[sacw] SACW Dispatch, 16 August 1999

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
16 August 1999

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Contents:
[1.] BJP's Growing Travails
[2.] Secular Exhibit Announcement from SAHMAT, Delhi
[3.] Letter from Pakistani Peace Activist who just did a Peace Workshop
[4.] Pakistani poor peasants oppose war
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[1.]
BJP's Growing Travails
Paying for institutional erosion

By Praful Bidwai

Going by the manner in which Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee kicked off
the BJP's election campaign in Ludhiana, Delhi and Lucknow, the
party hardly appears ready and raring to romp to victory on the
shoulders of the "hero of Kargil" brimming with self-confidence.
In Delhi and Lucknow, Mr Vajpayee's rallies were remarkably
poorly attended. He did not speak like a leader with his sights
focussed on victory, but like a diffident politician who only
pleaded the Lok Sabha be asked to complete its term. He did not
forecast a big forward thrust for the BJP, but only a small,
incremental, gain in its Lok Sabha tally--by just 20 seats.

Those who believed that Mr Vajpayee had struck out on his own
after "Operation Vijay" to loosen the hold of RSS hardliners on
the BJP organisation, had better think twice. True, Mr Vajpayee,
who for 15 years had taken no interest in organisational affairs,
suddenly got active and roped Mr J.H. Patel and the Sharad Yadav-
Ram Bilas Paswan duo into the National Democratic Alliance, after
withdrawing support to Mr Bansi Lal in Haryana. His spin-doctors
said he was asserting himself against sangh hardliners.

However, by August 8, he was at the feet of RSS sarasanghachalak
Rajendra Singh, meekly offering him the RSS salute and guru
dakshina at an elaborate 90 minute-long ceremony at Mr Murli
Manohar Joshi's residence, attended by Mr L.K. Advani and the
sangh top brass. In Ludhiana, before the plane shooting incident,
he made a vitriolic attack on Pakistan, calling it a "rogue
state", pleading that the U.S. must declare it one. The tone and
tenor of the speech was indistinguishable from hardcore Hindutva.

Perhaps Mr Vajpayee has turned unenthusiastic about the BJP's and
NDA's prospects after the worst display yet of mutual pulling and
pushing, of bargaining and haggling, since the party first formed
its coalition last year. The NDA's appearance of relative unity
and coherence conjured up in July has come apart. The BJP feels
unnerved by the entry of the Sharad Yadav-Paswan faction and the
Lok Shakti into the NDA. If the NDA, with Mr Fernandes, Mr Patel
and Mr Naidu sniping at their rivals, does not present a picture
of unity--its constituents are ideologically even further apart
from one another than those of the late and lamented United
Front--nor does the BJP, at one time the party "with a
difference". It can be no solace to it that two of its star women
campaigners, Uma Bharati and Sushma Swaraj, have opted out of the
electoral race, that intense factionalism plagues each of its
state units--from Himachal to Gujarat, Maharashtra to Bihar, and
Karnataka to UP--, and that enormous tensions have built up at
the top of the party pyramid, between Mr Vajpayee and Mr Advani.

In MP, there is open warfare between Mr Sunder Lal Patwa and Mr
Babulal Gaur. Factionalism is so intense that stalwarts like Mr
Sartaj Singh (who defeated Mr Arjun Singh), and Mr S.C. Verma
have dropped out of electoral contests. In Gujarat, inner-party
tensions have resulted in communal riots. VHP-RSS hardliners, led
by Mr Praveen Togadia the launched, first, an anti-Christian
pogrom in the Dangs, and now, anti-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad and
other cities to embarrass CM Keshubhai Patel. In UP, the Kalyan
Singh-OBC group is in open warfare with the upper caste Lalji
Tandon-Kalraj Mishra lobby, further discrediting what has become
one of the worst performing governments ever in the state.

In Maharashtra, the BJP and the Sena are not even holding joint
election meetings. The BJP is projecting Mr Gopinath Munde as the
"natural" choice for the chief minister's job, provoking Mr
Narayan Rane to declare that "teaching the BJP a lesson" is a
major political objective for him. The Sainiks' priority is as
much to put down the BJP as to combat the Congress and Mr Sharad
Pawar. The Sena is itself badly divided between the Uddhav and
Raj Thackeray factions, corresponding to different business
lobbies, protection rackets and regional power-bases. The SS-BJP
seems set to lose power in the assembly--short of a near-miracle.

