[sacw] SACW Dispatch 10 Sept.99

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
10 September 1999
[http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex]
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Contents:
#1. The post-Kargil scene in Kashmir [India]
#2. History, Memory, and National security
#3. On Deepa Mehta's 'Earth'
#4. SRI LANKA: journalist murdered
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#1.
[From: The Hindustan Times, 10 September 1999, Op-Ed.]

The post-Kargil scene in Kashmir
By Balraj Puri

The patriotic upsurge that swept the whole country during the Kargil
conflict did not affect the Kashmir valley.

There were no anti-Pakistan demonstrations, no collection campaigns for
welfare of the Kargil jawans and their families, no expressions of
solidarity with them and no blood donation camps. Separatist groups, on the
other hand, vied with each other to organise processions in support of the
"Freedom Fighters" of Kargil. However, when Pakistan withdrew its army and
others who had crossed to the Indian side of the LoC, it dawned on
Kashmiris that unlike the insurgency in the valley in 1990, the "freedom
movement" in Kargil was an imported phenomenon.

Now the All Parties Hurriyat Conference has expressed its disillusionment
with Pakistan for its "weak, parasitic and West-oriented foreign policy"
and for "damaging the Kashmir cause at the international level." In a
32-page booklet, the APHC has criticised the role of the UN, the US, the
UK, Russia and the Organisation of Islamic Countries vis-a-vis the Kashmir
issue. Realistically, it has exhorted the people of India to call upon the
government and leadership to settle the Kashmir issue once and for all.

There may be many reasons for the alienation of Kashmiri Muslims. But one
conspicuous fact is that Indian democracy did not fully encompass Kashmir
except for brief periods. A glaring proof of this is the doctrine that
=46arooq Abdullah has been preaching as a basis of Kashmir's relations with
the Centre. He has said that Kashmir should support any government that
comes to power at the Centre.

=46arooq does have as much right as Fernandes, Hegde, Mamata, Badal, Naidu
and other allies of the BJP to persuade Kashmiri Muslims that it is a
better party. But to deny them the right to choose, change and oppose the
government at the Centre is a negation of the elementary principle of
democracy and implies that they are not equal citizens of the country but
only its colony.

His further argument in support of his doctrine is that it is necessitated
by special circumstances of the state, especially its financial dependence
on the Centre. If the political support of the ruling party of a state to
the ruling party at the Centre is to determine its share in the Central
financial allocations, it cuts at the very roots of federalism. Moreover,
no people would surrender their freedom and self-respect for more aid.
Kashmiris are no exception.

=46arooq went out of his way to prove his loyalty to the BJP than what was
expected of him. His identification with Pokhran, his presence at the
release of the election manifesto of the NDA, his praise for the
"patriotic" virtues of the RSS at a function in New Delhi, his going all
the way to Mumbai to participate in the birthday celebrations of the Shiv
Sena Chief Minister are some of the glaring gestures.

=46arooq was converted to his present doctrine in 1986 when after being
dismissed from Chief Ministership, two years earlier, he was allowed to
resume it on agreeing to share power with the Congress, the party in power
at the Centre at that time. He had then declared "any one who wants to form
a government in Kashmir cannot do so without sharing power with Delhi".
This was the beginning of the alienation of the people of Kashmir which got
accentuated by the manipulation in elections a year later pushed them to
militancy in the next two years. In the election of 1977, Sheikh Abdullah's
National Conference swept the polls in the valley defeating the Janata
Party, then ruling at the Centre. It not only gave a sense of self-respect
to the people of Kashmir but also gave a common secular nationalist
platform of dissent in the form of Janata Party to all those forces which
were so far anti-India.

A similar experiment was repeated in 1983 when the Congress, the then
ruling party at the Centre, was almost wiped out in the valley by the
National Conference in the Assembly elections. As long as the avenues of
discontent against the State and the Central government existed,
secessionist and communal voices were silent. The situation now is not
similar to that in 1977 or 1983. For the BJP is not a contender for any
seat in the valley, but as Pramod Mahajan has said any seat won by the
National Conference would be in its basket.

