[sacw] [ACT] sacw dispatch #1 (26 Jan 00)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #1
26 January 2000
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
___________________
#1. First Annual New York City Dalit Solidarity Banquet.
#2. India: The RSS game plan
#3. India: In the latest issue of 'Organiser' [mouthpiece of the Hindu
Right] (17 Mar. 2000)
#4. US/Bangladesh/ Bahrain: UN Diplomat Sued By Former Maid / Who claims
diplomatic immunity
___________________
#1.
January 26, 2000

The International Campaign on Dalit Human Rights would like to extend an
invitation to attend the First Annual New York City Dalit Solidarity
Banquet.

The International Campaign on Dalit Human Rights is a campaign started in
December 1998 running through April 2000. The campaign in the United States
is sponsored by Dalit Solidarity Forum-USA (DSF-USA), a recently registered
non-profit organization based in Morristown, New Jersey. The campaign was
born out of an initiative of concerned Human Rights activists in India and
abroad working towards the elimination of discrimination and prejudice
directed at members of India's Dalit castes (formerly know as Untouchables).

As you may know, India is home to one of the most rigid social structures in
the world- The Caste System. The caste system roughly divides all of Indian
society into four hierarchically arranged tiers. In addition, there is one
group that falls outside of this four-fold structure traditionally known as
the "Untouchables" or "Outcastes" now commonly referred to as Dalits. Their
position is thought to be below all other groups. Despite constitutional
laws abolishing Untouchability and it associated practices, the majority of
Dalits are poor, deprived of basic needs, and socially backward. Many do
not have access to a sufficient amount of food, healthcare, housing or
clothing. Even fifty years after independence from colonial rule, it is
estimated that every hour two Dalits are assaulted, every day two Dalit
women are raped, every day two Dalits are murdered, and every day two Dalit
houses are burned down in the name of India's Caste System.

The objective of the International Campaign is to bring attention to the
persistence of Untouchability in India and the human rights abuses
associated with its practice. The campaign aims to initiate a global effort
to erase Untouchabilty in all its manifestations, and to bring within the
purview of human rights, all forms of discrimination and violations against
Dalits. In addition, the campaign supports the demand for the appointment
of a special rapporteur, or working group, on the practice of untouchability
in South Asia and the inclusion of caste discrimination in Article 1 of the
United Nations Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

To raise awareness about the Dalit issue, DSF is planning a banquet
fundraiser in New York City scheduled for Saturday, March 11, 2000, at
Columbia University's Alfred Lerner Hall. The theme for this banquet is
"Dalits: a People, a Culture, a History." All proceeds will go to the
campaign in the hopes of eliminating Human Rights abuses committed against
the Dalit community in the new millennium. If you, your organization, or
anyone else you know would like to attend this banquet fundraiser, please
contact us at 212-726-1638, or e-mail the NYC Banquet committee at
nycbanquet@a... <mailto:nycbanquet@a...>, and we will send
you an official invitation. The tickets are $100.00 per person and a table
of eight is $800.00. If you are unable to attend the event, but would like
to make a donation to the International Campaign on Dalit Human Rights,
please contact us at the above contact number.

Should you require further information regarding the International Campaign
on Dalit Human Rights, or Dalit Solidarity Forum, please do not hesitate to
write us at the campaign e-mail address, dalit@a...
<mailto:dalit@a...> or visit our campaign web-site at
<http://www.dalitusa.org>.

We hope that you will support us in this struggle for human liberation.

Sincerely,

Hester Betlem Rebecca Daniel
Member Member

Anita Rao Divya Shodavaram Deepa
Solomon
Member Member Member

Anita Rao
Medical Delivery Systems
ph: 212-805-3098
fax: 212-805-3435
e-mail: arao@o...
_____________

#2.

=46rontline
Volume 17 - Issue 02, Jan. 22 - Feb. 04, 2000
OPINION
http://www.the-hindu.com/fline/fl1702/17020950.htm

The RSS game plan

A disillusioned and dispirited RSS has set the ball rolling for mid-term
general elections in which it hopes that the BJP will gain an absolute
majority and implement the Hindutva agenda.

by SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY

THE situation in India today is characterised and manifested by creeping
fascism. Never before in our history have we been confronted by such an
almost invisible phenomenon. India has seen a crawling imperialism
(1750-1947) when foreign traders turned me rcenary protectors, and then
slowly became our masters. But that process took a century to consummate
and another century to unwind. The Indian people have also experienced
the Emergency (1975-77) that came upon the land in a flash and went out
much the same way. Nevertheless we had got a taste of dictatorship of
the modern state in that short period. We had felt it, hated it, but
then the nation also revolted against it.

Today the creeping fascism of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is
coming upon us not as gradually as imperialism did, nor as suddenly as
did the Emergency. Its spread is being calibrated adroitly by seven
faceless men of the RSS, the RSS "high comma nd". We barely feel it.
Some yesteryear civil libertyites such as Arun Shourie have been
co-opted. Others are being wooed or chased.

But the RSS leaders are now in their late seventies, some not at all in
good health, and so in a mood of frustration. Their glide to a total
capture of Delhi's gaddi (throne) has been interrupted and put on
'hold'. Symbolically, the bhagwa dhwaj (saffron double triangle flag)
does not yet flutter from the Red Fort; but the hated tricolour which no
RSS office can hoist even on August 15, still does. The climb to total
power is up a slippery slope. Having come so close, the RSS could lose
it all in a sudden throw of the electoral dice. That is the frustration;
so close yet so far. Last April, my tea party nearly put their goal out
of reach. It was a close call.

So the RSS warhorses recently have chalked out a game plan: the "Final
Solution". The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance
(NDA) and the National Agenda for Governance, they concluded, cannot go
on forever. It must be ended at some poi nt. Otherwise the danger is
that the RSS may.

Between the 1998 and 1999 general elections, the BJP had for the first
time in 15 years and after six general elections, hit a plateau in Lok
Sabha seats won. Its tally was stuck at 182 seats. The tally of its
"allied parties" - which do not believe in H indutva - rose in terms of
numbers (18 to 24), as well in terms of seats won (80 to 120). This rang
alarm bells in the RSS. For an organisation that has been banned three
times in 15 years, the 1999 election results naturally, justifiably,
caused neurosi s in the RSS. Under the compulsions of the coalition
calculus, they have had to dilute their goals for the rewards of office.
It was a trade-off: a BJP Prime Minister meant acquiring national and
international legitimacy they never had before. It also me ant a
conspiracy of silence of the intellectuals in the creeping advance of
their Hindutva goals.

But then there is a downside to that trade-off: the RSS cadre is
disillusioned and disspirited with the compromises and the stunting.
India is nowhere the Hindu Rashtra that the high command had been
promising, and on which they had been weaned and brain -washed. The
cadres' patience is now wearing thin. They want to strike out on their
own even at the cost of losing power. I have seen this mindset before.
Between 1977 and 1980, in the undivided Janata Party, I had witnessed
the agony in the cadre. At th at time the same trade-offs were pointed
out to the disgruntled rank and file by the high command. But the
welling of sentiment could not be capped. The seven (younger men then)
had therefore to act. They had to abandon the compromises in order to
keep t he Janata unity. They thus allowed the government to fall, and
then went on their own to form the BJP.

The current situation for the RSS is also characterised by the same
paradigm. The RSS has, according to reliable sources, made up its mind
that the NDA has taken its cause about as far as it could. The trade-off
is no more worth it. Therefore the groundw ork has to be laid
clandestinely and in small doses for achieving an absolute majority for
the BJP. In other words, in the not-too-distant future, I believe the
RSS will call for a mid-term poll when it feels that the ground has been
prepared. The RSS ju ggernaut is thus on the move, and the groundwork is
already there for the discerning to see. For this to fructify, the RSS
has drawn up a game plan which has three components.

