[sacw] sacw dispatch (13 June 00)

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Mon, 12 Jun 2000 21:54:47 +0200


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

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#1. S. Asia: expedition from Delhi to Khyber Pass & back (August 2000)
#2. Who is Fomenting Communal Trouble In India?
#3. Indian People's Media Collective
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#1.

PARTICIPANTS FOR THE EXPEDITION HANDS ACROSS THE BORDERS

Between March - May 1999, the motoring expedition Hands Across The
Borders drove 18,000 kms across the interiors of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh,
Bhutan, Nepal and 16 states of India to promote peace and development in
South Asia. The expedition addressed over 1000 public meetings in
villages, schools and colleges and presented its Agenda For Friendship
to the state and national leadership of these countries.

The final leg of the expedition - from Delhi to Khyber Pass and back -
is to be undertaken in from August 4-16, 2000.

As this is a joint expedition of the youth of South Asia, interested
participants from Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal may kindly
respond by sending their bio-datas.

The expedition will meet all the cost of travel, boarding and lodging
from Delhi to Delhi.

=46or more information on the expedition, please visit
http://www.cuvlindia.com/overview.htm

Best regards,

Akhil Bakshi
Expedition Leader

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#2.

WHO IS HELPING THE ISI IN FOMENTING COMMUNAL TROUBLE IN INDIA?
[ By Shamsul Islam | 12 June 2000]

Home Minister LK Advani while addressing a conference of the Intelligence
Bureau officials in New Delhi, recently, said that Pakistan wanted to
disintegrate this country by, "fomenting communal discord in India and ill
will for India." Again while addressing a meeting of the Parliamentary
Consultative Committee of the Union Home Ministry in the second week of
May, he went at length to explain to the MPs the nexus of ISI activities
in India. According the HM, "ISI was taking recourse to terror,
subversion, disruption, incitement of sectarian hatred and violence."
In fact HM while intervening in a debate in Lok Sabha on April 26, 2000
told the MPs that the primary aim of Pakistan was to disintegrate India.
He went on to declare that in such a scenario, the division between
internal and external security stood erased. Interestingly, while assuring
the largest minority of the country that the integrity of the Muslims of
the country could not be doubted vis-=FD-vis the ISI activities he at the
same time specifically called upon Indian Muslims to respond to this call
of Jehad of Pakistan.
The ISI the dreaded intelligence network of Pakistan is working overtime
in its attempts to subverse the secular-democratic Indian State; there can
be no two opinions on this count. However, the much-talked designs of the
ISI for dismemberment of India need deeper probing. There are many serious
questions that require proper and objective responses. Is it the complete
truth that only the ISI is trying to foment communal trouble in this
country? Are there communal elements well entrenched in our country,
enjoying state support, which are out with full force to destroy the
communal peace of the country. Are these not the same forces that are
making the job of ISI easier?
The Home Minister and the officials of his ministry if they are really
serious about countering and defeating the evil designs of organizations
like ISI must take immediate steps against those indigenous communal
groups which are spreading poisonous canard against religious minorities
in India. Organizations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Hindu Jagran
Manch (HJM) and Bajrang Dal (BD), and other affiliates of the RSS after
using Gujarat as a laboratory for religious cleansing of minorities
specially Christians and Muslims for more than three years are spreading
their tentacle throughout India. The leaflets containing highly
provocative statements like, "Muslims are filth of the gutter, don=EDt let
them enter in your houses", or "wherever Christian priests have gone in
the world, they loot the people. lies and deceit are their religion. The
Christian priests teach people to tell lies, to steal in the name of
religion=D6They curse Hindus, and decry the Hindu religion. Awaken Hindus an=
d
struggle against these thieves who lie, who rob you of your rights, and
bring these people to their senses and put their pride in place", or "One
addition in the population of Christians or Muslims is not only the
addition of anti-Hindu but anti-national person." Such leaflets issued on
behalf of VHP, HJM and BD which used to be confined to Gujarat only are
now circulating in different parts of the country. The fascist ideas
contained in these leaflets are not the brainchild of some hotheaded
cadre. In fact, the Bible of the RSS cadres, 'the Bunch of Thoughts', the
compilation of the writings of MS Golwalkar, the ideologue of the RSS, has
a long chapter titled as 'Internal Threats' in which Muslims and
Christians are described as threat number one and two respectively.
According to Golwalkar, "within the country there are so many Muslim
pockets, i.e., so many "miniature Pakistan's" The conclusion is that, in
practically every place, there are Muslims who are in constant touch with
Pakistan over the transmitter" While assigning to himself the task of
judging the patriotism of Muslims in general, he says, "It would be
suicidal to delude ourselves into believing that they have turned patriots
overnight after the creation of Pakistan. On the contrary, the Muslim
menace has increased a hundredfold by the creation of Pakistan" While
deliberating on the 'Internal Threat' number two, he says, "such is the
role of Christian gentlemen residing in our land today, out to demolish
not only the religious and social fabric of our life but also to establish
political domination in various pockets and if possible all over the land"
He described common Christians as 'bloodsuckers.' Led by this ideology,
the sawyamsevaks connected with different outfits of the RSS have killed
and maimed the Christians, destroyed churches and other properties of
theirs throughout India. And it is also true that the goons were always
given clean chits by central and state ministers affiliated to RSS. The
latest is the statement of Union Surface Minister, Rajnath Singh who while
giving a clean chit to the activists of BD for the murderous attacks on
Christians in Agra-Mathura described the attack as an action of the
'nationalist forces' done on the =EB'spur of the moment'.
What dangerous games RSS and its outfits are playing to divide the Indian
society on communal lines thus greatly facilitating the ISI plan of
"fomenting the communal discord in India" to use LK Advani's words, can be
seen through the latest controversy instigated by the RSS over the
religious identity of Sikhs. Sikhs, an influential minority community of
India, till very recently never thought that their identity was in danger
till due to highly sectarian proactivism of the RSS claiming that Sikhs
were part of Hindu community. Article 25 of the Indian Constitution which
read, "the reference to Hindus shall be construed as including a reference
to persons professing the Sikh, Jaina or Budhist religion" was never
questioned by the Sikh community till the RSS chief KS Sudarshan went all
the way to Chandigarh at the end of April to proclaim that Sikhs were not
a separate community but part of Hinduism. Sikhs reacted fiercely. A
Panthic congregation organized at the Akal Takht declared, "The separate
cultural and religious identity of the Sikhs has been threatened by
certain anti-Sikh elements and this has to be effectively and unitedly
countered by the 'quam." The Akal Takht Jathedar who led this conclave
also asked for a review of the Article 25 of the Constitution to ensure
separate religious, social and cultural identity for Sikhs. Mind this that
these are not Muslims and Christians only who are mobilizing big rallies
against attacks by the Hindu Right thus reminding of the days of
heightening of communal tension in the post Babri mosque demolition
episode. This time Sikhs, the natural allies of the BJP in politics are
out in open to defend their existence against the RSS.
The RSS strategy of cleansing or co-opting the minorities is only worsening
the communal scene of the country thus clearly playing into the hands of
ISI. Unfortunately, the RSS is yet to learn a lesson from the tragedy of
Pakistan. The pro-Pakistan Muslim lobby had boasted that an all-Muslim
theocratic state would assure the integrity of the country, prosperity of
common Muslims and democracy to the citizens. 53 years of Pakistan=EDs
existence prove only one fact that Pakistan failed on all these three
counts. The RSS wants to embark on this very path 53 years late!
The RSS shout a lot about Pakistan and its intelligence agency, the ISI.
They say that anti-nationals are conspiring to spread unrest in our
country. They repeatedly point out how such forces are causing unrest in
Gujarat, Kashmir, North East, Rajasthan and Punjab. And what is the VHP
doing? By pitting the Hindus against the Muslims and Christians is it
making the country strong? Are they not doing the very thing that ISI wants
to do? The VHP is playing such a game in India that will divide every
city, every village. The reality is that with the VHP and its assistants
around, the ISI does not need any other agents for spreading unrest and
disturbing peace. The VHP has taken this responsibility upon itself. As
the soldiers of the VHP step forward the task of the ISI becomes easier.
History will stand witness that the seed which the VHP is sowing, the
result of that will only be useful for those who want to break the country.
Shamsul Islam,1, Staff Qrs, Satyawati College,Ashok Vihar,Delhi-110052