The defeat of the NC candidates in Kashmir may not automatically revive the
spirit of 1977. In essence it means that loyalty to the ruling party in the
state and at the Centre and to India are not synonymous. After this
synonymity is broken, anti-India sentiments may not vanish altogether. But
if these sentiments are not fed by anti-government sentiments, Kashmiri
aspirations would be articulated in a more rational way. It should then be
possible for the people of India to understand them better and to discuss
how far they can be reconciled with the national interest.
-------------------------------------------
#2.
[From: The Friday Times, Septe 10-16, 1999]

History, memory, and national security

By Itty Abraham

The events of the last year and a half reveal a shocking lack of
historical consciousness on the part of Indian decision-makers. Take the
current trauma of New Delhi's strategic paparazzi, namely, the anxiety
that the endgame of Kargil has created a situation where the United
States is now firmly ensconced within the sub-continent. Because the
United States showed little interest in saving Pakistan's bacon (so to
speak) over its high altitude adventurism, this translates, in India,
into a story with two endings. The first is self-congratulation on being
correctly seen as the aggrieved and legitimate victim; the second,
following hard on the heels of the first, is that the US has now become
the final arbiter of all bilateral issues between India and Pakistan. In
other words, the heart of the Simla Accord (that bilateral issues
between the two countries are to be settled regionally) has had a stake
driven through it. Yet, in fact, the real reason that the United States
was willing to be drawn into Kargil - on whoever's beckoning - was
India's decision in May 1998 to go nuclear. That is what drew the
attention of the world's only global power to South Asia, i.e., the
breakdown of its global non-proliferation policy.

But beyond drawing correct inferences from the past, what about the past
itself? Even as the strategic pundits bemoan the new interest of the US
in the region, how can they have forgotten independent India's long
association with this strange bedfellow? Take Tibet for example. In the
1950s, the Indian government developed close ties with the CIA which was
seeking to create a liberation force of Tibetans, training them in India
and Colorado and helping them infiltrate back into Chinese-Occupied
Tibet. In fact, that support continued well after the last Lawrence of
Tibet had returned to Langley to apply the mistakes the CIA had learned
to Central America. And all this was in the time of Panchsheel and
before the Chinese attack on NEFA (North-Eastern Frontier Agency).
Through most of the decades that followed, even if India and the US
didn't appear to be in close concert, India remained, with China, the
two biggest borrowers of development funds from the soft loan wing of
the World Bank. The US could easily have shut that connection down, but
it did not. India even used US-supplied heavy water (though without its
explicit permission) for its 1974 nuclear explosion. Then came the
Russians with their invasion of Afghanistan. Since then, the US has
never left the region. The covert military operation against the
Russians in Afghanistan has continued to bleed into its ongoing concerns
with the flow of opium, heroin and arms from and into the region,
besides the traffic in armed fighters struggling for a different way of
life. In the end, the official Indian relationship with the United
States is not unlike the relation of Hindu right-wing groups to
Christian organizations within India. On the one hand, the Sangh Parivar
rants about the conversion of adivasis and pernicious foreign influence,
on the other hand, its leaders unfailingly send their children to
English-medium schools run by Christian priests and nuns.

But the mere presence or absence of the US is not the issue. South Asian
strategists cannot include or exclude the US at will. It will intervene
when it perceives its own interests are threatened. And while those
interests may be inherently flexible, the US has never lost its
obsession with one thing, namely, to keep nuclear weapons out of the
hands of people who do not look or think as it does.

The latest provocation for the United States, as mentioned before, was
the decision by the BJP-led coalition government in India to conduct
five nuclear tests in May 1998. What better way to ensure the US's
involvement in the region, especially when Pakistan's decision makers
followed suit soon after. The entry of the United States would perhaps
have been worth it if going nuclear had led to the fulfillment of
serious objectives of state. But did it? The tests set back improving
Indo-China relations, they considerably worsened relations with Japan
and Southeast Asia, they destroyed the illusions of peace-loving people
around the world who had thought that global nuclearism was on the
decline, they gave ammunition to those in the US Senate who had always
been opposed to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and they led to
economic sanctions. These were all eminently predictable responses. But,
most critical from a national security point of view, the tests marked
the end of India's strategic dominance of South Asia, a dominance it had
laid claim to following the creation of Bangladesh. At one stroke,
Pakistan was able to offset the military inferiority it had (and
continues to have) at the conventional weapons level by creating a
formal equivalence at the strategic level. The open presence of nuclear
weapons on both sides of the border produces a new status quo. It does
not make the region more safe (to wit, Kargil), but it does seem to make
the possibility of full-scale war less likely. At least, that is what
one hopes. Whatever the high reasons of state for this decision were,
they certainly did not translate into greater electoral support for the
BJP on the ground.

