[sacw] [ACT] sacw dispatch #2. (3 Feb 00 )

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #2.
3 February 2000
________________________
#1. Citizens Award For Famous Pakistani Journalist Ardeshir Cowasjee
#2. The ISI bogey in India
#3. Secularism challenged [In India]
________________________

#1.

CITIZENS AWARD FOR THE FAMOUS PAKISTANI JOURNALIST ARDESHIR COWASJEE

[Cowasjee has your years written a column in the Pakistani paper DAWN.
To access the archives with his columns in DAWN check out:
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/cowas/arc-cowas.htm ]

We citizens of Pakistan confer upon
Mr. Ardeshir Cowasjee,
the Citizens' Award for the year 1999.
The award is given in recognition of his outstanding and fearless
contribution, that he made through his writings and actions, for
upholding the cause of citizens and civil society in Pakistan.
Arshad Abdulla
Shahid Abdulla
Safiya Aftab
Dr. M. Afzal
Ayesha Agha
Dr. Shamim Ahmad
Durre Sameen Ahmad
Dr. S. Haroon Ahmed
=46aisal Ahmed
Gp.Capt.(R) Ishtiaque Ahmed
Hasnain Al Makky
Asma Ali
Maher Alvi
Khalid N Awan
Saadia Awan
Majyd Aziz
Darius J Balsara
Mushtaq Chhapra
Dr. Anis Dani
Air Marshall (R) Azim Daudpota
Q. Isa Daudpota
Roland de Souza
Mehli Dinshaw
Tehmina Durrani
=46akhruddin Ebrahim
Hamid Farooq
Rooha Ghaznavi
Tyaba Habib
Tarique Haider
Nazim Haji
Sadruddin Hashwani
Khurshid Hasnain
Rear Admiral Hasnain
Sofia Hasnain
Arif Hassan
Dr. Habiba Hassan
=46araz Hoodbhoy
Khatoon S. Hoodbhoy
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Samir Hoodbhoy
Syed Khurram Hussain
Naeem Ijaz
Dr Kamal Ilahi
Dr Faiz Ishaq
Dr. Aqila Islam
Haamid Jaffer
Tasnim Jaffer
Hussaini Jagirdar
Nuscie Jamil
Mazhar Jumani
Shumaila Kafeel
Dr Altamash Kamal
Mrs Imtiaz Taj Kamal
Simi Sadaf Kamal
Shahid Kardar
Dr. Khurram Kazi
Air Marshall (R) Asghar Khan
Asma Khan
Illyas Khan
Rashid Ali Khan
Shaheen Rafi Khan
Shahid Mahboob Khan
Shahrukh Rafi Khan
Suhair Khan
Zafar M. Khan
Zahra Khan
Zeinab Khan
Nuzhat Kidwai
Zaheer Kidwai
Sharaf Mahammadally
Dr. Mohammad Ali Mahesar
Hamid Maker
Nisar A Memon
Jugno Mohsin
Dr. Shafkat Munir
Dr Shifa Naeem
Dr. Rabia Naeem
Anjum Nasim
Abdul Hameed Nayyar
Nasra Omar
Saleem Piracha
Bisharat Qadir
Brig(R) S.S.A Qasim
Ahmed Rashid
Dr. Khalid Rashid
Khalid Rashid
=46asih-ur Rehman
Hassan A. Rizvi
Naeem Sadiq
Sardar Ghulam Sadiq
Dr Naseem Salahuddin
Dr. Ifthikhar Salahuddin
Zarina Salamat
Ahsan Saleem
Tabinda Salim
Mussadiq Sanwal
Najam Sethi
Aneela Shah
Bina Shah
Dr. Shafqat Ali Shah
Salman Shah
Syed Zafar Ali Shah
Rana Shaikh
Najma Siddiqi
Dr. Rukhsana Siddiqui
Omer Soomro
Abdul Hameed Toor
Dr. Ali Yousaf
Jameel Yusuf
Dr Suhail Zafar
Mohsin Zahur
_________

#2.

The Hindu
4 February 2000

The ISI bogey
By V. Krishna Ananth

``WHILE POLITICAL approximation may be a somewhat difficult and tardy
matter, there is no reason why Pakistan and India should not jointly
enter their teams for the various events at the World Olympics.''

Those in politics today can hardly afford to even refer to this
statement, made by none other than that leading light of the Indian
socialist movement, Ram Manohar Lohia, as early as in June 1952. Lohia
could make this point in the course of a public speech in Hardoi (a
small town in Uttar Pradesh).

