Before Partition, there was nothing unusual about a Muslim family celebrating at a Hindu shrine.

 “Pre-colonial identities were fuzzy, unclear,” says Ali Usman Qasmi, a historian who works at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).contradiction in a Hindu visiting a Muslim shrine or vice versa. The Hindu/Muslim, as we understand them today, was yet to be crystallised. Things began to change with the colonial state, with the arrival of modernity.

“Modernity doesn’t like this fuzziness. Identities needed to be indexed, clearly defined. They had to be determinable. People were pigeonholed according to the preconceived notions of the officers of the colonial state.

While there is no doubt that the Partition and the subsequent hostility between India and Pakistan played a major role in the hardening of the Hindu-Muslim identities, the British colonial state laid the foundation for this process, says Qasmi. The colonial census reports, for example, forced people to choose just one religion instead of reflecting the fluidity of their religious beliefs. The colonial education system, too, played its part, while dividing history into separate, impenetrable categories of “Hindu era” and “Muslim era” in Indian history, constructing the narrative of Muslims as “foreigners” on the Indian subcontinent and Hindus as “Indigenous”.

“There are multiple shades within the Sufi culture,” says Zulfiqar Ali Kalhoro, an anthropologist working with the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics in Islamabad, Pakistan. “There are different schools of thought and different philosophical debates. Broadly speaking there can be a division between orthodox and heterodox [aspects not conforming to the orthodox] form. It is the heterodox forms within Sufism that don’t follow conventional rituals. They draw followers and devotees from across different religions and sects. So, you would have Hindus and Sikhs as well, visiting their shrines. These heterodox forms, such as the ‘Malamati’ [Muslim mystic] tradition, have their own rituals, for example around music, singing and clothes.”

Rumi points out that, historically, Sufi shrines provided their devotees with an escape from the dogmatism of rituals, which is why diverse religious communities could interact there. Because of its syncretic traditions, a Sufi shrine was historically not a Muslim-specific place but rather a sacred space open to all religious groups.

There is a long history of defiance of normative gender roles at Sufi shrines. Women and men have historically intermingled in these spaces, while the transgender community has been welcomed. However, as these shrines have become more doctrinaire since the Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, many have disallowed the on-site mixing of men and women.

Another part of the adoption of stricter Muslim practices was the removal of Hindu influences from not just the Sufi shrines but from all aspects of religious, social and public life in the country.

“There was a forced amnesia on the part of the state, a planned erasure, which was organised and brutal,” says Qasmi. “The Hindu past was systematically removed.”

Sufi shrines were stripped of their Hindu influences and hundreds of Hindu temples and shrines across the country fell into neglect, resulting in squatters moving in or the buildings being demolished – while others were deliberately destroyed by mobs.

“Many of these abandoned sacred spaces, gurdwaras, temples and smadhs across Pakistan were taken over by refugees of Partition,” Iqbal Qaiser, a historian from the city of Kasur, says. “People divided these vast complexes into several residential quarters and started living there. The government, instead of protecting these historical and religious places, often turned a blind eye towards these places. Of course, you cannot blame the refugees for taking over these shrines. Having lost everything on the other side, they had no option. It was the government’s job to facilitate them and find a mechanism to protect these historical places. But nothing happened. For a lot of refugees, there was no emotional or sacred connection with the spaces they occupied. They were new to these geographies and hence did not fully understand the importance of these places in the context of their villages, towns or cities.”

In December 1992, after a Hindu-nationalist mob brought down the 16th century Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, India, hundreds of Hindu temples across Pakistan, most of which had been abandoned at the time of the 1947 Partition, were attacked in retaliation. The Neela Gumbad Valmiki Mandir, in Lahore – one of the two functioning Hindu temples in the city – was burned down, while Sitla Mandir, also in Lahore and which had been serving as the living quarters for Partition refugees from the other side of the border, was also attacked. As these attacks on historical structures unfolded, government officials quietly looked on.

With the Partition drastically reducing the population of the Hindu community in Pakistan traces of  pre-colonial, pre-modern, fluid traditions began to disappear. The tradition of Muslims revering a Hindu shrine, has continued to some extent in more remote, rural areas.

