[sacw] sacw dispatch (18 June 00)

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

__________________________

#1. Brokering Peace In Lanka: What role for India ?
#2. India nuclear workers 'in danger'
#3. India: Witness in priest's murder dies in police custody
#4. India: The Hindu Hedgehog and the Secular Fox
#5. U.S.A./ NY City: Bookreading for Benefit of Pakistani Children
__________________________

#1.

The Praful Bidwai Column
June 19 , 2000

Brokering Peace In Lanka:
Only a Moldest role for India

By Praful Bidwai

[India's] Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh's overdue visit to Colombo must be
seen against the backdrop of both dissonances within the NDA over Sri Lanka
and the killing of industries minister C.V. Gooneratne on War Heroes' Day
near Colombo.
Through the assassination, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam has once
again demonstrated its consummate mastery of the only kind of politics it
knows besides blind nationalism: the Politics of Assassination.

Colombo has since hardened its military stance. The LTTE today faces an impa=
sse
against the now-reinforced Sri Lanka Army (SLA), with no clear signs of an
easy victory. It is a sign of its desperation and its devotion to violence
that it should have returned to its annihilationist strategy. Ms Chandrka
Kumaratunga's government clearly told Mr Singh that India should not today
talk of a cessation of hostilities: that can only help the LTTE. At the
same time, it is keen to pursue the devolution agenda irrespective of the
LTTE. Mr Singh has done well to pay heed to Colombo's concerns. In any
case, even if they manage to capture Jaffna town the Tigers' victory may
prove hollow. A unilateral declaration of independence is unlikely to win
much support from the international community, which feels revolted by
their methods.

The LTTE is probably the world's most ruthlessly militaristic, Pol Potist,
guerilla force. It is remarkably well funded with whole businesses such as
shipping. The LTTE has practised terror not just against its non-Tamil
"opponents", including Rajiv Gandhi, but against the moderate TULF and the
EPRLF, PLOTE and TELO. An Eelam under the LTTE is too
frightening to contemplate.

There is a powerful case for the maximum
devolution of powers to the Tamils in Sri Lanka's northeast, within a
unified Sri Lanka, as part of an effort to (re)build a plural society. To
Ms Kumaratunga's credit, she has thoughtfully formulated proposals for such
devolution. One can only hope that the present state of national distress
will prove the futility of a purely military approach and persuade all of
Lanka's parties to discuss the proposals. The government can't afford to
spend 20 percent-plus GDP on the war or to impose harmful war levies. One
can--more desperately--hope that the impasse in Jaffna,--and its tarnished
international image,-will make the LTTE more towards a negotiated political
solution. Sri Lanka cries out for external mediation. So far, only Norway
has played a limited role, one that is not very satisfactory for many Sri
Lankans. Among the candidates for mediation being mentioned are the United
Nations, the US, Britain and India. The UN with its recent peace keeping
performance inspires little confidence. The US's past record e.g.,
Palestine, makes it untrustworthy. We should beware of Big Power
involvement too. Britain has serious leverage over the LTTE but shows
little enthusiasm for mediation. What of India? This is an extraordinarily
difficult question. The easy part is in rejecting any military role
whatsoever. Military intervention can only lead to a bloody mess, stoke the
fires of chauvinism and feed false pretences about India's "hegemonic" role
in South Asia.

On the one hand, India cannot remain unaffected by what is
happening in Lanka for obvious reasons: its own 50 million Tamils, the
knock-on effects of the Lankan crisis, and potentially, a refugee influx.
On the other hand, India bears a good share of the responsibility for the
Sri Lanka mess--thanks to its disastrous role in the 1980s in arming and
training the LTTE; imposing the 1987 accord; sending in the IPKF but
betraying its promise to disarm the LTTE; and then withdrawing altogether.
India cannot be insensitive to the expectations that responsible streams of
Sri Lankan opinion have from it; it should not be seen to be "neutral"
between Colombo and the LTTE. Thus, says Kethesh Loganathan of the Centre
for Political Alternatives in Colombo: "What is expected of India is a
stabilising role that would, while preventing a total 'state failure' in
Sri Lanka, ensure that the ethnic question is resolved in a manner that
ensures shared sovereignty." However, it is hard to imagine a
non-interfering, fair, balanced, finely tuned role for Indian mediators,
especially under the present dispensation. The BJP follows an aggressive
Big Brother nationalism. And some of its allies are itching to put India's
weight behind the Eelam agenda. They include not just committed LTTE
supporters like the MDMK, but even the DMK with its ill-conceived
"Czechoslovak solution."

It bears recalling that even Mr George Fernandes
and Mr L.K. Advani have associated closely in the past with pro-Eelam
politicians, as this column has pointed out. Under the circumstances, it
is hard to envisage India as an "honest broker" any overt process of
negotiation. There is at best an indirect, low-key, non-interventionist,
part that New Delhi could play, perhaps with Norway. This can encourage
the UNP as well as the ruling PA to take a positive approach to devolution
within a loose federal framework, in nudge all towards the negotiable
table, and tell LTTE that even military victory in Jaffna won't produce a
legitimate state. Such a role must be played with the utmost modesty, and
with the full acknowledgement of India's past blunders. India must be
prepared, indeed poised, to withdraw if there is a hint that it is seen as
being heavy-handed.

Besides, India can offer to use its good offices with
the UK to get it to pressure the LTTE by insisting it should not carry on
activities on British soil that lead to the violation of international
humanitarian law. But under no circumstances must India permit itself the
delusion that it is "naturally" pre-eminent in the region, or that it
should expand its role to pre-empt Pakistan or Big Power involvement.
Grandiose self-delusion is infinitely worse than modest passivity.--end--

_______

#2.

BBC News Online: World: South Asia

Sunday, 18 June, 2000, 08:17 GMT 09:17 UK

India nuclear workers 'in danger'

By Helen Sewell of BBC Science

A leading atomic energy expert in India claims workers at the country's
nuclear power plants are being
exposed to extremely high levels of radioactivity.

Dr A Gopalakrishnan, former chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board,
is worried that the
staff are at risk of developing diseases like cancer from machines
contaminated with radioactive tritium.

India's atomic industry
Ten reactors including: 2 Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) and 8 Pressurised
Heavy Water Reactors
(PHWR)
Six PHWRs under construction
Total nuclear power generation capacity: 1840 megawatts
Aiming for 20,000 megawatts by 2020

Source: Department of Atomic Energy

India's Department of Atomic Energy acknowledges that there are eight to
nine times more tritium
deposits in the power plants than in those of any other country.

But the Secretary of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, K S Parthasarathy
maintains that the
radiation from deposited tritium poses no extra health hazard.

He says that in 1998 only three out of more than 10,000 workers at India's
nuclear plants received
radiation doses above the safety limits, and he stresses that workers use
protective gear in areas with
high tritium levels.

However Dr Gopalakrishnan says the high levels of deposits should raise
doubts about the safety of
India's nuclear programme.

He said: "You just have to wipe off the surface of these devices at the
workmen's place with your palm
and there it is - layers of tritium."

He also claims that the main motive of the programme is not to generate
nuclear energy, but to obtain
the by-product of the nuclear reactions - plutonium - which he says is
syphoned off for use in India's
nuclear weapons.

_______

#3.

Rediff on the Net
18 June 2000

Witness in priest's murder dies in police custody

A cook who worked for murdered Roman Catholic priest
George Kuzhikandam has died mysteriously in police custody near Mathura in
Uttar Pradesh.
John Dayal, a spokesman for the United Christian Forum, has alleged that
Vijay Ekka, a helper employed by Brother Kuzhikandam, was killed by the
police.
Brother Kuzhikandam was found murdered on June 7 in Mathura and Ekka was a
key witness in the case.
Ekka, 23, who lived close to Brother Kuzhikandam's house, was taken to
Narauli police station for interrogation a few days back.
However, when Ekka's colleagues went to the police station today with his
breakfast, they were told that he had committed suicide.
Ekka's colleagues said he was taken in for interrogation by station
officer Sunil Kumar Sharma, who was recently suspended in connection with
Brother Kuzhikandam's murder.
An FIR under sections 302 (murder) and 342 have been filed against
officials attached to the Narauli police station.
''This custody death casts a shadow on the investigations into Brother
George's murder and poses several crucial questions. It is a clear case of
murder. How can a suspended police officer take away a crucial eyewitness
in a murder case," Dayal said.
The United Christian Forum and the All India Christian Council have called
upon the National Human Rights Commission to carry out an enquiry into the
custodial death.
Ekka, a native of Raigarh district in Madhya Pradesh, is survived by his
wife, who is expecting his first child.

_______

#4.

The Telegraph
18 June 2000
Op-Ed.

HINDU HEDGEHOG, SECULAR FOX

BY MUKUL KESAVAN

The recent attacks in Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have brought such
concerted condemnation of the government's response to anti-Christian
violence, that Atal Behari Vajpayee has been forced to hold high-profile
meetings with the National Minorities Commission, consult with Christian
representatives and backpedal on his earlier stand that such incidents were
routine law and order problems, not instances of communal violence.

Why is the press so hard on the Bharatiya Janata Party? For those of us who
have lived these 25 years since the Emergency as adults, where does this pe=
riod
of BJP-led government rank in Indian communalism's Hall of Fame. Has
1999-2000 been worse than the two years of the Emergency as far as minority
rights are concerned? Think of the forced sterilizations of Muslims, the
demolitions at Turkman Gate. Have they been more awful than the dark years
when Sikhs killed Hindus and the state killed Sikhs?

What comparison is there with the politically directed killing of Sikhs in =
1984
after Indira Gandhi's death? Was L.K. Advani's revelation of foreign fundin=
g
for missionaries after the Dangs attack on Christians more insensitive or l=
ess
sinister than Rajiv Gandhi's bland explanation for the Sikh pogroms after h=
is
mother's death: "When a big tree falls the ground shakes" ?

Has there been any violence in the past two years that even begins to compa=
re
with the Bhagalpur riots for sectarian hatred and violence? Does the senior
leadership of the BJP include anyone as tainted by accusations of hands-on
involvement in communal violence as the Delhi Congress of the Eighties? Has
the army in Kashmir under the BJP killed more people than it did during the
time of the Congress? Has any BJP state government presided over killings o=
n
the scale that occurred in Bombay in 1992 when mobs killed Muslims at...

[...]

Even in the matter of the Babri Masjid's demolition, the gates of the mosqu=
e
were unlocked under a Congress regime and the mosque was razed during the
prime ministership of P.V. Narasimha Rao. Can we confidently assert that th=
e
Congress is less culpable than the sangh parivar for the killing that
followed?

If the answer to all these rhetorical questions is no (and it arguably
is), then why are we so exercised about the future of India's secular
polity merely
because the BJP has trimmed its sails and come to power at the head of a
rag-tag coalition? This, I suspect, is the question that the BJP's allies -=
the
Telegu Desam, the Samata Party, the rump of the Janata Dal that joined it -
pose to their critics when their secular credentials are challenged.

It is the question the BJP asks when journalists point to the rash of
anti-Christian violence and invoke the spectre of organized fascist violenc=
e
against stigmatized minorities. Didn't the Congress preside over tens of
riots in which Muslims died in greater numbers? Why didn't this add up to a
fascist
majoritarian plot?

The answer to this is not complicated or novel. The Congress is regarded as=
a
cynically secular party that is opportunistically sectarian, while the BJP
is seen as an ideologically Hindu party that is opportunistically secular.
So the
Congress is given the benefit of the doubt but the BJP isn't. Is this
fair? No. Is it, nonetheless, prudent? Yes.

First and most simply, it would be unwise to judge a party by its actions a=
lone
when its words remain so explicitly sectarian. Neither the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, nor its affiliated organizations have ever disavowed the
frightening National Socialist view that Guru Golwalkar took of the place o=
f
minorities in a free India. Contrast this with Sonia Gandhi apologizing to =
the
Sikh community for the violence visited upon them by the Congress. While th=
e
Congress apology is transparently meant to win Sikh votes, at least it
indicates a political willingness to admit mistakes. But the world view
enunciated by vatic Nagpur is beyond criticism.

The BJP remains committed to Hindutva, to building a temple on the site of =
a
mosque that its supporters razed, to supporting a party, the Shiv Sena, tha=
t
stands accused of visiting the most horrific violence on Muslims in the=
wake of
that violence. It is also a party that came to power on a groundswell of
majoritarian self-assertion that its sponsorship of the Ram Janmabhoomi
movement helped create, which Advani with his rath yatras consolidated into=
a
political constituency.

The BJP's public image is defined by its consistent hostility towards
minorities. This is its USP, its reason for being. To put it more
respectably, the BJP stands for the rights of the majority. Garv se kaho
hum Hindu hain. Since Murli Manohar Joshi, Advani and Arun Shourie are such
committed defenders
of the faith, such alert sniffers-out of minority mischief, the party and t=
he
government to which they belong will always be seen to be hostile to
non-Hindus. Its supporters will approve of this hostility because they want=
to
see "pampered" minorities get their comeuppance and its critics will see it=
as
creeping fascism but in neither case will the record of the BJP in office
over the last two years make much difference to their perceptions.

The BJP itself makes it impossible to suggest that its record in office
belies its sectarian reputation. Its "moderation" in government - cited by
its supporters to argue that this majoritarian party has evolved in office
into the equivalent of the German Christian Democratic Union and not the
Nazi bogey beloved of secularists - is undermined by its own spokesmen who
regularly declare that the party remains committed to its maximalist agenda
in the long term and is merely constrained by coalition from giving free
play to its political instincts. When the leopard itself tells everyone who
will listen that it doesn't intend to change its spots, its present good
behaviour becomes sinister instead of
reassuring.

Baldly, the BJP in office will always be suspected of prejudice because it =
does
not, cannot, dissemble about its raison d'=EAtre. The Congress, on the othe=
r
hand, has from its beginnings, striven to be all things to all men and
dissembling is second nature to it. Nehru in a Sikh turban, Nehru in a skul=
l
cap, Nehru in a Naga shawl was low-grade pluralist theatre, but it worked f=
or
the Congress because representing diversity was its business.

Isaiah Berlin in a marvellous essay comparing Dostoevsky and Tolstoy
described the first as a hedgehog and the second as a fox. All novelists,
according to Berlin were either hedgehogs or foxes. The hedgehog was
possessed by one big idea with which he ordered the world while the fox had=
a
series of insights that explained it.

If the Congress is the fox, promiscuously plural, rhetorically socialist,
piously non-aligned, inconsistently secular, the BJP is a hedgehog,
possessed by a single idea, Hindutva, and a single goal, Hindu hegemony.
Vajpayee can wear
all the costumes he wants, but he will never be the sunny quick-change arti=
st
that Nehru was. It is not in the BJP's nature to be a fox: in good times
and bad, for enemies and friends, it will always be the dour Hindu
hedgehog.

_______

#5.

"Knocking on the Doors of Opportunity"

DASTAK-Network of Pakistani Professionals cordially inivite you to join us
in a book-reading with acclaimed Pakistani author MOHSIN HAMID who will be
reading excerpts of his debut novel

**MOTH SMOKE**

at

Teachers & Writers Collaborative
5 Union Square West
New York, NY 10003
212.691.6590

on Wednesday, June 21, 2000
6:00 to 9:00 PM

in a benefit for SAHE (Society for the Advancement of Education)

*SAHE is a Pakistani-based non-governmental organization (NGO) which has
focused on the need to make good education and training available to the les=
s
priveleged young men and women in Pakistan. For further information about
the organization, please visit SAHE's website at
http://www.brain.net.pk/~sahe

**PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL PROCEEDS FROM THIS EVENT WILL GO DIRECTLY TO SAHE**

*COPIES OF MOTH SMOKE WILL BE AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE!
*REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED!

Directions:
N, R, 4, 5, 6 and L trains at Union Square 14th Street

Admission:
$10 minium donation

Due to limited space, RSVPs are required.
Please indicate your name and the number of attendees.
After RSVP date, names will be added to a wait-list.

RSVP by June 19, 2000 via
email: rsvp@d...
or
phone: 917.854.8310

Online Event Information at:

http://www.dastak.org/June212000.htm

______________________________________________
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