This,necessarily meant from the start battling on issues of principle and commitment with the news editor and editor of publications from the mainline Indian media that included The Daily, The Indian Express and The Business India.

Writing on issue like drought and the politics of water distribution; urban housing and poverty; political accountability issues and more and more gender-related stories became my concern. As a result,  apart from her job as a professional writer, she was active with the Bombay Union of Journalists and one of the founder members of the Women and Media Committee that brought together working women journalists to raise job-related  concerns and also to raise the issue of gender-sensitivity in writing and reporting on issues concerning women in the media.

Their group contributed to the nationwide outrage/protest against the burning alive of a young widow, Roop Kanwar in a small village, Deorala in Rajasthan in Sept-October 1987. Our specific contribution was a report that extensively analysed the approach and attitude of the Hindi, Marathi, Urdu and English media to the event.

From the late eighties, the visible emergence of the fanatic, Hindu right  became frighteningly visible. The media as every other part of society was complaisant with these tendencies epitomised by the hate-speech of their leaders. Hate-speech and hate-writing, more and more, was published in the mainline media without a word of editorial censure. Monitoring this kind of hate-politics has been my professional concern and commitment over the past decade.

The state and its law and order machinery, the police, showed similar and frighteningly recurrent complaisant trends; in many cases it was not mere complaisancy but biased action or inaction. It became, in short, obvious to the keen political observer, that the single greatest threat to Indian democracy post Independence was going to assume the grab of a perversion/ manipulation of religious idenitity : communalism.

The lived experience of Indian state and society under the rule of the BJP, the politically ‘respectable face’ of the rabid, Hindu right-wing at the Centre and in three Indian states, confirms this suspicion. Since holding political power that they acquired for the second time in 1998, the discourse of violence and terror where religious minorities, women and Dalits are the immediate targets –while every free thinking and free speaking individual is a potential one –it has become clear to a persistent observer that in the Indian case, majoritarian politics of a small minority has the potential of deeply damaging and limiting the writ of the Indian Constitution and severly damaging the social, economic and pluralistic character of our country.

The culmination of hate politics within India was in 1992-93, when, following the demolition of the Babri Mosque at Ayodhya, a small town in northern India, vicious hatreds were unleashed that led a hitherto inactive populace to participate in barbaric words. And deeds.

Teesta Setalvad had covered this bleak period with two cover stories for Business India. In the course of this event, she broke a story that had international ramifications: the transcripts of police wireless messages that showed a blatant anti-minority bias within the police. It was covered by The Eye Witness,News Today, New York Times, the BBC and the CNN. The issue of bias within the police force is an issue of continued concern and extensive research. Even today, Teesta Setalvad regularly gives lectures at the regional and national centres of training for the Indian Police force on the issue of human rights generally, the need for a humane and yet professional police force untainted by preconceptions or bias.

The experience of 1992-93 led to a dissatisfaction with the ‘mainstream’ Indian media that tackled ‘tragedies’, ‘sensations’ or ‘communal crises’ only when they happened. There is little inclination to examine processes and the fallout of major social upheavals and trends. Hence the decision to launch Communalism Combat along with colleague, Javed Anand. As an individual writer and editor of a publication, Teesta Setalvad has been the individual recipient of several writers’ and human rights awards. Communalism Combat remains a journal that acts as a watchdog on the larger mainstream media, influencing the way the media looks at issues. ‘The riot in the mind festers for years before it spills into blood on the streets’ is the mission statement of the magazine. “To be the voice of sanity and reason and conscience keepers of the media’ is their moto.

Teesta Setalvad, apart from running the magazine and KHOJ –education for a plural India programme is in the forefront of the human rights movement in the country. She is at present General secretary of the People’s Union for Human Rights (PUHR) the oprgainisation’s president is Justice Hosbet Suresh.

The major contribution of CC and Teesta’s own writings have been on the issue of Implementation of the Rule of Law, Publication of the Justice Srikrishna Commission Report, Public Hearing of Riot Survivors and Punishing the Guilty. Teesta’s pathbreaking research has involved
exposing the findings of judicial commission riots post-Independence that reveal a strong anti-minority mindset and a collusion of Hindu fanatic parties.

