Bøker av Harsh Mander

In Between Memory and Forgetting, Harsh Mander recounts the history of one of the most gruesome communal massacres since India's independence in Gujarat in 2002. This occurred under the watch of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who led the state until he went on to be elected as Prime Minister a dozen years later. Mander tells the story of the years that passed between the carnage and his elevation as Prime Minister, examining difficult questions of whether he carries guilt for the crimes, and whetheracknowledgment, remorse, reparation and justice were accomplished in the years which followed. The book emerges as a powerfully reasoned indictment of Modi's record in these years, for not just why the survivors of the carnage were denied both reconciliation and justice; but also for the rise of a series of spectacular extra-judicial killings, including of Ishrat Jahan and Sohrabuddin Sheikh. In the last section, Mander writes stories of courageous resistance to the injustice of these years, by persons within and outside government.

The summer of 2021 saw a massive rise in the number of infections and deaths fromCovid-19 in India. Even by conservative estimates, at least 1.5 million people hadlost their lives by June; several times the official figure. As in the first wave of thepandemic, this time, too, the chaos and suffering was in large measure, as HarshMander shows, due to mismanagement by an uncaring and cynical state.The first part of the book, 'Locking Down the Poor', describes the grave humanitariancrisis of 2020, which pushed the urban poor to the brink of starvation. It shows howthis was a direct consequence of public policy choices that the central governmentmade, particularly of imposing the world's longest and most stringent lockdown,with the smallest relief package. Mander brings us voices of out-of-work daily-wageand informal workers, the homeless and the destitute, all overwhelmed by hunger,humiliation and dread. From the highways and overcrowded quarantine centres, hebrings us stories of the estimated 3 crore migrant workers whose livelihoods weredestroyed, forcing them to walk hundreds of kilometres to their villages.The second part of the book, 'Burning Pyres, Mass Graves', records the horrorsof the following year, when everything from hospital beds to oxygen and essentialmedicines fell disastrously short. Mander traces the causes for these shortages to thecriminal neglect of public health in India, a situation made worse under the NarendraModi government, leading to the extortion of a beleaguered population by everyonefrom suppliers of oxygen cylinders to pharma billionaires. He holds the state culpablefor indulging in pageantry-with the PM advertising himself as a messiah-when thecountry needed to brace for the impact of the second wave.Combining ground reports with hard data and first-hand knowledge, Mander chroniclesthe greatest humanitarian catastrophe India has faced in a century, the effects of whichwill be felt for decades. This powerful, even shattering, book is a necessary record ofa national tragedy that too many of us want to forget, when remembering is our onlydefence against a similar disaster in the future.

There was one partition of the land in 1947. Harsh Mander believes that another partition is underway in our hearts and minds.How much of this culpability lies with ordinary people? What are the responsibilities of a secular government, of a civil society, and of a progressive majority? In Partitions of the Heart: Unmaking the Idea of India, human rights and peace worker Harsh Mander takes stock of whether the republic has upheld the values it set out to achieve and offers painful, unsparing insight into the contours of hate violence. Through vivid stories from his own work, Mander shows that hate speech, communal propaganda and vigilante violence are mounting a fearsome climate of dread, that targeted crime is systematically fracturing our community, and that the damage to the country's social fabric may be irreparable. At the same time, he argues that hate can indeed be fought, but only with solidarity, reconciliation and love, and when all of these are founded on fairness.Ultimately, this meticulously researched social critique is a rallying cry for public compassion, conscience and justice, and a paean to the resilience of humanity.

This feeble blemished light, this dawn mangled by night, This is not the morning we had all so longed for... -Faiz Ahmed FaizIn the two decades since the early 1990s, when India confirmed its allegiance to the Free Market, more of its citizens have become marginalized than ever before, and society has become more sharply riven than ever.In Looking Away, Harsh Mander ranges wide to record and analyse the many different fault lines which crisscross Indian society today.There is increasing prosperity among the middle classes, but also a corresponding intolerance for the less fortunate. Poverty and homelessness are also on the rise-both in urban and rural settings- but not only has the state abandoned its responsibility to provide for those afflicted, the middle class, too, now avoids even the basic impulses of sharing. And with the sharp Rightward turn in politics, minority communities are under serious threat-their very status as citizens in question-as a belligerent, monolithic idea of the nation takes the place of an inclusive, tolerant one.However, as Harsh Mander points out, what most stains society today is the erosion in the imperative for sympathy, both at the state and individual levels, a crumbling that is principally at the base of the vast inequities which afflict India. Exhaustive in its scope, impassioned in its arguments, and rigorous in its scholarship, Looking Away is a sobering checklist of all the things we must collectively get right if India is to become the country that was promised, in equal measure, to all its citizens.