THE first component of the game plan is to discredit the RSS' opponents
but protect its converts. The First Information Report in the Bofors
case is a classic instance of this strategem. In that FIR, Rajiv
Gandhi's name figures in the list of accused (n ever mind the column).
But those Cabinet Ministers who vetted and signed the deal, or had even
held secret negotiations on the "financial parameters" with the Bofors
company as representatives of Rajiv Gandhi, are prosecution witnesses.
Naturally we can guess what they will say in the witness box. Then there
is the case of Arun Nehru, whose hand has been in every cookie jar of
every deal of that period. He is our swadeshi Quattrocchi, but then he
has now bathed in the Ganga jal of the BJP. He too is a witness, not an
accused. The motto is: "Join us and be free. Resist us and see you in
court." By a series of such sham prosecutions and managed associate
media leaks, the RSS expects to undermine the democratic Opposition in
India. They hope to tak e full advantage of the factions of democratic
parties as they did with the Janata Dal recently.

The second component of the RSS game plan is to shake public confidence
in every institution that can circumscribe or act as a speed-breaker for
the RSS juggernaut. The Law Minister has already initiated moves to
emasculate the Supreme Court via the judi cial commission and by
threatening political monitoring of judicial ethics. Just in case his
ilk got too rebellious, he has threatened to amend the law (through an
ordinance) to permit foreign lawyers to practise in Indian courts.
Briefless Jaffna lawyer s are waiting to fill the vacuum.

The Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister has elevated an RSS
activist to the post of a selector of teachers in the National Council
for Educational Research and Training, a person who defends his
credentials of valour by recording that he once had s hot dead a young
Muslim girl to protect her honour and to end her misery while she was
being gang-raped by Hindu youth during Partition. That, of course, is
Hindutva justice: that is, the minorities can best look forward to
liberation through mercy killi ng.

Christians are being targeted by the front organisations of the RSS in
order to terrorise and ghetto-ise all minorities. Since Osama bin Laden
is stalking the Hindustan peninsula with his millions of dollars and
narcotics, for the wily and cautious RSS. Christians are an easy target
because there are no Christian terrorists to retaliate. As the period of
the Emergency clearly demonstrated, the RSS is astute enough to know
when to hunt with the hounds and when to run with the hares. They are
smarter than the German fascists in this respect.

The third component of the RSS game plan is to ready the blueprints for
implementing the agenda. Of course they cannot implement it in the
present Parliament, but it will be their USP (unique selling
proposition) for the mid-term poll. They have already scripted the new
history texts; they have sent into circulation amongst the faithful how
the new Constitution of India should be structured.

ACCORDING to a draft circulated at the 1998 October conference of the
Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), an RSS front organisation,
the following measures are planned: The present bicameral Parliament
would be replaced by a three-tier structure. At the apex will be a Guru
Sabha of sadhus and sanyasis (read VHP activists) nominated by the
President who is elected by a Lok Sabha constituted on a limited
electoral college of primary and secondary school teachers, the rolls of
which will be prepared by the HRD Ministry and not the Election
Commission. All legislation and money bills will have to originate in
the Guru Sabha and be passed by it before being sent to the Lok Sabha.
The Guru Sabha will also be the judicial commission to nominate Supreme
Court Judges, and impeach them. In between the Guru Sabha and the Lok
Sabha, there will be a Raksha Sabha of serving armed forces chiefs and
retired soldiers who can decide when to declare an Emergency. India
would be, it seems, converted into a state w hich is a cross between the
Taliban and the Vatican. It is for this scheme that they will seek a
mandate in a mid-term poll.

The RSS game plan also has proposals to bridle the electoral system.
Adult suffrage is out, but furthermore, the electoral college for the
Lok Sabha will not vote for candidates, but for parties under a List
System. Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) will be used in all the
constituencies. Perhaps it is then easier to rig the outcome. After all,
in the 1999 general elections, the BJP and its allies won 34 out of the
45 Lok Sabha constituencies which had EVMs. On that ratio, the NDA
should have won 405 se ats of the 544 Lok Sabha constituencies and not
292. EVMs have to be programmed by an engineer to tabulate the votes in
its memory. It can easily be programmed to transfer votes of one
candidate to another, or one party to another. The EVMs are entirely
unsafeguarded today. I suspect it was rigged in the 1999 general
elections.

The RSS game plan is thus ready. Only the D-Day for the blitzkrieg is to
be determined. Since it appears that the RSS has already been generating
momentum on religious fundamentalist issues (for example, Gujarat's Ram
temple) and raised the fanatical emo tional temperature (chasing of
Christian missionaries), my guess is that this campaign will be taken to
a fever pitch by November 9, 2001 (the 1986 date for shilanyas) and then
mid-term elections will be called.

Prime Minister Vajpayee will as usual waffle and wobble, but he will not
resist. That is his nature; he is a mask for the RSS, as Commissar
Govindacharya had once said.

Of course, the good news is that the game plan can fail. I live on the
hope that in India, no well-laid plan ever works. India, after all, is a
functioning anarchy. That has been the undoing of every attempt to
straitjacket its society. That is why we ar e still the longest
continuing unbroken civilisation of over 10,000 years. The RSS is,
luckily, our counter-culture. The vibrations of Mother India will, I
hope, be its undoing.

Dr. Subramanian Swamy is a former Union Law Minister who is now
president of the Janata Party.
_____________

#4.
Latest Issue of 'Organiser' (March 17, 2000)
[Organiser is the political journal of the India's Hindu right]

Article headlines:
- BJP not a communal party
Arif Mohammed Khan

- Patents Act not pro-people
Vandana Shiva
___________

#4.
UN Wire
26 January 2000

BAHRAIN: UN Diplomat Claims Immunity In "Slavery" Lawsuit

A Bahraini diplomat, the second secretary at Bahrain's mission to
the United Nations, has claimed diplomatic immunity in a federal lawsuit
accusing him of making a domestic servant a virtual slave.
Mohammed Saleh asked a federal judge in New York to dismiss the
charges. He and his wife Khatun were charged with violating state and
federal employment laws in a lawsuit filed by their former employee,
Shamela Begum (New York Times, 26 Jan).

Related information below:

UN Wire
12 January 2000
BAHRAIN: UN Diplomat Sued By Former Maid For Imprisonment

The former maid for the second secretary at the Bahraini mission to
the United Nations has sued him for false imprisonment and forcing her
into indentured servitude, the New York Times reports.
"In a rare effort to hold an official of a foreign government
accountable to the laws of the United States," Shamela Begum of
Bangladesh has accused diplomat Mohammed Saleh and his wife Khatun of
flagrant US labor law violations, the Times reports. She filed the
lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, in federal district court in
New York last month.
Yet Begum faces an enormous legal hurdle -- since Saleh is a
diplomat, he is potentially beyond the reach of US courts. Begum's
lawyer, Chaumtoli Huq of the Asian-American Legal Defense and
Educational Fund in New York: "Our position is that hiring an employee
to clean your house and watch your children is not related to consular
functions and should not be immune from federal and state law."
Saleh did not return calls from the Times for comment. The
defendants have until 24 January to respond to the charges.
New US Labor Guidelines On The Way
Meanwhile, "the lawsuit has already produced results," the Times
reports. US State Department officials in Washington said they are
preparing a detailed new memorandum outlining the obligations of UN
diplomats toward domestic workers, as well as a brochure to inform
domestic workers of their rights in the United States. According to the
State Department, there are some 800 domestic workers in the United
States with special visas allowing them to work for UN officials in New
York.
Martha Honey of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington said
it is not uncommon for maids to have their passports confiscated by
their employers, be barred from contacting friends and earn salaries of
$100 to $400 per month. Begum claims the Salehs confiscated her passport
and rarely allowed her to leave their apartment (Somini Sengupta, New
York Times, 12 Jan).
=20

__________________________________________
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.