[sacw] sacw dispatch (26 Oct.99)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
26 October 1999
_________________
#1. Pakistan's Pathos
#2. Dismantling India's last vestiges of liberal academic space
#3. [The Hindu Right aka 'Sangh Lafangs'] In Search of the Next Scapegoat
#4. Victims of Bhagalpur Communal Riots: 10 years on
_________________
#1.
[British] Observer/Guardian
Thursday October 14, 1999

PAKISTAN'S PATHOS
By Tariq Ali

Pakistan is, once again, in the throes of a serious crisis. The country
is under martial law. The elected prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, his
brother, Shahbaz and General Ziaudin, the head of Inter Services
Intelligence (ISI) are under house arrest. Ever since its foundation in
1947, the Pakistani state has been plagued by a failure to establish
strong democratic institutions. The reason is simple. From 1951 onwards,
when the country had become a US pawn in the cold war, Washington felt
that the army was the best guarantor of Washington's interests in the
region. General Ayub Khan's dictatorship (1958-68) was openly backed by
the US state department, till it was swept aside by a popular uprising
that lasted three months. General Zia's monstrous regime (1977-89) was
spawned by the Pentagon and the Defense Intelligence Agency, eager for a
proxy to take on the Russians in Afghanistan.

For the third time in its traumatic history, the army has seized power,
this time, apparently, against the advice of the US. The people -
disillusioned, apathetic, weary - appear indifferent to the fate of
their venal politicians. There is widespread disgust at the inability of
successive governments to control the scale of corruption. For several
years now, the decay at the heart of the administration had become a
national scandal. Politicians were so busy lining their own pockets that
they had little time to ponder the welfare of the country and its
people.

In 1997 a palace coup, orchestrated by her own hand-picked president,
removed Benazir Bhutto. It was alleged that she and her husband, Senator
Asif Zardari, had used the Prime Minister's House to amass a large
private fortune, estimated at somewhere close to $1bn.

In the subsequent general elections, her long-time opponent, Nawaz
Sharif scored a triumph, winning 80% of the seats in parliament, but on
the basis of an exceptionally low turn-out. Only 25% of the electorate
bothered to vote. Benazir's supporters punished her by staying at home.
The new government had promised a great deal, but nothing changed.

The country continued to rot. Pakistan has never been able to provide
the bulk of its population with either free education or health, but in
the past it could offer food to the poor at subsidised prices and
protect innocent lives from random killings. No longer. Everything is
falling apart. A country that spends billions to fund its arsenal of
nuclear weapons, forces its poor to eat grass. The suicide rate among
the poor, driven insane by poverty, has risen sharply over the last
decade. Last January a transport worker in Hyderabad, who had not been
paid for two years, soaked himself in petrol and set himself alight
outside the Press Club. He left behind a letter: "I have lost patience.
Me and my fellow workers have been protesting the non-payment of our
salaries for a long time. But nobody takes any notice. My wife and
mother are seriously ill and I have no money for their treatment. My
family is starving and I am fed up with quarrels. I don't have the right
to live. I am sure the flames of my body will reach the houses of the
rich one day."

The Sharif brothers and their father, strong believers in globalisation
and neo-liberal economics, helped create an enterprise culture in which
they genuinely believed that everything was for sale, including
politicians, civil servants and, yes, generals. There were widespread
rumours that, in order to buy time and make yet more money, the Sharif
family had provided sackfuls of general-friendly dollars to bolster
their support in the army. A section of the high command was enraged by
this civilian interference.

The immediate cause of the latest coup was Sharif's decision to sack the
army chief, General Musharraf while he was on an official visit to Sri
Lanka and appoint General Ziaudin in his place. Just as Pakistan TV was
showing Sharif appointing and congratulating the new army chief, the old
army pulled the plug and the country's TV screens went blank. Ziaudin,
as the ISI boss, is the main supplier of the Taliban army in
Afghanistan. He is sympathetic to the fundamentalist cause and loathed
by officers, who value the secular side of the army and enjoy drinking
whisky to the tune of bagpipes at regimental dinners.