Sabrang Communications has also built-up an extensive database -- news clippings, pamphlets, posters, books, audio and video-cassettes on the issues of hate politics, human rights and gender justice. The group has been at the forefront of advocacy and human rights campaigns, especially related to issues of justice and the rule of law (the publication of the Srikrishna Commission report and it’s implementation. One of it’s directors, Teesta Setalvad has received especial acclaim for raising the issue of communal bias among the law and order machinery, (she was responsible for tapping the police wireless messages that reflected a sharp anti-minority bias in Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993) an issue that has remained the focus of Sabrang Communications publications and public awareness campaigns. Mobilised public opinion, frequently, in defence of the rule of law and for action against those who vitiate it. (Public meetings, campaigns, publishing the Srikrishna Commission’s report).
Attempting constantly to influence the public debate not merely function with the limited numbers that we sell: Not just a magazine, a movement
Through it’s nearly decade long history, CC, Sabrang and KHOJ –the education for a plural India project  have been tracking the ominous trends in the western state of Gujarat, converted into ‘a laboratory for a Hindu rashtra (state) by the right wing, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) there. Through her analysis of Gujarat’s state textbooks, Setalvad identified the hate innuendoes and biases in blatant existence there as far back as 1999. Through five cover stories, CC tried to warn Indians of the potential for disaster in Gujarat especially since 1998. It was with deep anguish therefore that we published our report, “Genocide—Gujarat 2002” authored by Setalvad that ominously proved us right. Thi report went into three editions and has been translated into five Indian languages. Teesta Setalvad was also the Convenor of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, Crimes Against Humanity—Gujarat 2002. Here are our own thoughts on the occasion:

“The torching of bogey S-6 of the Ahmedabad-bound Sabarmati Express at Godhra on February 27, in which 58 passengers, including 26 women and 12 children, were burnt to death, is an unpardonable act. The perpetrators of this grossly inhuman crime must be tried swiftly and given the most stringent punishment. But, for the burned corpses of the ill-fated passengers to become the justification for armed squads of the ruling BJP and its ‘brother’ organisations — RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal -- to launch a pogrom that sits well with what the UN defines as genocide against the innocent Muslims of Gujarat? 

Even during the unspeakable horrors that communities inflicted on each other in 1946 and 1947, all organs of the state had not been directly involved in stoking the fires. Not so in Gujarat, 2002. The chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, called the targetted attacks in 16 of Gujarat’s 24 districts, a ‘natural reaction’. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is guilty of worse: “If there was no Godhra, there would have been no Gujarat,” he said, at the meeting of the national executive of his party in Goa in mid-April. Both the CM and PM have opened themselves to the charge of complicity in ‘crimes against humanity’.

The BJP, flanked by the RSS, VHP and BD combine in Gujarat had laid their grounds well. Both the Modi, and his predecessor, Keshubhai Patel had systematically implanted, through insidious hate propaganda and school textbooks, the mindset to justify such a pogrom. They had their men in key jobs to prevent any hindrance to their plan. They used threat and intimidation to numb conscience-keepers. And they trained their cadres well. They bestialised the ‘art of killing’.
Rape was used as an instrument for the subjugation and humiliation of a community. A chilling and hitherto absent technique was the deliberate destruction of evidence -- barring a few cases, women who were gang raped were thereafter hacked and burned.
Twenty-fix hours after the Godhra tragedy, 58 bodies were brought to the Sola Civil Hospital for the arthi, vengeful slogans were raised. Thereafter, from February 28 to March 6, the raging fires of hatred and venom consumed 16 of Gujarat’s 24 districts.
Even as we go to press, violence continues in Gujarat. The police shot dead two persons on April 16; another met a similar fate on April 18. Twelve and 13-year-old girls were terrorised by mobs as they appeared for their eighth and ninth standard examinations.
We have attempted public space interventions: Human rights meetings following the bomb blasts in Mumbai; TS made two films Bombay A Myth Shattered and on the Issue of Rights Violations –Torture of Innocent Muslims after the Bomb Blasts; On the Issue of the Srikrishna Report Implementation; when Asghar Ali Engineer was attacked by Bohra fanatics; Hosted Feminist Islamic scholar, Riffat Hasan ( Islamic feminist), Justice Dorab Patel (a former Chief Justice of Pakistan), and Bangladeshi Writer, Taslima Nasreen etc…

