[sacw] sacw dispatch #1 | 9 Nov.99

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #1
8 November 1999
____________________
#1. Again, desperate Times [in Pakistan]
#2. Conversions and the Sangh Parivar
#3. Step Back, Christian Soldiers
#4. Donate for Orissa Cyclone Relief, But Not To Hindutwa Outfits
____________________
#1.
Again, desperate times [in Pakistan]
by Zia Mian and A.H. Nayyar

[To appear in Himal South Asian, November 1999, Vol 12, no 11]

The late Eqbal Ahmad once wrote : "It has all been said before. Yet those
who should, do not listen. And, as in talking to the deaf, one is compelled
to repeat in louder, more agitated tones: The army may bring temporary
relief. But the problem is eminently political; it shall not yield to
military solution." There is little more that should need to be said about
the situation in Pakistan after the 12 October coup by General Pervez
Musharraf. But, unfortunately, more will have to be said, loudly, and
often, because for too many people memories have become short and the needs
of the moment have silenced the warnings of conscience, history and
political sense.

Like the 1990s, the decade after partition and independence was one of
enormous political instability and opportunism; there were seven prime
ministers and four governor-generals between 1947 and 1958, in the last
decade there have been seven prime ministers, and three presidents. In
mid-1958, General Ayub Khan, then head of the army and defence minister,
wrote in his diary "I am receiving very depressing reports of economic
distress and maladministration through political interference, frustration
and complete lack of faith by the people in political leaders=8A The general
belief is that none of these men have the honesty of purpose, integrity and
patriotism to root out the evils of the country, which will require drastic
action."

The action came on 7 October, 1958, when President Iskander Mirza abrogated
the constitution and appointed General Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law
Administrator. Ayub Khan addressed the nation on the radio the following
day, describing the abrogation of the constitution and declaration of
martial law as "a drastic and extreme step taken with great reluctance".
But, he said, "there was no alternative to it except the disintegration and
complete ruination of the country." The situation was one of "total
administrative, economic, political and moral chaos" brought about "by
self-seekers, who in the garb of political leaders, have ravaged the
country". Ayub Khan's 1958 text could have served General Pervez
Musharraf for his speech to the nation on 17 October 1998. Musharraf said
"There is despondency and hopelessness surrounding us with no light visible
anywhere around=8A we have reached a stage where our economy has crumbled,
our credibility is lost, state institutions lie demolished".

Both Ayub and Musharraf claim to have a clear mission. Ayub Khan claimed
"martial law will not be retained a minute longer than is necessary, it
will not be lifted before the purpose for which it has been imposed is
fulfilled." For his part, Musharraf declared "The armed forces have no
intention to stay in charge longer than is absolutely necessary to pave the
way for true democracy to flourish". He did not said what "true democracy"
was, or how he planned to create it, or whether anyone but he would
recognise it as such. Perhaps he will try Ayub Khan's local government
based "Basic Democracy" system.

The response of the media and Pakistan's intellectuals to Musharraf's coup
was also familiar. It was the same as the response to Ayub Khan, which has
been described by Altaf Gauhar; "Academics, scholars and writers,
particularly in West Pakistan, welcomed Ayub's arrival on the scene and the
press gave him considerable support." Gauhar noted tellingly, "The media
surrender was so complete the government did not have to resort to any kind
of censorship. Not one newspaper uttered a word of criticism against the
imposition of martial law. Indeed, most newspapers acclaimed the advent of
military rule as a blessing and many of the press barons became willing
tools of the regime."

Tools there are aplenty, some well worn. Musharraf announced that he would
have three civilian advisers in his National Security Council. The people
picked are known for having co-operated with military governments in the
past. Their history of failure, like that of earlier coups, conveniently
forgotten.

Along with the reaching back to Ayub Khan, there are some notable
borrowings from the July 1977 coup by General Zia-ul Haq; although not the
desperate search for legitimacy which led the 1977 coup to be called
Operation Fairplay. Musharraf has copied General Zia's little innovation of
saying that he was not abrogating the constitution, merely suspending it.
Like Zia, he has also kept on the President, at least for a while. It is to
be seen if, like his predecessors who each ruled for over ten years,
Musharraf settles in for the long haul.

Despite all this, like the previous coups Musharraf's seizure of power was
welcomed with a general sense of relief in the country. Nawaz Sharif's
government was seen as having become a problem facing the country, rather
than a mechanism for solving its problems. At a time of growing poverty, he
was squandering resources on grandiose infrastructure projects and building
palaces for himself and his family. He amused himself playing cricket in
front of the media while the country watched aghast as poor people burned
themselves to death in public as a way to voice the agonies of their lives
and their only escape from them.

It was not just these mughal displays that made his going such a relief for
so many. Like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto before him, Nawaz Sharif's absolutist
sense of power drove his efforts to ensure that no one, and no institution,
should be able to challenge his authority. He picked a puppet President,
ignored the cabinet, railroaded his political party, and amended the
constitution in a way that ruled out a parliamentary challenge. On a larger
canvas, he bought, brow-beat, and terrorised the judiciary and the press.
Until stopped short by the coup, some of the same forces were being brought
to bear on the army.

A lot has been said about the relationship between the seeds of the putsch
and the war in the Kargil area of Kashmir earlier this year. It is clear
now that the action was planned by the army and the civilian government
invited on board. Nawaz Sharif went along with it lured by the promise of
glory. The halo created so assiduously after the nuclear tests had already
worn off as far as the public was concerned. When the adventure in Kargil
failed miserably, Nawaz Sharif blamed the military and the military blamed
him.

Now that it is freed from political restraint, the military may try more
adventures like Kargil. Musharraf said as much before the coup. It is
significant that the unilateral pull back of armed forces that Musharraf
announced as a sign of good faith has been restricted to the international
border and not the Line of Control which divides Kashmir. This suggests
Pakistan's military rulers shall continue their support for the mujahideen
groups fighting in Kashmir. Despite Musharraf's exhortation that Islam
"teaches tolerance not hatred, brotherhood not enmity, peace not violence",
to keep the mujahideen pliant the rulers will have to turn a blind eye to
the international holy warriors, their training camps, their schools, and
their politics.

The Pakistan military's obsession with India helps focus on a largely
unremarked motive for the coup. The terrible state of Pakistan's economy
had made it increasingly difficult to maintain the military budget, and
certainly restricted the kind of increases that military planners needed if
they were going to stick with their strategy of keeping up with India.. The
military budget, over $3 billion and growing, is about the same size as the
budget deficit this year. The only bigger drain on state revenue is debt
servicing, which cannot be wished away and is growing rapidly. Having cut
development spending to the point where it was all dependent on foreign
aid, the state needed to generate and collect more revenue if the military
were to get as much as they wanted.

Military demands are growing rapidly. The nuclear tests of last year were
only a way station on a longer and more expensive commitment to the
development of a real nuclear arsenal. This arsenal was not to be bought by
cutting back the conventional forces. The new Foreign Secretary, Abdus
Sattar, recently argued that Pakistan needed both nuclear weapons on mobile
ballistic missiles and large conventional forces.

General Musharraf has declared reviving the economy to be critical. It is a
tall order, by any standard, especially since the armed forces themselves
are the biggest domestic drain on state resources. On the revenue side,
things look grim. Unlike the times of Ayub Khan and General Zia, there is
no cold war to lure the American dollar to Pakistan as aid. The famous bank
defaulters, the rich and powerful who borrowed heroically with no intention
of repaying it, are the target of much public resentment. But, even if the
money is recovered from them it will go back to the banks which lent it not
to the public exchequer. The claim to end corruption is nothing more than a
hollow slogan. It will simply corrupt the military if it tries too hard.

The only means available to increase state resources are more taxation,
enforced austerity, and increased exports. This amounts to further
squeezing the poor and the salaried through indirect taxation, driving down
wages, and reducing the size of state corporations by increasing
unemployment. It was noticeable that there was no mention of increased
spending on public sector development projects like education and health in
Musharraf's speech on 17 October. Authoritarian governments are more
effective at this than democracies, and for this reason were so beloved of
the World Bank and IMF, and many international investors.

It is worth recalling that a primary goal of Ayub Khan's military
government was economic growth. The military was devouring over 40% of
government spending, and the military wanted to spend even more as it tried
to catch up with India. This led to anticommunist military alliances with
the United States in the search for economic and military aid, and the
determined pursuit of economic growth. Steered by supposed experts from
Harvard University and their local clones, including Mahbub-ul Haq, growth
was pursued regardless of the consequences. The outcome was enormous
regional disparity, with East Pakistan suffering most acutely, and growing
social inequality. Ayub's decade of development famously left 22 families
owning two-thirds of Pakistan's industry, and nearly all of the insurance
and banking sectors, while for the rest, wages fell, healthcare and other
social sectors were neglected. The suppressed tensions exploded with the
mass protests in 1969 that brought down the dictatorship, and paved the way
for civil war and genocide in Bangladesh.

These problems identified with Nawaz Sharif, and before him Benazir Bhutto,
and before her Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and on the other side with Pervez
Musharraf, and before General Zia-ul Haq, and before him Ayub Khan, point
to deep systemic problems in Pakistan. The most significant among these is
not the venality and corruption of Pakistan's political class, nor the
thoughtless adventurism of its military leaders, it is rather the absence
of organised public opinion strong enough to discipline either.

Musharraf's coup has hastened a creeping double disillusionment that
lessens the chances of creating such opinion. The coup truncated a
democratic process that would certainly have thrown Nawaz Sharif out of
office as decisively as Benazir Bhutto had been rejected in the last
election. The next election may have created political confusion, coalition
government and instability, but it would have reinforced the feeling in
Pakistan that the citizens would not tolerate the gross abuses of power
they had suffered at the hands of both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. The
sharp political lesson, that the people matter, shall now not be learned by
political leaders or the electorate. Instead, for many there will be only a
memory of democratic politics as the system that failed. Democracy shall
have even fewer defenders in Pakistan.

By putting the old partnership of military and bureaucracy that has ruled
Pakistan for half its history back at centre-stage the coup has also
exposed the weakened and tottering structures of the state to new stresses.
These have been eroded by its earlier efforts and failures at government,
and by the unprincipled compliance of every state and public institution
with the politicians they now claim to despise. The problems are so grave
and the state's capacity to govern so poor that the longer the military and
bureaucracy try to rule without consent the greater will be their failure
and their loss of legitimacy.

When dissent grows the present liberal face of the putschists shall change.
They shall resort to coercion or shall have to step aside, with few if any
of their problems solved. If the military regime become ruthless, there
shall be a desperate need for a new source of public legitimacy. They are
likely to resort to the cover of Islam, like all other governments in
crisis in Pakistan. Waiting in the wings are the armies of god.
____________________
#2.
Conversions and the Sangh Parivar
By Sumit Sarkar

THE SANGH Parivar has a rare ability to turn absurdities into what often
threaten to become widespread commonsense. Today, with Ayodhya for the
moment allegedly on the backburner, Christian conversion and the demand
for an apology from the Pope for Inquisition atrocities are being sought
to be made into key national issues. Meanwhile, the BJP and the Government
it leads officially ``welcomes'' the Pope, but at the same time talks
about the need for a ``national debate'' on conversions and does nothing
to seriously curb the anti-Christian campaign by other Parivar affiliates
like the VHP. The ground for the Ramjanambhumi agitation had been prepared
in a similar manner by the VHP for years, before the BJP formally took it
up. Already in Gujarat, where the BJP is solely in power, a bill has been
circulated to punish conversion through (a very vaguely-defined)
``allurement'' by a minimum of three years in jail.

What is worrying is the way terms of discourse and commonsensical everyday
assumptions are getting moulded, as had happened during the Ayodhya
agitation. Many even among those who expressed indignation at the Staines
murder thought it necessary to say at the same time that the doctor had
not been indulging in conversions: as if it would have been somehow less
terrible if a missionary proselytiser had been burnt alive with his sons.
Conversion, again, is always assumed to be Christian (or, in different
contexts, Islamic or any other non-Hindu) conversion. The systematic work
of the VHP ever since its foundation in 1964 to spread high-Hindu
practices and norms among adivasis is never acknowledged as conversion,
but described by terms like shuddhi (purification), `reconversion', or
paravartan (turning back). The implicit assumption behind the use or
acceptance of such terms is that being a Hindu is somehow the ``natural''
condition of any Indian. Discursively, therefore, we are already
perilously close to Hindu Rashtra. And ``Hindu'', as defined by the Sangh
Parivar, is obviously worlds removed from the devotion of a Ramakrishna
for whom the difference between Ishwar, Allah and God mattered as little
as that between jal, pani and water.

The surprisingly apologetic tone about conversions, even among many
critics of the anti-Christian campaign, makes necessary the restatement of
some things which should be obvious. Conversion in the sense of voluntary
change of religion is not just a logical corollary of the Article 25
clause about the fundamental right to ``preach, practise and propagate''
religion (why else should anyone seek to ``propagate''?). Freedom of
conscience surely includes the right to change one's views about religion,
and a curbing of that right can lead to restrictions on freedom of choice
in general, with dominant groups dictating what one can think or do in
politics, artistic tastes, dress, ways of life. Conversely, conversion by
force or fraud is equally reprehensible, and one fails to see the need for
any ``national debate'' about it. Given the current political and
administrative situation in a country where even Dara Singh can roam
around freely, it should be obvious that groups like the VHP are far more
likely to indulge in such methods. There is ample evidence, notably from
Gujarat, that forcible or fraudulent Hindu conversions are in fact going
on on a significant scale in adivasi areas (see, for instance, the
Citizens Committee Report on Incidents in Dang District, Delhi, 1999).

The total implausibility of forcible Christian conversion in today's India
makes necessary a constant harping on Inquisition atrocities centuries
ago. This extends to Christians the old Sangh Parivar strategy of branding
all Muslims as `Babar-ki-aulad'. All modern political movements deploy
`history' to enhance legitimacy and more. It needs to be emphasised,
however, that `history' is vital for the Hindutva project on a
qualitatively higher scale: hence history text-books and funding bodies
have always been the first target of saffronising drives whenever the
Sangh Parivar has got into the corridors of power. Other 20th Century
trends have also sought to link up with and/or construct heritages. But
they have all been rooted fundamentally in contemporary conditions and
contradictions: colonial domination, class, caste and gender oppression,
environmental depredation. Hindutva in this respect has been always marked
by significantly greater gaps and displacements. Thus a foundation-text of
the movement, Savarkar's Hindutva/ Who is a Hindu (1923), written just a
few years after Jallianwallabagh and the massive Hindu-Muslim unity of the
Non-Cooperation-Khilafat movement, managed the remarkable feat of virtual
silence about British rule through turning the edge of an
admittedly-powerful and seemingly nationalist rhetoric entirely against
medieval `Muslim' invaders and oppressors. The gap widened even more once
Muslim communalism ceased to be a major political tendency after 1947 in
the Indian part of the sub-continent.

Two inter-related questions arise here. Why target Christians, then, and
how is the campaign attaining some plausibility?

Christians, as a small and electorally insignificant minority in most
parts of the country, are in the first place a conveniently safe target
under conditions of coalition government. Adverse foreign reactions have
so far been kept within limits by the new strategy of, not big riots, but
everyday petty humiliation of Christians in many parts of the country,
interspersed with occasional gross acts of violence against individuals.
Attacking them helps to keep the wilder elements within the Sangh Parivar
both satisfied and in good fighting trim for future, more aggressive
phases. Perhaps more important, Christians represent a convenient and not
entirely implausible surrogate for `swadeshi' at a time when BJP-led Union
governments have speeded up the opening-up of the country to
multinationals.

Like any major tradition, Christian history has its share of horrors and
scandals: these would certainly include the Inquisition, close
collaboration often with colonial projects, and numerous instances of
crude cultural arrogance and Eurocentrism. It remains an elementary
fallacy to hold today's Christians (or Muslims) responsible for atrocities
committed by some of their co-religionists centuries back. This becomes
particularly absurd with the Inquisition, which had always had its edge
primarily directed against fellow Christians (dissident Catholics,
Protestant `heretics'), and which in India could only have been a very
marginal phenomenon, being confined to a few Portuguese ruled enclaves.
The diversities within Christian (like many other) traditions must be kept
in mind. Dissident readings of Christianity have been central to
innumerable movements of the oppressed. The extent of missionary
complicity with colonialism in India has also been much exaggerated and
simplified. Early Company rulers like Hastings and Cornwallis, far from
encouraging missionaries, often developed close collaborative relations
with orthodox Brahman literati, and the Baptist mission had to set up its
first outpost in Serampur, then outside British Bengal. Later, too, there
have been many missionary critics of colonial policies. Above all, at the
other end of the social scale, recent historical research is increasingly
highlighting the extent to which sustained Christian philanthropic and
educational work have had an empowering impact on significant sections of
adivasis, dalits and poor and subordinated groups in general.

Such small gains in the direction of greater social justice may have been
earlier the largely unintended fall-out of Christian proselytisation
efforts, often among the very many who did not convert, but still found
missions a helpful resource for their own upliftment. Today, with the
churches clearly changing in quite striking ways, there is ample evidence
of far greater awareness of such issues among many- though of course very
far from all-Christian activists in India. And perhaps it is precisely
these aspects that arouse the greatest anger and fear among adherents of
Hindutva. Certainly Arun Shourie's widely- circulated anti-Christian
tirade, Missionaries in India (1994), is very clear on this point. It
begins, and ends, with a violent denunciation of the ways in which the
Church today ``spurred by the new `liberation theology,' is spurring
movements among so-called `dalits'''-movements which he fears ``would
certainly disrupt Hindu society.''

(The writer is Professor of Modern Indian History, University of Delhi.)
____________________
#3.
The Telegraph
8 November, 1999
Op-Ed.

STEP BACK, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
BY Achin Vanaik

The sangh parivar has won out. It has succeeded in making conversions an
issue of public debate. This victory is worth much more than the issue of
whether or not it will succeed in overturning the right to convert
currently enjoyed by practitioners of religions like Islam and
Christianity. This is a longer term aim and not a particularly important
one for it. The main aim is to transform, in the short and medium term, the
ideological climate within the Indian elite so as to buttress and deepen
the ideological-political dominance of the sangh parivar and its extreme
version of Hindu nationalism.

The most intelligent of the sangh parivar leaders and ideologues know the
Christian community is minuscule and its growth slightly declining. Muslim
growth in India is so slow that it would take another 100 years for their
relative proportions to go from the current 12-13 per cent to 14-15 per
cent.

The purpose of targetting them through the conversion debate is far removed
from any fear of being "swamped" by their supposedly inexorable growth in
the future though it certainly helps the Hindutva forces if a lot of people
actually fear this.

=46rom the beginning of the Eighties to the early Nineties, conversion to
Islam was made the biggest bugbear. There was Meenakshipuram, the discourse
about Muslim polygamy and its connection to the absence of a uniform civil
code; and then all those claims about massive forcible conversions as part
of the campaign to whip up hatred over presumed historical wrongs. All this
could then be directed towards strengthening the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri
Masjid campaign. In the late Nineties, the "minority whipping boy" has
become Christians rather than Muslims. It is important to understand why.

To come to electoral power, scapegoating Muslims through a politics of
communal polarization was the best way to consolidate largescale Hindu
support, especially among the upper classes and castes. The Bharatiya
Janata Party having come to power, the sangh parivar feels it must now
consolidate itself by a "long march through the institutions" both of the
state and civil society.

On the latter terrain, the principal barriers to the sangh parivar effort
to extend its tentacles via its own network of
educational-recreational-cultural-social structures are constituted by
Christian run social service, health and educational institutions, and by
the best elements of what has come to be called the non-governmental
sector. Although Christians comprise only 2.4 per cent of the population,
Christian run networks comprise more than 20 per cent of all such
autonomous activities in civil society in India.

These structures are in fact powerful secularizing influences because the
services they provide are available to all and because for the overwhelming
part they offer widespread employment to members of all religious
communities although the apex remains under church or Christian control.
Their objective impact is not the extension of Christian religious
influence but the consolidation of non-communal and secular influence. It
is this that is anathema to the sangh parivar.

When you add to this the fact that in tribal areas, Christian bodies are
direct competitors to the sangh parivar in conversion activities (only the
latter calls it "reconversions") the reasons for hostility become even more
obvious. As for the NGO sector, the new government has already begun its
self-appointed task of selectively identifying and harassing those NGOs
which it feels are either opposed to sangh parivar ideology or otherwise
unamenable to its influence.

Barring exceptions, the attacks on Christians fall short of physical
killings or serious maimings. It has taken not the form of communal riots
but regularized and routinized forms of everyday terrorization and
humiliation through spittings, slappings, insults, threats, damage to
church property, Bible burnings and other forms of desecration of religious
beliefs, practices and icons. And through all this the leaders of the
saffron family from the prime minister downwards have repeatedly called for
" and justified the call for " a public debate on conversions.

The controversy over the pope=92s visit is only the latest in this calculate=
d
process, calculated because the BJP, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad carefully discuss, coordinate and calibrate their
varying responses so as to both satisfy their own hardcore support base and
avoid alienating "moderate" opinion.

Had Atal Behari Vajpayee even a minimal sensitivity to the plight of
Christians he would not only have refused to raise the issue of conversions
during this whole period when they feel so insecure but also publicly
demanded that no one else do so at such a juncture.

If he had genuine respect for the Indian Constitution he would have pointed
out that the constituent assembly debates lasted for three years during
which the issue was discussed threadbare before the matter was resolved and
conversion, when not fraudulent or forcible, deemed a protected democratic
right. But then you are talking about a political force which has made no
bones about its desire to comprehensively revise the Constitution. This is
a long term aim (how else can Hindutva be legally and constitutionally
institutionalized?) but the first step is to begin a public debate on this
as well!

Even if Vajpayee believes that the issue of conversions should be revived
he should assert that a public debate can only take place in an appropriate
atmosphere when Muslims or Christians do not feel insecure or under attack.

The feeling itself of insecurity is the crucial determinant here, not
whether the harboured feeling is justified or not. Otherwise the religious
community in question which feels itself to be a victim will also believe
that it is being blamed for such victimization. All the sangh parivar
leaders have played their part in making the conversion issue a matter of
public debate at a time this can only further polarize sentiments, beliefs
and attitudes.

But then, the very purpose was to divert attention away from ground
realities and from how the sangh parivar is systematically pursuing its
communal and authoritarian agenda.

A party or organization can congratulate itself that it is truly shaping
the general political-ideological direction that a country or society is
taking not when it wins each and every, or even most, of the debates
entering the terrain of public political discourse. But when it is able to
determine what enters the terrain of public discourse itself as priority
issues that must be debated. One has gained even further
political-ideological ground if the broad parameters of what should now be
debated are themselves established in such a manner as to suit the party or
organization in question.

This is happening in the current conversions debate. It is not just
forcible or fraudulent conversion that is supposed to be unacceptable.
Conversion itself must be seen as in some way the mark of intolerance,
though some sangh parivar ideologues (not all) will also repeatedly declare
that this is a democratic right.

The "game" that is being played must be properly understood. The message
that is sought to be systematically propagated is that Semitic religions,
because they proselytize, are in some basic sense more "innately
intolerant" than the image of Hinduism constructed by the sangh parivar,
which unfortunately is also the image held by much of the Indian elite.
Both the historical facts of an enduring caste system and of mass scale
conversions in southeast Asia to certain forms of a Brahminized Hinduism
should indicate that matters are a lot more complicated than this.

But the more difficult it has become to shake this "feel good" myth of the
"innate tolerance of Hinduism" the more indicative it is of the inroads
that Hindutva is making within our elite.

(The author is a political scientist and has recently published the book,
Communalism Contested: Religion, Modernity and Secularization)
____________________
#4.
WATCH OUT !
DONATE FOR ORISSA CYCLONE RELIEF, BUT NOT TO HINDUTWA OUTFITS.

Here is an example of an organisation raising money for Orissa cyclone
relief but it has very clear Hindutwa connections. The details are:
India Development & Relief Fund, Inc.
[Tax-Exempt Organization under Internal Revenue Code, Section 501(c)(3):ID
52-1555563] (http://www.idrf.org)

The above organisation is clearly associated with the VHP and the RSS in
the US and in India. Check it out yourself.
______________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.
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