Musharraf's supporters inside the army moved swiftly. Once Nawaz
Sharif's instruction that the plane returning the general to Pakistan be
diverted to a foreign country was ignored and Musharraf landed at a
Karachi Airport secured by the army it became obvious that the
government would be toppled. The bloated Pakistan army - one of the
Pentagon's spoilt brats in Asia - hated becoming a cold war orphan.
"Pakistan was the condom the Americans needed to enter Afghanistan," a
retired general told me last year. "We've served our purpose and they
think we can just be flushed down the toilet."

Last year the army, fearful that a forced rapprochement with India might
lead to a relegation of its status and power and a reduction of its
budget, played the nuclear card. This was followed by an adventurous
border clash with India in Kashmir during which Pakistan received a
severe drubbing. This increased tensions with the government which tried
to pin the entire blame for the botched operation on the army. Now
General Musharraf has seized power in the country, but in changed
conditions.

The army is no longer a unified institution. Well organized groups of
Islamic zealots have penetrated its core. Unlike the older and more
traditional religious parties, the Soldiers of the First Four Caliphs,
the Soldiers of Muhammed, the Soldiers of Medina and the Volunteers are
all hungry for power. Their preferred model is that of the Taliban and
earlier in the year one of their factions seized several villages in the
North-West Frontier province and declared the area to be under "Islamic
law". A public destruction of TV sets and dish antennae took place in
the village of Zargari. If such a faction were ever to take over the
Pakistan army - and the possibility is not as remote as it seemed a few
years ago - then the possession of nuclear weapons would acquire a
frightening new significance.

If Washington refuses to tolerate a new dictator, the most likely
scenario is a caretaker government staffed by IMF-approved technocrats.
That, too, will achieve little, for the only serious and rational
alternative to domestic chaos is a long-term treaty of friendship and
trade with India, a new permanent settlement which could form the basis
of a larger EU-style confederation of south Asian republics. For over 50
years, Pakistan has turned its back on India, imagining it could replace
its giant neighbour by cultivating links with the gulf states and Saudi
Arabia. The strategy has been a political and economic failure, leaving
the country denuded of a skilled labour force and incapable of meeting
its own basic needs.

In recent years there have been a few signs in that politicians of the
main secular parties were beginning to explore a new economic deal with
India. Pressure from the fundamentalists and the army sent their heads
quickly back into the sand. And yet this remains the only rational
solution in the medium term. All other options are bleak beyond belief.
The ISI-armed fundamentalists are waiting in the wings. If they decided
to split the army it would unleash a bloody civil war, with devastating
consequences for the region. If the politicians of the sub-continent
fail to devise a way of living together, they might end up dying
together.
_________________
#2.
The Hindu
26 Oct. 1999
Op-Ed.

FORECLOSING SPACES
By Harsh Sethi

HISTORY OF TEN repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce. A
little over 15 months ago, when the HRD Minister, Dr. Murli Manohar
Joshi, reconstituted the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR)
nominating 18 new members, allegedly with strong saffron sympathies,
there were howls of protest, mainly by 'secularist' historians. The
BJP-led Government then had but a wafer-thin majority in Parliament.
Worse, it was hamstrung by the mercurial Ms. Jayalalitha. Now the
alliance is comfortably placed beyond, as its spokesmen smugly point
out, the potential capriciousness of its allies. Is this why Dr. Joshi's
first act, the day he took charge of the Ministry again, was to appoint
new chairpersons to both the ICHR and the Indian Council of Social
Science Research (ICSSR)?.

This time too there were comments, albeit muted, about the individuals
selected. Dr. B. R. Grover, earlier Director in the ICHR, has proved his
"true'' (not pseudo) secularist credentials by being part of the
"expert'' panel supporting the Vishwa Hindu Parishad case in the
Ramjanmabhoomi dispute. Prof. M. L. Sondhi's credentials too are
impeccable. Since resigning from the Indian Foreign Service and joining
the School of International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University,
he has remained a key member of the BJP think-tank on foreign policy
matters. Barring in the brief interregnum of the Emergency, during which
many wisely rethought their ideological positions, he has remained loyal
to the cause.

