[sacw] [ACT] sacw dispatch #1 (5 Feb 00)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #1
5 February 2000
____________________
#1. A Very Friendly Hostile Country: Delhi students on Pakistan
#2. South Asia: a parlous situation
#3. India: After Hindutva its the turn of the Muslim right to attack the Fil=
m
____________________

#1.

The Hindustan Times
5 February 2000
Sunday

A VERY FRIENDLY HOSTILE COUNTRY

It was a trip in search of Pakistan. January 5, and 12 students of the
history department, Ramjas College, Delhi, have reached Old Delhi
railway station to board the Samjhauta Express to Lahore. We've had to
handle anxious parents, and our own fears of travelling to a 'hostile'
country so soon after the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane.

The train leaves at 9 pm. For most of us, it is our first experience of
seeing Partition up close. Our co-passengers are mostly from families
split and living on both sides of the border, travelling to relatives in
the other country.

It's 6.30 in the morning and bitterly cold and foggy. We are at Attari,
the last station in India. The entire train empties out, and every
passenger and piece of luggage is scrutinised by the immigration and
customs authorities. They take an agonising nine hours, during which
they humiliate, abuse and harass the passengers, large numbers of whom
are poor and illiterate. If you are prepared to pay you can take
anything across. If you have no contraband, you still pay. You pay for
every step you take at Attari.

At last, the Pakistan Railways train pulls out. The track to Wagah, a
15-minute ride, is fenced on either side. Mounted BSF men, imposing and
handsome like the horses they ride, gallop alongside. The train stops at
the gate which will take us through the barbed wire fencing, so
definitively inscribing the border. The gate takes a while to open, and
in the silence, almost menacingly the border forces itself into our very
beings.

In contrast to Attari, which lacks even basic amenities, Wagah is
cleaner, and the authorities more efficient and far more courteous. By
nine, back on the train, we are on our way to Lahore, where we arrive 25
hours after leaving Delhi.

Beena Sarwar, editor of the News on Sunday meets us warmly in the cold
and the fog, with two other journalists making us immediately
comfortable. Lahore Station and the ride to the Youth Hostel where we
are staying, look, feel and sound like parts of Delhi. Even the cars are
similar. Instead of the Maruti 800 and Omni, they call theirs Suzuki
Khyber and Suzuki Bolan. Add on the packed dal, roti and kaleji from the
Lahore Press Club that we have for dinner, and you begin to wonder
whatever happened to that border, how foreign really is this foreign
country?

We've barely surfaced on our first morning in Lahore, when historians
Mubarak Ali and Kamran Saheb arrive with Irfan Usmani, a most agreeable
guide, and lecturer at the historic and beautifully kept Government
College. Of all that we see of colonial Lahore, this is by far the most
impressive. Its red-brick buildings, soaring spires, green lawns and
Roll of Honour make us swoon. All of us want to study here, until we
discover the price of subsidised coffee in the canteen - Rs 12 per cup.

Irfan Usmani takes us to Jahangir's Tomb, the Jama Masjid, the Lahore
=46ort, the Masjid Wazirkhan, the Minar-e-Pakistan and the Data Saheb ki
mazaar. We travel in Qing-qis (pronounced Ching-kis) which are Lahore's
version of Delhi's phut-phutis. Lahore's are manufactured by a Chinese
company, hence the name.

Jahangir's maqbara, set in well-cared-for grounds, reminds us of
Humayun's Tomb in Delhi. We're accosted by a wizened Shami Guide who
thinks Mitul, who's Assamese, is from Japan. But when he hears we are
from India, he's pleased. "I'm honoured," he says. "Everybody in India
speaks very good English."

Masjid Wazirkhan the colourful 17th century mosque in the heart of the
Walled City and has stunning mosaic, takes our breath away. The galis
outside are famous for their chana-kulcha, but it's Ramzan, and all
eating places are closed. As it nears 5, our stomachs begin growling and
the enticing aromas rising in the alleyways leading out of Bhaati Gate
through Hira Mandi into Anarkali Bazaar are driving us crazy. We finally
break the fast at 5.15, with Irfan Usmani offering us dates. Dinner is
nihari, mutton cooked overnight on a slow fire, at a tiny street
restaurant in Gali Paisa Akhbaari. It's tough to be vegetarian in
Pakistan.

Walking through Anarkali Bazaar at night is like walking through a
crowded Delhi bus, except no bus could ever have been so much fun.
Anarkali Bazaar is a foodie's delight - kheer, falooda, Kashmiri tea and
conversation. Everyone we chat with thinks we are from Karachi. Whenever
they hear we're from India, people get talking about relatives, and how
much they want to go, and how difficult it is to get visas.

