[sacw] sacw dispatch (16 Sept.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
16 Sept 1999
--------------------------------------------------------------
#1. Territory, People and the Nation-state
#2. [BJP, Temporarily Trades Ideology for Votes]
#3. The "Jawaras" of India's Andaman Islands may face eviction from their lands
#4. The living exports of South Asia
--------------------------------------------------------------

#1.

The Times of India
Thursday 16 September 1999
Op-Ed.

Tricolour over Kashmir
Territory, People and the Nation-state

By Dipankar Gupta

JINGOISM is allegiance to soil and territory, but so also is patriotism.
Patriotism, however, goes a step further. It is also concerned with
people who live on the soil. This is what separates patriotism from
jingoism. As patriotism puts people on a par with the soil, jingoists
are never happy with it. Jingoism is dismissive of people and of
cultural diversities. It is solely besotted by considerations of
territory. A patriot is also devoted to the soil but realises that the
best way of firming up national boundaries is by paying attention to the
people who live within it. It needs to be underlined though that in both
instances territory is critically important.

Napoleon's March

Jingoists and patriots are modern phenomena found only in the age of
nation-states. They did not exist in the days of monarchies and empires.
It is only in a modern nation-state that there is a popular endorsement
of territory. In the days of absolutist kings and potentates, the
subject population was never drawn into any kind of loyalty to the
overlord's territorial possession.

It is said that when Napoleon's army marched into Russia he was welcomed
by Russian peasants in the hope that his dispensation towards them would
be kinder than that of the absolutist Tsar. The situation changed
dramatically when Hitler attacked Russia. By then, Russia had become a
nation-state and Hitler met with stiff resistance. Every Russian fought
against the Nazi invasion and read Pushkin to keep their spirits alive.
It is not as if the Russians then were all committed to communism. Their
strongest commitment at that point was to territory.

The nation-state is popular endorsement of territory. This implies that
in all authentic nation-states territory is sacralised. Territorial
acquisitions are not just a matter of geography, there is a profound
sense of cultural attachment to them. It is quite useless to look for
rational reasons behind this sentiment. The initial fervour towards it
could well have been fuelled by the desire to overcome feudalism and its
localised despotism. But one way or another the end product has been a
supra-local endorsement of territory.

There is no single privileged path to the formation of nation-states.
Several nation-states came into being after severe civil strife between
the ancien regime and the democratic masses. There are other known
instances when a prolonged war helped to create a sense of
`nation-stateness'. In many developing countries, such as India,
anti-colonial movements gave birth to nation-states. Though the starting
points may be vastly different for different nation-states, the end
product is without exception the same. Territory is always consecrated
on a popular basis in every full bodied nation-state.

The compulsions of territory run very deep into the foundations of all
nation-states. In fact, a nation is an unfinished entity if it does not
have the state component linked to it. With state comes territory and
with it the final realisation of the national project. This is why
India's cultural diversity does not make it a continent of many nations.
If that were so each linguistic province in our country would be
straining towards sovereignty.

The coming together of diverse people in the making of a territorial
unity called the nation-state does not mean that this sentiment excludes
all other kinds of loyalty. When Maharashtra became a linguistic
province in 1959 some feared that this might lead to the balkanisation
of India. But that did not happen, it was not even remotely on the
cards. Nevertheless, at the level of the nation-state this popular
acquiescence over territory can brook no compromise. If any part of the
country secedes, it is not as if the rest of it can carry on with
business as usual. The entire edifice of the nation-state and its
territorial lineaments will be brought into question.

Win over Hearts

In those days when Kashmir became part of India emotions were high, and
quite legitimately so. India was still a very young nation-state and
threats from neighbouring Pakistan loomed large in the post-Partition
national psyche. Though the subsequent history of Kashmir leaves much to
be desired, both the secular Congress and the Hindu political
organisations left no doubt in the minds of their respective supporters
that Kashmir belonged to India. Over time this attitude has sedimented
and the line of control in Kashmir is seared into our national
consciousness as Indian territory.

At this point it is almost impossible to open up the Kashmir question to
international adjudication and hope that the Indian nation-state will
remain unchanged and unmoved by it. While it is difficult to find
broad-based support anywhere in India for letting Kashmir go, there are
at least two different ways of looking at it -- one jingoist and the
other patriotic. The jingoist would say that regardless of what happens
to the people of Kashmir and what they think of the Indian Union, the
land mass of Kashmir belongs to India. If some people do not like that
they should leave the country and go to Pakistan. The patriot would not
cede territory either, but would do the utmost to win over the hearts of
the people of Kashmir to forge a stronger Indian Union.