Setalvad has done important work with the POLICE-training and breaking of stereotypes

Much of the public space within our democracy, whether it is physical space where goon squads roam (!!) or within our institutions is getting squeezed out, before our eyes. Without us realising it. Can some of this be re-claimed? What are the creative ways in which we can do this, or at least attempt to?
The KHOJ and Aman educational programmes have explored and evolved alternate pedagogical and methodologies of learning, teaching and writing history and social studies apart from animating this sound theoretical work with an interactive and pioneering effort towards peace among young minds from India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Such an education programme that has evolved a concrete alternative towards history and social studies learning and teaching deserves national recognition.
Sabrang Communications & Publishing Pvt. Ltd. is a product of circumstances that was born in August 1993. Launched at the initiative of two senior journalists, it has since grown into an initiative that has made a serious contribute to education, today conducting regular classes in over three dozen schools.
KHOJ has evolved and is running this programme of secular education in many schools in Mumbai . Teacher training workshops conducted by the director of Khoj, Teesta Setalvad have highlighted how government approved textbooks breed caste, community and gender prejudice in school children.  The idea and need for an alternate approach to history and social studies teaching grew out of the experience of 1992-93 when even elite schools proud of their cosmopolitan environment and ethos were shocked to find prejudice surfacing among their students.
It started with one school in south Mumbai in 1994. One period every week with students from class V, VI & VII. From 1996, the programme was extended to several schools – elite, middle class, municipal schools for the poor. No lectures. Through self-portraits, drawings, essay-writing, reflections (on God, religion, festivals, gender differences), field visits, debates and discussions where children were encouraged to express their opinions without fear of any censure, students experienced and examined ‘adult themes’ -- conflict, prejudice, friendship, the present education system.
Through the lived experience of engaging with school children to evolve a module of secular education  that could be offered to schools throughout the country. This is a full-fledged alternate social studies curriculum, addressed to the school, teacher and parent within which dealing with conflict and working with young learners to an understanding and resolution of it (conflict resolution) and peace education have an inbuilt focus. KHOJ is in the process of publishing this material in a rich, multi-media kit.

Teacher Training Material and Interactions to Re-Motivate the Indian Teacher before she/he graduates and becomes part of the system and while she is in there, to offer her refresher courses. The South Asia Studies Programme and Peacepals Exchange: Publish material for the teacher to teach with a south Asian perspective and promoting the Aman students’ exchange is an integral part of KHOJ.

Today KHOJ runs in over three dozen schools in Mumbai, Maharashtra and the influence of the alternative being created has evolved into the major intervention against the latest move by the central government to hegemonise knowledge and it’s content through restrictions on historical content in the country.

Long before the NCERT made it’s moves, Teesta Setalvad had not only analysed the country’s textbooks in major states but pointed ot that the issue was not simply one of ‘de-communalising’ them. The issue of widening the scope and expanse of history learning and teaching goes fundamentally further. It involves the desire to inculcate a curious and questioning outlook in the young; the need to explore the shadows and silences within historical vision; the readiness to genuinely foster human rights within all sections of our population and most of all recognize and face that the deepest forces of domination have involved a narrow, caste based outlook that is limited by the myopia of it’s vision. Within this wider reality, issues of gender and class bias as also regional imbalances are something that make the whole issue of curriculum re-framing a daunting yet challenging task.
                       
Peace and regional co-operation in South Asia has been a personal passion. It is also a logical corrollary to the work that we are attempting within India, battling ethnic-communal stereotypes. The particular circumstances behind the partitioning of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 on religious lines makes it imperative that be it the question of the deepening of democracy or the rights of minorities within a state a cohesive South Asian approach could go a long way in resolving contradictions.
                       