None of this, nor its opponents' failings, can give the BJP much
satisfaction. True, the Congress is still to get its act
together. It does not yet have a well-defined, coherent electoral
strategy or a programmatic perspective. It has not resolved its
tricky leadership issue. It does have a lot of ammunition against
the government on Kargil and the telecom and steel import scams.
But it has not yet been able to turn these issues to its
advantage. And yet, no one can deny that the Congress is now on
the upswing and in revival mode; that it stands to gain in
diverse states. Given certain conditions--especially imaginative
programmes--it could electorally do far better than last year. By
contrast, the BJP may have peaked in UP, MP and Gujarat, and
perhaps in Bihar and Karnataka too. It is more likely than not to
decline nationally. Even the most optimistic internal assessment
of the party's prospects does not give it more than a one per
cent positive vote-swing. The dice do not heavily favour the
Congress, but they certainly remain loaded against the BJP.

The BJP's leadership has itself to blame for this state of
affairs. What has gone wrong? Regardless of what one thinks of
BJP politics, at least three factors are discernible. First, the
BJP made its electoral gains in the 1990s on the strength of
symbols, not substance, on identities (Hindu, "national", etc.),
not realities (poverty, deprivation or corruption) and programmes
in response to them. On coming to power, however, it failed to
translate symbolic issues into real, substantive, ones.
Ultimately, people judge parties in power by their performance.
Here, the BJP was found badly wanting. It did nothing that could
attract the imagination of any sizeable section of the people.

Second, the BJP misunderstood its limited, largely default-based,
mandate and pushed for policies that, at one extreme, were
blatantly pro-business, and at another extreme, jingoistic,
communal and chauvinistic. Thus, it promoted indiscriminate
privatisation and favoured business houses "crony capitalism"-
style. This went far beyond anything approaching balanced
liberalisation. At the same time, its pursuit of an openly
communal or hawkish agenda in nuclear policy, in education and
culture, and its attacks on the minorities, repelled large
sections of the public. The BJP's vacillation between these two
poles reflected the tension between its city-slicker types, e.g.
Messrs Jaswant Singh and Mahajan, and hardcore RSS-VHP elements,
neither of whom it can dispense with. This made for incoherence.

Third, the BJP-led government increasingly got into a
confrontation with important democratic institutions, even as it
violated norms of Cabinet functioning. Its caretaker government
took more decisions in three months than the regular one did in
13. This is now costing it further in credibility. President K.R.
Narayanan, surely one of the most sober individuals to adorn that
office, and a stickler for propriety, had to intervene no fewer
than 17 times on various improper or irregular actions and
pronouncements of the government: e.g. planned dismissal of the
Bihar government through Mr S.S. Bhandari, the anti-Christian
campaign, Indian Airlines' equity sell-off, a Rajya Sabha session
on Kargil, the Rs 50,000 crores telecom scandal.... The
government's response was to answer him back through partisan
rationalisations--usually after leaking the matter to the media.

The caretaker government also got into spats with the Election
Commission by questioning its authority, jurisdiction and
intentions. Equally reprehensibly, it questioned the higher
judiciary on the telecom policy--although it was fully within its
jurisdiction and promoted the public interest by so doing. The
government also made a mockery of the Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (TRAI) by robbing it of its legitimate powers.

Perhaps the BJP's, or rather Mr Vajpayee's, most deplorable
action has been to create an extra-constitutional power centre in
the form of the PMO, which bypasses the Cabinet and defies all
accountability. The PMO has emerged not as a functional extension
of the executive, which supplements the Cabinet, but as a
virtually autonomous decision-making caucus around one
individual. Unlike in Indira Gandhi's time, it is run more by
non-officials, committed to Mr Vajpayee, than by regular civil
servants. Today, the likes of Mr Ranjan Bhattacharya and Mr
Sudhanshu Mittal hold no positions in government, but operate
with great clout out of the PMO and indulge in all manner of
activity, from monitoring and bullying the media, to fixing steel
prices, from organising extravaganzas for Mr Vajpayee, to
drafting disinformation reports and legal strategies on telecom.