Divisive Slaughter

The territorial bond that unites and vivifies the Indian nation-state is
not just a subcontinental characteristic. In the relative placid
environment of Canada too there is an equal feeling regarding territory.
When a section of English Canadians started considering the possibility
of letting Quebec go it met with an interesting response. The Credit
Party, a staunch nationalist organisation based largely in the Canadian
west coast, announced that if Quebec were to go so also would British
Columbia.

It is, therefore, quite immaterial what resolutions the United Nation
passes, or what world opinion thinks about Kashmir. Letting go of
Kashmir will have serious repercussions on the entire Indian Union. The
compact will be unsettled and there will be secessionist wars and
divisive slaughter across the country. The tragedy of Kashmir will be
multiplied several times over. If Kashmir goes it will probably take
India down with it. This is why the best option on Kashmir today is the
patriot's option, and the worst is to listen to international opinion.
If the tricolour does not fly over Kashmir it won't fly over many other
parts of India as well.
____________________________

#2. [From: Sreenath Sreenivasan <ss221@c...>]

The Washington Post
Sept. 16, 1999
Page A17

With BJP, Indian Masses No Longer Get Religion; Party Trades Hindu
Ideology for Votes
By Pamela Constable

As a champion of Hindu nationalism, Jayawantiben Mehta has impeccable
credentials. During 30 years in politics, she has dutifully campaigned for
every major Hindu platform--from building a temple to Lord Ram on the site
of a demolished mosque, to creating a uniform civil code that supersedes
Muslim law.

But here is what Mehta, 61, promises as she strides through a
working-class housing complex while campaigning for Parliament: A "stable
and able government," led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, that
will provide residents with safe drinking water, housing repairs and more
public parks.

Then there is Sanjay Nirupam, 33, a muscular young politician from the
Shiv Sena, the Bombay-based shock-troop outfit notoriously known for
anti-Islamic activities such as sabotaging cricket matches with Pakistan
and provoking anti-Muslim riots.

These days, while insisting he is still committed to promoting Hindu
causes, Nirupam is also following orders and campaigning on a solidly
secular platform, speaking out for paved roads and literacy programs for
rural areas outside Bombay.

So what has happened to Hindutva, the emotionally charged crusade for
"Hindu-ness" that once defined Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and
its allies like Shiv Sena? As the BJP broadens its audience beyond its
traditional power base, are the forces of Hindu nationalism fading into
history--or are they just waiting for the right moment to return with a
vengeance?

India is in the middle of a five-phase election for Parliament. By early
October, 605 million people will have voted for 543 legislative seats, and
by mid-month a new prime minister will have been chosen.

The BJP, once a religious fringe group that held only two seats in
Parliament as recently as 1984, has grown to a mass-based,
coalition-backed juggernaut. Now, under the leadership of Vajpayee, 76, it
appears likely to capture a solid parliamentary majority over its chief
rival, the secular-based Congress party.

In the process, however, the party has shed much of its ideological
baggage, arousing skepticism from critics and alarm among hard-line
loyalists. As a price for widening public acceptance and the parliamentary
alliances it needs to rule in a fragmented political culture, the BJP may
have sacrificed the pro-Hindu mystique that once lured and unified its
supporters.

"The BJP is sidetracking the very issues that brought them up. No one is
talking about the Ram Temple any more," said Nirupam with dismay. "In
order to create a consensus, we have to drop these controversial issues
for now. But if we keep on compromising our ideology, ultimately there
will be no difference between the BJP and Congress."

Critics from Congress officials to Muslim intellectuals charge that
pro-Hindu groups have temporarily dropped their religious crusade as a
purely tactical measure, and that if they win a commanding majority in
Parliament, it will inevitably surface again.

"The BJP is trying to hide its real agenda of hate and mistrust behind the
mask they are wearing and taking off at their convenience," charged
Congress president Sonia Gandhi in a recent speech. Gandhi, 52, is running
for Parliament and is widely expected to be her party's candidate for
prime minister.

India is about 80 percent Hindu and 15 percent Muslim, with pockets of
Sikhs, Christians and other groups. The Hindu and Muslim populations have
never co-existed easily, and the violence that accompanied the chaotic
1947 partition of India and the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state has
periodically resurfaced.

