[sacw] sacw dispatch #1 (24 June 00)

[aiindex@mnet.fr]

South Asia Citizens Web - Dispatch #1.
24 June 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

[IMPORTANT CORRECTION:

There was a major mistake in the title of item 3 in SACW Dispatch No.1 of
23 June 2000. These were excerpts from the autobiography of a highly
respected secular government official from India which is a rarity these
days. Please see to it that no injustice is done to Rajeshwar Dayal who is
no
more. Many appologies for having referred to him as a member of the Hindu
Right.]

__________________________

#1. India / Pakistan: Peoples Initiatives for Peace
#2. India: Fanatics on the Rampage

__________________________

#1.

Indian Express
21 June 2000
Op-Ed.

The people's initiative

by Beena Sarwar

Can citizens' diplomacy change the ground reality that India
and Pakistan are, and perhaps always have been, in a state of
covert if not overt war? In an effort to try, over the last decade,
several citizens' initiatives have cropped up, ranging from the
people-to-people dialogue, the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace
and Democracy (PIPFPD) started in 1995, to the more recent Women's
Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA) launched in August 1999.
These build on earlier meetings between leading intellectuals, like the Sout=
h
Asia Dialogue started by the late Eqbal Ahmad among others.

These interventions have involved retired foreign secretaries,
ambassadors, governors, secretaries to government, ministers
and judges, besides lawyers, journalists, doctors, educationists,
artists, business men and women, trade unionists and students. Even
groups of retired military officers, foremost among them Air Marshal Zafar
Chaudhry of Pakistan and Admiral Ramdas of India, have engaged in
dialogue with their counterparts across the border. Their past battles
have given way to a common imperative for de-nuclearisation and peace.
=46or all of them, India and Pakistan's emergence from the nuclear closet in
1998, the subsequent Kargil war, and the attendant nationalistic
hysteria has served to impart new urgency to the quest for better
relations.

The scale and committment of the effort is impressive by any
measure. PIPFPD's April meeting at Bangalore saw some 450 delegates
converging from all parts of India and Pakistan, to renew their pledge
of working for peace. The commitment is not an empty one: PIPFPD
delegates pay their own way to attend these conferences, although hosts
take care of their board and lodging. The Indian and Pakistani women who
recently visited each other's countries by bus also paid their own
fares.

The respective governments are at best ambiguous. Neither
government 'wishes to or is strong enough to stop these initiatives,'
former federal minister Dr Mubashir Hasan observes. A committed
track-two activist, he believes that the citizen-led process provides
a safety net to both governments, offering them a way out of their
public positions and postures. "Politicians and government officials
privately agree that peace between India and Pakistan is necessary, but
publicly they don't know how to go about this," he says.

There are real obstacles. Right-wing, ultra-nationalist and
communalist forces in both India and Pakistan have threatened and
harassed peace activists, pillorying them as 'traitors',
'anti-nationalists' and 'enemy agents'. Admiral L. Ramdas, chairman of the
India chapter of PIPFPD notes that the "enemy" image of the other country
"serves as
a smoke screen for the rulers to cover up the political, economic
and social difficulties that plague them."

Cynics argue that unless 'core issues' like Kashmir are not
'resolved', there is no chance of peace. Mubashir Hasan responds that
both countries were finally heading towards peace through the bus
diplomacy of 1999, and the Lahore Declaration because it was in their own
national interests and because of their own socio-economic
compulsions -- both of which still exist.

The peace-makers believe that when Indians and Pakistanis
unite to insist that their governments talk, find a way out of the
Kashmir imbroglio through, and allow their people to visit the other
country without restrictions, the governments can no longer pretend
that their people want war. Even now, many people clearly don't, as any
Indian or Pakistani who has crossed the border will testify.

The importance of direct contact, putting names and faces on
each other as individuals, is reflected in track two demands for a
lifting of restrictions on travel, and cultural and media exchanges. At
present, visas are allowed routinely only 'to visit relatives'. Once
granted, they require reporting to the police on arrival and
departure. This irksome procedure is often waived for track two
initiatives and has facilitated the cross-border visits of hundreds
of ordinary Indians and Pakistanis.

Exposure to ordinary people serves as a powerful perception
changer, and every border crossing brings a new example. Take young
Kamran, an engineering student in Lahore who volunteered to help during
the Indian women's 'Peace Bus' delegation in March, drawn through
curiosity about 'the other'. He was earlier so vehemently anti-Indian
that he wouldn't even indulge in the popular pastime of watching Hindi films
on video, or allow his family and friends to. Now he says 'They are
ordinary people, just like us.'

Or take the Ramjas College students who decided to make
Pakistan the venue of their annual excursion, not long after Kargil.
Despite dire warnings from friends and family, they were undaunted even
by the coup of October 12. One student from Kargil confided that he used
to wonder 'what kind of people these were' who caused him and his
family and townspeople such trouble. He left realising that people are
people everywhere, and that there is a tremendous desire for peace
among them.

