population at the time. The settlements and civilisations of the Native Americans were destroyed by murder, slavery and diseases like small pox, measles and the bubonic plague. Unlike the Europeans, the Natives had no immunity to such diseases. Perhaps the first widespread modern usage of biological warfare, small pox was used as a weapon by the colonialists. Those who survived were herded off to reservations, far from their ancestral lands, to eke out wheat ever existence they could. Thousands more died from exposure, hunger and exhaustion during these treks.

“Civilising these savages” was a massive campaign to erase the identity of the America’s Natives, so that they could be recast in the mould of their European oppressors and made “useful”. Across North America, Native children were forcibly removed from their parents and imprisoned in Indian Residential Schools, where they were made to convert to Christianity, wear only western clothes, and were forbidden to speak their native languages. If they were caught speaking any language, other than English, punishments ranged from beatings to having pins stuck in their tongues. These schools, run by the state and the church, were rife with physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Countless children who entered them never came out again. In Canada, this continued until the Mid–1970s.

Repeated claims of abduction, abuse and murder were ignored. Recently a mass grave, containing the remains of 215 children was discovered on the grounds of what once the largest such school in Canada, the Kamploops school in British Colombia. The truth and reconciliation commission of 2008, after probing the accusations, concluded that Canada’s abduction and education policy, amounted to “cultural genocide.” In the over 120 year history of the colonial schools, at least 3,200 children had died in these mini-concentration camps for children. Countless thousands had been subjected to repeated sexual abuse. The commission was allowed to investigate only 139, of the over 1300 such cases, that existed across Canada. The Canadian government refused funds for probe into allegations of mass graves. The commission wrapped up, after presenting its findings in 2015. The Report is entitled “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials”.

Broken and bleeding after centuries of state sponsored abuse, rates of crime and alcoholism are far higher in indigenous communities, than in any other ethnic group Canada. While indigenous children made up less than 8 percent of Canada’s child population, according to 2016 census data, they make up a staggering 52 percent of all children in foster care. The murder and disappearance rate for indigenous women, twice marginalised by their ethnicity and gender, is twelve times that of other women in Canada.

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Frontier
Vol. 54, No. 7, Aug 15 - 21, 2021