[sacw] sacw dispatch (13 Sept. 1999)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
13 Sept. 1999
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#1. Controversy over Fencing of Indo Bangladesh Border
#2. Pak Fundamentalists gunning for the Film 'Jinnah'
#3. New Book on the BJP reviewed by AG Noorani
#4. A Documentary film on death in prison of a Bangladeshi Garment Worker
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#1.
From: The Week
Sept 19, 1999
http://www.the-week.com/99sep19/events1.htm

Caught in the middle
Controversy: Villages on the Indo-Bangladesh border oppose the
16-year-old fencing
project, claiming it will make them refugees overnight

By Tapash Ganguly (from Indo-Bangladesh border )

The construction of a road and a fence along the 2,216-km Indo-Bangladesh
border has run into a major roadblock with more than 200 border villages
opposing the project. The 5 lakh people in these 'problem' villages are
not against the road and fencing, but say they need 24-hour access to the
mainland. They claim that erecting barbed wire along the border will make
them refugees in their own land.
Under the Indo-Bangladesh treaty, neither country can erect a fence
within 150 yards of the zero border line. This means once the fence comes
up villagers living in this zone will find their movements restricted.
Gates on the fence will be closed between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. every day. "We
don't want to be second class citizens in our own land, and be denied
access to the mainland 12 hours a day," said Asraf Mondal, 40, a member of
the Ronghat gram panchayat.

[. . . ]
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#2.
From: The Asian Age
13 Sept. 1999

Don't cry for unity, Jinnah: Pak fundamentalists
London: Cinemas and film distributors in Pakistan have been threatened
with death and destruction if the controversial film, Jinnah, is released
in the country next month. Professor Akbar Ahmed, scriptwriter and
co-producer of film, has also received several death threats. Opponents of
the film claim the bio-pic fails to portray the founder of Pakistan in
sufficiently respectful light. More rabid critics in Pakistan have called
the film a "Hindu and Zionist plot," reported the Observer on Sunday. A
Pakistani newspaper, Daily Khabrain, has been running a sustained campaign
against the film, calling the actresses in the film "prostitutes." Mian
Azhar Umin, a prominent Pakistani industrialist and politician, has vowed
to launch violent protests against those involved in the film. "Either
they will die or I will," he claimed last week. Controversy has dogged the
film since inception when Christopher Lee, famous for his roles as
Dracula, was chosen to play Jinnah. Recent criticism of the film has
focused on scenes which hardliners have called either indecent, un-Islamic
or un-Pakistani. The scene which has provoked the maximum anger is one in
which Jinnah breaks down in tears over the violence that accompanied
Partition. Pakistani critics have alleged that the depiction of Jinnah
crying for the victims of the killings at Partition sends out the message
that he is crying over the creation of Pakistan. Others have also objected
to scenes that show Jinnah's wife collapsed on a bed wearing a skirt as
she is dying of cancer. The film, however, has gone down well with
Pakistan's westernised elite, reported the Observer. At a screening for
1500 of Karachi's beautiful people, the film received rapturous applause.
There was standing ovation in Islamabad as well at a private showing
attended by Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, ministers and most of
the Pakistani top brass. One reason for the film's popularity with the
Pakistani elite, claimed the Observer, is its deliberate effort to "right
the wrong" committed by Richard Attenborough in his characterisation of
Jinnah in Gandhi as a cold and ruthless politician. The film also gives
vent to the long-held Pakistani view that an affair between Jawaharlal
Nehru and Lady Edwina Mountbatten led - from Pakistan's standpoint - to an
unfair division of the subcontinent. The film also has a message aimed at
the West - a fact Professor Ahmed does not deny. "I want to reclaim Jinnah
as a moderate and liberal politician, as a modern and moderate Muslim
leader. The point is to show that not all Muslim leaders are like Saddam or
Gaddafi," he said.

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#3.
From: Frontline
Volume 16 - Issue 19, Sep. 11 - 24, 1999

BOOK[Review]

The BJP's real agenda
By A.G. Noorani

The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India by
Thomas Blom Hansen; Oxford, 1999; pages 293, Rs. 495.