She is both a core group member of the Pak-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy(PIPFPD) as also the convenor of AMAN, the South Asia studies and student’s exchange programme. Already we have youngsters within India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in regular, letter-writing contact; we are developing a south Asia studies module that will be out soon; we hope to culminate these efforts into actual student’s exchanges as also youth camps on the lines that groups in the Balkans (Europe) have attempted.    In July 2000, the Director of Khoj (Teesta Setalvad) was elected President (Asia) of the International Association of Peace Educators (IAPE) at UNESCO’s 6th World Conference on the Culture of Peace held in Paris.

Therefore, it was Teesta Setalvad’s personal experience in the pre-Babri Masjid demolition period that results in her professional position today-- editor of Communalism Combat, a monthly journal. Despite its small readership of 1,50,000 (we have a print-run of 15,000 copies, 5,000 of which go to school and college libraries all over the country),Comunalism Combat has a wide impact. Articles that the magazine produces are translated into Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Malyalam, tamil, Oriya and Urdu and syndicated to mainline newspapers all over the country. It has made a mark in public spirited journalism.

As co-editor, Communalism Combat, director of KHOJ, education for a plural India programme and general secretary of People’s Union for Human Rights (PUHR), Teesta S has been tracking Gujarat for over seven years now, but especially since February 1998 when the BJP assumed power in that state.

The steady rosion of Constitutional laws, norms, and practice in public life and policy in Gujarat was evident at the outset and the life and liberty of citizens, especially those belonging to religious minorities and the oppressed castes under dire threat. Hate speech was a commonly used form of vitiating public discourse and also keading and guilding violence.

Whether it is in over half a dozen articles—cover stories authored for Communalism Combat :
Attacks on Christians—April 1998
Welcome to Hindu Rashtra—Oct 1998
Conversions—Jan 1999
Our Textbooks Teach Prejudice—Oct 1999
Face to Face with Facism-April 2000
Blinding Reality—July 2000
The Great Divide-Jan 2001

Teesta has been issuing active warning signals in Gujarat. (These articles are available in the archival section of sabrang.com). In August 2000, after 33 Hindu pilgrims were brutally shot by alleged Laskhar-e-Toiyaba militants in Kashmir, the international general secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Praveen Togadia issued a call to arms in a widely publicised press conference Ahmedabad, August 2, 02. “We will give our reply here.” Following this, armed cadres of the BJP-VHP-RSS-BD systematically targeted Muslim property worth Rs 15 crores all over the state. Teesta did a report with several other activists, “Saffron On the Rampage” that was sent out to several Members of Parliament, human rights organisations and individuals. The issue was raised in Parliament but yet no compensation or reparation has been paid.

Muslims, Christians and Dalits have been attacked systematically since the BJP’s armed wings, that have protection of the state cabinet, the BJP came to power. A selective census on the Christian and Muslim minority, severe ghettoisation of the minorities, no admission in prestigious cosmpolitan schools are some of the clearcut trends that have been repeatedly tracked by Teesta.

In Jan 2000 when the Gujarat government issued a circular allowing government servants to be members of the Rashtriya Swayamesevak Sangh, it was the detailed backgrounder prepared by Teesta for Sabrang that was used by Parliamentarians to counter the move in Parliament. Again, it was because/through KHOJ workshops in Gujarat with school principals that Teesta managed to get exposed through the national media, the circular of the Gujarat government compulsarily directing that every school subscribe to the RSS periodical, Sadhana. Last august at a national convention of education in Delhi Setalvad warned of the signals emanating from Gujarat.

