[sacw] sacw dispatch (16 Jan 2000) [Glimpses of 21st Century India]

Harsh Kapoor act@egroups.com
Sat, 15 Jan 2000 23:35:53 +0100


South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch [ Glimpses of 21st Century India]
16 January 2000
________________________
#1. How 'private' cops crushed a magical protest
#2. Gujarat: The Hindutva laboratary
#3. Glimpses of the Hindu rashtra
#4. Letter to Governor of U.P.
________________________

The Hindustan Times
16 January 2000

HOW 'PRIVATE' COPS CRUSHED A MAGICAL PROTEST
(By Arundhati Roy and Jharuna Jhaveri)

IT HAS been distressing to read the completely false accounts that have
appeared in both local and national newspapers about the Narmada Bachao
Andolan's capture of the Maheshwar dam site.

Obviously, these accounts are based on information received in press
releases handed out by the Government and S. Kumar's, the textile company
that has won the contract for the dam.

To suggest that there were only 400 people, most of them "outsiders", is
nothing but an outlandish lie. We both were there to express our
solidarity with the struggle of the local people and not to "lead the
march" as some papers have suggested. (Winning a prize for literary
fiction does not automatically qualify a person to "lead" a people's
movement that has existed years before she came along.)

This is a brief, first person account of what happened. There are
photographs and documentary film footage of the event for anyone who
wishes to check the veracity of what is stated.

On the night of January 10, men and women from the 62 affected villages
gathered in the village of Sulgaon. By midnight, between 3,500 and 4,000
people had assembled. They planned to capture the dam site of the Shri
Maheshwar Hydel Project, the first privatised hydel project in India for
which the Government has signed a power purchase agreement with S.
Kumar's.

The 3,500 local people were joined by about a dozen "outsiders", most of
whom were independent filmmakers, photographers and reporters. Among the
supporters were the veteran Gandhian Jyotibhai Desai, Krishna Raval and
ourselves.

The march set off from Sulgaon at 4 am on January 11. It was exactly two
years ago to the day that villagers occupied the Maheshwar dam site for
more than 20 days. In order to avoid the police, we walked in darkness and
in pindrop silence for about 6 km through fields and on little-used
footpaths, across streams and marshland.

Not a throat was cleared, not a beedi lit. The sound of 3,500 quiet feet,
the absolute single-minded determination and discipline, was magical.
Those of us who were "outsiders", both the skeptics and the romantics,
knew we were participating in something historic. We arrived at the dam
site just as dawn was breaking.

The policemen who had been patrolling the actual dam structure were taken
by surprise, and could not prevent the first 2,000 people from occupying
the site where excavation work on the powerhouse pit was underway.
However, they managed to head off 1,500 people, who were forced to remain
in Jalud, the first village in the submergence zone.

Soon after the site was occupied, the Collector Mr Bhupal Singh, the SP
(whose name we don't recall), and the Additional Collector arrived and
tried to persuade the people to leave peacefully.

The Collector was asked why the Madhya Pradesh Government had chosen to
permit S. Kumar's to push ahead with the project, and ignore the
recommendations of its own Task Force Report, which prescribes a complete
re-evaluation of the project.

He was asked whether police repression was the way to deal with the fact
that there was no land available for the resettlement of displaced people.

The Collector tried to trivialize the seriousness of the situation with
pathetic humor and some tired soap opera dialogue. ("Hum do bhai hain, aur
ek ghar main do bhaiyon ke alag alag vichaar ho sakte hain=8A/main bhi aap
ka hun, yeh prashaasan bhi aap ka hai aur yeh police bhi aap hi ki hai=8A")

This was greeted with derisive laughter from the people, who called him
"S. Kumar ka dalaal."

The people restated their demands:

a)What will each unit of electricity generated by the project cost?
(According to the NBA's calculation, it would be more than Rs 10 per unit)

b) According to the escrow clause in the contract that the MP Government
is negotiating with S. Kumar's, the Government will have to pay the
company Rs 600 crore a year for the next 35 years, irrespective of how
much electricity the project actually generates. We demand to know where
this money is going to come from.

c)The MP Government's relief and rehabilitation policy for the Narmada
Project, which is legally binding, says the displaced people must be given
land for land. We demand to be shown exactly where this (non-existent)
land is.

The Collector then said he would go back to his office and return with his
written reply. Instead, he returned a little later and ordered the police
to take up positions to begin the arrests.

In response, the people moved to a lower level in the excavated pit. They
perched dangerously on the jagged edge of a rocky, 50-foot precipice.

Any fall from there would have been fatal. Sensing the mood, the Collector
withdrew the police at about 8.30 am. There was a palpable easing of
tension. For the next two hours or so, people spoke, sang, and the
"outside supporters" (numbering about four) introduced themselves and
spoke briefly.

Several local people spoke at length about the struggle and the violent
repressive regime of the government and S. Kumar's. Again and again they
said they would rather die than lose their lands and homes.

Suddenly, without warning at about 11 am, the police returned and the
arrests began. Women were dragged and carried into waiting buses. We
(Jharana and Arundhati) were dragged away, carried up the hill, dumped in
a private Tata Sierra and driven away.

The driver of the vehicle admitted that it belonged to the "project"
(administered by S. Kumar's). It was a humiliating revelation-is this the
first, faltering step towards a privatised Indian police force and
administration?

We protested about this and were then transferred to a police Gypsy. We
were first taken to a resthouse. We refused to get out of the vehicle and
demanded to be taken to the jail along with everyone else. We were then
driven from place to place for over three hours, and eventually we were
taken to the Mandleshwar jail where the rest of the people were waiting.

They had refused to get out of their buses until they knew where we and Ms
Chitaroopa Palit (a beloved NBA activist) were. The male policemen had
booze on their breath. While driving away after dropping us, the driver of
the police jeep knocked down a man, a drunk constable.

His unconscious body was unceremoniously dumped in the back of the police
Gypsy. We have no idea whether he is dead or alive.

Altogether, more than 2,000 people were picked up. There were not enough
vehicles to take them away in. There was no place in the prisons to keep
them. Eventually most of them (including ourselves) were released.

However, 973 people were arrested and lodged in the Maheshwar jail. (The
Press is advised to check police records). We learnt that there was no
electricity and no water and no facilities.

Today, five days later, the situation borders on farce. The jail has been
left open and abandoned by its own workers. The people have vowed to
return to the dam site and stop illegal construction work. It's not
surprising. Their lives and livelihoods are at stake.

To the rest of the world, the Shri Maheshwar Hydel Project may be a dam,
but to the affected people, it is nothing but a gun to their heads. There
could be no bigger lie than the misinformation that the movement has no
local support. S. Kumar's and the Government both know they have a
full-blown civil disobedience movement on their hands.

The Press would know it too, if it would only go and see for itself,
instead of basing its reports on government handouts or false accounts by
compromised journalists on the payroll of private companies (of whom,
according to local people, there is no shortage).

It is a disturbing development, this. The Press would do well to look into
it, or risk having its good name tarnished by unscrupulous people
masquerading as journalists.

One last word: What the people of the Narmada Valley are asking for is
honest, reliable information about their future. Is that so unreasonable?

=46or the government to treat such a historic, spectacular and spectacularl=
y
non-violent peoples' movement in the way it has done, is to undermine the
very principle of non-violent protest. Is it only when a plane is hijacked
that people get taken seriously? Or not even then?
______________

#2.
Hindustan Times
Sunday, January 16, 2000, New Delhi
=46eatures=20
=20
THE HINDUTVA LABORATARY
(By Akshaya Mukul)

The dividing line between old and new in Ahmedabad is the decrepit wall
erected in the 15th century by its founder Sultan Ahmed Shah.