One would have expected a far more intense ``excitement'' about these
appointments - about how a "narrow, revanchist, non- progressive
outlook'' is likely to prevail over the functioning of ``national
research-sponsoring and funding bodies''. But barring the expected
denunciation from expected quarters, what we have been greeted with is a
troubled silence. Even the comment on Star News by Mr. Partha Ghosh,
Director in the ICSSR and author of the "BJP and the Evolution of Hindu
Nationalism'', that "all regimes tend to stack such institutions with
individuals who share their outlook'' has gone uncontested.

Is this merely because "secular'' and "liberal'' intellectuals are now
a dispirited lot, what with their hopes in the Congress and/or the Third
Front having come unstuck? Or is it they are aware of the weakness of
their criticism - that since they cannot easily claim to have been
non-partisan in the phases when they ran these institutions, their locus
standi remains somewhat suspect. What is amazing and disturbing is that
few participants in the debate seriously question the ``principle'' of
the ruling regime claiming an untrammelled right to man the
institutions, as if these positions are rewards for loyalists.

Few realise that these organisations, though fully-funded by the
government, are registered as autonomous societies. The intention, when
they were set up in the late '60s, was that they would be run by and be
responsible to their professional peers, and would not work as
handmaidens to a cabal, far less serve the expedient objectives of the
regime in power. And like many of our institutions they did enjoy a
period of glory, albeit brief.

Few even in the ICSSR remember that when, during the Emergency,
instructions were received from the Education Ministry to stop funding
for the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, all because of its
close association with Jayaprakash Narayan, its then Member-Secretary,
the late J. P. Naik, arranged for fellowships to the entire faculty. Or,
when the Home Ministry demanded that the primary data about the
satyagrahis in the Bihar Andolan be handed over, the original schedules,
sealed, were placed with the ICSSR for safekeeping, and ``conveniently''
lost. Once the Emergency was over, the packet was handed back to the
researcher, seals intact. More important than these stray examples of
political courage was the ability of the ICSSR to mould the social
science scene - by setting up autonomous research centres, commissioning
major surveys of research, and by being a pioneer in promoting women's
studies or election studies. Few questioned its legitimacy and status.
Maybe because it struggled to safeguard its autonomy, by drawing in and
involving a wide and representative spectrum of professionals. Not just
by cosying up to those in power.This is not the place to elaborate the
story behind the decline of these bodies, but there is little doubt that
today neither the ICSSR nor the ICHR is held in the regard it once was.
The reasons are within the organisation, the culture and attitude of the
community these agencies were expected to serve and draw their
legitimacy from, and the shift in the relative importance they occupy in
the domain of research funding.

Unlike in the late '60s, the ICSSR is currently a small, even
insignificant, player in the research market. Bigger actors - the World
Bank, the U.N. system and external co-financing agencies like the Ford,
Rockfeller or the Population Council - are far more important, not just
as grant-givers but in setting the agenda for research. Both areas of
concern and individuals, if not falling on their cognitive map, are
ignored. The broad state system, from ministries to councils, too seems
to take its cue from the international players. Many of those who secure
substantial support from the state system are no different from those
who can and do access the international agencies. Little wonder, issues
and individuals not well-connected get left out of the loop.

Part of the explanation may also lie in a culture created by scarcity.
As the better-known and more visible researchers shifted their
allegiance to the foreign sector while simultaneously seeking to
monopolise relatively scarce state resources, those left out raised
issues of ideology and connections. Different strategies had to be
created to both corner and direct available funds. What might have grown
into a culture dominated by professional and intellectual concerns
became more like a market place. Thus began the saga of control of these
bodies for predetermined ends, often partisan and petty.

The above is a schematic and somewhat caricatured account of a complex
process of the decline (some would say stillbirth) of our research
funding institutions. For this, as much as the officialdom, both
bureaucratic and political, the profession is to blame. Senior
academics, across disciplines, have never seriously protested, far less
worked at establishing and nurturing norms of transparency and
accountability. They stood by as mute spectators, if not willing
participants, to the creation of a culture which acquiesces in the use
of public resources for private ends.

It is no one's claim that running engaged yet not personalised
institutions is easy, that too in an environment dominated by network
ties. But ensuring liberal space which welcomes and nurtures diversity,
without which intellectual activity can only stultify, is crucial for
the country. We have to not only learn how to value dissenting, even
conflicting, imagination but to do this transparently by holding onto
norms which do not excite the charge of partisanship.

Whatever the flaws in the 'secularist' handling of these institutions,
they never quite foreclosed dissent. An Arun Shourie was a recipient of
an ICSSR senior fellowship, and that too during the Emergency. An A.R.
Desai produced volumes on labour history for the ICHR, though his
distancing from the official, nationalist historiography was never in
doubt. It is this space which today is under threat. One only wishes
that our professional associations do not remain silent spectators to
the dismantling of the last vestiges of liberal academic space.
_________________
#3.
The Times of India
26 October 1999
Op-Ed.

IN SEARCH OF THE NEXT SCAPEGOAT
By Dilip D'souza

TWO points in response to M V Kamath's article: "Mission Impossible:
Putting an End to Conversion Activity'' (October 13). First, in 2000
years in India, Christianity has "succeeded'' to the fabulous extent of
bringing 20 million Indians -- one in every 50 -- to the flock. Even
assuming Christian groups feverishly fall over themselves to convert,
and Mr Kamath gives us much scary evidence of that -- how much is this
ratio going to change this year? In the next two years? Ten? 50? For the
record, if this is to double 50 years from now, there would have to be
about 800 conversions happening every single day. Not even Mr Kamath
would grant Christian missionaries success that stupendous.

Secondly, if conversions are happening, as Mr Kamath tells us, ``in
poor, illiterate and innocent tribal areas'', then perhaps we should ask
why those innocent tribal areas are poor and illiterate in the first
place. What have we ever done to change that? I have in front of me a
letter in the magazine Outlook. Ravi Pratap writes from Dumka in Bihar,
describing himself as ``a native of a tribal-dominated district.'' He
has an explanation for why -- and note the similarity to Mr Kamath's
language -- ``poor, uneducated tribals'' choose Christianity. And what's
that? ``Decades of neglect,'' writes Mr Pratap, "both by the government
and their existing religious leaders.'' He goes on: "The Christian
missionaries are providing better education, better healthcare and even
employment to the most backward.''

Ghastly Evidence

I could make some more points too. But then I remember what must
certainly have crossed the minds of people like Mr Kamath when reading
this article: My name is D'Souza. That says it all, doesn't it? It
renders my arguments invalid, doesn't it? Of course a Christian -- I'm
not one, but that hardly matters because my name brands me -- will make
such points!

So instead, I wonder to myself where the likes of Mr Kamath will aim
their guns next. Some years ago, Muslims were the villains. Their
depredations through the centuries had ripped vast holes in Hindu
sensibilities and, therefore, present-day Muslims simply had to feel,
and express, remorse for what Muslims dead for aeons had done. The Babri
Masjid simply had to be torn down. These were the only ways to repair
the damage to the Hindu psyche.

But, of course, the demolition of that Masjid did not change things
much. Apparently the Hindu psyche is still in tatters. So now, nearly
seven years later, it is Christians who are the villains. Specifically,
conversions by Christian missionaries, which Mr Kamath considers nothing
less than a "mortal assault on local cultures.'' What's more, Christian
depredations through the centuries have been every bit as horrifying as
what the Muslims did: Mr Kamath offers us some ghastly evidence, indeed.
So when the Pope visits India soon, says Mr Kamath, even "a mere
apology is not enough.'' He will have "to give a full account of what
Christianity had perpetrated in our country.''

Stands Tallest

Good enough, but I do wonder, who will Mr Kamath's target be in 2006,
seven years from now? Who is to be the next scapegoat for the wounded
Hindu psyche? And I think of the innumerable Hindus I know, confident
and clear-eyed citizens of India, psyches firmly intact, thank you very
much. They take their religion and culture seriously. They are not
unaware of the miseries perpetrated by Muslim and Christian invaders.
But they don't feel in any way diminished by that history today. They
don't need a forced apology from the Pope -- or whatever else, since "a
mere apology is not enough'' -- to find honour and self-esteem. They see
their well-being not in terms of destroying mosques or identifying a
"mortal assault on local cultures.'' No, they see it in the kind of
life they make for themselves, on their own terms.

Certainly, the points I've made in response to Mr Kamath can be
dismissed because of my name. But it is the existence of these Hindus
that is the greatest single threat to the reasoning Mr Kamath offers us.
Because for such people, life is rather more than one long dreary
exercise in finding scapegoats and villains.

And because it is, they are the living, vibrant proof that Hinduism is
alive and well. That it stands tallest when it stands on its own feet.
Not on the rubble of a mosque.
_________________
#4.
The Week
Oct 31, 1999

FESTERING WOUNDS:
BHAGALPUR: TEN YEARS AFTER THE COMMUNAL KILLINGS, THE VICTIMS' FAMILIES ARE
YET TO OVERCOME THEIR MISERY
By Kanhaiah Bhelari ([in] Bhagalpur )