The effect of disinformation and propaganda, often buried in
text books in the guise of history, is most clearly visible in the
minds of children, who play war games against the 'enemy' country,
and who fear for their relatives crossing the border. If one Delhi
student's 11-year old cousin warned him not to disclose his Indian
identity while in Lahore, a Pakistani vistor's 9-year old daughter tearfully
feared for his life when he travelled to Delhi. In Lucknow, his 12-year
old Indian niece talked of Pakistan as the 'enemy' - until he pointed out
that he was Pakistani too.

Even adults feel the difference. Part of a group of Pakistani Rotarians
who went to Delhi in Dec '99 to prepare the ground for the first
International Rotarians Peace Conference in Pakistan, Conference
Secretary Faiz Kidwai says that the post-Kargil atmosphere
there was initially hostile. But, he says, "when we met and discussed
issues from the bottom of our hearts, it changed."

The conference was held in Karachi at the end of April, with
180 non-police reporting visas granted to Indian Rotarians,
although only about 80 could get bookings on PIA, the sole air link
between the countries.

"I feel we can definitely contribute something," says Mr Kidwai in the
aftermath of the Conference. "There is bound to be a ripple
effect. There have been so many requests for more such conferences
from both sides of the border."

A senior Pakistani diplomat who helped with the visas said
that he believes people across the borders should be allowed to meet
and develop an understanding. His view, he said, is shaped not least by
a sense that if a solution to the Kashmir issue were to appear on the
horizon, the citizens of both countries should be able to accept it.

(ends)

_______

#2.

Praful Bidwai Column
26 June 2000

=46anatics On The Rampage

Descent into the Dark Ages ...

By Praful Bidwai

Going by a number of independent reports, Sunil Kumar Sharma, former
station house officer of Narahauli in Mathura district, must be an
amazingly dedicated man--dedicated to torture, that is. Suspended in
connection with the June 7 murder of Brother George Kuzhikandam of St.
=46rancis' School, Navada, he would periodically pick up the 23-year-old
Vijay Kumar Ekka, the sole eyewitness to the murder, and torture him in
illegal police custody. The electric shocks and removal of fingernails
that Ekka suffered were meant to force him to confess that he, and not
Hindu communal fanatics, had murdered the priest. On June 18, Ekka was
found dead, with multiple injuries and strangulation marks. Sharma
claimed Ekka had 'strangled himself'

Sharma's cock-and-bull story would have aroused derisive laughter had it
not been an integral part of the 37th episode of anti-Christian violence
this year in different parts of India, and involving the
murder-in-custody of a key witness. Brother George's killing was the
fifth consecutive attack on St. Francis' School. After the synchronised,
simultaneous bomb explosions in four churches in three different states
on June 8, these facts totally falsify the claim that the attacks were
random, unconnected and without purpose. They were part of a communal
design.

Seen in perspective, the Mathura events should shock us into recognising
a grim reality: what we are witnessing is a sinister pogrom against
religious minorities by Hindu-communal fanatics who enjoy the patronage
of the state. It should also alarm us that those at the very apex of the
government have casual and indulgent attitudes to this, and further that
their close allies in the sangh parivar actually rationalise this
barbarism.

It is noteworthy that Prime Minister Vajpayee has not even thought fit to
make a public statement on this issue. This is just as disturbing as his
first reaction to the anti-Christian campaign in the Dangs in 1998, which
was to call for "a national debate on conversions". Equally
deplorable was his parroting of the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's
utterly fraudulent claim that the attacks on Christian institutions in
Mathura and Jhansi two months ago were instances of mere
robbery--law-and-order problems without communal motives. It is precisely
such condoning of communal violence that has created a fertile ground for
the spread of vicious prejudice in the country.; If the gravity of
the Dangs episode had not been played down, Graham Staines' killing might
not have happened.

Top-level indulgence of communalism alone explains the anti-minority hate
campaign in progress today and the ease with which Vishwa Hindu Parishad
vice-president Giriraj Kishore can malign all Christians and Muslims as
"anti-Hindu": "This [Christian] community is worse than
Muslims ... Muslims breed too much. But Christians go around desecrating
Hindu gods and asking tribals to accept Jesus." No less disgraceful
is the so-called re-conversion campaign in Orissa directed at Adivasis,
and the formation of a Dara Sena, so named after the man accused of
having burned alive Staines with his children. The Sena's promoters have
announced that Dara Singh would contest the next assembly elections.
Worse, they have unleashed inflammatory assaults on religious
minorities--even as they practise caste segregation for the
"reconverted" through separate swastika temples. Clearly, these
elements feel so emboldened only because of the signals emanating from
the top that hate speech is kosher; and any vicious anti-minority barrage
can pass muster in the name of "nationalism."