The PMO today increasingly resembles its degenerate avatar during
the notorious Emergency days. The difference is, Sanjay Gandhi
then provoked anger, but Mr Bhattacharya is sheltered by much of
the media. The PMO now acts like a praetorian guard whose sole
job is to defend and apologise for one individual, and which
coins slogans like "Bihar, Bomb and Bus", "Kargil, Kashmir, and
Karnataka", and (one is tempted to add) "Washington, War and War
Widows". The PMO's role has seriously eroded the government's
credibility and undermined the Cabinet system. In the long run,
this does not bode well for Indian democracy. But in the short
run, it cannot do the BJP much good either. De-institutionalising
democracy can be terribly counterproductive for everybody.--end--
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[2.]
Harvest of Hatred
Dark Times
Under the Saffron Brigade

We request you to join us for the opening of "Harvest of Hatred" an
exhibition documenting
the Dark Times Under the Saffron Brigade

at 4 pm. on Monday, 16th August
at Quami Ekta Trust Building
Bhai Veer Singh Marg, Gole Market, New Delhi

The exhibition will be inaugurated by
Shri Sunil Dutt
and will remain open from 16th to 23rd August
10.30 am to 5.00 pm

Please note:
The copies of the exhibition for a vigrous campaign against the Sangh Parivar
will be available at the venue

An Exhibition of 38 panels of size 23"x18" printed on art paper in duatone
using media reports, cartoons, photographs and editorial comments etc.,
available to interested groups for Rs. 500 and $50 (including postage).
The panels printed in English will be accompanied by Hindi text.

contact
SAHMAT
8, Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg,
New Delhi-110001
Telephone-3711276/ fax-3351424
e-mail-shabhashmi@h...

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[3.] Letter from Beena Sarwar, Peace activist from Lahore
August 15

Dear all, 
I wanted to share with you my experience of a peace workshop I did on
August 6 with working women in Lahore, including factory workers and
marketing officers from multinationals. It was organised by Piler
(Pakistan Institute of Labour, Education and Research, with about 35
participants. Since I had never done this kind of thing before, I asked my
mother, a teacher for help - she had formulated a peace workshop for
teacher trainers last year, using the material I got from
Hiroshima-Nagasaki, including an edited version of a Sadako Sasaki
animated cartoon film. I didn't have a copy of the film with me, so I just
used the basic structure she had formed. After going through all the
excercises and questions, I talked about the significance of Aug 6, and
used the photo panels of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Nevada, Semiplatinsk etc.
(from Japan) to show the participants what nuclear weapons and testing can
do. I also used silk dolls that Junko Kayashige (a teacher in Hiroshima &
a hibakusha) had presented me, and used her story, and the fan with the
peace message to add a more human touch. We also discussed Pakistan and
India's nuclear tests and how futile and damaging these were. Participants
said that in countries where there was so much hunger, unemployment, lack
of health care and education etc., weapons should not be manufactured.
They said that they had not participated in the government-sponsored
celebrations on May 28, but had felt everyone else had - and then they
realised that most people hadn't but that those who were against nuclear
weapons had not come out to lodge their protest. The feedback I got later
from the workshop organisers was that the participants, most of whom had
been in favour of Pakistan's nuclear programme (which they hadn't told me
then), had ALL agreed that nuclear weapons cannot be used under any
circumstances, and drafted a resolution to this effect! One of them even
wrote an anti-nuke poem. So we have 35 converts to our cause.... 
Following is the peace workshop devised by my mother, Professor Zakia
Sarwar. It is simple and may be used by anyone; it's meant for women, but
can be adapted for any group. Please do let us know if and when and how it
went. If anyone needs the Hiroshima/Nagasaki photo sets, please let me
know.
Thanks, Beena 