Today, it's called the 'Berlin Wall' because it has become, over the last
decade, both a physical and an emotional-psychological barrier, separating
Hindu settlements in spanking new areas from Muslim clusters in the walled
city. Those who, consciously or otherwise, choose to defy this segregation
do so at their peril. Senior journalist Ashraf Sayeed learnt this the hard
way. Some years ago, when Ahmedabad was in the grip of continual communal
violence, his Hindu friends advised him to shift from Patrakar Colony to a
"safer area" as they feared they would not be able to protect him for
long. But when Sayeed tried to purchase a house in posh Gandhinagar, his
prospective neighbours forced the Hindu property owner to rescind the
deal. Today, he lives in a house bought from a Muslim; predictably, it's
in a Muslim neighbourhood.

Similarly, Hanif Lakdawala and his Christian wife Sheeba George, could not
rent space for their Institute for Initiatives in Education. Ultimately, a
Brahmin friend helped them. The obverse is equally true: Hindus in Muslim
areas face a backlash.

Indeed, the state which produced the apostle of non-violence, Mahatma
Gandhi, is a simmering cauldron of hatred. The few who care are mocked at.
Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh utilises the Bharatiya Janata
Party's being in government to relentlessly push its divisive agenda.

The public has been so co-opted that the state government's recent
decision to lift the ban on its officials joining the RSS was met with
indifference. Similar was the response when banners declaring, "Vishwa
Hindu Parishad welcomes you to Hindu Rashtra's village" mushroomed in
several villages following the anti-Christian incidents in Dangs in 1998.

"Only a few decisions are taken publicly," says former chief minister
Shankarsinh Vaghela, once a leading light of the RSS in Gujarat. "The rest
is a covert RSS operation, deftly planned and executed. In doing this, the
RSS can go to any extent, even kill."

But killing is usually unnecessary. Threats and intimidation are enough to
hasten ghettoisation. When this fails, minorities, especially those in
petty business, are boycotted. This is precisely how Muslim autorickshaw
drivers were driven out of Bardoli last year.

State home minister Haren Pandya protests that "a communal hue should not
be imparted to local issues." He euphorically cites statistics to show
that the number of people killed in communal riots has dipped during the
BJP's five-year tenure.

A senior bureaucrat counters: "The idea is to exert constant pressure on
the minorities, and make them realise that the terms of their existence
will be set by the majority. Since the government is a party to this, you
don't have to achieve this through riots and killings."

Adds Lakdawala, "Even the recent Christian bashing was well-planned. You
could read slogans like pehle kasai, baad mein isai-first butchers
(Muslims), then Christians-on public walls in interior Gujarat way back in
the Eighties."

Why is the RSS using Gujarat as a laboratory for its Hindutva project? And
when did this process begin? Replies Achyut Yagnik, coordinator of the
Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, "It began with the 1969 riots in
which nearly 2,000 people were killed. The involvement of the RSS, Hindu
Dharma Raksha Samiti and Jan Sangh was brought out by the P Jagmohan Reddy
inquiry commission."

Gujarat politics underwent a change in the Seventies. The hegemony of the
powerful Patidar (Patel) community, exercised through the Congress, was
being increasingly challenged. Following the famous Navnirman movement
against Congress chief minister Chimanbhai Patel, the party realised that,
post-Emergency, it needed a new social alliance to stay in power.

Consequently, it forged the KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim)
coalition and stormed to power. When Madhavsinh Solanki formed his
Cabinet, Patidars found themselves out of favour. Says Yagnik, "For the
first time, there was a divorce between political and economic power. It
was an impossible situation."

Looking for new patrons, Patidars found their opportunity in the
anti-reservation struggle that began a year later. The BJP, whose earlier
incarnate, Jan Sangh, had built a strong upper caste base through the RSS,
grabbed the leadership of the movement.

The picture was now clear: upper castes were drifting towards the BJP;
OBCs, Dalits and Muslims towards the Congress. (Dalit-Muslim unity was
easily forged because the strong influence of vegetarianism in the state
forced them to live in the same neighbourhoods.)

In 1985, Solanki increased OBC reservations from 10 to 28 per cent,
incurred the wrath of anti-reservationists-and bagged 84 per cent of the
seats in the election that year. The Sangh, now fearing that its patronage
of the anti-reservation stir would alienate it from lower castes, gave a
communal twist to the movement. A series of riots inexplicably broke out
in the walled city.

The focus shifted. A section of OBCs were wooed and coopted into the
Sangh's upper caste alliance. Simultaneously, Solanki could not uplift the
marginalised sections among the KHAM alliance-and disenchantment set in.

Thus, in the late Eighties, the BJP began invoking religious symbols to
cash in on the dissatisfaction. Since tribals (7 per cent) and Dalits (15
per cent) constituted a substantial vote bank, the Sangh's myriad outfits
like the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram started
working among tribals, providing relief and indoctrinating them.

The attempt to break tribal-Dalit-Muslim unity succeeded in 1987 when,
during a riot in Virpur on the Kheda-Panchmahal district border, tribals
attacked Muslims for the first time. KHAM had given way to the politics of
religion.

This mobilisation was complete when LK Advani's infamous Rath Yatra was
flagged off on September 25, 1990 from the Somnath temple, its place in
Hindu-Muslim communal history acting as the catalyst.

In 1990, the BJP's alliance with VP Singh's Janata Dal helped it increase
its seats and enter the coalition government. And in 1995, the BJP was in
power on its own. Gujarat was thus a successful test case for the BJP,
proving the virtues of wooing the middleclasses and gobbling allies.

But why is the average Hindu Gujarati inclined towards extreme and
divisive politics? Yagnik traces this to the rapid urbanisation of
Gujarat: "This led the middleclass to see itself as a block. It realised
that the Hindu identity could counter KHAM."

Similarly, at the block and village level, the capitalist growth of
agriculture and the White Revolution enhanced the prosperity of the
farming community, which now wanted to express itself politically.
Upwardly mobile farmers were attracted to the VHP and Bajrang Dal because
they provided an alternative to subaltern politics. This has resulted in
the BJP controlling the state's powerful and rich cooperatives.

Even tribal and Dalit government officials (Gujarat Dalits have the
highest literacy rate among their brethren-61 per cent) find the Hindutva
ideology resolves their identity crisis in cities, where the upper-caste
dominated middleclasses scoff at lower-caste identification. Obviously, it
also helps to get co-opted.

"Hindutva rhetoric wasn't just meant for coming to power," Vaghela points
out. "The idea is to perpetuate it for eternity." For this, the RSS needs
yes-men in the BJP and government. This was the reason, claims Vaghela, he
was sidelined despite building the party in the state. "I could have posed
difficulties for their fascist mechanism of zero-debate," he says.

Vaghela says even Prime Minister Vajpayee has experienced the RSS'
intolerance for debate. In 1980, he wrote an article, "Whither RSS?", in a
national daily. "So furious was the Sangh leadership that it decided to
defeat Vajpayee in the 1984 election-and it did. Vajpayee seriously
contemplated leaving the RSS, and even wrote a poem, Jayen to jayen kahan.
(Where should I go?) But he missed the bus," says Vaghela.

But RSS propagandist Mukund Deobhankar says the state is not being
saffronised-because it was always saffron. "It's only more visible now,"
he claims, arguing that a Hindu state has its advantages: "If we grow, the
minorities will be safe. For, the followers of other religions will have
to share our vision of India and its culture. Then, we won't mind
accommodating two more gods (Allah and Christ) along with our 33 crore
gods and goddesses."

Deobhankar justifies the government's decision to lift the ban on police
officers and government employees joining the RSS. Agrees home minister
Pandya, "When the chief minister and I are from the RSS, how does it
matter if an employee goes to the shakha?"

But a senior bureaucrat in his ministry warns, "Those Hindu employees who
don't join the RSS will be isolated. And your RSS link will become a
deciding factor in promotion. I am dead set against the move."

Economist Meghnad Desai wrote about Gujarat in 1998, "Gods are worshipped
in large social gatherings in much the same way as the British go to
soccer games on Saturdays as a consumption display event." When a
government relentlessly pushes a communal agenda in a state such as this,
the seeds of hatred are easily sowed.

Gujarat is clearly a laboratory where the RSS is conducting its communal
experiments. Gujarat today, India tomorrow?
____________

#3.
The Hindustan Times
16 January 2000
=46eatures=20

PICTURE OF THE HINDU RASHTRA
(By Rathin Das)

Victimising dissenters: In August 1995, the Keshubhai Patel ministry
cooked up a story of an ISI conspiracy to blow up Ahmedabad's
high-security jail-just to "fix" V Kannu Pillai, a senior police officer
whose doctoral thesis had established a direct correlation between
communal riots and the BJP's proximity to power.

Patel himself announced that Pillai was accused of involvement in the
alleged jailbreak case. The complainant was a college girl whom the IPS
officer was supposed to have repeatedly raped in exchange for permitting
her to interview prisoners for a research project.

A court-ordered CBI probe found the case to be fabricated, and three years
later, Pillai, by then retired, was acquitted. Only recently, a court has
ordered the BJP government to prosecute the "research" student.
Significantly, she had been sent to Pillai by the BJP jails minister.

*In May 1996, the saffron brigade did not spare even its own minister.
Cadres disrobed the septuagenarian Atmaram Patel for showing dissent at a
rally of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in Ahmedabad.

Thought and culture police: In August 1996, the attack on artistic freedom
began in Ahmedabad with the Sangh Parivar ransacking the Husain-Doshi Gufa
in retaliation against MF Husain's depiction of Saraswati.

*In March 1998, Bajrang Dal men disrupted a beauty pageant in Ahmedabad.

*In May that year, VHP and Bajrang Dal men broke cola bottles and burnt
soft-drink vans to protest post-Pokharan US sanctions.

*In July 1998, copies of the New Testament distributed in a Rajkot school
were burnt.

*Bajrang Dal men raided the campus of the Centre for Environment, Planning
and Technology (CEPT) at Ahmedabad in July 1998 and instructed girls not
to "imitate Madonna". Many students were injured; one was hospitalised for
weeks.

*In Surat in December 1998, the Bajrang Dal decided to impose prohibition.
It used walkietalkie sets sold to the VHP at concessional rates by a
multinational.

*In March 1999, another beauty contest in the south Gujarat town of
Navsari was disrupted. The car of the minister attending it was damaged.

*Fish-lovers in a cosmopolitan locality of Ahmedabad in April 1999 were
denied their favourite food as the Fishing Corporation's sale van was not
allowed to park at its usual place, some 200 metres from a temple.

*In September 1999, Bajrang Dal activists attack another beauty contest
organised by university students in Vadodara. The police refused to arrest
the culprits.

Attacks on minorities: In July 1998, a corpse was exhumed from a Christian
cemetery and dumped by the riverside in Kapadvanj (Kheda district).

*In Randhikpur in July 1998, more than 50 Muslim families were driven out
of their village by VHP and Bajrang Dal activists, in retaliation against
two Muslim boys eloping with two Hindu girls.

*In October 1998, a Christian congregation in Vadodara was attacked and
cases of forcible conversion lodged against the pastor.

*On December 3, 1998, on the eve of Christians taking out a protest rally,
the government announced that the grants-in-aid to their schools would be
stopped.

*In December, a Hindu Shiv Sena leader threatened shopowners in Ahmedabad
against displaying "Christian symbols" like Santa Claus. He was
arrested-the first time such action was taken.

*The year 1998 ended with the systematic torching of huts used as churches
in tribal-dominated Dangs district. The government denied they were
"churches".

*The year 1999 began with the government surreptitiously ordering a census
of Christians and Muslims, including their assets and crime records.

*The VHP and Bajrang Dal launched a campaign against animal sacrifice on
Bakr-Id, which coincided with Mahavir Jayanti in March 1999. The two
festivals could be observed only with heavy police deployment, and an Army
flag march in Vadodara.

*In July, riots broke out in the walled city of Ahmedabad for no apparent
reason.

*Bajrang Dal men set fire to a restaurant partially owned by a Muslim in
Ahmedabad in July 1999. He subsequently died.

*In October, 30 minority families abandoned their houses in Ahmedabad's
Naroda area following threats by the VHP after a Hindu girl committed
suicide because of a failed affair with a Muslim boy.

*The VHP deliberately held a rally at Ahwa, Dangs, on Christmas Day.

Education: School textbooks have been badly distorted, with numerous
factual inaccuracies, to push the RSS brand of history.

Administration: The government has lifted the ban on its staff joining the
RSS.
___________

#4.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MARXIST)
District Committee, Kanpur.
Ram Asrey Bhavan, Jareeb Chowki, Kanpur.

14.1.2000

His Excellency,
The Governor, Uttar Pradesh,
Lucknow.

Dear Suraj Bhanji,

We were shocked to read a newspaper report that you, along with the Chief
Minister of the State and other members of the Cabinet, will be attending
the inauguration on the 18th of January of a Yagya being conducted in
Kanpur by someone known as Prakhar Maharaj. We would like to bring to your
notice that the said Prakhar Maharaj has made the most objectionable
statements in the last one month which are not only opposed to the law of
the land and the Constitution of the country but which reveal a most
backward, socially reprehensible and superstitious bent of mind which
should be condemned by all those who are responsible for upholding the
Constitution, the law of the land and the spirit of social reform that
inspire them.

In the month of November, soon after the unfortunate suicide of Smt. Charan
Shah in Satpurva village of Mahoba District, Prakhar Maharaj gave an
interview upholding the practice of sati as being in accordance with Hindu
religion and saying that the construction of sati temples should be
encouraged and any laws prohibiting this should be opposed and violated.

Around the same time, when he was asked by journalists how he could justify
the expenditure of more than a crore of rupees on the yagna specially at a
time when lakhs of people were facing death and destruction in Orissa, he
replied saying that this money would be of no help to these suffering
people because even large amounts of Government aid were not sufficient to
solve their problems and then went on to say that natural calamities like
the cyclone that hit Orissa could only be prevented by the yagna that he
was organising.

Soon after this, Prakhar Maharaj refused permission to the person who had
earlier been selected to recite the Geeta Path on the grounds that he was a
member of the OBC and not a Brahmin.

We are surprised that these kinds of anti-Constitutional and illegal
pronouncements should not only go unchallenged but that the local
administration should be involved in giving various kinds of help and
assistance to an event that is being organised to perpetuate superstitious
beliefs by a person whose pronouncements are casteist, anti-women,
anti-Constitution and illegal.

We would, therefore, request you to, at the very least, disassociate
yourself as the Constitutional Head of the State from such events. Your
presence at the inauguration of this yagna will make a mockery of the
Constitution and the law of the land and will only encourage superstitious,
casteist anti-women and obscurantist beliefs. We would also request you
to use your Constitutional prerogative to ensure that there is no further
misuse of State assistance in this regard and also to see that no
Ministers attend this function in their official capacities using their
official modes of transportation.

Since we feel that this is a matter of public concern, we are releasing
this letter to the press.

Yours sincerely,

Subhashini Ali, Sridhar Sharma, Harsh Kumar Misra. Parasnath Yadav, Arvind
Kumar, Zareena Khurshid, Devi Krishna Misra. (District Committee, CPI(M),
Kanpur)

__________________________________________
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