Now, with another election around the corner, the interim government has
published a draft report of India's official nuclear doctrine. Two
things stand out after reading this document: first, it bears a marked
resemblance to India's Constitution, that is very little appears to have
been left out; second, there is hardly any sign of fresh or creative
thinking about the real problem of security. At least with the
Constitution, the larger purpose of comprehensiveness - the protection
and development of India's citizenry - was noteworthy. This may not be
the case with the nuclear doctrine.

The lack of fresh and clear thinking on the issue of nuclear weapons
begins from the outset. The main plank of the doctrine is a "credible
minimum deterrence" based on a policy of "retaliation only" or
no-first-use. No first use, but the ability to respond overwhelmingly to
"threat of use" or "nuclear attack" on "India and its forces". Dr. Zia
Mian has pointed out that the language used in the document implies that
any nuclear power that has not accepted the "no first use" formulation
(i.e., the P-5 except China) is thus seen as potential threat to India.
In other words, for the doctrine to be meaningful, India would have to
develop a nuclear arsenal that included responding to the US in kind and
inflicting "damage unacceptable" to the attacker. That this reading of
the doctrine is possible immediately points to the vacuity of the word
"minimum" in the impressive sounding formulation "credible minimum
deterrence" (CMD). If deterrence under these circumstances includes also
being prepared to attack the US, then "minimum" begins to stretch a
little too far. Even if CMD means that India will not build thousands of
missiles like the US and Russia, it will have to go at least as far as
the nuclear babies, China, France, and the UK, and build about 400
warheads or weapons. Real numbers, however, are tastefully excluded from
the document.

Moving from the implications of threat projections to force structure,
the document makes clear that India seeks to establish a triad of
nuclear forces - nukes deliverable from land, sea and air. Why a triad?
The most obvious answer is because the other nuclear powers have a triad
and it is the easiest way of getting all branches of the armed forces
onboard. That India does not have "sea-based assets" which have the
necessary robust and high survivability characteristics is not a problem
- they will be acquired by some means, the Navy's unhappiness with
leased Russian nuclear submarines, notwithstanding. The most interesting
(and one must admit, novel) term enters in this section - the comment
that survivability will be enhanced by deception.

One can not help noticing that after a long hiatus deception is back in
business. From its shadowy origins in camouflage and disinformation,
deception has been given new life in the age of globalization with the
ability of Iraq and its Scuds to escape the electronic eye of the Allied
Cyclops during the Gulf War (and after), and with the complete surprise
with which India's explosions in May 1998 were greeted. It should be
noted, however, that deception is not something new for the Indian
nuclear complex. From its beginnings, the nuclear complex has been able
to veil its activities that practically no one, certainly not elected
representatives of the Indian government or the public, has been able to
rend. Did nuclear accidents occur, did reactors perform as planned, is
the data provided by the nuclear sybarites accurate? Who knows, because
it is all shrouded in secrecy. The deception of the nuclear
establishment is all the more impressive because it takes place in broad
daylight, before your very eyes. Deception, therefore, makes sense
historically, but in the nuclear doctrine probably means nothing more
than missiles carried by rail, travelling along the Indian railway
network. Before jumping to conclusions, note that there is also explicit
mention of a disaster control system "capable of handling the unique
requirements of potential incidents" - though the source of these
incidents is tactfully not mentioned.

In the end, the document does not tell us any more than we already knew
or feared, except reaffirming all about economics. What this document
promises is a government that will need to invest enormous amounts of
money over the next three decades to build its survivable, credible, and
up-to-date nuclear weapons system. How much money would that be?
Estimates range from the relatively miniscule Rs 3,000 crores (US$750
million), calculated by a late chief of the Indian Army, to the slightly
more realistic Rs 70,000 crores (US$17 billion) over the next thirty
years, according to one of the members of the NSAB, Bharat Karnad. The
most credible estimate so far is Rs. 40,000-Rs. 50,000 crores (US$10
billion) over the next ten years, according to Rammanohar Reddy, an i
nformed journalist.

When we get into the numbers game, it is important to remember, first,
that the correct way to assess the impact of these estimates is to see
them as a proportion of the government's budget, not as a proportion of
GDP. Second, the experience of the United States has shown that by far
the bulk of spending on nuclear weapons is not applied to nuclear
weapons per se but is spent on the infrastructure that supports it -
what the Indian Nuclear Doctrine calls C4I2. Of the US$5.5 trillion the
US spent on its weapons, 86% went for the costs of delivery systems,
maintenance and command and control, not warheads. These would be brand
new costs for India. If this path is to be followed, one can foresee, at
the very least, a substantial drop in productive capital investment, a
decline in allocations for social welfare and a rise in the budget
deficit, leading to continued high interest rates and putting the
long-term growth of the economy in serious question. Simply put, India
can not afford it.

As we look to the future, it would be useful to go back to the past. Ten
years after the end of the Cold War, we still do not quite know why it
ended, but we can be sure of one thing. The single largest constraint
hanging over the heads of Politburo members as they debated the
foreclosure of their empire was the inability of the USSR's
military-industrial economy to sustain the kind of spending it needed to
counter Ronald Reagan's renewed emphasis on defense, especially his Star
Wars initiative. In the end, ideology did not matter as much as
economics. Pakistan's ruling class should consider this parallel
seriously. Rather than provoke their Indian equivalent with continued
belligerence, they should sit back and wait for the inherent
contradictions in the Indian nuclear policy to emerge. The Indian state
cannot sustain these expenditures without whipping up a jingoistic
frenzy to justify such madness: in its absence, the Indian people will
measure their wellbeing through the price of onions. By the same token,
Pakistan, a smaller and more fragile economy, would do well to heed the
same advice. Their room for maneuver is even less.

Dr Itty Abraham is Program Director for South Asia and South East Asia
at the Social Science Research Council and the author of "The Making of
The Indian Atomic Bomb: Science Secrecy and the Postcolonial State,"
published by Zed Books in 1998.
-------------------------------------------
#3.
Los Angeles Times
Sept. 9, 1999
Movies

Grounded to 'Earth'
Political upheaval in 1947 India is the subject of the second film in
director Deepa Mehta's trilogy.
By KATHLEEN CRAUGHWELL

It's a scorching August day and camera-toting tourists trot in and out of
the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Boulevard. The lobby is abuzz
with chatter and music, but writer-director Deepa Mehta is a study in
serenity.

Mehta, 49, is in town with her film "Earth" as part of the American
Cinematheque's Universal Studios Hitchcock International Directors Series.
"Earth," the second in Mehta's trilogy based on the elements, follows the
1997 lesbian drama "Fire." "Water," which is in pre-production, will be
released next year. "Earth" opens Friday.

Although the larger theme is the violent political upheaval of 1947, the
heart of "Earth" is a love story involving three young adults: Shanta, a
beautiful, young Hindu governess (whose charge, an 8-year-old Parsee girl,
is the story's narrator), and her two suitors, Hasan and Ice Candy man,
both Muslim.

Mehta, 49, an elegant and well- spoken woman, shared her thoughts on
filmmaking, India and politics with The Times.

Question: Tell me about the trilogy and how it came about.

Answer: I was still shooting "Fire," and I knew that the next film that I
wanted to do was about the partition of India in 1947. People started
asking what it was called, and I just said "Earth." It made perfect sense
that I would call it "Earth" because it is about the politics of
nationalism and what territory means to us, what our land means to us, why
we make the sacrifices we do. Why do we kill for it, and what is the
particular nature of nationalism that can evoke such feelings of passion?
And I knew I wanted to make a film about sexuality and religion as well,
and that's "Water."