A statement of this kind today, when even an India-Pakistan cricket
match is turned into a war-like situation, is bound to be condemned and
the speaker is likely to be labelled an agent of the ISI. And one does
not have to wait for such fanatics as Mr. Bal Thackeray or Mr. Ashok
Singhal and their ilk to react in such fashion. The Indian state itself
has begun indulging in this project.

In the national political discourse today, one is urged to look for the
ISI's hand anywhere and everywhere. The day is not far off when the
hapless masses will be told that the ISI is involved in siphoning off
foodgrains meant for the Public Distribution System, that the ISI is
behind the poor quality of the grain supplied in the ration shops and
that it is the ISI's game to dismantle whatever little health care and
education facilities exist in the public sector in the country.

It is not the case here to portray the ruling dispensation in Pakistan -
whether under Gen. Pervez Musharraf now or under Mr. Nawaz Sharif until
a few months earlier - as well-meaning saints. Nor can there be any
illusion that the rulers of Pakistan now want to turn the heat on
militants. How can Gen. Musharraf rein in the mercenaries just because
the task for which they were put together - to dismantle the democratic
structure in Afghanistan - has been ``accomplished''?

And given this reality, it is the mandatory responsibility of the Indian
state to ensure that the games that these mercenaries are engaged in are
scuttled. Those concerned with the democratic and secular social fabric
cannot relish the thought of the Taliban trying to do to us what they
managed to do with Najibullah and his regime in Afghanistan.

The trouble, however, is with the rhetoric that has come to dominate the
political discourse in recent times in this connection. Take for
instance an incident in Delhi about a month ago involving a member of
the staff in the Pakistan High Commission. He paid the term fees in the
school where his ward studies just like any other parent and it so
happened that there was a counterfeit note in the bundle. On being
informed about that, he agreed to replace it; and as is the normal
course, a case was registered in the local police station.

What was shocking was the manner in which this incident made news and
one particular private TV channel had it in its headlines that a
Pakistani mission staff was found involved in counterfeiting. And a
couple of weeks after that, a news agency sought to club this incident
with the recovery of huge amounts of counterfeit currency in the capital
and reported with unquestioning certainty that pumping in huge amounts
of fake notes is the means adopted by the ISI to fund its subversives.

Such small details as to whether at all a person would deliberately use
a counterfeit note while paying his son's school fees, particularly if
he is part of a conspiracy, did not occur to those reporting the
incident. Then there are the reports, handed out recently by the Delhi
police, of subversives having smuggled in detonators and such devices
from across the border. While it is likely that explosives - RDX in
particular - may have to be smuggled in from elsewhere, do detonators
too have to be brought in from Pakistan? In a similar vein was the
report that the subversives depended on the public transport in Delhi to
ferry the stuff from one end of the city to another.

Many members of the political class may not know that it only requires
some rudimentary knowledge of physics and some locally- available
material to put together a detonator. The Defence Minister, Mr. George
=46ernandes, will vouch for this. So will the personnel in the police and
paramilitary forces. But then, when there is an ISI angle to it, the
stories gain ``legitimacy'' and anyone raising doubts over the veracity
of such claims will be treated as anti-national.

And herein lies the problem which becomes worse when people like Mr.
=46ernandes, himself a victim of such propaganda some 25 years ago (as
part of the Baroda Dynamite conspiracy case), adopt the same language
and aid the right-wing dispensation in its attempts to construct a
nationalist discourse loaded heavily with jingoistic expressions.

That Mr. Fernandes, who insists on looking up to Lohia to give an
``ideological'' justification to all that he does - including his
ganging up with the BJP to fight the Congress - went to the extent of
citing the Quran (while speaking at a conference recently) to argue that
the regime in Pakistan cannot be trusted only confirms fears that the
present dispensation in India is itching for a long battle with its
neighbour.

The intention is only too evident: to build up a case for another armed
conflict with Pakistan. After all, it is a fact that the sangh parivar
outfits were not all that successful in their attempts to help the BJP
capture power on its own via the Kargil route. For if the majority of
the people had been convinced the BJP would have managed more than a
majority on its own in the Lok Sabha.

It is not for the first time that rulers have resorted to such rhetoric
and war mongering in times of crises in their own backyard. And such
rhetoric is resorted to not just in India. The rulers in Pakistan too
thrive on an anti-India rhetoric. After all, the BJP-led orchestration
around Kargil would not have been possible without the Nawaz Sharif
dispensation in Pakistan aiding the militants, with sophisticated arms
and other accessories, to cross the LoC.

The adventure must have helped the rulers there to mute resistance at
least for some time. It is this aspect that stares us in the face now in
the context of the renewed vigour and thrust being put by our rulers
into this campaign about the ubiquitous ISI. Through this campaign, the
Vajpayees, the Advanis and the Fernandeses have managed to sweep under
the carpet any debate on why there has been an increase in the number of
those living below the poverty line; from 34.88 crores in 1997 to 40.63
crores in 1998 (as reported by the National Sample Survey Organisation,
Government of India).

Rather than initiating any meaningful measures to end this downslide in
the quality of living of the poor - using the 32 million tonnes of
foodgrains now rotting in the FCI godowns - the ruling clique seem to
have decided to feed the hapless millions with the ISI rhetoric and
conjure up fears of an Islamic conspiracy to over-run our nation.

Indira Gandhi too tried this in the early Seventies and ended up putting
the democratic structure on hold for a couple of years. The Congress(I)
repeated the trick in the Eighties too when members belonging to a
particular faith were presented as agents of forces bent upon
destabilising our country. What is happening now is different in only
one sense. Indira Gandhi and the Congress(I) were only able to put
democracy on hold. The present dispensation with the large network of
the RSS to back it and a definite ideological objective - to render
India into a Hindu state - has the potential to lead the polity towards
a bigger danger than what Indira Gandhi could between June 26, 1975, and
March 1977.
_________

#3.
DAWN Special Report On South Asian Century
http://www.dawn.com/events/millennium/10.htm

Secularism challenged
By K.N. Panikkar
Hindu revivalism went beyond regeneration and consolidation. It took on a
communal character. The secular territorial concept of nationalism is also
under siege. It is sought to be replaced by an exclusionist notion of
religious cultural nationalism. The politics of religious identity has
gained unprecedented influence in India in recent times, as evident from
the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to power. It reflects a
qualitative change in the state of consciousness in civil society and a
departure from the political culture so far practised in independent India.
After a protracted struggle against colonialism India had emerged in 1947
as a secular-democratic state and had set out to preserve and reinforce the
rich heritage of its multi-religious and multi-cultural society. The
foundational principles of the state and society that the nation then
adopted as its credo were non-discriminatory with regard to caste, creed
and religion, which imparted to Indian nationalism a territorially
inclusive character. Both political culture and social relations initially
drew upon these principles, and despite certain aberrations, sought to
respect them in practice. The situation has radically changed today. The
religious symbols and sentiments invoked for political mobilization and
democratic principles are shrouded in majoritarianism. The secular
territorial concept of nationalism is also under siege; it is sought to be
replaced by an exclusionist notion of religious cultural nationalism.
Although the political assertion of the Hindus is a recent phenomenon - the
earlier attempts like the Hindu Mahasabha and Ram Rajya Parishad were
unsuccessful - its cultural and ideological roots have a long history,
going back to the nineteenth century. The religious bonds during the
pre-colonial era were localized and within fragmented communities, with
both communication and mobility confined within local limits. The only
attempts to overstep the local limits were through pilgrimages to religious
centres, which being sporadic did not lead to any continuous interaction or
connection. A qualitative change occurred during the colonial period, when,
influenced by a variety of initiatives by both the state and civil society,
the boundaries of community consciousness were considerably enlarged. The
changes witnessed in the religious domain during this period, with multiple
tendencies embedded in them, were particularly important in this context:
they were revitalizing on the one hand and revivalist on the other. Both
were occasioned by colonial domination, which brought home the need for a
social and cultural regeneration. A neo-Hinduism emerged out of this quest
which, inter alia, sought to construct a homogenized religious community,
by attributing to it certain common ideological and cultural traits. The
reformation of the existing religious practices which the neo-Hinduism
attempted by identifying a common scriptural source and by formulating
common modes of worship laid the ideological foundation for the
incorporation of the hitherto disparate sects and castes into a single
Hindu community. Although religious reforms did not mitigate sectarian
tendencies within Hinduism, a consciousness of being part of a larger
community did emerge out of them. The Hindu revivalism, which made great
strides during the course of the twentieth century, drew considerable
sustenance from this historical experience. A major catalyst of Hindu
religious consolidation was colonialism: both the social engineering and
cultural hegemonization it attempted contributed to the formation of a
community consciousness among the Hindus. Its interventions in the social
and religious practices created a sense of cultural umbrage, widely shared
within the Hindu community, despite the absence of uniform perspectives on
social change. The discourse they brought into being was conducted within a
commonly shared religious idiom. The initiatives of the colonial state to
abolish Sati and child marriage and to prescribe a minimum age for the
consummation of marriage, for instance, generated a debate about the
authentic cultural practices of the Hindus in the past. Both sides, those
who opposed and supported these moves, invoked the same religious texts,
reinforcing, even in opposition, a consciousness rooted in religion. Unlike
in the past, the controversies generated by these issues involved people
across the country, enlarging thereby the boundaries of religious
communitarian experience. The response of the Hindus to the colonial
cultural hegemonization was essentially inward looking, seeking to
revitalize the indigenous practices through a critical introspection about
the cultural resources of the past. In such an introspection culture was
treated as synonymous with that of the ancient Hindu past, creating in the
process a sense of pride in the achievements of a golden age associated
with the Hindus. The Hindu religious thought during the course of the
nineteenth century, as expressed by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, Dayananda
Saraswati, Vivekananda, Arabindo Ghosh and several others reinforced this
tendency. Their interest in spirituality and comparative religion, instead
of promoting universalism, led them to recognize Hinduism as a superior,
universal religion. More importantly, they equated the regeneration of the
country with the revitalization of Hindu religion. That the Hindus
constituted a nation and that religion defined the ideological parameters
of nationalism were born out of this perspective. The rationale for
demarcating the Hindus as a nation was mainly drawn from two historical
constructs. First, the Hindus are heirs to an uninterrupted lineage from
the time of the Vedas and secondly, the members of other religious
denominations by virtue of being the descendants of those who migrated from
outside or converted to alien faiths do not belong to the nation. The roots
of the nation were traced to an ancient glorious past in which the Hindus
had attained a high level of civilizational excellence. The other religious
denominations that became part of Indian society, either through invasions
or conversions, were considered alien and hence outside the nation. Such an
interpretation of history thus became an important source of justification
for defining the nation as Hindu. The colonial construction of Indian past
in religious terms and the Orientalists' discoveries of Hindu cultural
heritage gave credence to this view. If the Hindus had such a creditable
past their contemporary condition called for some explanation. The Hindu
ideologues did not consider colonial domination as a possible reason.
Instead, they traced the decline of the Hindus to the mediaeval times "when
the tyranny perpetrated by the Muslim rulers", adversely affected the
social and political fortunes of the Hindus. The Muslim rule, it was held,
meant for the Hindus the loss of political power, forcible conversion to
Islam, desecration and destruction of the places of worship and the
stagnation of knowledge systems like Ayurved and astrology. If the Hindus
had lost their past glory, it was essentially because of the Muslim
aggression and logically a prerequisite for the revival of the Hindu nation
was a clear demarcation from, and consolidation against, the Muslims. The
Hindu revivalism, therefore, went beyond regeneration and internal
consolidation; it took on a clearly communal character by stigmatizing the
Muslims as enemies. A series of developments like the Hindi-Urdu
controversy, the cow protection movement, the use of religious symbols for
political mobilization and, above all, sporadic communal riots reinforced
such a perspective. Almost simultaneously a process of consolidation was
taking place among the Muslims also, though for different reasons. The
colonial intervention in their social and cultural life was not very
acutely felt, but the intelligentsia was conscious of the economic and
educational backwardness of the community, for which they sought a solution
through the instrumentality of the colonial rule. At the same time they
were apprehensive that the prospects of the community would be adversely
affected if the political power were to be vested with the majority. The
colonial rulers naturally exploited this fear and encouraged the growth of
separatist tendencies among the Muslims, resulting in the formation of the
Muslim League in 1906. Such a development among the Muslims not only set
them on a communal path but also provided further anchorage to Hindu
revivalism, which found its political articulation in the Hindu Mahasabha,
founded in 1914. Reclaiming the glory of the Hindu nation, which, it is
claimed, had surpassed the achievements of all other civilizations in the
past, but now enfeebled by the onslaughts of foreigners, was a major
concern of revivalism. It naturally subsumed within it the resurrection of
the cultural past and the creation of a polity which privileged the
Hindu.The Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) formed in 1925 undertook the
former, whereas the latter was initially pursued by the Hindu Mahasabha and
the Jana Sangh and currently by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both
these projects, the cultural and the political, are mutually complementary
and converged on salvaging the Hindu pride and interest. The ideological
and theoretical foundations of this quest were laid by Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar, a former revolutionary and nationalist, who, in his later life
was influenced by the racial theories of Adolf Hitler. In a book entitled
Hindutva - Who Is A Hindu published in 1923 he traced the cultural, racial
and political attributes of Hindus which constituted them as a nation. He
claimed that the Hindus are bound together not only by the tie of love we
bear to a common fatherland and by the common blood that courses through
our veins and keeps our hearts throbbing and our affections warm, but also
by the tie of common homage we pay to our great civilization. We are one
because we are a nation, a race and own a common sanskriti (civilization).
According to him the Hindus were bound together as a nation not only
culturally but also politically when Ramachandra, the mythical god, was
crowned the emperor of Aryavarta. Since then the Hindus have succeeded in
preserving the nation against the invasion of foreigners from the time of
the Shakas to the British. Savarkar detailed the saga of this heroic
resistance, through which the consciousness of belonging to a nation
crystallized in the Hindu mind, in an influential work entitled, Six
Glorious Epochs of Indian History. Much before Muhammad Ali Jinnah evolved
his political strategy based on a two-nation theory, Savarkar had already
propounded it. He had argued that the non-Hindus, even if they were born
and brought up in India, could not belong to the nation. The RSS pursued
this exclusionist idea of the nation by advocating that the minorities are
not entitled to equal citizenship rights. By interpreting Indian history
as the record of a successful struggle of the Hindus against the foreigners
Savarkar was seeking to establish two historical 'truths'. First, India is
a nation of the Hindus, which they have defended against all comers in the
past, and secondly, there is enough in the history of India to prove, if
proof is needed, that the Hindus have an inherently brave and intrepid
character. They have become weak, passive and divided only because of their
'subjection to foreign rule' for about one thousand years. Reclaiming the
militant spirit of the past is, therefore, essential if the Hindu nation
had to regain its former glory. Vivekananda had realized it, as evident
from his call to the Hindu youth to improve their physical prowess in order
to build a powerful nation. The RSS was quite conscious of this necessary
mission, as evident from the importance it attaches to physical culture in
its training. Its militant and disciplined cadre epitomizes the new image
of the resurgent, aggressive Hindu. The change in the representation of
Sriram in the recent revivalist iconography from a serene, smil-ing god to
an angry, aggressive warrior holding a bow and arrow is also symbolic of
the new militant spirit. The torch bearer of Hindu revivalism is the RSS,
a para-military outfit, founded by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar who had
undergone some training in terrorist techniques in Bengal. In its
constitution the RSS describes itself as a cultural organization with
'abiding faith in the fundamental principle of tolerance towards all
faiths' and dedicated to welding together the diverse groups within the
Hindu society. But its actual activities went much beyond the stated
objectives in the constitution. In reality it is an organization wedded to
the concept of a Hindu state from which all other religious denominations
are excluded. Its cultural work is only intended to prepare the Hindus to
achieve such a goal, by imparting to them self-confidence and physical
strength. The cultural and ideological work undertaken by the RSS and its
feeder organizations during the last seventy-five years has led to the
internalization of revivalist ideas in civil society. It is not easy to
ascertain the number of these organizations, present in almost all spheres
of cultural and social activities. Functioning under different
denominations, they are actively engaged in creating a social consciousness
rooted in Hindu revivalism. In this scheme, education, which helps mould
the mind of young children, is accorded a prime place. It is estimated
that about twenty thousand schools are now under the management of the RSS
in which the curriculum is so conceived as to foreground a Hindu revivalist
agenda. Moreover, the BJP governments in the states and at the centre have
been quick to seize the opportunity to initiate steps to Hinduize
education, by changing the syllabus and rewriting the textbooks. In an
effort to 'Indianize and spiritualize' education these governments have
sought to change Indian history into Hindu history, make Sanskrit a
compulsory subject and incorporate Vedic knowledge in science courses. A
separate pattern of education to impart training in domestic chores is
envisaged for girls, which betrays a feudal, patriarchal perspective. The
communal content of Hindu revivalism has become more aggressive during the
last two decades. The formation of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in 1964
heralded a particularly militant phase of Hindu revivalism by trying to
marginalize the minorities from the mainstream national life and
stigmatizing them as enemies of the nation. The Parishad set out to
remedy the 'historical wrongs' committed by the minorities in the past,
which led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, and the physical
intimidation and attack of Christians more recently. By forgrounding the
Hindu grievances and interests these initiatives have given an
unprecedented fillip to the communal mobilization and have consequently
yielded considerable political advantage. Without that the BJP's electoral
success would not have been possible. Hindu revivalism is not a 'modern'
phenomenon. In fact, it is antithetical to modernity, even if it is in
harmony with capitalist development and globalization. Obscurantism is writ
large in its social agenda. Nor is it opposed to imperialism, although its
origins can be traced to the colonial cultural and intellectual
hegemonization. What contributed to its progress is its communal character
and its strategies of religious mobilization. The cultural crisis of a fast
expanding middle class provided it with an influential social base and the
pathology of economic development, which denied to a vast majority of
people even the minimum necessities of life, has ensured to it an expanding
electoral support. The Hindu revivalism is now well entrenched,
politically powerful and socially influential. Whether it will succeed in
subverting the secular-democratic polity of India is the puzzle of the next
century.

__________________________________________
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.