People’s SAARC Regional Convergence 2014

 

People’s SAARC Regional Convergence 2014

22-24 November 2014

Kathmandu, Nepal

 

South Asian people's movements (women, youth, peasants, labour, socially marginalised groups) and civil society organisations have planned a convergence  from 22 to 24 November 2014 in the form of People's SAARC or people's assembly, parallel to the 18th SAARC Summit in Kathmandu, Nepal. 

 

The overarching theme will be ‘People’s Movements Uniting South Asia for Deepening Democracy, Social Justice & Peace’. The people of South Asia are coming together at People’s SAARC 2014 challenging systematic marginalisation of people, groups, communal division and fragmentation and degradation of environment and impact of climate change through widespread voicing of ideas and experiences and by forging solidarity across the borders.  Thus the theme of this year’s People’s SAARC Convergence is focused on People’s Movements Uniting South Asia for Deepening Democracy, Social Justice & Peace.

 

Key Areas, Issues and Concerns:

·         Alternative Regionalism

·         Food, Food Security, Food Sovereignty and Trade 

·         Migration, Freedom of Movement, Human Trafficking 

·         Attack on Labour, Expanding Labour Rights regionally

·         Climate Change, Ecological Justice, Economic Cooperation, Livelihoods

·         Gender Rights, Women's Rights, Women and Armed Conflicts

·         Human Rights, Social Justice, Exclusions, Caste Discriminations, Politics of Hatred (Protection of Minority Rights and strengthening ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural pluralism and diversity)

·         Refugees and Indigenous People's Rights

·         Sustainable Development

·         Peace, Democracy, Rule of Law, De-Militarisation (expanding spaces for civil society and social movements)

·         Tax Justice, Fiscal Responsibility, and Corporate Accountability

·         Community control over natural resources, resource commons, water commons

·         Energy security for people

In this context we are planning to have side events on ‘Universal Social Security’, ‘Sexuality, Exclusion and Resistance in the South Asian Context’ and ‘Conflict led challenges and way towards sustainable peace for women of South Asia: Discussing women’s ESCRs’. People’s SAARC while challenging systematic marginalization of groups, it is important to acknowledge the concerns of the South Asian women that has not achieved much attention at national, regional and international economic growth policies and development agendas. To take these issues forward it was felt that side events should be organized with widest possible participation from all.

 

For more information on People’s SAARC: 

www.peoplesaarc.org and www.psaarcindia.wordpress.com

Concept note is attached for more detailed information on the same.

 

 

SOURCE: http://www.peoplesaarc.org/index.php/press-room/people-s-saarc-events/people-s-saarc-2014/42-concept-note-people-s-saarc-2014

REMEMBERING M.S.S. PANDIAN

Monday, November 17, 2014

Remembering Pandian

BY SANKARAN KRISHNA

MSS Pandian 

Generosity. That’s the first word that came to mind when I thought about how to write this difficult reminisce on Pandian’s passing away. Though I had been aware of his many essays in the EPW and had read “The Image Trap” by then, I met Pandian only in the early 1990s when I walked into his office at the MIDS in Adayar. Dressed casually in his bush-shirt and slacks, the thin and boyish guy with a scraggly mustache was a bit hard to square with the mental image I had of him. I was just beginning my research into India’s intervention into Sri Lanka and Pandian opened up a world of possibilities for me. He suggested names and phone numbers of people I should meet; groups in Chennai and elsewhere that I was unaware of; and books and articles to read. His interest in my research – and we met regularly almost every summer thereafter while also exchanging many emails – was deep and genuine. Most importantly, he helped me think otherwise than the nation. His take on Dravidian politics; on the alleged peripheries – both regional and intellectual- of the heartland and the mainstream; on the multiple and varied idioms of resistance to majoritarianism; on the ways in which support for the Sri Lankan Tamil cause in Tamil Nadu was something that could not be adequately understood or calibrated through just the formal domain of politics; and a host of other issues enriched and complicated my thinking in all sorts of ineffable ways. Looking back, what is striking was his patience with me. Especially at the beginning, I had unconsciously and completely ingested a very mainstream and Delhi-centric narrative of India’s intervention into Sri Lanka. Helping me see that, and in a wider sense to “rescue history from the nation,” was something Pandian did almost imperceptibly and as a consequence of our equitable conversations. Most importantly, all our interactions and arguments were marked by his generosity towards and affection for what I was doing.