Q: Explain the themes of each.

A: "Fire" is about the politics of sexuality, "Earth" is about the
politics of nationalism, and "Water" is about the politics of religion.

Q: Describe your upbringing.

A: I was born in India and grew up in Delhi. I went to school and
university in India . My father was a film distributor and he had a
theater as well, so after school we'd go and watch movies for free.

Q: What kinds of films did you watch?

A: Indian popular cinema, and every Sunday at 11 o'clock we'd have an
American movie. Only on Sundays. Strange American films, I remember, "Ben
Hur" being a big favorite. And then they started showing French films,
which was very interesting, seeing different kinds of cinema. But by the
time I was in university I knew I wanted to have nothing to do with film!
I'd been saturated with it. So I did my master's in philosophy, and I was
going to do my dissertation for my PhD, and I met a friend who said they
needed somebody to work part time in a place called Cinema Workshop, a
small place that made documentary films in Delhi. I learned how to do
sound first, and then I learned camera work, I learned to edit and then
finally I made my own documentary and discovered how much I loved it.

Q: I was struck by the colors you used in the film. The oranges, and reds.
=2E . .

A: It's very important for me to do a color palette of the film, and the
palette comes from the emotional content of the script. I knew that I had
to use terra cotta. Red and yellow are the two very prominent colors. Red
for blood and passion and for earth. And yellow for hope and warmth. The
film reflects the beauty, texture and colors of India . And how that
beautiful world starts to erode when war starts knocking on your door.

Q: I'm afraid that in the States most people's knowledge of that time in
India 's history begins and ends with Mohandas Gandhi. Do you think the
subject matter, not to mention your unromantic approach to India 's
independence, will be difficult for Western audiences?

A: Even though my film is very particular, in the sense that it's set in
1947 and it's about the division of India into India and Pakistan, it's
also really an exploration of what colonialism does to countries. So
wherever the British, or it could be anybody but for us it was the
British, whenever they flew the country, they divided it. And they leave
us holding the mess. I also had a real desire to demystify the raj. This
whole thing about the benign rulers, 250 years of the British Empire, and
the nostalgia about what it was like. It's horrible to be ruled by
somebody else. And it's not just India , it's Ireland, Israel, Palestine,
Bosnia, Kosovo. It's so sad.

Q: The reason many of us have religious beliefs is to guide us morally,
and yet it's so often the cause of such pain and division. Why do you
think that is and why do people continue these patterns of war?

A: It's true that most wars are fought in the name of religion, but I
think [the strife] has a lot to do with politics, and socioeconomic
reasons. Every religion, basically, teaches us to be honest, and to be
good human beings, but because our faith is so dear to us it is also the
most fragile part of our nature. So for politicians, religion is a very
easy target if they want [to provoke] riots or unrest; all they have to do
is fan those embers that are already there. War gives such a license to
people to realize their worst possible potential.

Q: The love story in "Earth" is quite moving, and you feel such sympathy
for the suitor who doesn't get chosen. The love scene is very delicate;
how do you handle something like that?

A: I must say that as a woman director I had great fun making sure that
Rahul [who plays Hasan] takes off his shirt but Shanta doesn't. But the
love scene was the toughest one to shoot because it has to be sensual and
yet it has to come from a place of purity. The line is so thin, you have
to choreograph every move. Not more than one button off her blouse . . . .
but he takes off his shirt. That's for all the times men directors make
women unrobe.

Q: Do you have any desire to make a film in the U.S.?

A: I did a film called "Camilla" with Jessica Tandy and Bridget Fonda--in
fact it was Jessica Tandy's last film. We shot it in Savannah [Georgia].
But it turned out to be a film that I don't even recognize. Whenever you
have a budget which is so huge, well, to me it was huge, you have
considerations that are not about the integrity to the script or to the
vision. The considerations are to the market, and I'm not putting that
down, it's a reality, let's face it. So if you want to be in that arena
you better be prepared to play in that arena; you can't be like a hurt
rabbit and be naive about it. I learned a very good lesson from it.