“Separation from a ‘Hindu India’ is explained as the raison d’être of a Muslim-Pakistan,” says Anam Zakaria, an oral historian who is the author of ‘Footprints of Partition and Between the Great Divide.’ “…The ‘Hindu’ is the perennial enemy and it is imperative to retain the purity of religion, and of nationhood from it. It is through this reflection, and contradiction of the ‘Hindu other’, that the self is created in Pakistan. Unfortunately, the situation is not much different in India, where the ‘Muslim other’ defines the ‘Hindu Indian’ identity.”

On the other side of the Partition divide, “India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged as a hegemon in Indian politics since 2014 and aggressively implemented its ideology that revolves around the idea of Hindutva,” says Delhi-based author and journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani.

How colonialism eroded Pakistan’s history of religious fluidity | History News | Al Jazeera

Dalit activist Nodeep Kaur  comes from a family of activists and her parents have been associated with farmers’ union in Punjab. In 2014, her mother Swaranjeet Kaur led protest demanding justice for a minor Dalit girl who was gang raped in their village. She faced multiple death threats.

“I am who I am today because of my mother. Our society is not created equal, there is so much caste based bias and if you are a woman, and a woman from my background Dalit, its a bigger challenge. From a very young age I learnt to fight not just for myself but for others as well,” said Nodeep. She told IPS, “I am a woman, I am Dalit and I am giving voice to the people who are often very easily suppressed.”

During the lockdown in 2020, Nodeep joined a local workers’ rights organization called Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan (MAS) in the Kundli Industrial Area in Haryana. In January Nodeep was accused of allegedly manhandling management and staff of an industrial area during a protest and also assaulting the police team.

Nodeep had been participating in the farmers’ protest against the central government’s new agricultural reforms as well. She was taken into custody and accused in three separate cases and was charged under sections of the Indian law which included, attempt to murder, extortion, unlawful assembly, rioting and criminal intimidation. She has been granted bail, but her cases are still pending.

Nodeep has become one of the strongest voices that is leading the farmers protest in the country.

“This solidarity that you see today between the farmers and the working class is so powerful. Can you imagine what all can happen now that we are all united and standing up for each other?” says Nodeep. “My battle started with fighting for unpaid wages and unfair treatments of the working class in an Industrial area, and from there, today, I am here supporting and giving my voice to the farmers. I don’t know how or when it happened, but they call me their leader, and I am not going to let them down.”

“Do you know why we call Nodeep our leader? She is just like us farmers, strong and resilient. Nothing can stop her, and when she goes up on the stage and talks, everybody listens,” says *Kiranjeet, a 57-year old farmer from Punjab. “Nodeep is the future, we need youngsters like her, and so many other sisters who came out to support us. When one woman speaks, so many others join her. Our husbands have gone back home, its crop cutting season and now we are going to be here for the next few months, it’s our right and our fight,” 

The farmers protest is considered to be one of the biggest protests that has taken place in india, not just for its size and magnanimity but also because it has put women in the forefront who are now often seen leading the protest.

“This is a revolution, we are here to raise our voices, if we don’t do this today, what will our future generations have,” says *Ratinder Kaur, a 65-year-old farmer from Punjab. “How can anyone tell us we can’t participate? We women are farmers too, we go to the field, we farm, we do other labour incentive work and we also look after our families,”

OXFAM states that nearly 80% of the full-time workers on Indian farms are women, they comprise 33% of the agricultural labor force and 48 % of the self-employed farmers yet only about 13% women own land. The agrarian societies in India are extremely patriarchal societies, characterized by deeply entrenched feudal structures where women and men rarely have equal access to resources. Gender based discrimnation continues to thrive in the country in different ways, for the women farmers in India, they are yet to be recognized as farmers in Indian policies, ”thereby denying them of institutional supports of the bank, insurance, cooperatives, and government departments,” says OXFAM.

The farmers protest is not the first time women in India took on leadership roles in both political movements and mass protests. Women constituted a significant proportion of street protesters during the anti-CAA protests in the country since December 2019. The biggest challenge in India however remains how to transform their leadership into equal representations in high-level government positions, without gender, caste and religious bias. The very idea that the farmers movement in the country is transforming women’s presence and influence within their own patriarchal and often caste based biased set ups, there is no pushing them back into a space of invisibility.

“Without women there is no revolution,” says Nodeep. “We women have gone through so much, have fought so much, have survived so much, they thought they could put inside a prison and I will keep quiet. I am here to fight and I am here to stay, come what may, they have made their people’s leader, and I am not going to let them down.”

People’s Leader: A Dalit Woman Becomes The Voice of Farmers In India | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

A third of $4.3 trillion in billionaire wealth gains since 1990 have come during the last 13 months of the pandemic.  

Between 1990 and April 2021, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires increased 19-fold, from $240 billion in today’s dollars to $4.56 trillion in 2021. 

Between March 18, 2020, and April 12, 2021,the collective wealth of American billionaires leapt by $1.62 trillion, or 55 percent, from $2.95 trillion to $4.56 trillion. Billionaires’ huge pandemic-era wealth gains have come amid the past 13 months of coronavirus misery. During those same 13 months, over 30 million Americans fell ill from COVID, over 560,000 died from it and about 77 million lost jobs.

America’s 719 billionaires now hold over four times more wealth ($4.56 trillion) than all the roughly 165 million Americans in society’s bottom half ($1.01 trillion). In 1990, the situation was reversed—billionaires were worth $240 billion and the bottom 50% had $380 billion in combined wealth.

As of April 12, there were six American “centi-billionaires”—individuals each worth at least $100 billion. That’s bigger than the size of the economy of each of 13 of the nation’s states.

1. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, almost a “double-centi-billionaire” with a net worth of nearly $197 billion, is up 74 percent over the last 13 months. If he was still married to his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, together they would be worth another $60 billion or so—giving the couple a net worth of a quarter trillion dollars. 

2. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and Space-X, with $172 billion, up an astounding 599 percent during the pandemic.

3. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, worth $130 billion, up 33 percent since March 2020.

4. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, has $113.5 billion, a fortune that more than doubled (up 108 percent) in 13 months.

5. Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett is worth $101 billion, an increase of 50 percent during the pandemic.

6. Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, is also worth $101 billion, up 71 percent since March 2020.

In the war of words between the war-mongers and the anti-war movement in the build-up to the Iraq invasion, the name Denis Halliday should not be forgotten. An interview with him posted on the Dissident Voice website is an informative read. 

As an Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday saw at first hand the devastating impact of sanctions policy had had on the Iraqi population and he was eventually to resign his position when the UN Security Council refused to lift sanctions. 

In his answers to the questions posed to him, Halliday exhibits what humanitarianism really means.

 “…I think the United States and its populus, who vote these governments in, need to understand that the children and the people of Iraq are just like the children of the United States and England and their people. They have the same dreams, same ambitions of education and employment and housing and vacations and all the things that good people care about. We’re all the same people and we cannot sit back and think somehow, “We don’t know who they are, they’re Afghans, they’re Iranians, they’re Iraqis. So what? They’re dying. Well, we don’t know, it’s not our problem, this happens in war.” I mean, all that sort of rationale as to why this is unimportant.

And I think that aspect of life in the sanctions world continues, whether it’s Venezuela, whether it’s Cuba, which has been ongoing now for 60 years. People are not aware or don’t think in terms of the lives of other human beings identical to ourselves here in Europe or in the United States.

It’s a frightening problem, and I don’t know how it can be resolved. We now have sanctions on Iran and North Korea. So the difficulty is to bring alive that we kill people with sanctions. They’re not a substitute for war – they are a form of warfare…”

Halliday is asked “…how can the UN address the problem of a powerful, aggressive country like the United States that systematically violates international law and then abuses its veto and diplomatic power to avoid accountability?”

He answers, “I think the UN is doomed. The tragedy is that the five veto powers are the very member states that violate the Charter, violate human rights conventions, and will not allow the application of the ICC to their war crimes and other abuses. On top of that, they are the countries that manufacture and sell weapons, and we know that weapons of war are possibly the most profitable product you can produce. So their vested interest is control, is the military capacity, is interference. It’s a neocolonial endeavor, an empire in reality, to control the world as the way they want to see it. Until that is changed and those five member states agree to dilute their power and play an honest role, I think we’re doomed. The UN has no capacity to stop the difficulties we’re faced with around the world…The tragedy is that the decisions of the Security Council are binding decisions. Every member state has got to apply and respect those decisions. So, if you violate a sanctions regime imposed by the Council as a member state, you’re in trouble. The General Assembly resolutions are not binding.”

Halliday spent 34 years as an UN official so his opinion of it and its future is to be valued.