=46ortunately we got visas on the first try. In September, we decided to
visit Pakistan on our annual History Society excursion. We wanted no
sponsors, and had only about Rs 2,500 each. Mukul Sir (Mr Mukul
Mangalik) wrote to the Pakistan High Commission. When the idea was first
floated, 40 hands had shot up in support. When it came to applying for
passports, there were only some 20, mainly because many parents and
guardians had refused permission. "Jaan bhoojh kar maut ke mooh me jaa
rahe ho," was the refrain.

On October 12, when the army seized power, we thought that was the end
of our dream. But in early December, the High Commission replied that
visas would be granted within 24 hours of our applying, and that we
would be exempted from reporting to the police at every place we
travelled to. But then, IC-814 was hijacked. More students dropped out.

All these apprehensions just vanished when we reached Lahore. We felt
comfortable everywhere we went, except initially at Peshawar. Peshawar
feels foreign: the language, Pashtu, and the people's bearing are very
different.

We're nearly in Peshawar before our driver, who later buys us tea,
realises we're Indians. He asks how many of us are Hindus. "What do you
know about Hindus?" we ask back. "That they don't have beards!"

We aren't laughing though when Gaurav, tired of standing in a crowded
bus, sits down next to a purdah-clad woman. The woman bolts. "You're
extremely uncultured," somebody shouts in the general pandemonium that
erupts. "Where are you from?" the driver wants to know. "India." The
driver hastily goes, tauba, tauba. We're taken aback. "Why, shouldn't we
have come?" Driver: "Yes, you made a big mistake." Welcome to Peshawar!

The city seems forbidding - huge, bearded Pathans all over the place,
and only the occasional woman in purdah. At the hotel, the proprietor
tells us not to advertise the fact that we are Indian as "There are lots
of uneducated, foolish people here."

We eat at Namak Mandi, and how Banajit and Anand can eat! Between them
they polish off five huge khamiri rotis, seven skewers of kebab, half a
kadhai of kadhai gosht and two milkshakes each. The Pathans still think
they eat too little! None of us ventures to try their 'red eggs', which
they first boil and then paint.

We are invited by Afrasiab Khattak, chairman of the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan, to have tea with him and Khwaja Mohammad Wasim
of the Peshawar chapter of the Pakistan India People's Forum.

Khattak recounts stories of Kissa Khawani Bazaar (the bazaar of
storytellers), the oldest market in Peshawar, where we had spent most of
our day. It was once the place where caravans of traders and travellers
from Central Asia and the subcontinent met. We dream of the Khyber Pass.

We arrive in Pakistan's capital on the evening of Id, January 9, having
travelled from Lahore on the new motorway. Pakistan's inter- and
intra-city bus services are a pleasant surprise. But these are
privately-run, and motorists have to pay to use the motorway.

The majority of people neither have the means nor the chance to leave
their villages. The few villages we got to see from our bus windows
appeared very backward, with one or two big houses surrounded by many
small, mud houses.

Pakistan's landscape tells us it is dominated by incredibly large
landowners. We hardly saw big industry. But then we didn't go to Karachi
or to the cotton mills which have grown enormously in number, according
to Mubashir Hasan, former finance minister of Pakistan, and now an
active member of the Pakistan India People's Forum who hosted an iftar
for us in Lahore.

Islamabad, 10 minutes away from Pakistan, is startlingly different. We
have our only brush with the police here. We are on our way to house of
The Hindu's Pakistan correspondent, Amit Baruah, an ex-Ramjas history
student. The police, heavily armed, stop our van because it is
over-crowded, and then frisk us and examine our passports. Satisfied
that we are indeed only students from India, they are very apologetic.

After a 'debauched' night at a most luxurious guesthouse, which Amit
paid for, we leave for Taxila, with its stupas, monasteries and the
ruins of the two cities of Sirkap and Sirsuk. The moment we leave
Punjab, makeshift stalls selling mountains of tempting, bright-orange
maltas appear on both sides of the road. They are very juicy and sweet,
and our Pathan driver boasts, we'd never get to taste the same anywhere
else. He's right.

The Buddhist ruins are a World Heritage site. What struck us is that
Pakistan should so lovingly protect these ruins, although it is not sure
whether the teaching of its own history should go back to even as far as
the 8th century AD.

By late afternoon we are back in Islamabad, in time to catch the tail
end of the tense India-Pakistan cricket match in Australia in the home
of one of Pakistan's well-known nuclear physicists, Dr A.H. Nayyar. His
colleague, Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy is also present. Both are committed
democrats and anti-nuclear activists. The cricket match dominates.
Seeing our excitement, Dr Nayyar's two sons say, "India will win, Prasad
is bowling." It was probably one of the few India-Pakistan cricket
matches watched by Indians and Pakistanis sitting in the same room on
the subcontinent!