Q: Who are some of the filmmakers who have influenced you?

A: Well, the great, what you call humanist, filmmakers, from the '50s have
really influenced me. Satyajit Ray and his "Apu" trilogy, Kenji
Mizoguchi's "Ugetsu," Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story," Vittorio De Sica's
"The Bicycle Thief." I guess I like films that engage me emotionally, I
don't get off on films that just engage me cerebrally. Oh, and now I love
[Emir] Kusturica; he's a Serbian filmmaker.

Q: Tell me more about "Water."

A: We start shooting on Nov. 1 in India . It's set on the bank of the
Ganges, which is a very holy river, hence "Water," and it's about
religion. It's an amalgamation of "Earth" and "Fire." And it's a love
story, all my films have love stories, because I think love exists.
Whether we reject it or accept it or try to deal with it, it's always
there.

Q: Do you know what you'll direct after "Water?"

A: After "Water" I don't want to film in India for a few years. I may do
something in New York. We'll see.

* "Earth" opens in select theaters Friday.

PHOTO: "I think love exists. Whether we reject it or accept it or try to
deal with it, it's always there," says Deepa Mehta, in L.A. for a
directors series.; PHOTOGRAPHER: PAUL MORSE / Los Angeles Times;

PHOTO: Actors Nandita Das and Aamir Khan inhabit Mehta's "Earth.";
PHOTOGRAPHER: Zeitgeist Films
-------------------------------------------
#4.
Committee to Protect Journalists
330 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001 USA
Phone: (212) 465-1004 Fax: (212) 465-9568
Web: www.cpj.org E-Mail: info@c...

SENT BY FAX to: 011-94-1-333-703

September 9, 1999

Her Excellency Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga
President, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
Presidential Secretariat
Colombo-1
Sri Lanka

Your Excellency:

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) strongly condemns the murder of
Rohana Kumara, chief editor of the Sinhala-language newspaper Satana.

At around 10 p.m. on September 7, unidentified assailants shot and killed
Kumara
on the road leading to his home in the Colombo suburb of Mirihana. The
assailants reportedly fled the scene in a silver Toyota 300 car. Kumara had
received a phone call earlier that night notifying him that a group of men h=
ad
entered his home and threatened to harm his wife if she did not reveal her
husband's whereabouts.

The motive for the killing is not yet known, but journalists in Sri Lanka fe=
ar
Kumara may have been murdered for his work. CPJ's sources characterize Satan=
a
("Battle") as a controversial tabloid paper with a reputation for attacking =
the
government and featuring personal and political scandal. Though Satana
currently
receives financial backing from the opposition United National Party (UNP), =
it
had also taken money from the People's Alliance (PA) coalition led by Your
Excellency, in the days when the PA was in the opposition, according to the
Colombo-based Free Media Movement (FMM).

The FMM also reports that Satana recently ran a series of stories concerning
allegations of high-level corruption and bribery involving, among others, Yo=
ur
Excellency's media advisor, Sanath Gunatillake.

As a nonpartisan organization of journalists dedicated to the defense of our
colleagues around the world, CPJ is deeply disturbed by Kumara's murder. We
congratulate Your Excellency for acting promptly in this case to order a ful=
l
investigation into the killing.

CPJ respectfully urges Your Excellency to make the results of this
investigation
public, and bring Rohana Kumara's killers to justice.

We thank you very much for your attention to these matters, and await your
response.

Sincerely,
Ann K. Cooper
Executive Director

cc: Free Media Movement
South Asian Journalists Association
American Society of Newspaper Editors
Amnesty International
Article 19 (United Kingdom)
Artikel 19 (The Netherlands)
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression
Congressional Committee to Support Writers and Journalists
Freedom Forum
Freedom House
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
International Association of Broadcasting
International Federation of Journalists
International Federation of Newspaper Publishers
International Journalism Institute
International PEN
International Press Institute
National Association of Black Journalists
National Press Club
Newspaper Association of America
The Newspaper Guild
North American Broadcasters Association
Overseas Press Club
Reporters Sans Fronti=E8res
Society of Professional Journalists
World Press Freedom Committee