“… in reality, the UN carries very little cachet nowadays to send a UN mission into a country like Myanmar or Afghanistan. I think we have no power left, we have no influence left, because they know who runs the organization, they know who makes the decisions. It’s not the Secretary-General. It’s not people like me. We are dictated to by the Security Council…”

“…The League of Nations failed, and the UN was the next best hope and we have deliberately turned our backs upon it, neglected it and distrusted it. When we get a good Secretary General like Hammarskjold, we murder him. He was definitely killed, because he was interfering in the dreams of the British in particular, and perhaps the Belgians, in Katanga. It’s a very sad story, and I don’t know where we go from here…”

 More than 42 million people in the US – roughly one in six adults – hold student debt, which averages roughly $30,000 for a four-year undergraduate degree.

Workers on zero-hours contracts and other insecure jobs are twice as likely to have died of Covid-19 as those in other professions, according to a report from the Trades Union Congress.

 The research reveals stark inequalities in the workplace.

Those on the frontline of the pandemic, such as care workers, nurses and delivery drivers, were at a higher risk of death. It said many of these key workers were in insecure work, such as zero-hours contracts and agency employment, landing them with a “triple whammy” of no sick pay, fewer rights and endemic low pay, while having to shoulder more risk of infection. Insecure jobs were defined using occupations with a higher proportion of workers employed on contracts that did not guarantee regular hours or income, or low-paid self-employment.

Covid-19 mortality rates among male workers in insecure jobs was 51 per 100,000 people aged 20-64, compared with 24 out of 100,000 in more secure work. For female staff the rate was 25 per 100,000, compared with 13 per 100,000 in higher-paying secure work.

Sectors such as care, leisure, and occupations such as labouring, factory and warehouse work have the highest rates of insecure work, compared with managerial, professional and administrative roles, which have some of the lowest. Insecure workers account for one in nine of the total workforce, with women, disabled people and BAME workers more likely to be in precarious roles.

The union body said the lack of proper sick pay was forcing those in insecure jobs to choose between protecting their lives and putting food on the table. The UK has one of the lowest rates of sick pay in Europe and nearly 2 million workers, including many in insecure work, do not earn enough to qualify for it.

Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, said the government had failed to bring forward an employment bill promised in 2019 to bolster workers’ rights and legal protections. She said urgent action was required to tackle insecure employment practices and support low-paid workers.

“Lots of them are the key workers we all applauded – like social care workers, delivery drivers and coronavirus testing staff. This must be a turning point,” she said. “If people can’t observe self-isolation when they need to, the virus could rebound. No one should have to choose between doing the right thing and putting food on the table.”

Workers in insecure jobs twice as likely to die of Covid, TUC research finds | Zero-hours contracts | The Guardian

As part of Wall Street’s “relentless push to influence decision-making” in Washington, D.C., the powerful financial sector spent a record $2.9 billion on campaign donations and lobbying in the 2020 election cycle, according to Americans for Financial Reform (AFR). The spending detailed in AFR’s report likely does not represent Wall Street’s total contributions, the organization noted, because $1.05 billion in dark money, with unknown original sources, was spent on the 2020 federal elections.

 The historic sum was spent by Wall Street executives, employees, and trade groups, and included campaign contributions as well as lobbying expenses was to ensure lawmakers pass “policy that makes the already wealthy richer, and the rest of us poorer,” regardless of which party is in power. 

Wall Street Gave More Money During 2020 Election Than Any Campaign Season in US History | Common Dreams News

 nearly 362,000 people have died of Covid-19 in Brazil, trailing only the United States with its 565,000 deaths.

 Doctors Without Borders denounced what it called the Brazilian government’s “failed Covid-19 response,” warning of a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“After accounting for over a quarter of global Covid-19 deaths last week, Brazil does not have an effective plan in place to deal with the pandemic,” the international medical charity, known by its French acronym, MSF, stated in a blog post. “The pandemic in the country has become politicized, and the government has not adopted science-based measures to try to bring it under control.” 

MSF international president Dr. Christos Christou said that “public health measures have become a political battlefield in Brazil. As a result, science-based policies are associated with political opinions, rather than the need to protect individuals and their communities from Covid-19.” 

“The lack of political will to adequately respond to the pandemic is killing Brazilians in their thousands,” said MSF. “Last week, Brazilians accounted for 11% of the world’s Covid-19 infections and 26.2% global Covid-19 deaths. On 8 April, 4,249 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded in a single 24-hour period, alongside 86,652 new Covid-19 infections.”