Plainly, there is a causal connection between the cynically casual
attitudes of our seniormost ministers towards this poisonous
anti-minority campaign, on the one hand, and the activities of the Dara
Singhs and the Giriraj Kishores, on the other. Even Mr Vajpayee is no
exception to this. His fiery past speeches against religious conversion,
and his outrageously smug recent statement that "all minorities are
safe in India," bear this out. Both these groups within the sangh
parivar share a number of deeply irrational beliefs. First, they imagine
that India's primary, quintessential, identity is Hindu. Christianity and
Islam are alien to India. Hence, Hindu "assertion" is only
fair, even democratic. Second, they imagine that Islam and Christianity
were promoted in India through forcible conversions and there is a
Christian conspiracy today to proselytise Indians on a mass scale,
witness the Pope's Asia speech last year: "In the third Christian
millennium, a great harvest of faith will be reaped in this vast and
vital continent."

And third, they believe that conversion is not only illegal, but so
immoral that it must be prevented and punished no matter by what means. A
poorly concealed rationalisation for violent means to do so is offered by
Mr Arun Shourie: "Society is too disorganised to act in an orderly
manner. Inundated by infiltrators, people cannot get to the authorities
to Bangladesh, they will get at their neighbour in the adjoining slum.
Incensed by mounting conversions, they cannot get to the Pope in Rome ...
they will leap at the poor convert next door."

All three parivar premises are dangerously false. Within our
Constitutional framework, Indians have no "primary" identity,
least of all one defined religiously. Nor is Christianity or Islam
"alien" or new to India. Indian Christianity goes back to 52
AD--eight centuries before anything resembling Hinduism as we know it
today was consolidated here. Christianity is much older in India than in
Europe, today considered its "home". Islam in India too goes
back more than a thousand years. It evolved organically here, as part of
this soil. India has always been plural and multi-religious.

Secondly, it is historically very doubtful if most Indian Christians or
Muslims were "forcibly" converted. The operative identities of
Indian rulers in the Middle Ages were more ethnic--Cholas, Yadavas,
Rashtrakutas, Yavanas, Kushans, Shakas, Tajikas--than religious. Even the
Delhi Sultans and the Mughals recognised the political limits of how far
they could push proselytisation. Had there been mass-scale forcible
conversion--as distinct from a wilful change of faith by, say, Dalits, to
escape caste oppression--we wouldn't have had a fairly well-dispersed
population of Muslims or Christians in most of India. In Goa, ruled for
400 years by "Christian" Portugal, the majority population
remains Hindu.

Even assuming there was coercion in the past, it does not follow that
there will be conversion conspiracies in the future. The Pope probably
genuinely believes that Christianity alone provides true salvation to
humans. That doesn't mean he can actually accomplish this for Asia's
three billion people. There are enough social and legal safeguards in
this country to prevent coercive conversion. You need a theocratic state
to bring that about. Mercifully, our state is not even remotely
theocratic.

The right to religious conversion is a fundamental Constitutional right.
Article 25 guarantees the right to "practise" and
"propagate" religion. There is nothing immoral about conversion
either. Some faiths are based on historical belief in the actual
existence of prophets and revealed knowledge. They demand such adherence
from their followers. This doesn't make them inferior to non-prophetic
faiths--only different from them. Constitutionally, a faith's adherents
must have the liberty to practise, preach and convert. To argue, as Mr
Shourie does, that "society is too disorganised to act in an orderly
manner" and hence that devout Hindus will naturally "leap at
the poor convert next door" is to inflame passions and rationalise
fascist pogroms.

Deep down, such attitudes betray a profound irrationality which drives
fantastic myth-making about imagined monsters and promotes fanatical
intolerance and pigheadedness in understanding history and politics. It
is precisely through the construction of terrible myths and gross
misreading of history--e.g. seen as a series of "repeated
invasions"--that intense hatred can be made to sustain mindless,
barbaric, violence. Without such irrationality, superstition and deep
hatred, it would have been impossible for most Germans in the 1930s to
demonise a tiny minority of Jews as a "threat" to their
national identity and "pride" or as a pestilence to be put
down--in gas chambers, if necessary.

That process of demonisation is at work in today's India. It is fuelled
by forces of bigotry which abhor logic and reject the values of the
Enlightenment--i.e. of human emancipation from ignorance, religious
fanaticism and communal unreason. Christians are only one, soft, target
for these bigots. Their larger goal is to destroy the very foundations of
modern rationality and humane liberalism which sustain pluralism and
democracy. That's why Hindutva isn't against the minorities alone. It
debases all Indians and assaults the humanity of us all. What we need is
not more mediocre poetry, smug assurances, and condolences from Mr
Vajpayee on Archbishop de Lastic's sad death, but action to uphold the
law of the land and stop the fascists in their tracks. --end--

______________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WEB DISPATCH (SACW) is an
informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service
run by South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
since 1996. Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
by joining the ACT list run by SACW. To subscribe send
a message to <act-subscribe@egroups.com>
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL