[sacw] SACW Dispatch, 19 August 1999

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
19 August 1999
-------------------------------------
Contents:
[1.] A note on Journalists Against Nuclear Weapons, Chennai, India
[2.] Re Wadhwa Commission Report on the Murder of Rev. Graham Staines in Ind=
ia
[3.] Sanctifying "honour" killings [in Pakistan]
[4.] US paper on Arundhati Roy
-------------------------------------

[1.]

A note on Journalists Against Nuclear Weapons, Chennai, India

The JANW was formed by about 20 working journalists based in Chennai
(erstwhile Madras), India, in late July 1998, following Pokhran II
and Chagai and has now expanded to more than 30 members. In our own
humble way, with all our limited resources, we have been conducting
several programmes and campaigns of awareness on the nuclear theme
among different sections of the public. With cooperation from
fraternal organisations like the Indian Scientists Against Nuclear
Weapons, Campaign Committee Against Nuclear Weapons, All India
Catholic University Federation etc, we have made our own humble
contribution to this cause in the past one year.

We have conducted interactive programmes for students and working
women and we were also instrumental in organising a May 11 Committee
comprising representatives of trade unions, environmentalists,
writers, scientists, civil liberty activists etc this year (1999)
which successfully conducted a protest Human Chain programme at
Chennai on the anniversary of Pokharan-II (May 11, 1999).

A BOOKLET in English published by us (`The Media Bomb') on Indian
media response to Pokharan-II (with researched articles by members of
the JANW) was released on December 10, 1998 (human Rights Day) and
can be accessed at our website: www.pppindia.com/janw.

On the occasion of our anniversary (July 24, 1999), viz, last month,
we released two booklets, one each in English and Tamil, with
articles by members on "Pokharan-II, Kargil and the People". Dr
M.Anandakrishnan, former Vice-Chancellor of Anna (technical)
University and at present Vice-Chairman of the Tamil Nadu COuncil
of Higher Education, and other invitees spoke on the occasion. We
have also brought out the first issue of an information-oriented=20
bulletin for the benefit of members of the JANW and activists of
fraternal organisations.

The JANW (Convenor: J.Sri Raman), along with the Campaign Committee
Against Nuclear Weapons (Convenors: Mr N.Ram, Editor, `Frontline', Dr
T.Jayaraman and Ms Mythili Sivaraman) and the All India Insurance
Employees' Association (AIIEA- President: Mr N.M.Sundaram) observed
Hiroshima Day (August 6, 1999) at a meeting in the city where
prominent personalities including Mr C.V.Narasimhan, former UN Under-
Secretary-General, Mr N.Ram, Ms Mythili Sivaraman, Mr S.S.Thiagarajan
(President, Tamil Nadu unit of the All India Trade Union Congress-
AITUC) and others spoke. Dr M.V.Ramana of Princeton University made a
slide-backed presentation on the impact of nuclear explosions.

The meeting also passed resolutions demanding of Indian and Pakistani
governments to give up nuclear weaponisation and of the Nuclear
Powers to start the process of global nuclear disarmament without
further delay. =20

Contact: <janw@h...>
------------------------------------

[2.]
Indian Express
Wednesday, August 18, 1999
Op-Ed.

Wadhwa's balmy effect

by Valson Thampu

It is instructive to sample the responses to the Wadhwa Commission Report.
Some are elated and some agitated over the commission's findings. Both are
unfair to the report; for they seek to politicise it to their own advantage.

Fairness demands that a document be judged vis-a-vis what it purports to
achieve. The report makes it clear that its guiding principle is
"restorative justice", which is explained as: "Restorative justice is not
concerned as much with punishment or fault-finding only. It seeks to
correct imbalances of perception, restoring broken relationships with
healing, harmony and reconciliation." Graham Stewart Staines would have
welcomed this approach as thoroughly Christian.

When I visited Gladys Staines at Baripada in March this year, she
recalled her conversation with Graham Staines merely 10 days before his
martyrdom at Manoharpur. They were discussing the atrocities on Christians
in Dangs, Gujarat. Graham concluded with a question vibrant with the
spirit of his faith: "Should notChristians forgive, even as Jesus did when
he prayed for his persecutors?" It was this, Gladys
Staines gratefully recalled, that prepared her to respond "Christianly"
to her supreme tragedy.

The irony is this. The commission sees Graham Staines as a martyr and his
death as a significant event that could wake up the conscience of a whole
nation. Those who speak for the political and religious lobbies, on the
contrary, see it as a crime whose political scope outweighs its spiritual
significance. This is a sacrilege to those who know Gladys, and the
spiritual meaning of the work that the Staines couple has been doing in
Orissa. The report is far more sensitive to her spiritual nobility and the
redemptive scope of her witness than the spokesmen for the community.

The concluding words of the report deserve to be quoted: "The Commission
wishes to place on record its deep appreciation of the remarkable fortitude
and wisdom displayed by Gladys Staines in the face of such terrible
personal tragedy where she losther husband and two little sons...By her
conduct, she has put to shame, if they have any shame, not only the
perpetrators of the crime but those who directly or indirectly may have
sympathy with them...Gladys has shown great resilience with her resolve to
stay in India with her daughter to carry on the work of her late
husband.The Commission is with her in her resolve and wishes her strength
and support in her endeavour to serve the poor and spread the Gospel
without any fear."
In the report, the Manoharpur tragedy is treated as an alarming symptom
of the general malady that threatens the country as a whole. In describing
it as an "avoidable tragedy", the report enlarges the environment of
responsibility for this national shame. So the accusing fingers of the
commission point to the state administration that remained a passive
witness to Dara Singh's riotous rise to criminal pre-eminence in Mayurbhanj
and Keonjhar districts.

Implicated though he was in 11 criminal cases of serious magnitude, Dara
Singhremained free to perpetrate more and more heinous crimes, enjoying at
times even the goodwill of the police. The report says: "Purna Chandra
Mahanta recalls an incident which took place one day before the Manoharpur
incident wherein the police lifted up an intoxicated Dara Singh and put him
on the side of a road, even when he was a wanted criminal."

Communally slanted political patronage is the key to such immunity.
Significantly, while Dara Singh used to be arrested and let off till the
end of 1997, in none of the cases thereafter the police dared to lay hands
on him. Not because he was hiding like sandalwood smuggler Veerappan. Even
after Manoharpur, he was moving around freely and was available for a TV
interview, though he remained invisible and inaccessible to the police.

The report speaks for the nation as a whole when it says, "That an
individual rabid fundamentalist playing on the sentiments of poor tribals
in the name of religion could commit such a dastardly act is a matter of
grave concern forus, one and all." Elsewhere, it says: "The attempt of Dara
Singh in murdering Staines was plainly to prevent missionary activity
amongst the tribals so that they would not embrace the Christian faith.
Such violent acts are aimed at mutilating the Constitutional structure and
it is necessary that the collective energy of the people of India protect
itself against misguided and ill-informed religious zealots who have been
spreading a communal view of religion."

The commission, however, sees no link between Dara Singh and any communal
outfit in this specific instance. Yet it does not overlook the evidence
pointing to Dara Singh's ideological affinity to Bajrang Dal and the BJP
and the solidarity he enjoyed from them. The report notes: "In the case of
Patna Police Station Case No. 80 of 19th October 1997, several BJP and
Bajrang Dal activists were arrested along with Dara Singh. There was sharp
reaction from the BJP as well as from the local Bajrang Dal on the arrests
so made."

This is further borne out by Dara Singh's motive in murdering Staines.
The report quotes him: "Let us go and assault the Christian missionaries
who have come to Manoharpur as they
are indulging in conversion of innocent tribals to Christianity and
spoiling our religion and culture." It strains our credulity that an
ideologically innocent criminal, tucked away in the tribal belt of Orissa,
can be so paranoid about his "religion and culture" (especially culture!)
being spoiled by missionary activities.

The report is commendable in the focus it puts on the lamentable plight
of the tribals. It speaks of their poverty, their neglect at the hands of
the administration and their helplessness which makes them vulnerable to
irreligious incentives as in the case of conversion inspired by the hope
of healing. The report is eloquent in exposing the unfairness thereof but
loses sight of its link with the "avoidable" misery and destitution on
which it feeds. Those who know human helplessness in states of prolonged
illness unrelieved by health care,and are not strangers to the brooding
ferocity of hunger, can understand how in such states people grab any form
of help. While it is mean to take advantage of such a state, it is even
more dishonourable to keep millions in such sub-human conditions.

`Restorative justice' needs to be translated proactively into a social
reality with a special focus on the underprivileged sections of our
society. Regrettably, the resentment against the conversion of tribals is
the other side of the apathy to their hellish plight.

The writer is Member, Delhi Minorities Commission

Copyright =A9 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay)
Ltd.
------------------------
[3.]
The Nation Online
Tuesday, August 17, 1999

(Opinion Page)

Sanctifying "honour" killings [in Pakistan]

By Shireen M. Mazari

The level of our civil society's underdevelopment and our political elite's
opportunism are most clearly illustrated in how we still define, what is by
all accounts simply barbaric behaviour, as "honour". And the victims of
this "honour" are by and large women - with no class or caste being beyond
the tentacles of this continuing barbarism. Whether it is the despicable
practice of karo kari, or wife-burning or beating, or rape, or reducing a
woman to a saleable commodity by forcing her to marry against her wishes,
or murdering a wife, daughter or sister simply because they chose to assert
their right of choice as adults - all these criminal acts (for they are
crimes under the law of the land) are "justified" -under the guise of
"honour". And no class is beyond this, as the murder of Samia in her
lawyer's office illustrated only too clearly - yet again. The irony is that
even those who, condemned this act referred to the deed as "murder for
honour" or "honour killing", and so on.

However, if one was to examine at a very basic level even the strict
meaning of the word "honour", it is clear that such killings and other such
acts of violence can never be dignified by the word "honour'. For the word
refers to that which rightfully attracts esteem; or that which confers
distinction or does credit, or self-respecting integrity - to quote a few
definitions. Now under none of these meanings could one even remotely
include the acts mentioned above. So let us not dignify such acts with the
word "honour".

In many ways the Samia case has exposed the many facets of crimes against
women that bedevil our society even today. To begin with, at the level of
the family, while infanticide may not be as common today, girls are by and
large not the preferred child. Many families condemn their women who fail
to produce sons and many other males simply use this as a pretext to
continue remarrying. In poorer homes the girl child is the least nourished
and least looked after member of the family - with perhaps only the mother
competing for that lowly position. In the rural areas, women are seen as no
better than animals - to be traded, literally, at will and many times over
by the male members of their families. Such is the "honour" involved in
dealing with women.

Nor is this trading of women limited to the rural area or the less
"educated" classes. Feudals trade their daughters within the families to
retain the landed properties or strengthen political ties; business
families do the same to keep the business interests "within the family" -
or to build up the family businesses. And when one of their educated
offsprings decides to assert her rights as an adult human being, then
violence and murders take place.

What can be honourable about living with a man one hates, or a man who has
all manner of repulsive vices, or a man who is diseased, mentally and/or
physically, or a man who womanises, or a man who is violent and offensive,
etc? As an adult human being a woman has no need to put-up with physical
and mental abuse nor has anyone the right to inflict it on her or allow it
to be inflicted on her. The barbaric state of mind of a mother who actually
has her daughter murdered before her very eyes cannot even be fathomed -
but it chills the very being to think of it. And with never a thought for
the children of the victim, so unwittingly brutalised. And simply to
satisfy a barbaric sense of "outrage"?

Which is where another despicable dimension of the whole episode
illustrates the degenerate level of our society today. Society - at all
levels, from the elite and educated to the poor and uneducated - continues
to tolerate crimes against women, and often condones acts of murder of
women by their families/spouses. It is no wonder then that women, wherever
they are in this society, are often beaten as a normal course of life, are
abused and violated and the perpetrators of these crimes are protected by
the society.

The worst of it is that Islam which dignified the status of women before
any other religious or secular creed, is now being misused to justify
violence and killing of women. And here the accuser, judge and executioner
are one and the same - with not even a minimal notion of justice being
prevalent. It is not simply the Western media that paints Islam in a bad
light - it is Muslims themselves who are distorting and violating basic
Islamic notions of justice and human dignity. We are ever ready to condemn
Western societies for their lack of morality and so on, but what happens
here is even worse. There is a facade of so-called morality behind which
every kind of action takes place and every kind of abuse is practised on
women and children - and society silently abets in it all. That is why
murderers and rapists quietly get accepted by society - as long as they
have the right connections.

=46inally, there is the State itself. Not only was it shocking to find
parties that seek to assert their progressive creed oppose condemnation of
these killings 'in the Senate, but religious parties also kept a strange
silence - despite such killings going against the basic precepts of Islam.
Where the right and the left could have united and stood up for the dignity
of women and against acts of murder, political opportunism prevailed. As
for the government, it is unfortunate that it has chosen to remain a silent
spectator instead of actively opposing murder - for at the end of the day
that is what these killings are: Simple murders which require punishment
for the murderers.
But let us examine what happened in the Samia case leading up to the
Senate action on these killings. There have been no arrests made of the
known murderers of Samia - including the uncle who is also guilty of
kidnapping Shahtaj' Qizalbash in broad daylight in full view of witnesses.
So what is stopping the State functionaries to arrest the guilty? Does the
fact that you are heading a chamber of commerce put you and your family
above the law? Is the law of the land to be applied only selectively? The
fact of the matter is that divorce is allowed and therefore all women have
the right to seek it if they choose. One may or may not agree with the
perspectives of Ms Jehangir and her sister Ms Jillani, but one cannot deny
them admiration and respect for providing a channel through which women can
assert their right to live their lives as they see fit, free of male
violence and abuse - and in the process endangering their own lives.

By, at the very least, tacitly condoning such an act, the State is sending
a clear signal that it is open season on women who wish to assert their
right to lead their own lives and choose their own partners - or escape
from abusive and violent ones. If anything, the State is making a mockery
not only of the lives of its female population but also of the very notion
of marriage. One has simply to recall the decision of a judge of the Lahore
High Court a while back in which the judge - according to a report of NNI -
ordered the confiscation of a woman's property as punishment for her (the
woman) refusal to grant her husband conjugal rights. Apparently, the
husband applied for relief on the grounds that his wife had denied him his
conjugal rights granted under the religion. Of course, what remedy the
religion provides for this the judge may have better understood - but to a
rational lay person such a denial should have led the man to divorce his
spouse rather than seek confiscation of her property.

Most important and more serious, how would the issue of rape fit in with
conjugal rights after this judgment? In most civilised societies, a woman
can accuse her husband of rape and, if proven, seek legal penalties for the
errant husband. The Chambers English Dictionary defines rape as unlawful
sexual intercourse with another person (usually by force) without that
person's consent. Now if the legal system here defines sexual intercourse
with a spouse as legal - even if it is unwilling - then how does that fit
in with the notion of consent and the use of force. In other words, can a
spouse forcefully have sexual intercourse with the other partner and
without that partner's consent - all under the legitimisation of "conjugal
rights"'?

As a result of all these actions at the level of civil society and the
state, that are targeting women, we are becoming a society polarised by
hatred, violence and intolerance. The silence of the state is deafening in
the sinister message it is giving out.

The question that we must ask ourselves is whether women, then, are
condemned to remain at the mercy of tribal and societal barbarism as the
millennium nears? Is this the Government's vision of Pakistan in the 21st
century?

If not, then the government needs to speak out against anti-Islamic customs
that reflect a decaying feudalism. We rightly condemn the rape that has
been and is being perpetrated against Muslim women by states such as India.
But what about the rape - both mental and physical - and murder that are
daily being inflicted on Muslim women by Muslims in Pakistan? Where is the
"honour" in that?

---------------------------------
[4.]
=46rom SAJA E-mail Discussion List
Info: www.saja.org/lists

Christian Science Monitor
Aug. 17, 1999

A writer's life: From India's favorite daughter to its conscience
By ROBERT MARQUAND

NIASRPUR, India - When novelist Arundhati Roy arrives late at night in
this little river hamlet, she is mobbed and pelted with flowers. They love
her here. And why not? She wants to help save their town.

Roy arrived as a public figure on the larger Indian scene only two years
ago, like some dramatic, unforeseen comet. When sales of her highly
original first novel, "The God of Small Things," went through the roof
worldwide, it put Indian writing firmly on the map and gave this country
something it never had - a bona-fide celebrity author. John Updike
compared Roy's arrival in fiction to that of Tiger Woods in golf.

Yet Roy is more than an exotic literary figure in her native land. She has
emerged as a kind of populist conscience, a budding Pablo Neruda of India,
an upstart who has bravely taken on some of India's most sacred cows.

Last year, as the nation celebrated its nuclear tests, Roy wrote a
blistering critique, describing them as "folly." She made headlines by
donating time and money to untouchable, or "Dalit," writers. Recently, she
helped inspire and organize a massive weeklong protest against one of the
dams on the Narmada River that may submerge 245 villages.

In so doing, Roy shed her role as one of India's favorite daughters and
became one of its most controversial - though few disagree that, right or
wrong, she's had a terrific impact on debates that lie at the heart of a
country whose population this week reached 1 billion people. Like many
artists she worries about the rise of extremism and a more aggressive
Hinduism. But her main concern is the ever-rising gap between modern urban
India and the vast poverty found in the villages.

Indeed, Roy's identification with villagers, and their admiration of her,
is unusual. Famous artists here mostly inhabit a stratified world of heady
seminars and splendid isolation. Not many are folk heroes willing to deal
with bedbugs and bumpy roads as Roy has done in the past few weeks.

Yet Roy's outsider status is one reason her voice has emerged, say those
close to her. "She is not an academic. The people she knew and grew up
with were underdogs," says Rana Behl, a friend and historian at Delhi
University. "She did not come through the normal patterns of social
politeness and the caution public figures here are used to. She's not cut
as an elite Anglo-Indian writer."

Roy's strength, say friends, is a passionate sense of justice and a
feeling for everyday problems - one reason her writing attracts doctoral
candidates and ordinary people alike. Her appeals in print, whether for an
end to the South Asian arms race, or for equal treatment of villagers,
have the fire of a 19th century abolitionist: "Prevalent political wisdom
suggest that to prevent the State from crumbling, we need a national
cause, and other than our currency (and poverty, illiteracy) we have none.
This is the road that led us to the bomb," she wrote in an essay that
itself hit India's intelligentsia last year like a bomb.

"The young lady's writing on the Narmada dam has forced the question of
the treatment of village people into urban drawing rooms where it might
not have been raised," argues Sumer Lal, a senior editor at The Hindustan
Times, Delhi's largest newspaper. "She has married passion and facts and
breathed life into a social movement that had given up hope."

Not everyone is so complimentary. This spring, after the Supreme Court of
India lifted a stay on construction of the Sardar Sarovar dam on the
Narmada, Roy published a highly critical essay, "The Greater Common Good."
The tract so upset the Supreme Court that in July several justices said
Roy had "undermined the dignity of the court," and sought action against
her. In the state of Gujarat, supporters of the dam burned the book in
public. An increasingly hostile Indian press often now sneers at Roy as
impractical or naive. One newspaper called her "The Goddess of Large
Causes."

Still, the photogenic Roy, who has been on several lists of "the 50 most
beautiful women in the world," has made herself hard to ignore. "Some
people say I am using my fame," Roy says. "I say I am letting my fame use
me. The space for disagreement, not only in this country, but also abroad,
is shrinking. Critics say we are urban elites and so can't comment on
rural problems, as if being urban is a crime. What they really want is
that only powerless people in the village should protest, because they
know such people can easily be crushed underfoot.

"People say I'm too passionate. Well if you can't get passionate about 40
million people displaced (the estimate of how many lost homes around the
hundreds of dams in the Narmada valley) and losing their jobs, what can
you get passionate about?"

In some ways her Cinderella story still surprises Roy.

After a stint living on the beach as a fruit-juice seller, Roy left her
husband, returned to Delhi without a place to stay, and was so poor she
hocked a ring for 300 rupees (the equivalent of $7) and a banana shake. In
1996, after working as an aerobics instructor, and then as a screenwriter,
the bank closed her account.

During this time, however, she started work on the manuscript that became
"The God of Small Things," writing for herself in a regimen from 9 a.m. to
3 p.m. every day for five years.

Mostly, she plumbed her past, growing up as the daughter of a Syrian
Christian in the lush tropical state of Kerala on South India's west
coast. It is a partly tragic story told through the innocent but shrewd
eyes of a young girl, a twin, and culminates in a "forbidden" theme, a
love affair between an upper-caste woman and a Dalit.

When Roy showed the manuscript to an editor from Harper-Collins in Delhi,
Pankaj Mishra, Indian writing was being "discovered" in the West. Mishra
was so excited by the unusual syntax and rhythm of the novel that he told
Roy she had written a blockbuster. She got a $1 million advance, and
fueled a frenzy over Indian writing that has yet to end.

By unanimous vote, the novel won Britain's Booker Prize. In India the
Booker is treated as the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes put together. Salmon
Rushdie was the last Indian to win, in 1982, for "Midnight's Children,"
itself a seminal novel. (Unlike Roy, Rushdie, who lives in London, is not
embraced here). The prize gave Roy star status.

Yet she has always challenged norms, always been a questioner. "From a
very early age I was determined to negotiate with the world on my own,"
she says. As an architecture student she argued that the final contest
thesis should be written, not drawn. Her written thesis won. One local
physicist first noticed Roy during a debate in the mid-1990s over "Bandit
Queen," a film about a real-life tribal woman who is raped and later
becomes a renegade heroine. Censors wanted to cut some nude scenes. The
artistic left portrayed critics of the film as cultural troglodytes
opposed to free expression. But Roy took another view.

"She stood up to the left and said, 'Hey, this is just another
rape-and-retribution film. It still exploits women,' " remembers physicist
Lekha Nair. "It was pretty brave, actually."

In person, at 7 a.m., Roy emits a whiff of the bohemian, a whiff of the
Sixties, a whiff of Marin County, Calif. - and a rapier-like intelligence.
She also seems unimpressed with herself.

"I find that in our society today it has become much easier to ignore the
little ugly things, the things we never would have before.

"When you come to a place like the Narmada Valley, you understand that
these village people are not understood in Delhi. It has become easier to
hate, or ignore them. Who wants to pay attention? You don't notice unless
something is on TV, and if it isn't there, it doesn't exist."

At one point Roy delightedly points out a mongoose running along a
roofline, and turns it into a metaphor for her own new battles: "That's
perfect! I identify with Rikki Tikki (a cobra-fighting mongoose made
famous by Rudyard Kipling). I tell my friends, I am like Rikki Tikki. I
just need to hold on. I may get thrashed around by the cobra. But I will
still hold on."