“Last week, intensive care units were full in 21 out of 27 of Brazil’s capitals,” said MSF. “In hospitals across the country there are ongoing shortages of both oxygen, needed to treat patients who are severely and critically ill, as well as sedatives, needed to intubate critically ill patients. As a result, our teams have seen patients, who may have otherwise had a chance at survival, being left without appropriate medical care.”

Pierre Van Heddegem, emergency coordinator for MSF’s Covid-19 response in Brazil, said that “not only are patients dying without access to healthcare, but medical staff are exhausted and suffering from severe psychological and emotional trauma due to their working conditions.”

“The Brazilian authorities have overseen the unmitigated spread of Covid-19,” Christou pointed out. “Their refusal to adapt evidence-based public health measures has sent too many to an early grave. The response in Brazil needs an urgent, science-based reset.” Driving home his point once again, Christou added: “I have to be very clear in this: the Brazilian authorities’ negligence is costing lives.”

‘Humanitarian Catastrophe’: Doctors Without Borders Slams Brazil’s Covid-19 Response | Common Dreams News

 Four more talks from March 2021 –

‘Fame and Fortune‘, Mike Foster, 5th March 2021

‘FAQ Leaders and leadership‘, introduced by Paddy Shannon, 10th March 2021

‘Technocracy – Swerving A Revolution, Unless We Get There First’, Carla Dee, 12th March 2021

‘What is post-scarcity?‘, introduced by Adam Buick, 19th March 2021

(This is a discussion based on Peter Joseph’s podcast on ‘post-scarcity’. Due to technical problems the podcast recording failed, and the start of the discussion wasn’t recorded. The original podcast can be found here).

 Drivers at  Hermes, one of the UK’s largest delivery firms, say they are having to work for free for several hours a day.

 Couriers in several areas of the country say they feel compelled to “muck in” with the parcel sorting process in understaffed depots because they cannot start earning any money until it is done.

“People should not be working for free and people should not be exploited into working for free,” said the GMB union’s national officer Mick Rix.

Drivers came forward to describe the “impossible choice” they regularly face, explaining that as they get paid per delivery, they are entirely dependent on the sorting process being completed before they can start their working day. Many depots are routinely understaffed, they said, meaning the process can sometimes be lengthy. As a result, many feel compelled to go in early and help with the sorting without pay because their alternative would be to start late in the day and work until well after dark to get their deliveries done and keep up their earnings.

“There is this relationship that you find that exists in the gig economy where you think: how far do the norms go before it becomes accepted? What seems to be the acceptance here is that people are sorting parcels to ensure that they can get their deliveries out and they’re doing it for free,” said Rix.  “Sometimes you’ve got to wonder: is the success of companies such as Hermes in some respects because they can charge such a low price to clients and customers, because there’s a workforce that’s subsidising that price?” he said. “We think that is part of the model that has now got to change for the future. You can’t say you are decent companies if you are not treating people and looking after people well. People are just not going to wear that any more.”

 Meanwhile, new research by the Living Wage Foundation suggests that two-fifths of UK workers are given only short notice of their working hours, research has revealed, with lower-paid staff suffering the most during the pandemic, in a sign that precarious employment practices are widespread across the economy.

 38% of all workers – representing about 10 million people in the UK workforce – were being given less than a week’s notice of shift patterns by their employer.

In research exposing the scale of precarious work, the figures suggest that chaotic employment practices and just-in-time arrangements extend well beyond roles in hospitality, retail and warehousing into typically higher-paying professional jobs.

Short-notice periods were even more pronounced for those in jobs with variable hours or shift work built into their contracts, with 62% having less than a week to prepare for their schedule. At the extreme, 12% of this group – amounting to 7% all working adults – had less than 24 hours’ notice. Low-paid, full-time workers from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds, and those with children, were also disproportionately affected.

Laura Gardiner, the director of the Living Wage Foundation, said lack of clear notice of shift patterns meant millions of workers were being forced to make impossible choices on childcare, transport and other important aspects of family life.

Some Hermes drivers working for free for hours a day, union says | Hermes | The Guardian

Almost 40% of UK workers ‘get less than a week’s notice of shift patterns’ | Gig economy | The Guardian