[sacw] sacw dispatch #2 | 9 Nov.99

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #2
8 November 1999
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#1. India's deadly Home Minister Advani in rogue's gallery of US museum
#2. The Purse Strings as the Noose: Indian NGOs Face New Challenges
#3. Action needed on the Srikrishna Report on Mumbai
#4. Missing Source in sacw dispatch #1 (9Nov.99)
#5. Review: The Making of Amar Jiban; A Modern Autobiography
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#1.
Deccan Herald
Thursday, November 4, 1999

Advani in rogue's gallery of US museum
>From Shyam Bhatia DH News Service WASHINGTON, Nov 3

A major American museum in Los Angeles has assigned a portrait of Union
Home Minister L K Advani to a rogues` gallery of extremist killers such as
Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein.

The Museum of Tolerance, the educational arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre
in California, has Mr Advani`s portrait prominently displayed on what is
called the Demagogue Wall.

''Basically, I can tell you in summary that the individuals on that wall
used demagogy to advance their agenda,`` says a museum official, Rabbi
Abraham Cooper, who is unaware of Mr Advani`s status as a veteran
parliamentarian.

The Museum of Tolerance was started in 1993. It receives 1,000 visitors per
day and has registered nearly three million visitors since it threw open
its doors in 1993.

For every one of those three million visitors Mr Advani will be bracketed
with Idi Amin, who chopped off his enemies` heads and preserved them in his
refrigerator, and Saddam Hussein, who gasses his opponents until they choke
to death.

If the museum`s logic is followed through Mr Advani will also be answerable
to a human rights or war crimes tribunal.

The insult to Mr Advani could not have come from a worse source. He is one
of the proponents of stronger Indo-Israeli ties and the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre promotes and protects the worldwide interests of the Jewish nation.

The existence of Mr Advani`s portrait has been a running sore with members
of the Indian community in Los Angeles. When the BJP`s General Secretary,
Mr Govindacharya, visited Los Angeles last week, local Indians made a point
of showing him around the museum.

Despite Mr Govindacharya`s protests, Mr Advani`s portrait has not been
moved from the Demagogue Wall. Mr Govindacharya`s explanation is that
politically motivated individuals have used the museum to score a political
point against Mr Advani.

Asked by Deccan Herald to explain the inclusion of Mr Advani, Mr Cooper
said: ''This exhibit went up in 1993 when someone dubbed him the Hitler of
Bombay.``

Pressed further, Mr Cooper said the reference to the Hitler of Bombay was
not correct. ''We expect a clarification of Mr Advani`s current political
stance. We live in a time of change, perhaps we`re looking at a major
statesman. If we get the clarification we need, his portrait will come
down.``
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#6.
Human Rights Features (New Delhi).
[Tel: 6859622, 6192717, 6192706. Fax: 6191120.]

HRF/9/99
Embargoed for 29 October 1999

THE PURSE STRINGS AS THE NOOSE: INDIAN NGOS FACE NEW CHALLENGES

The Government of India has recently intensified its efforts to restrict
the activities of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by breathing new
life into an anachronistic, Emergency-era statute. The Government's
arbitrary application of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act of
1976 (FCRA) at the behest of particular political interests infringes
the fundamental rights to freedom of association and expression
guaranteed by international law and the Constitution of India. Moreover,
it flouts the most basic norms of fairness and due process enshrined in
the Constitution of India and other Indian legislation.

The FCRA requires all Indian organisations and individuals that seek to
receive foreign contributions to receive clearance from the Ministry of
Home Affairs (the Home Ministry), in the form of either registration or
prior permission. In recent weeks, the Home Ministry has deployed the
FCRA as a blatantly political tool, seeking to intimidate NGOs that have
been critical of the Government and its policies. On 25 September 1999,
two Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) officials - in separate statements on
the same day - called for the investigation and punishment of 13 NGOs
for their sponsorship of a newspaper advertisement criticising the
party's positions on women's issues. The party officials assailed these
organisations as "anti-national and anti-Indian" - not only on account
of their sponsorship of the advertisement, but also based on their
criticism of the Pokhran nuclear tests of May 1998.