Bibi Shakina of Logai village saw her husband being chopped to pieces
ten years ago. Today, she suffers a fate worse than death while her
husband's killers roam free. "I would have committed suicide but I want
to marry off my three daughters," she says, her eyes betraying her
trauma.
Chasing a mirage: Bibi Fatima, whose husband was killed,
is yet to get compensation
Her husband was among the 116 persons who were killed in a communal riot
in Logai in Bhagalpur district on October 27, 1989. It was one of the
worst communal riots, with more than a thousand killed in the district.
The rioters in Logai buried the bodies in a field and planted vegetables
there, defying curfew. Shakina, in her statement before a magistrate,
named the killers and a police officer in charge of Jagdishpur and the
block development officer who allegedly helped in burying the bodies.
Some of them tried to intimidate her into withdrawing the case. They
needn't have: the case has not yet come up for hearing. Kamaru Rehman, a
special public prosecutor, says the delay is mainly because some of the
accused are absconding. But he also blames the police for not showing
any keenness to trace them.
After Shakina had moved to Babura village with her young children, some
villagers in Logai started cultivating her 44 bighas of land. She holds
Sadanand Singh, a former mukhiya, responsible for inciting the
encroachers. "The district magistrate and the police superintendent
haven't shown any interest in solving the problem," she says.
Those who had migrated from Logai to Pithna and Babura, after the
massacre, never mustered courage to return, even though strangers had
usurped their land. Sadanand Singh has been trying to persuade Shakina
and others like her to sell off their land at throwaway prices. His
offered Rs 14,000 per bigha while the market rate was Rs 50,000. Shakina
alleges that he threatened to kill her son Mohamed Ansar if she did not
accept the price he offered. Fearing for her son, she made him
discontinue his intermediate course at Bhagalpur and stay with her.
The only one who went back to his land in Logai was Mohamed Nazim, whose
wife and two children had been killed in the riots. Two years after the
return, in January 1990, he remarried but trouble has not stopped
haunting them. There have been frequent thefts, and his mother Jilabin
Khatun says, "Bad elements are doing all this to make us leave. But we
will stay here till we die."
Malka Begum (right), whose leg was chopped off, was rescued by soldiers
from a pond. One soldier from J&K married her but he took away the
compensation and deserted her and their children.
More wrenching is the plight of Malka Begum of Chanderi, whose leg was
chopped off. The marauders, who killed 66 persons in her village, left
her in a pond for dead. Soldiers rescued her and took her to a hospital.
A soldier, Mohamed Taj from Punchh in J&K, who was posted in Bhagalpur
to restore normalcy, married her. He turned out to be worse than her
attackers: he took away her compensation and deserted her and their two
kids.
She filed a case against him in 1993 but has got no relief till now. Nor
has she got the job that Laloo Prasad Yadav promised as chief minister.
All that she has is a monthly allowance of Rs 100 for the handicapped,
and a piece of land that Gulam Sarvar granted as Governor. He also gave
her an artificial leg.
Another casualty of the riots has been the silk industry that employed
10,000 labourers in handlooms and powerlooms. They are now jobless. "We
became paupers," says Majahar Shamim, who once earned crores from the
industry.
In all, 811 FIRs had been filed after the riots. The police filed 302
chargesheets, and the lower courts have disposed of 152 cases,
acquitting the accused in 119 cases. In the remaining 33 cases, the
district and sessions court punished many of the accused with life
imprisonment. Most of them have appealed to the High Court. The other
cases are pending before the special courts.
The state government gave compensation of Rs 1 lakh each to the families
of 634 victims. Some also got Rs 10,000 from the Prime Minister's Relief
Fund.
The administration rejected 169 pleas for compensation. Special public
prosecutor Kamaru Rehman has referred some of these to the Lok Ayukta.
"The district administration may be short of funds. Otherwise, there is
no reason to reject the genuine claims of the victims," says Rehman. He
points out that the sessions court has directed the district
administration to pay compensation in some of these cases. "For example,
the police have admitted in court that rioters killed the husband of
Bibi Fatima. But she hasn't got any compensation," he says.
Shakina (left, with daughters) moved to Babura village after her husband
was murdered. The villagers started cultivating her land.
Every working day, Fatima walks 10 kilometres from her village, Sihnan,
to Rehman's chamber in the court premises to find out the progress of
her case. "She doesn't have any land or money, and one of her daughters
died a few years ago," says Rehman.
As the photographer clicks, the tearful woman asks if she has finally
been awarded compensation. "Never mind. She has lost some of her
balance," says Rehman. The delay would do that to anyone. "I suspect
that the state government is deliberately going slow on the matter,"
says Rehman. He says that most of the accused have got bail while others
are persuading the appellants to withdraw their cases. Some witnesses do
not turn up during hearings as the police do not provide them any
security.
Bibi Shajahan of Bhagalpur had accused a dozen policemen of murdering
her husband Hanif, who was a peon in the district magistrate's office.
All the accused got anticipatory bail. Similarly, all the 24 accused
involved in the riots in Chanderi got bail. The hearing in these cases
is yet to begin.
The state government had constituted three special courts, exclusively
for riot cases. It also appointed two special public prosecutors (SPPs),
who were later replaced by five SPPs in 1995. A special court judge told
The Week that the police were not keen on producing the witnesses or
tracing the accused, even after receiving several court notices.
On the other hand, many people like Mohamed Shakeel Ahmed claim that the
police falsely implicated them. "I was a true follower of Mahatma Gandhi
and Jawaharlal Nehru," says Ahmed. "I got awards for restoring peace
from several organisations like the Gandhi Pratisthan." He was in love
with a girl but didn't want to marry until he had cleared himself of the
charges. On August 5 this year, he was acquitted but his sweetheart had
already become another man's wife. "The police ruined my life," he
wails.
With financial help from Tisco, the district administration had built
200 houses at three riot-hit villages for those affected. But in
Chanderi, only 5 of the 27 affected families live in these houses. The
rest are occupied by anti-socials. Malka says that the families had
suggested certain sites for their relocation but the district
administration paid no heed.
The riot-hit families have no hope that the marauders will ever be
brought to book. At best, some innocent people will be made scapegoats,
they say. Experience has made them bitter cynics.
____________________________________________
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