The BJP, formed in 1980 with Vajpayee as president, has consistently
pressed the major pro-Hindu issues: the right to rebuild an ancient Hindu
temple at Ayodhya, the creation of a uniform civil code that would
override Hindu family and social law, and the elimination of Kashmir's
longtime "special status" as a partly autonomous, Muslim-dominated state.

Philosophically, the BJP and its allies--the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh
(RSS), a scholarly association that runs schools and publications, and the
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a grass-roots cultural movement--also promote
Hindutva, a vaguely defined concept of Hindu values and precepts, as a
unifying national force.

For years, the BJP and its philosophical partners were limited to an
obstructionist role on the edges of a proudly secular society headed by
Congress. But the BJP gained influence in the 1990s as pro-Hindu sentiment
swelled. Vajpayee has been chosen prime minister twice in the past three
years, and the BJP holds 189 seats in Parliament.

Now, capitalizing on Vajpayee's success in handling the 10-week border
conflict with Pakistan this summer, the party is being flooded with new
members and courted by a wide variety of coalition partners. In the
campaign, however, not a single BJP or Shiv Sena candidate has raised
Ayodhya, the civil code, or the status of Kashmir. Instead, all have
focused on constituency services and the accomplishments of Vajpayee--even
though the stricter Hindus among them wince at his bon vivant lifestyle
and disagree sharply with his liberal political views.

"The reality of politics in India today is that no one party can carry out
its agenda," said one longtime RSS member. "We are trying to form a
government, so we must make compromises. We cannot run a country based on
these contentious issues, so let us leave them aside. But just because you
don't talk about it doesn't mean it's absent."

The BJP's back-pedaling on pro-Hindu issues has alarmed supporters who
fear the party may permanently sacrifice its core principles for the sake
of votes. They make little effort to hide their hopes that, once the party
gains a solid grip on government, it will revive their sacred causes from
a new position of strength.

"The main need today is to come to power, so we can't afford to go for
Hindutva any more. But it's a temporary phase," said Arvind Parmar, one of
Mehta's campaign aides. "The voters know we haven't forgotten these issues
or gone to the other side, we are just waiting for the right time."
__________________________

#3.
Urgent Action Bulletin of Survival International
August 1999

'This is high time to make them acquainted with modern civilisation.'

Extract from the petition to the court

The Jarawa, isolated hunter-gatherers of India's Andaman Islands, are
already in danger of contracting fatal diseases from outsiders. Now a
lawyer living in the Islands has initiated a court case, the intended
effect of which is to remove the Jarawa from their land and relocate
them to another island. This alarming step has been taken without any
consultation with the Jarawa themselves, and if successful could
herald the end for this nomadic people.

The lawyer, who has little knowledge of the Jarawa, has filed a
Public Interest Litigation case against the Indian government. She is
asking for these nomadic hunter-gatherers, who have survived for
thousands of years in their rainforest home, to be forcibly settled.
She says, 'This is high time to make them acquainted with modern
civilisation.'

She cites the two previously contacted tribes on the Andaman Islands -
the Onge and 'Great Andamanese' - as examples of the type of
settlement she wants for the Jarawa. However even the local
government's tribal welfare department accepts that these cases have
been disastrous for the tribes concerned, and has told Survival they
do not want to repeat past mistakes.

The Jarawa are one of four tribal peoples on the Andaman Islands. The
'Great Andamanese' were relocated and settled by the British colonial
administration with catastrophic consequences - in 150 years their
numbers fell from 5,000 to 28. The Onge, settled by the Indian
government, fared little better - from 670 at the start of the
century, only 97 survive today.

There are thought to be only between 250 and 400 Jarawa. If they were
to be forcibly relocated like the 'Great Andamanese' they would
probably soon be wiped out. Besides the tribes of the Andaman
Islands, history is littered with thousands of examples of nomadic
tribal peoples who have been catastrophically affected by being
sedentarised against their will.

Little is known about the Jarawa's way of life as until very recently
they resisted contact with outsiders. What is known has mostly been
gleaned from brief meetings and findings from abandoned camps. The
Jarawa hunt pigs and monitor lizards, and catch fish, turtles and
dugong (a marine mammal) with bows and arrows. They also collect
honey, roots and berries from the forest. They have a main camp for
two or three months where 40-50 people live together in a large
communal hut, but much of the time is spent moving around in small
family groups, staying in hunting camps for two or three days before
moving on.

The tribe has recently shaken off 150 years of hostility and begun
coming out of their forest home to visit the villages of Indian
settlers which have sprung up on the edges of their land. No one
knows why they have now started to come out and make peaceful
contact, but the lawyer's assertion that they are 'starving and
desperate to join the mainstream' is certainly wrong.

The Indian government has yet to decide its policy towards the
Jarawa: whether it should continue with its plan to settle and
assimilate the Jarawa into the mainstream of Indian society, or
whether the Jarawa should be allowed to make their own decisions as
to their future.

Thousands of Survival supporters from around the world have already
written to the government asking that the Jarawa's right to own their
land and to choose their way of life for themselves be respected.
This legal case may force the government to make a decision. The
Jarawa's right to own their land and to choose their way of life is
enshrined in international law. Neither the Indian government nor the
courts should be allowed to take this away from them.

This campaign is already having a significant impact on the Indian
government, so even if you have already written, please write again.

Action

Please write a petition letter to:

Ms. Maneka Gandhi,
Minister of Welfare,
Shastri Bhavan,
New Delhi 110 001,
India
Fax: + 91 113384918

Shri. I. P. Gupta,
Lieutenant Governor,
Andaman and Nicobar
Islands,
Raj Niwas,
Port Blair 744 107,
Andaman Islands,
India
Fax: + 91 3192 32656

Please fax copies of your letters to the following newspaper.'

The Times Of India,
7 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg,
New Delhi 110002,
India
Email:
editor@t... com

and to the Indian High Commission or Embassy in your country.

Make the following points:
+ History shows that when nomadic peoples are forcibly settled they
are decimated by disease and suffer appalling social problems. if
they are moved from their land these problems will be ever worse.

+ The Jarawa must be allowed to make informed decisions about their
future themselves; they must not have another way of fife imposed
upon them.. This right is enshrined in inter
national law. The Jarawa also have the right to own their land - it
should not be encroached upon by outsiders.

Power of the pen

Politicians think that every letter they receive represents the views
of hundreds of other people who do not take the trouble to write,
By spending a few minutes writing to the addresses in this bulletin,
you are taking really effective action to help the tribal peoples of
the Andaman Islands.

Write in English or your own language. Be brief Be polite.

Many Survival campaigns have succeeded. It really is worth it.

Urgent action bulletins are also available in French, Italian,
Spanish & Portuguese, Some are produced in other languages. Please
write for details or extra copies.
Survival is a worldwide organisation supporting tribal peoples. It
stands for their right to decide their own future and helps them
protect their lives, lands and human rights. + Survival has no
connection whatsoever with the organisation called 'Cultural Survival

Copyright of this bulletin belongs to Survival. Editors are
encouraged to reproduce the information on the condition that
Survival is credited. + Further information about Survival's work is
available on the Internet at
www. survival. org. uk
_____________________________

#4.
The Indian Express
Friday, September 17, 1999
Op-Ed.

The living exports of South Asia

by Aruna Chakravorty 

The trafficking of humans, especially women and children, is an old
affliction for the SAARC nations. Statistics first presented at a
workshop in Bangladesh in 1996 stated that around 50,000 young Nepalese
girls are brought into India every year. An estimated 40,000 to 45,000
of them are earmarked for Mumbai alone. In Pakistan, over 1 million
`undocumented' Bangladeshis and over 2 lakh Burmese have been found in
Karachi. Approximately 100 to 150 Bangladeshi women are brought into
Pakistan as `human cargo' every day.

Few South Asian officials were found to be willing to look into the
problem. There were Nepalese women forced into prostitution in Mumbai
who were willing to go back home, but the Nepalese government refused to
take responsibility for them. No action could be taken against a
Nepalese man who came to India to sell his daughter, who finally landed
up in a Pakistani brothel. Nothing could be done when a SAARC woman
working as a maid in another country was battered and exploited.

Meanwhile, the situation only worsened with children being trafficked
from Bangladesh and Pakistan for use as camel jockeys in the Arab
nations. In 1997, a group of some 25 Bangladeshi girls, who were found
begging in the streets of Jeddah, were brought to Mumbai. Many did not
even know their names or the names of their native town.