The students and others you met at Pandian’s office in MIDS were different from the ones you might run into at the offices of most of India’s intellectuals. Very often they were more comfortable in Tamil or in regional languages rather than English, and were not part of that comfortable upper-caste/middle-class/English-educated habitus that dominates our academy. Pandian interacted with them no differently than with the twice-born, whether domestic or NRI or authentically firangi. The outpouring of remembered generosity by a wide diversity of his students from various places – MIDS, JNU, Manoa and elsewhere – is the real testament to his innate egalitarianism and collegiality. And of his respect for interesting ideas and people, irrespective of their provenance in terms of class, accent, language, or caste.  

As shown by his contrarian stance on the cartoon controversy, by his daring resignation from MIDS to become an academic libero for a while in the early 2000s, and his refusal to accept certain regions, cultures, civilizations or individuals as somehow more consequential than others, Pandian hewed to an ethic that came from both within and elsewhere. His was a distinctive voice, and a rare one in the context of India. In these biopolitical times marked by an obsessive and commodified care for the self, Pandian indulged his love for cigarettes, alcohol and the good life in full measure. I am trying very hard not to channel my frustration with his early passing into wishing he had played more by the rules. For Pandian was never about playing by the rules but more about playing with them, as he himself might have said with that delighted gleam in his eye.

SANKARAN KRISHNA

Sankaran Krishna is Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa. He has written extensively on ethnic identity and conflict and identity politics in India and Sri Lanka. Prof. Krishna is the author of Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Globalization and Postcolonialism: Hegemony and Resistance in the 21st Century, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2009.

A rebel with a cause: Good bye Comrade Sarath

·          

10 SEPTEMBER 2014

BY LIONEL BOPAGE

Comrade Sarath Justin Fernando and I met as students of the Engineering Faculty in Peradeniya campus in the late 1960s. Justin as we came to know him was from a very well-known leftist family from Kegalle. Together we were involved in university students’ issues and activities both independently and through ‘Socialist Society’, which was a student’s association affiliated at the time with the Peking wing of the Communist Party headed by comrade Shanmugathasan.

With the uprising of April 1971, comrade Justin was taken into custody and his family property in Kegalle was set on fire by the security forces and their goons. When we were held in Magazine prison in Borella, we spend some time together in one of the prison wards. He had political differences with the JVP as he had his pro-Maoist ideological views, orientated more towards organising the peasantry of Sri Lanka, which was about 70 percent of its population. He was also devoted to his religious views with his compassionate attitude towards the people who are subjected to suppression and exploitation. It took a long time for me to convince him to join the activities organised by the 1969 Engineering Batch of the Peradeniya campus. I understand he was extremely happy in associating himself with those activities later on.

While in prison our political journeys diverged. Despite this, we have remained friends and used to meet every now and then when I visited Sri Lanka. He had devoted his whole life for achieving socialism by organising the peasantry through the extremely good work done by the movement he founded ‘Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform’ (MONLAR). I personally know that through this organisation many progressive activities had been supported. The anti-capitalist and anti-neo-liberal policy platform presented by MONLAR under comrade Justin’s leadership had been widely discussed in global alternative gatherings such as World Economic Forum. Though he retired from his work as founder and leader of this movement, I know in heart and soul he was still involved with the progress of this organisation. Currently the organisation and till his untimely death Justin have been involved in agitating against perceived actions of the government to turn the country’s traditional agricultural practices to one more conducive of transnational agri-business.

I met him last in July this year when I was in Sri Lanka to attend my mother’s funeral, at a family and friends gathering organised in Rambukkana by our friend Dr Raja Wijetunga. It was a great and happy occasion where comrade Justin and his wife sang together for a while. Though he was unwell, he discussed his plans for future including publishing his memoirs. He wrote to me wishing me on my last birthday, but it was so sad to hear his passing away a short time afterwards.

I have really appreciated the positions he and his organisation took when the people of Sri Lanka were faced with crucial situations, be it the national question, neo-liberal exploitation, or destruction of natural environment. As a Sri Lankan left intellectual and activist what he did for the progress of the people of Sri Lanka will never be forgotten. The major lesson I take from his life is that there are many schools of socialist thought on addressing the socio-political and economic issues faced by the society and that all these schools need to work together in achieving our goals, rather than fighting and destroying each other and ultimately the socialist camp itself.

On a personal, he is also one of my brother in laws and I farewell comrade Justin both politically and personally. He will be missed both as a friend and a comrade whose life was devoted to making Sri Lanka a more democratic and egalitarian nation.

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Lionel Bopage, is a former General Secretary of the Peoples Liberation Front (JVP) in Sri Lanka. He appeared before the Criminal Justice Commission as the second accused in the failed JVP insurrection in 1971.

Courtesy: Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka