Activist & Journo Teesta Setalvad Talks about PEACE in Times of HATE!

Activist & Journo Teesta Setalvad Talks about PEACE in Times of HATE!

Human Rights Activist, Educationist, Journalist and Secretary of Citizens for Justice & Peace- Ms Teesta Setalvad from Mumbai talked about PEACE in Times of HATE, and interacted with the audience during a session held at Bishop Jathanna auditorium-KTC-Balmatta-Mangaluru on 25 October at 4 pm organized by Samarasa, Mangaluru

Mangaluru : Human Rights Activist, Educationist, Journalist and Secretary of Citizens for Justice & Peace- Ms Teesta Setalvad from Mumbai talked about PEACE in Times of HATE, and interacted with the audience during a session held at Bishop Jathanna auditorium-KTC-Balmatta-Mangaluru on 25 October at 4 pm organized by Samarasa, Mangaluru. The talk was attended by a packed full house comprising of students and adults, who had come to hear and interact with Ms Teesta.

A two minute silence was observed prior to the talk delivered by Teesta in memory of the departed soul of Journalist Gauri Lankesh. Addressing the audience, Teesta Setalvad said, ” Quoting Rabindranath Tagore’s poem, “Where the Mind is without Fear”, some forces are pressing down on others and values of the Indian Constitution are not followed. There are people who are threatening the citizens and taking over the country. Nobody wants to follow the Constitution. In 1947 we got freedom after our forefathers and citizens fought for nearly 300 years. A Constitution was formed, which spoke of Equality, Justice, Ideologies and fraternity. Irrespective of caste, creed and religion, India is a Country for all. Caste, Creed, and Religion should not determine a citizenship of an individual. But presently we see there is hate, discrimination and disharmony in the Country created by a bunch of people who are abusing the Constitution”

” With the present situation of unrest, inequality, disharmony, hate etc that is taking place in India, there is a need to form a Mohalla Committees to prevent communal clashes and disharmony in the nation, including Mangaluru. When the then Bombay (now Mumbai) was burning in communal clashes in 1992-93, its neighbouring Bhiwandi once known for communal clashes was calm. It was owing to forming Mohalla Committees by a police official named Suresh Khopade involving all community members. The committee members were in touch with the police and administration on daily basis to prevent clashes. Whenever rumour mongering started and whenever the build up of conflict began the committee members came together and put ‘moral weight and pressure’ on police and administration to observe peace and rule of the law. So the similar experiment should be emulated in other places too for peace and harmony” added Teesta.

She further said, “India is threatened by forces fostering fear, festering hatred and attacking reason. Discarding all the differences and breaking all the bondage, let the minds be free to visualize a society free of evils, ills, hatred, jealousy, greed, lust, pride etc. which are all ill effects of humans’ adverse thinking arising out of bad collateral thoughts and behaviour. Citizens have been threatened very badly, and are not allowed to ask any question pertaining to the present system, equality and injustice. Our Country which belongs to everyone, irrespective of caste, Creed and Religion has gone back to a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm. Today the administration and police are buckling under those pressure of a negative kind that are trying to break down the rule of law. In the meantime, peace loving people like me and you who are not looking forward for any kind of hate and violence, are forced to remain in silence.”

“We can’t keep quite anymore the way the things are going on in the country. It’s about time that we all raise our voices and speak against injustice, Violence, and whenever indignity is propagated. Let’s speak out peacefully against them, and make India a better Nation. There are many other issues that are haunting our Nation and not followed as per the Constitution. A few forces do not want us to question the structures of inequity and injustice and they want us to believe that questioning the regime in power is disloyal to the nation. Why keep quite-We need to question this hatred and communal disharmony. We need to ask- Don’t we have Fundamental Rights? The Rights of Equality; Rights to Freedom of Faith; Right to live without discrimination. It is time that we all unite and look forward for a better nation with freedom for all, that we got 70 years ago” added Ms Teesta Setalvad.

A few questions on Moral Policing, Communal Disharmony, and Discrimination by Police were posed at Ms Teesta, who answered them all with facts, and urged the youth and others to stand up and fight against such issues, by forming organizations or committees and putting forth those issues in front of the Police Commissioner or DC, and fight till justice is served.

About Teesta Setalvad :

Teesta Setalvad (born 9 February 1962 ) is an Indian civil rights activist and journalist. She is the secretary of Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), an organisation formed for fighting for justice for the victims of communal violence in the state of Gujarat in 2002. CJP is a co-petitioner seeking a criminal trial of Narendra Modi, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat and the current Prime minister of India and sixty-two other politicians and government officials for complicity in the Gujarat violence of 2002 and whose names did not figure in any of the FIRs /charge sheets that formed the subject matter of the various Session Trials regarding the riots at that point of time. Four of the accused since then were charge-sheeted, of whom Maya Kodnani and Babu Bajrangi have already been convicted.

Born into a Gujarati Hindu family, Setalvad is the daughter of Atul Setalvad, a Mumbai-based lawyer, and his wife Sita Setalvad. Her paternal grandfather was M. C. Setalvad, India’s first Attorney General. Setalvad is married to Javed Anand, a journalist turned minority rights activist. They have two children, daughter Tamara and son Jibran.

Teesta has authored the chapter When Guardians Betray: The Role of the Police in the book Gujarat: The making of a tragedy, edited by Siddharth Varadarajan and published by Penguin. The book is about the 2002 Gujarat riots. Teesta, with her husband Javed Anand is the co-founder and co-editor of the magazine Communalism Combat which fosters communal harmony by attacking entities propounding communal violence. Teesta testified at the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom on 10 June 2002 against the BJP-led Gujarat government’s role in the post-Godhra communal violence. Teesta is a staunch feminist and campaigns for rights and privileges of Dalits, Muslims and women. She heads the Mumbai-based NGO Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP). She is one of the founding members of Journalists Against Communalism. She is General Secretary of People’s Union for Human Rights (PUHR), and Member of the Pakistan India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy.

A few of her Recognitions include: PUCL Journalism for Human Rights Award 1993; Chameli Devi Jain Award for outstanding Woman journalist 1993; Human Rights Award of the Dalit Liberation Education Trust in 2000; The 2003 Nuremberg International Human Rights Award; 2004 M.A. Thomas National Human Rights Award from the Vigil India Movement; The 2006 Nani A Palkhivala Award, given by a trust run by the Tata Group; Padma Shri in 2007, awarded for Public Affairs in Maharashtra by the Government of India; 2009 FIMA Excellence Award – given by Federation of Indian Muslim Associations in Kuwait; and Pax Christi International Peace Award (jointly with Australian artist Eddie Kneebone), given by the Evangelical group “Pax Christi”.