Peace workshop - General aims:
* to give working women a sense of empowerment
* make them aware of the possibilities of working for peace within
their own sphere. Intro: Give women a sense of empowerment by talking to
them of their
God-given extraordinary capacities 1. They have been entrusted with the
task of the propogation of 
species (As GB Shaw said): Man only contributes by inseminating
within a fraction of a second, but women carry the baby, care for it
help it grow, and instinctively know what are the ways to help the
child and protect it >from harm. So They carry the larger burden of
responsibility for the coming generations. Man's emotional and
physical involvement is in comparison small
2. That is why women are more patient, emotionally much stronger,
more understanding, have more sensitivity and insight and have even a
stronger will when it comes to the welfare of their young ones. For
their offsprings no sacrifice seems difficult enough
So it is logical that the present world situation re peace should be
a matter of concern for them, and they should take initiatives to 
deter in what ever small way they can to the mad arms race and nuke
programmes This trend of thought can be expanded, with dialogue and
discussion with the participants. The questions can be done
individually so they give thought to it, and then in groups. Finally
groups can report to the whole class. Here are the questions:
1. what kind of thoughts/ideas come to your mind when you hear the word
'peace'?
2. What is the importance of peace on social and political level?
3. Should it be women's special responsibilitiy in present times to
foster peace in their social set up - specially groom children to
become peaceful citizens of the world? Give reasons for your answer.
4. How cam women foster peace?
5. When women work for peace, what kinds of problems are they likey
to encounter?
6. How can we as women get over those problems.
7. Formulate an 'action plan' for peace which you think you can follow
either in groups or alone
This can be given as questionnaire, for the women to work on first
individually and then in groups. Could take up to 1 1/2 hour. After
which groups report to the whole class with discussion and points
added by the facilitator, while the organisers write up the ans and
suggestions on the board. 
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[4.]
August 15, 1999
Pakistani poor peasants oppose war

A report by Farooq Tariq

A mass meeting of poor peasants belonging to district Sheikhupura,
Punjab, passed a resolution unanimously to oppose the war efforts of
Indian and Pakistan ruling classes. The meeting was organised by
Ghareeb Itehad Anjaman Shamsia (Poor Peasants Unity), in connection
with the 52nd years of Pakistan Independence on 14th August. On the
day, when most of the public meetings organized to celebrate the
independence day by the ruling Muslim League were praising the war
tactics of Pakistan Government, the poor peasants leaders were making
it absolute clear that this is not the real independence and we have
to build a new Pakistan, a Pakistan, independent of the exploitation
of the feudals and capitalists.

On 14th august, while the government handed over medals to the" brave
Pakistani army men" in officials ceremonies, the poor peasants were
declaring this war as a war of the fundamentalists and saying that the
real war is a class war against the feudals and capitalists.

Over a thousand peasants men and women listened their leaders for over
four hours in a very hot day and without any fans or air-conditioneds.
Among the speakers, were several leaders of Labour Party Pakistan,
trade unions and social organizations. They had reached the meeting
place on their tractors and trollies from for off places raising
slogans for workers and peasants unity, for the abolition of feudal
system, land to the peasants and Asia will be red one day.

Speaking on the occasion, LPP general secretary, Farooq Tariq moved
the
resolution to condemn the both ruling class of India and Pakistan to
endanger
the peace of the region and the world by the ongoing war incidents. He
said that the danger of war can only be eliminated if the working
class of India and Pakistan alongside with peasants, social welfare
organizations and the youth build a strong peace movement. The ruling
classes of both countries want to continue the border clashes for mean
political ends. He said we support the right of the self determination
of Kashmir including the right of separation. This is not our war and
our real war is against the capitalist and feudal system. There were
tremendous response by the peasants and they raised their hands in
affirmation for the ideas and the resolution. Farooq tariq also raised
the issue that we must get rid of the habit of voting for this or that
rich politicians. They are all the same, corrupt and our class
enemies, he declared.

Several peasant leaders took up the issue of the killing of woman for
"honour" and condemned such traditions. We must treat woman as equal
and with respect. Over two hundreds peasant woman were present and
several of those spoke on the occasion giving full support for the
workers and peasants unity and declared that we must stand on our own
feats.

The main peasant leaders, Asghar Ali and Abdul Karim Kirala spoke of a
broad unity of the Left in Pakistan. They also declared their full
support for the peace efforts and asked the peasants to join the
political parties of the working class as the Labour Party Pakistan.
Both of these leaders had attended the Left Unity Conference in March
this year organized by LPP in Lahore.

The meeting was organized in Muridke, a town, 5 kilometres away from
the main head quarters of the most known religious fundamentalists
group called
Lashker Tayaba, the group who had send their "Mujahidin" (religious
fighters) to Kargil in Kashmir which caused the war between India and
Pakistan from 25th may to 12th July. The group is in the main list of
"terrorist organizations" declared by the Americans. So it was a
brave act to organize this meeting which was in sharp contradiction
from most of the celeberations activities throughout the country.