Bangladesh initiated a sustained effort for regional cooperation on the
issue at the Tenth SAARC Summit at Colombo last year. A document was
drafted and, given the magnitude of the problem, much was expected from
it. But going by the proceedings of a workshop on the draft in Mumbai,
NGOs and human rights activists in all the SAARC nations are
dissatisfied with it. The SAARC Convention on Preventing and Combating
Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution was seen to be too
narrow to address the problem.

Activists feel that the document should have encompassed the whole ambit
of human trafficking -- from sweatshop labour to child pornography sites
on the Internet -- instead of restricting itself to ``women and
children'' trafficked ``for prostitution''. If the idea was to unite the
SAARC nations to fight the malaise, this draft is inadequate.

``Camel jockeying can continue. One can still take busloads of children
to beg in the Arab countries,'' says an indignant Sheela Barse, the
human rights activist who organised the workshop. ``In fact, they were
treating the draft as an official secret. No people's participation.''
The workshop was attended, along with representatives of UN and
international agencies in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, by G.P. Thapa,
DIG, Nepal Police.

The draft, for instance, treats women as `victims' of trafficking, while
the workshop opted for the more humane term of `persons affected'. It
does not address the question of the large mass of ``stateless
individuals'' who, feels Dr Faquir Hussain of the Pakistan Law
Commission, must find mention. ``The issue is complex and acute in the
South Asian region, which hosts many political refugees and economic
migrants. Appropriate provisions may be inserted in the draft convention
providing for state responsibility to accept repatriation,'' he stated.

Natasha Ahmad of Bangladesh, whose organisation first held a workshop on
the subject in 1996, was insistent about differentiating between
``trafficking in women'' and ``trafficking in children''. The draft is
expected to be the starting point for the codification of law in her
country. Ahmad is afraid that unless it is specific, it might affect the
flow of Bangladeshi labour into India and Pakistan.

Already, the approach in Bangladesh is ad hoc, she says. Women were
simply banned from working in the Arab countries. The ban has recently
been relaxed for nurses. ``But at the immigration department, any woman
who applies to go to the Arab nations is rebuffed.''

Statistics on the number of children sent to the Arab nations for camel
jockeying is hard to come by. ``It is only when a family discovers that
the children of some other family have returned that they realise that
their child should have come home too. Many children are left to tend
the camels in the desert once the season is over,'' says Ahmad. The
parents are so poor that they are more concerned about the money they
were to have been paid.

The draft, which was felt to lack clarity of vision, has come in for
heavy editing. Its very title has been changed to widen its ambit. The
vague, the unnecessary and the uncertain have been struck off. While the
draft left it to individual countries to legislate on extradition, ``if
so permitted by their laws,'' the amended version makes it mandatory for
states to take the convention as the basis for extradition.

While the original draft shied from putting any time limit for signing
extradition treaties between the states, a one-year deadline has been
proposed. Dr N.R. Madhava Menon, member, Law Commission of India,
recommended that a protocol be included under which individuals and NGOs
in the SAARC countries can petition their government on violations in
other countries. Going a step further, the workshop proposed, on the
lines of the UN International Court, a Regional Court with original
jurisdiction.

While the draft mentioned the establishment of a Regional Task Force to
implement the convention, Menon also introduced the concept of a
regional fund: ``There is so much money in prostitution; combating it is
not possible only through pious declarations.'' Stateless persons will
also have to be guaranteed equality and equal protection.

The dreaded word `repatriation' was removed from Article I to deny the
option to magistrates. ``There are women who do not know if they are
from Bihar or Bangladesh,'' said Preeti Patkar of Prerna, which works in
Mumbai's Kamathipura. ``If their country of origin is not proved, how do
we `repatriate' them?''

However, many issues remain unresolved. ``What do we do about the
stateless people of Tibet, who live in India but are not a part of
SAARC?" asks Barse, who has been working on trafficking since 1980. "Or
Burma, which shares borders with India and Bangladesh but is not a
member of SAARC?''

She also rued the absence of inputs from the Indian Labour Ministry,
because thousands of migrants cross borders in South Asia in search of
work. ``Do we have to push them out at the borders, or should we have a
system of work permits, which will make life easier for both us and
them?'' she asks.

The issues of trafficking and cross-border labour in South Asia are
headed for a turning point. And they are far too large to be entrusted
to a few bureaucrats. If they are to move effectively against the
problem, governments must tap into the experience of the
non-governmental sector.