Within days of these statements, the Home Ministry dutifully served
notice upon several of the 13 NGOs presumptively classifying the groups
as "organisation[s] of a political nature, not being a political party"
under Section 5(1) of the FCRA. If unable to rebut this classification,
these NGOs would be required to obtain prior permission from the Home
Ministry before receiving any foreign contributions. When another NGO,
the Volunteer Action Network India (VANI), publicly defended the groups,
it too was promptly informed that the Home Ministry intended to cancel
its registration to receive contributions from abroad without prior
permission.

How does the Home Ministry justify its attempt to cancel the FCRA
registrations of these groups and their supporters? The Show Cause
Notice served upon the NGOs alleges that these voluntary associations
"ha[ve] been associated with the release of certain advertisements in
the press and with certain documents the contents of which are in the
nature of comments of a political nature." The vagueness of this
McCarthyesque description of the alleged misconduct is exceeded only by
its potential chilling effect on the fundamental rights of Indian
citizens to engage in collective political and social action. As of 6
October 1999, the Home Ministry had retaliated against over one dozen
NGOs for their association with "certain advertisements" and "certain
documents."

Curiously, the Home Ministry has been highly selective in its efforts to
regulate foreign funds in Indian political and social life. Sangh
Parivar (the family of Hindu Fundamentalist Organisations) and
Government officials have expressed outrage over the role allegedly
played by foreign funding in support of Christian and Muslim
organisations. However, Sangh Parivar organisations are among the
highest recipients of foreign contributions in India. Reports indicate
that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP; or the World Hindu Council) has
raised at least Rs. 86 million (approximately $US 2 million) from the
United States since 1980. Much of this money has been used to fund
schemes that seek to intimidate tribal peoples from converting to
Christianity or Islam, often under threat of violence. While other
reports of misuse of foreign funds raised by "VHP America" abound, at no
time has the Government sought to investigate this influx of foreign
capital.

Even the BJP itself - which, as a political party, is subject to more
stringent restrictions under the FCRA - has received substantial foreign
contributions. The party's United States arm, the "Overseas Friends of
the BJP," routinely hosts expensive fund-raisers and has sent large
delegations to India to campaign on behalf of the BJP - trips that are
presumably financed with foreign funds. The Home Minister has, however,
turned a blind eye to this conduct by members of his ideological
fraternity.

These examples reveal a pattern of arbitrary enforcement of the FCRA
that violates fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution of
India and international human rights law. On its face and as applied,
the FCRA violates Article 19 of the Constitution of India and several
international human rights instruments that guarantee freedom of
expression and freedom of association including Articles 19(3) and 22(1)
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) -
ratified by India in 1979. The Government's arbitrary application of the
FCRA also violates guarantees of equality and due process under Articles
14 and 21 of the Indian Constitution. Moreover, the decision to target
NGOs that criticize the Government's record on women's rights raises
serious questions about the Government's commitment to implementation
and enforcement of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination of Women, which India ratified in 1993.

The Home Ministry's deployment of the FCRA as a political weapon comes
on the heels of another recent assault on the political and social space
for NGOs in India. For example, the Government's recent imposition of an
arbitrary clearance requirement for NGOs organising international
conferences contravenes India's constitutional guarantees and
international commitments. (See Human Rights Features, India Restricts
NGO Meetings, HRF/7/99, 20 September 1999). Such efforts signal an
increasing unwillingness on the part of the Government to tolerate
criticism and dissent.

While the Government has a legitimate interest in holding NGOs
accountable for financial or other wrongdoing, normal regulatory and
criminal justice procedures provide sufficient institutional resources
to accomplish this task. Narrowly-tailored financial reporting
requirements for NGOs serve legitimate governmental interests and should
remain in place. However, these laws should be administered by the
Ministry of Finance, rather than the highly politicised Home

Ministry. And to the extent that the direct channels of political
participation are to be reserved for Indian citizens, the proper targets
of regulation are political parties and the candidates they field for
office, not voluntary organisations and advocacy groups. Democracy and
human rights depend upon the vitality of civil society which, in turn,
depends upon the ability of NGOs to operate free of arbitrary legal
obstacles. The Government's heavy-handed use of the FCRA to restrict the
legitimate activities of politically-disfavoured NGOs represents yet
another troubling retreat from India's democratic tradition.
___________________
#3.
The Hindu
9 November 1999
Op-Ed.