THE skeletons began rattling all the more noisily for the desperate
determination with which the cupboard was being shut. The Bharatiya Janata
Party tried to assure its allies in the so-called National Democratic
Alliance (NDA) that issues such as the Ra m temple in Ayodhya, scrapping
of Article 370 on Kashmir's autonomy, and a uniform civil code were not on
its immediate agenda. But what assurance could it offer its own cadres who
supported it precisely because it was committed to these issues and to Hi
ndutva?
The mentors, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), can quietly be
squared with. If the RSS could spread its influence when its political
front, the Jan Sangh, predecessor of the BJP, was but a constituent of the
Janata Party Government (1977-79), its in fluence, surely, would be far
greater if the BJP is allowed to stay in power as the dominant member of a
coalition. The RSS boss, Rajendra Singh, declared in an article in
Organiser (May 7, 1995), entitled "Ayodhya, Mathura and Kashi", that "no
fr iendly interaction between the Hindus and Muslims is possible unless
the latter shed their intransigence in regard to Kashi, Mathura and
Ayodhya."
The silence of a man of such a rabidly communal outlook during the
current controversy over the BJP's commitments vis-a-vis its pact with the
allies, is as significant as that of the dog that did not bark.
First came the calculated leak. "RSS sources" told a correspondent of
The Asian Age (August 18) that "there has been no dilution in the agenda
and ... installation of a BJP-led coalition government at the Centre will
be a step towards achieving th e implementation of the agenda."
They told him: "Our priority is to install a BJP-led government at the
Centre. But that does not mean that it will be done at the cost of our
agenda.... It will be the BJP alone which is going to implement our
agenda." Atal Behari Vajpayee would be suppo rted to the hilt because he
is the best vote-getter available. Incidentally, the issue of Organiser
in which Rajendra Singh wrote as he did, also carried Vajpayee's famous
article "The Sangh is my soul".
It was left to the BJP's general secretary, the too-clever-by-half K.N.
Govindacharya, to give the game away as he tried publicly to assure the
cadres. He said in New Delhi on August 22 that the BJP remained committed
to the three contentious issues even though it accepted the NDA's agenda.
Why? Because "with the BJP yet to traverse some more distance to attain
the steering position in Indian politics, we decided that in this
interregnum of transition we should commit ourselves" to the NDA's agen
da. Kalraj Mishra, Public Works Minister in Uttar Pradesh, confirmed it in
Lucknow the next day: "The party is committed to the construction of the
Ram temple."
Vajpayee tried frantically to limit the damage, in Ahmedabad on August
23: He was "surprised" to read Govindacharya's statement and said "all
contentious issues should not be brought into the political arena".
Govindacharya obediently issued a "clarifica tion". Having claimed on
August 22 that "we work with bifocal vision", he demonstrated the next day
that the BJP also speaks with a forked tongue.
If Pramod Mahajan asserted at Aurangabad on August 23 that the three
issues had not been sidetracked, J.P. Mathur said the opposite on August
24. M. Venkaiah Naidu declared on August 25: "Even if tomorrow we were to
fight an election on our own an d get 370 seats, we will not make Ram
Mandir part of our election agenda." The very next day he denied having
said so. He had said that, not to a press reporter, but on the Star News
TV channel, which said his "statement was on tape and could not be refu
ted" (The Indian Express, August 27).
Kalraj Mishra returned to the fray on August 25. "Even now Ram Mandir
was a burning issue for us. But since there was no consensus in the NDA on
this, it is not part of the joint manifesto with the NDA... there is no
dilution in our stand. However there are the compulsions of coalition
politics...." A Times of India report (August 27) from Nagpur said that
"the RSS was completely at peace with the BJP on the Ayodhya temple
issue, RSS sources claimed. The RSS realises that getting Mr. Vajpa yee
back into power is much more important." Mamasaheb Ghumre, former
vice-president of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), told him: "The temple
has a better chance of getting built with him in the saddle for five
years." Once in power with a solid majorit y of its own, the BJP will
discard the flotsam and jetsam it has gathered in the NDA - and fulfil its
own agenda. To paraphrase Milton, case will recant vows made under pain as
unsaid and void.
On April 24, 1996, on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections, L.K. Advani,
then BJP president, said there would be no compromise on the Ram temple
and the matter was high on its agenda. The party's 1998 election
manifesto had a whole page on Hindutva, and "c ultural nationalism". It
concluded with a pledge - to build the temple. The National Agenda for
Governance was drawn up subsequently and published on March 18, 1998 when
alliances became inescapable if power was to be won. The BJP's decision
not t o bring out its own manifesto this year is as unprecedented as it is
meaningful - the 1998 document stands.
ONE must not miss the wood for these trees. The Danish scholar, Thomas
Blom Hansen's book makes a timely appearance to remind us of what is in
store for us once the BJP takes us into the wood. Its sub-title captures
the theme: what the BJP's concept of H indu nationalism spells for
India's governance and its democracy. His grasp of political theory,
intensive field work in Maharashtra, and familiarity with the vast
literature on the subject are well reflected in the work. To what do we
attribute the saff ron wave? One school of scholarship attributed it to
"imaginative political strategies", another to the older "reserves of
religious nationalism".
Hansen incorporates both the strands but goes beyond them. "My main
argument is that Hindu nationalism has emerged and taken shape neither in
the political system as such nor in the religious field, but in the
broader realm of what we may call public culture - the public space in
which a society and its constituent individuals and communities imagine,
represent, and recognise themselves through political discourse,
commercial and cultural expressions, and representations of state and