This time from Januruary 2002 onwards the build-up to Ayodhya was also a call for urgent concern. (Appeal to the Chief Justice Bharucha to intervene). Since February 27, 02 with the ghastly incident at Godhra, especially from the afternoon of Fen 28, Setalvad received no less than 100 calls from every corner of Gujarat: Ahmedabad –where her fortuitous intervention managed to alert the army when the office of Gujarat Today  and homes of staffers around Shah-e-Alam had been relentlessly targeted by a mob; at Rakhial, Ahmedabad’ at Vatwa, Ahmedabad; Chhotaudaipur, Baroda rural, Kadih, Mehsana—much of the tragedies could not be averted; some lives could be saved; but to experience the horror of Gujarat first-hand in her home in Mumbai until she determinedly left for Ahmedabad on March 2. She spent over three-and-a-half weeks there; all the while interacting with the army and the police. On more than one occasion, the army in charge remarked top her, “How come the police are sending us somehwere else while your information of locations do not match?” “I suggest that you draw your own conclusions, sir” setalvad told the army major after he had found her information to be accurate.

Apart from this, the arming of Indian Civil society (Bajrang Dal/VHP armed training camps)—CC July 2001, and the Mass Trishul Distribution nationwide but especially in Rajasthan (CC, November 01) have been matters of particular concern to her. She has authored and inspired campaigns on these with other colleagues at Sabrang. These have been reflected in interventions made by CC and Sabrang.


One of the major outcomes (positive) of the Genocide in Gujarat 2002 was the formation of the Citizens for Justice and Peace, Mumbai. Teesta along with Javed Anand her husband-colleague (Sabrang directors) were initiators in setting up this body of eminent persons from different walks of like primarily to initiate and coordinate the internal struggle for justice in Gujarat. Teesta is the Working Committee member of the CJP and the sole coordinator within of all the legal strategies that are being worked upon for justice for the victims.

The Indian Criminal Justice System is smacked by tardiness, elitism and bias.  The CJP as decided as a democratic strategy to push and initiate legal processes and petitions to shake the system into action. The CJP has worked getting sufficient relief and rehabilitation for the victims  through a High Court intervention, intervened with legal aid and a watching advocate in three criminal trials of direct carnages, filed one petition on hate speech against the Gujarat chief ministers and VHP functionaries, agitated legally for the transfer of the carnage trials to a central body of investigation (due to mal intent and bias). Four more cases are still being researched by CJP before legal action is taken.


AWARDS
•    Recipient, “PUCL Journalism For Human Rights Awards, 1993.

•    Recipient, “Chameli Devi Jain Award for Outstanding Woman Journalist, 1993.

•    (Among other things, both citations made special reference to
      interceptions of police wireless message during the January,
      1993 riots which expose the anti-Muslim bias of the force.
      Besides, the national press, the story was picked up by BBC,  
      CNN and ‘The New York Times’. Was also interviewed by CNN)

•    The Ramkrishna Jaidayal Harmony Award (1998) from the Organisation of Understanding and Fraternity, Delhi for excellence       in writing on communal harmony in English

•    Maharana Mewar Foundation’s Hakim Khan Sur award, 1998-1999 to Javed Anand and Teesta Setalvad

•    The Ramkrishna Jaidayal Harmony Award (1999) from the Organisation of Understanding and Fraternity, Delhi; to        Communalism Combat, Khoj and Aman.

•    The Human Rights Award 2000 instituted by the Dalit Liberation Education Trust, Chennai, Tamil Naidu; to Teesta Setalvad.

•    The Prince Claus Award 2000 (Netherlands), “in recognition of exceptional initiatives in the field of journalism and        development”, to Communalism Combat. Since 1997, the annual Prince Claus Awards (named after HRH Prince Claus of        Netherlands) have been presented “to people and organisations to recognise and encourage their exceptional        achievements in the field of culture and development in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean”.

•    The Pax Christi International Human Rights Award, October 2001.

•    The Xaviers Institute of Communications Father Divakar Communucation for Peace Award, January 2002.

•    Rajiv Gandhi Sadbhavna Award 2002, awarded jointly to Teesta Setalvad and Harsh Mander, Action Aid, India.

•    3rd Prakash Kapley International Solidarity Award (PKISA) 2002.

•     Nuremberg International Human Rights Award 2003, awarded jointly to Teesta Setalvad and Ibn Abdur Rehman (Pakistan