Action needed on Srikrishna report
By V. Krishna Ananth

``FOR FIVE days in December 1992 (December 6 to 10) and fifteen days in
January 1993 (January 6 to 20), Bombay, prima urbs of this country, was
rocked by riots and violence unprecedented in magnitude and ferocity, as
though the forces of Satan were let loose, destroying all human values and
civilised behaviour.''

These words are not from any old pamphlet by any of the NGOs which have
now been charged by the Union Home Ministry of ``misusing'' funds received
from abroad. Hence, those in the ruling combine cannot wish it away as
part of a conspiracy, inspired or hatched by ``enemies'' of the nation
from within and outside the country. And Mr. L. K. Advani cannot instruct
officials in his Ministry to issue notices to the author of this
statement; a step that was resorted to by the Union Home Ministry against
some of the collectives that were engaged in exposing the ugly face of the
BJP during the run-up to the last elections.

For, these are the opening remarks by a sitting High Court judge, Justice
B. N. Srikrishna, in the report he submitted to the then Government of
Maharashtra on February 16, 1998. The Government virtually threw the
report into the trash can and did not conceal its contempt for all the
painstaking work that went into the report. It took its own sweet time to
even go through the process of making the report public- this was done only
on August 6, just ten days ahead of the mandatory six-month period-and an
Action Taken Report (ATR), once again a requirement under the law, simply
brushed away the findings.

This, indeed, was only expected. After all, the report had held the Shiv
Sena, which was then in power in the State, and its leader, Mr. Bal
Thackeray, responsible for the violence. It said: ``From January 8, 1993,
at least, there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and Shiv Sainiks took the
lead in organising attacks on Muslims and their properties under the
guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena from the level of Shakha
Pramukh to the Shiv Sena Pramukh, Mr. Bal Thackeray, who, like a veteran
General, commanded his loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised
attacks against Muslims.''

The Opposition in the Maharashtra Assembly agitated, demanding action
against the Sena chief and others named in it. Mr. Chagan Bhujbal led that
agitation. It is only natural to expect Mr. Bhujbal, now Deputy Chief
Minister, to save the Srikrishna Commission's report from meeting the same
fate-of being left to gather dust-as had happened to most, if not all,
reports of this nature in the past 52 years after independence.

Indeed, Mr. Bhujbal, soon after assuming charge, declared his intentions
to re-open the Srikrishna Commission's findings. And the reaction was only
on expected lines; the Thackeray brigade began daring the Government to do
what it can. Leading the chorus, apart from Mr. Thackeray himself was the
former Chief Minister, Mr. Narayan Rane, who was seen on the small screen
declaring that any such move will lead to a situation where the Government
will cease to function. In other words, the Shiv Sena leader in the
Assembly dared the Government to carry out its Constitutional
responsibility and virtually declared a war against the state.

But what is shocking is that after the initial enthusiasm, Mr. Bhujbal, as
also the new Chief Minister, Mr. Vilasrao Deshmukh, seem to have lost
interest in the whole affair. Instead, they are engaged once again in a
fratricidal war over sharing the spoils of office-ministerial berths-
between their own loyalists.

Hence, one is apprehensive whether the mandate of the people of
Maharashtra-there would hardly be any dispute to the statement in this
context that the BJP-Sena combine's defeat would have been decisive but
for the division of votes between the Congress(I) and the NCP-will be
carried out at all by the Congress(I)-NCP combine to its logical
conclusion. In other words, whether at all Mr. Thackeray and his ilk will
be shown their place?

And it will be pertinent in this context to cull out another important
statement, once again from Justice Srikrishna in his report: Among the
factors listed specifically by the Commission, one cannot gloss over the
comment that ``Effete political leadership, vacillation for political
reasons and conflicting orders issued to the Commissioner of Police
percolated downwards created a general sense of confusion in the lower
ranks of the police, resulting in the dilemma as to whether to shoot, or
not to shoot.''

The Commission notes with lament that ``four precious days were lost for
the Chief Minister to consider and issue orders as to the effective use of
army for controlling the riots'' and that ``the built-in bias of the
police force against Muslims'' added to the violence and killings. That
the brunt of the violence was faced by the Muslims can be established by
the following figures: Of the 900 dead, 575 were Muslims.

These facts and the conclusions of the Srikrishna Commission assume a lot
of relevance today. The sense of confidence with which the Thackeray
brigade ``dared'' the Government to act on the Srikrishna Commission
report and the ``courage'' displayed by the Sena goons in the past were
derived from the abdication of duty by the civil administration and the
political masters whose primary responsibility is to ensure that such
elements are dealt with firmly under the provisions of law.

This factor (the State standing a mute witness) is certainly not a new
development. As for instance, the Shiv Sena's role in the riots,
documented extensively by the Srikrishna Commission, could not have been
an ``unknown fact'' for the State Government-headed by the Congress(I)
-when the riots took place. But then, the long arm of law was not long
enough to rein in Mr. Thackeray and his goons. And the mighty State did
nothing to contain such elements, whether it was during the riots or in
the following years.

It was this sense of helplessness, exhibited by the political
establishment all these years that let the Shiv Sena emerge into a
political party from being a small gang of lumpen elements engaged in
disrupting trade unions meetings and campaigning against the Tamil and
Malayalam speaking men and women who settled down in Mumbai for a living.

Indeed, the Congress(I) as a party (and this must include the NCP too)
was, in a sense, behind the Sena's rise; after all, several of its leaders
were the ones who engaged the Sena goons, in the Sixties, to put down any
threat to their ``popularity.'' It is not sheer coincidence that the
initial targets of the Sena terror were all those who opposed the Congress
in Mumbai-the Left wing unions, Mr. George Fernandes and his unions and
later on Datta Samant. Meanwhile, the Sena turned against the Mumbai
underworld (Dawood Ibrahim was not even thought of at that time) only
because its goon squads had to be ``engaged'' gainfully. Maharashtra,
indeed, was ruled by the Congress(I) all these years when the Sena
metamorphosised into an organised political platform from its ``humble''
beginnings as small gangs carrying out hatchet jobs for a local Congress
leader here or an industrialist there.

The situation now is different. The Congress(I) and the NCP, have returned
to power in the State based on the express promise (though not as a
combine) that they were opposed to the Shiv Sena's approach to politics.
It is time for them to put their act together and see what could be done
about the Srikrishna Commission report. This is necessary not just in the
interest of the partisan interests of the two parties- the Congress(I) and
the NCP-but in the interests of civil society.

Meanwhile, the various groups that were engaged in confronting the Sena's
terror throughout the five years it controlled the State Government must
take the campaign to its logical conclusion. And this must include a
concerted effort to draw the organised trade unions in the city and their
political masters beyond wages and job security. The Shiv Sena must also
be confronted on the streets of Mumbai. It is time to convey to Mr.
Thackeray that public display of mob psychology is not his own monopoly.
______________
#4.
Missing Source in the Sacw Dispatch #1 (9 Nov 1999):
The Article by Sumit Sarkar 'on Coversions...' appeared as an Op-Ed. in The
Hindu, 9 November 1999
______________
#5.
The Statesman
Monday 8 November 1999
Review Page

Passion of a woman
Words To Win: The Making of Amar Jiban; A Modern Autobiography By Tanika Sarkar
In the early nineteenth century in India, the question of educating women
was almost unthinkable due to the mistaken belief that it would lead to
immorality and even early widowhood. Yet, Rashsundari Debi, a housewife
from an uppercaste landed family in East Bengal (not in Bangladesh), taught
herself to read and write and penned her autobiography titled Amar Jiban
which was published in 1875. She had finished the first version in 1868, a
year after she was widowed at the age of fifty-nine. She later added a
second part and the new version was published in 1897 when she was
eighty-eight. A preface to the second edition was written by Jyotindranath
Tagore, the elder brother of Rabindranath Tagore and a well known literary
figure at that time.

Though Amar Jiban was the only book written by Rashsundari Debi, she was
able to convey a fairly realistic picture of the women of her age through
her own story. It was been recently republished by 'Kali For Women' with an
an introduction and translation by Tanika Sarkar, who traces the social,
historical, religious and literary background to the novel in her book
Words To Win-The Making of Amar Jiban: A Modern Autobiography.

It was an intense desire on the part of Rashsundari Debi to be able to
read to sacred text of 'Chaitanya Bhagbat', the first Bengali biography of
the saint of medieval Bengal that urged her to learn to read on her own. It
turned out to be an extremely long and painful effort for her since she had
to hide her desire and her ability to read from the other members of her
family lest she be considered a sinner. She attributed her success to
divine intervention and later modelled her story on the divine texts that
she had read. She also learned to write on her own when she had to reply to
the letters written by one of her sons who was based in Calcutta, far away
from her village Faridpur in East Bengal.

The novel is a straight forward narrative of the life a housewife who was
married at the young age of twelve into the family of Sitanath Ray, a
prosperous landlord from Ramdia Village in Faridpur. By the time she was
fourteen, she was looking after a large household, caring for everyone's
needs and shouldering all the responsibilities. She bore twelve children in
rapid succession, and lost quite a few to early illnesses. Her life would
have been uneventful if she had not made the daring departure from
conventionality by teaching herself to read and write.

Each chapter of her book starts with an invocation, and then goes on to
trace the events of her life and her maturing from a relatively frightened
child-bride to that of a responsible house-wife who looked after the
welfare of her household. The author does not take any interest in the
historical events of her times nor does she use any of the proverbs,
riddles, idioms or tales that were such an integral part of the women's
lives. Yet it is a gripping tale as the narrative moves forward at a rapid
pace, chronicling the everyday events, her responsibilities and fears that
shaped her long life, with a strong religious grounding that gave her the
courage to face them.

The reader gets a glimpse of the lives of women in a large household in
uppercaste Vaishnav household where the women were confined to the house
and were subjected to obedience, fear and humility. They were not even
supposed to converse with the other male members or their husbands in
public. It was only with the passage of time and to a certain extent the
bearing of sons that eventually gave the woman some say in the household
and that too was related to the management to the servants and related
affairs. They were kept strictly out of the public sphere, though the
author again breaks away from tradition by solving a long family rivalry in
the absence of her husband and is suitably appreciated for her intelligence.

The modern reader can identify with the displacement that the women face
when they leave their natal home, the adjustments that are expected at the
in-laws place, the total financial and unquestioning submission to
tradition in the husband's family.

Rashsundari mentions her husband as the 'Karta' only in the last two
paragraphs of the book, and that too as an afterthought. Her writing is
quite modernistic in the way she has abstracted her persona from her
immediate surroundings, lending a universality to her experience. It is
curiously a gender-free account of her experiences, belying the
expectations of an autobiography written by a women.

Tanika Sarkar's detailed introduction to the text is fairly comprehensive,
recreating and interpreting the text of Amar Jiban in the context of the
early nineteenth century in the province of Bengal which saw enormous
political and social changes, particularly in relation to the question of
educating women and the literary efforts of Rashsundari's contemporaries.
Her scholarly analysis is supported by bibliographical readings of other
authors who have elucidated on this historical period. It gives valuable
insight about the corpus of religious literature that shaped the world view
of the people at that time and the fierce debate that raged about the
question of educating women.

She also traces the historical factors that led about a change in the
status of the landed gentry due to the British rule and the passing of new
laws related to land reforms. Simultaneously the reformation movement
regarding vital issues of 'Sati', child marriage, widow remarriage etc.
brought about some changes in the attitudes towards women, paving way for
them to be allowed to be educated.

The fact of providing education for women therefore had a long and
eventful history, taking the women out of the confines of the private
sphere of domesticity to the public sphere of schools and later colleges.
It was a long time before it become socially acceptable for women to attend
regular schools instead of lady teachers visiting the homes of affluent
families to impart basic education. Given such a background, Rashsundari's
effort at educating herself and writing her autobiography becomes truly
commendable.

The success of her book is indicated by the fact that a third and fourth
edition of the book was published in 1906 and 1956 respectively with an
introduction by the famous historian Dineshchandra Sen. The book is
relevant for those interested in gender studies or women's early writing in
English in India. It gives a glimpse into a woman's world, shorn of the
cultural subjectivity that is traditionally associated with women's
writing. In this sense it is remarkably an early text of modernity.

Renu Govil
______________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.
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