That evening we are invited to tea at the residence of India's (acting)
high commissioner, Sudhir Vyas. Dinner is with lawyer Anees Jillani and
journalist Nadeem Iqbal who drive us around the city. It's beautiful,
but lacks the life and colour of Lahore.

Anand is right - "I don't think any of us has ever enjoyed our Indian
identity as much" as we did in Lahore. But we're also startled by the
anti-India slogans on the walls. Iftikhar reads out a poster in Urdu:
"Maulana al-Masood Azhar ki rihai mubarak ho." We are careful to remain
restrained at all times while talking to strangers, and keep a check on
each other's tongues in public places. Yet, in Lahore on Id morning,
when Irfan Usmani, our lecturer-turned-guide brings us sewai from his
house, a two hour journey from where we are staying, no place felt more
like home.

The previous night had been special. We were at the home of Raza Kazim,
a friend of the late Eqbal Ahmed. It was Eqbal Saheb who had come to
Ramjas in January 1999, and talked about Pakistan, insisting that young
people should cross the boundaries between our two countries. Raza has
been an activist, and also an artist who invented the musical
instrument, the Saagar Veena aka the Raza been, which he has been
working on for 31 years. We go up to his music room where, very
prominently placed, is a foot-high stone statue of Saraswati.

Our last evening in Lahore is at the home of a Kathak dancer Naheed
Siddiqui, where we also meet a rock band who call themselves Traveller,
and lament that they cannot freely perform in Pakistan. It's ironic. We
have greater freedom of expression, and yet rock is dead, buried under
Indipop and dance tracks.

We are sad to part with Irfan Usmani at Lahore Station on January 13. We
arrived knowing only Beena. We were leaving with rich associations, and
memories of all those who spontaneously reached out to us, and made our
short trip on a shoestring budget so special.

The train back to Delhi starts at 7 am. In half an hour we're at Wagah.
Customs is a major shock: they seize all our films, saying they have no
idea if we have taken "sensitive" pictures. Hours of negotiations
follow. We have almost lost all hope when they return the rolls, saying
they want us to take back "sweet memories". Gentle name-dropping has
probably done the trick, as it normally does in India.

At one on January 14, we arrive at Attari. We are happy to be back,
though we hardly felt alien across the border.

By Banajit Hussain, Gaurav Srivastav, Anand Taneja, Karan Singh Bagal,
Amit Kumar Singh, Gagan, Rajnish Kumar, Sidharth Mishra, Madhuresh
Kumar, Iftikhar Hussain, Sudhir Kumar and Mitul Baruah.

(History Department, Ramjas College)
________

#2.
DAWN
4 February 2000
Op-Ed.

SOUTH ASIA: A PARLOUS SITUATION
By M.B. Naqvi

TENSION between Pakistan and India is at an all-time high and is still
rising. It began with the competitive nuclear tests in May 1998. The
chief result of these was the intensification of struggle in Kashmir.
That, in short order, resulted in the collapse of the Lahore process,
Kargil conflict, Washington agreement, October 12 takeover by Gen Pervez
Musharraf and a sudden increase in bomb blasts, shelling and other
incidents along the LoC and now perhaps across the international border
between India and Pakistan. These might presage war.
The blunt warning by the Pakistan Chief Executive that nuclear weapons
will be used if Pakistan's security is threatened does not seem to have
led to de-escalation of incidents or tension.
Indeed, indications point in the opposite direction. India's Defence
Minister George Fernandes has reiterated the doctrine of limited
(conventional) war. It is an extension of the draft nuclear doctrine.
Implied in it is that Pakistan's nuclear deterrent deters only India's
nuclear offensive; it does nothing to prevent what he called a limited
war, provided India takes care not to cross the nuclear threshold (for
Pakistan). Also implied is that India is ready and willing for such a
limited war at the time and place of its own choosing. That brings war
so much nearer.
That a war is built into the situation has been repeatedly asserted by
any number of people in the last few years and also in this space.
Doubtless America is striving to prevent the eruption of hostilities in
the subcontinent. It is doubtful whether the Fernandes doctrine of a
limited conventional war can be accepted by anyone outside India; the
Americans and the rest of the world are unlikely to stand for it. Yet
the threat of an actual nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan
remains cognizable.
America's leadership role certainly requires the maintenance of South
Asian peace and stability as a building block of its longer-term
strategic designs. These designs include building a partnership with
India which offers growing markets for American and western capital,
fighting terrorism emanating from what the Americans and Indians define
as Islamic fundamentalism. American agenda in Pakistan is also fairly
big and complex and begins with the short-term issues: Osama bin Laden
and going on to terrorism and narcotics. This takes precedence over
longer-term objectives in Central Asia. While peace-making efforts by
the Americans need to be supported, it has to be realized that they
cannot succeed without an adjustment of policies between India and
Pakistan that, at bottom, cannot but be bilateral. Can that happen in
the supercharged atmosphere of today?
The situation underscores the political trends in both India and
Pakistan. Despite all the Maulana Azhar Masoods and other religious and
political hardliners, Pakistan is sure to opt for peace if some progress
can be shown on the Kashmir issue. But that can scarcely be said for
India. India's peace terms today seem to include Pakistan surrendering
all along the line in Kashmir, leaving the status quo substantially
unchanged. Apart from the unlikelihood of Pakistan being meek enough to
do that, major complication is introduced by the new political reality
that India is becoming. The emerging reality's major component is the
political agenda of the BJP, the main ruling party, backed as it is by a
well-knit and rich RSS.
What the BJP aims at can be inferred. It wants the saffronization or
Hinduization of a largely Hindu India. What precise meaning is to be
attached to this aim is a matter for opinion and study. Nothing can be
taken at face value.
It is said to be a cultural concept, though one political implication
stands out. It would involve untrammelled - by the need to please
coalition partners - power for the BJP to rule India. It is fair to say
that the BJP is well on its way to recasting the Indian polity in its
own image.
It is true it is facing resistance; although on the defensive if not
retreat, the secular forces mean to resist this move. The outcome cannot
be predicted with any certainty, though the ground for being sceptical
about total success of the BJP lie in the contradictions in the richly
variegated and vast India, especially the caste system and the existence
of the secular and left schools of political thought.
This writer chose to travel to Calcutta, largely because of the dicey
situation that obtains across the border, to attend a peace conference,
called by the famous Gandhian: Nirmala Deshpande. It turned out it was
fully supported by West Bengal's ruling Communist Party (Marxist).
This conference was an eye-opener. Over 10,000 persons had travelled to
Calcutta from many parts of India, including held Kashmir. A whole
section of the huge Salt Lake Stadium was full and Chief Minister Jyoti
Basu addressed its closing session. It talked of peace within and peace
without in order to promote secularism in India which is in real danger
of being wiped out.
In contrast, one also attended a workshop of Indian and Pakistani media
people in Colombo called by the Regional Centre of Strategic Studies on
Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) between India and Pakistan.
Its highlights included two papers by Lt. Gen. Satish Nambiar of India
and Gen. Talat Masood of Pakistan. While Talat Masood was suave,
moderate and to the point on the subject of military CBMs, Gen. Nambiar
ranged widely on and about Pakistan's genesis, asserting the death long
ago of the two Nation theory, Pakistan's illusions and the threat it is
posing to India through cross-border terrorism.
His operative part was: if the Americans do have the wit to accept
Indian advice of declaring Pakistan a terrorist state, India should do
just that and suspend diplomatic relations with Islamabad.
Other Indian speakers were not so wild in their views and prescriptions.
They nevertheless reflected an extra-hard line, though some of the
journalists, particularly John Cherian and Ms Rajeshwari Khanna, did
pose searching questions that tried to underline the emptiness of some
of the assertions by academies from India.
________

#3.

The Asian Age
5 February 2000

GOD SHAVE SHABANA: NOW MUSLIMS POUR OIL ON WATER
By Suneeta Kaul

Mumbai: After sparking violent protests by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangathan in Varanasi, the shooting of renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta's
Water in Varanasi has kicked up a controversy in, albeit for different
reasons.
This time, it is the movie's protagonist Shabana Azmi who is under fire
from a Muslim organisation in Mumbai.
The All India Muslim Mahaz has decided to participate in the agitation
against the film Water angered by a Muslim woman, Azmi, performing an
un-Islamic act - tonsuring her head for the film.
AIMM chief Farooq Azam said, "Azmi has committed an un-Islamic act by
shaving her head bald and has no right to be a part of the Muslim
community. She is a fraud. Now that her film career is over, these are
the only tactics left to sell the film; otherwise which sane person will
be interested in going for a Shabana Azmi film in the theatre today."
"She is so desperate for publicity. Otherwise how else does one explain
the fact that she had a picture of her head being shaved clicked and
circulated to the press. We want her to apologise for hurting Islamic
sentiments. Or else, she should quit the religion," he said.
As a mark of protest, the youth wing of the AIMM decided to agitate
outside the Mumbai airport where the noted filmstar was scheduled to
arrive.
The RSS activists in Varanasi have been up in arms against the film,
which they claim is a denigration of the Hindu religion and an insult to
the Ganga. The film is set in the 1930s and deals with the trials and
tribulations of the widows of Varanasi. The film, part of Deepa Mehta's
trilogy Fire, Earth and Water, ran into major trouble, with protesters
vandalising the sets in Varanasi.
(IndiaAbroad News Service)

__________________________________________
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