civic organi sations" (emphasis added, throughout).
The Sangh's credo is quintessentially paternalistic, xenophobic and
authoritarian. "Many Hindu nationalists have only a skin-deep commitment
to democratic procedures." But there are some latent fears, some hidden
concerns, which it was able to draw upon. Hansen's book is, in its
mercilessly incisive analyses, a mirror to Indian society. "Is Hindu
nationalism really revealing the dark side of the middle-class culture and
social world of the 'educated sections' who have dominated Indian public
culture and the Indian state for so long - the authoritarian longings, the
complacency, and the fear of the 'underdog', the 'masses', and the
Muslims?... The recent Indian experience of Hindu nationalism should
remind us that democracy also very often gives birth t o forces, desires,
and imaginings of an authoritarian and anti-democratic nature, or
'majoritarian' and moral backlashes against what is seen as 'excessive
liberalism' in the public culture."
His resume of the course of Indian politics in recent years is prefaced
by a thorough discussion of the ideology of Hindu nationalism as developed
in the last century and the present one by men of intellect such as Bankim
Chandra Chatterji, Lala Lajpat R ai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak right down to
the likes of V.D. Savarkar and M.S. Golwalkar.
The BJP capitalised on the policy of "soft" Hindu communalism which
Indira Gandhi adopted after her return to power in 1980. But the seeds had
been sown much earlier. "Radical anti-Muslim discourse had coexisted with
political pragmatism within the Sangh Parivar and within the older
sanghathanist tradition for almost a century. What was new in the 1980s
was, in other words, not so much the employment of the idiom of Hindu
communalism per se, but rather the ingenuity and scale with which this
idio m was differentiated and disseminated through an array of new
technologies of mass mobilisation."
Amazingly - or perhaps not - the BJP's supporters in the "respectable"
middle class do not find its techniques of mobilisation offensive. The
ends justify the means. Sadhvi Rithambara and Uma Bharati were found
useful. The latter was made a Union Ministe r. The author quotes one of
her election speeches in 1991: "We could not teach them with words, now
let us teach them with kicks... Tie up your religiosity and kindness in a
bundle and throw it in the Jamuna... Any non-Hindu who lives here does so
at our mercy."
Acts of violence are a natural consequence of speeches such as this. No
wonder riots followed the Hindutva campaign.
The Sangh Parivar operates from a narrow electoral base and its success
is far more tenuous than is imagined. It owes a lot to the erosion of
centrist forces such as the Janata Dal. Regionalist parties fell in line.
Its electoral constituency is limited to 25 per cent of the popular votes,
a mere 15 to 16 per cent of the country's adult population. One limitation
to its expansion is that it is confined "mainly to the Hindu upper-caste
and middle class milieus". It has no message for social uplift, econo mic
emancipation and gender equality. The women it projects are not known for
commitment to issues of gender equality, unlike, for instance, Brinda
Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or Gita Mukerjee of the
CPI.
The Hindutva movement has wreaked sheer havoc in the country. It claimed
to have altered the political agenda in the early 1990s, only to profess
to discard it at the end of the decade. "Has the Indian democracy been
weakened by the BJP's expansion over the last decade and its recent
formation of the Central Government in New Delhi? Is this only the
beginning of a gradual Hindu nationalist penetration of the public
administration, the judiciary, the military, and the press that over time
may constrict d emocratic procedures, and encourage a more heavy-handed
line toward public protests, social movements and others who are critical
of the government or just oppose economic and social exploitation?...
Throughout this work I have presented evidence and arg uments that in many
ways support the conclusion that the RSS represents a kind of 'Swadeshi
fascism' decisively vernacularised and shaped by modern Indian colonial
and postcolonial history." But, the author adds, the BJP must not be
viewed in isolation f rom other dark social forces in Indian society. "The
advent of Hindu nationalism forces us to ask larger and more uncomfortable
questions."
This is not to minimise one bit the seriousness of the sheer evil that
is the Sangh Parivar: "There is little doubt that the BJP's road to power
has ridden over the dead bodies of thousands of innocent Muslims, and
there is no doubt that strong forces wi thin the movement and in the BJP's
sizeable constituency among bureaucrats, commercial strata, and officers
would like to see India as a much stronger, less democratic, and more
repressive state that could provide security, labour, and the pleasant
sides of modern life to the elite and the middle class." The Parivar must
be viewed in the context of the milieu in which it has been able to
prosper and attract support from some who were not suspected of being
communal. There are many more closet Hindutvais ts than is commonly
realised.
The battle for India's democracy is not lost, it will not do to minimise
the arduousness of the tasks that lie ahead. The future of India's
democracy and its secularism depends on the outlook Indians of all creeds
come to share. Ideology matters, still.
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#4.
A MOTHER"S LAMENT: RAPE & DEATH OF SHIMA CHOWDHURY

A Video documentary on the rape and death of a young garment worker in "safe"
custody in a Bangladeshi Prison

Yasmine Kabir is an independent film maker who is a founding member of
NARIKA, a
non-profit South Asian women's organization in San Francisco working in the
area of
domestic violence. She received her training in San Francisco. A Mother's
Lament is
her second documentary, which has been funded by the Grameen Trust in
Bangladesh.
The film has been shown in Bangladesh and is scheduled to be shown in the
HIMAL film
festival in Kathmandu, Nepal in October 1999. Ms. Kabir is currently
working on a
documentary depicting the plight of Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia.

(For more information on how to contact the film maker write to:
naeem.mohaiemen@h... )