_______

#3.

INDIAN PEOPLE'S MEDIA COLLECTIVE
10, Laxmi Nivas, 2nd Floor
697, Katrak Road
Wadala, Mumbai 400031
India
Phone 91.22.4110640
E-Mail <ipmc@r...>

A PROFILE

The Indian People's Media Collective (IPMC) is an organisation of
students, activists and media practitioners in Mumbai, India working
towards returning the media to the people.
Today, the so-called mass media communicates a message alien to the
lives of the majority of people, imposing upon and distorting their
experience, rather than affirming it. The television, film, and
electronic media, fashioned in the self-image of a small ruling
class, represents the aspirations of the people as identical with
those of their exploiters.
Despite the public celebration of India's potential in
information and software production, and the massive investments in
these industries, the recent boom in media and information
technologies has neither broadened people's creative expression, nor
encouraged newer and more democratic forms of public discourse and
media practice. Rather, the new media has become, like police and
state violence, nuclear jingoism and neoliberal economics, yet
another apparatus of elite domination.
The IPMC recognises that the proliferation of new media
technologies has opened new public spaces, a terrain which has been
hegemonised by the elites and their programmes of repression,
profit-making and ideological obfuscation. This media, however, can
regain its mandate as an instrument of communication and
transformation of the lives, ideas and aspirations of the majority
of the people. It can become a medium through which people tell their
own stories, rather than having their stories told for them. We are
committed to evolving an alternative discourse and democratic media
practice which does not rely upon, nor is controlled by, a particular
class or group, but is truly a mass medium.

We believe that the only medium which should be called a 'mass
medium' is one which belongs to the masses and reflects their
aspirations.

=46OUNDER MEMBERS: Sameer Khedekar, Independent Film Maker; Neeraj
Sahay, Independent Film Maker; Vinod Shetty, Labour Advocate

ADVISORS: Sanober Keshwar, Teacher and Trade Unionist
Meena Menon, Writer and Trade Unionist
Paromita Vohra, Independent Film Maker

WORKING COMMITTEE
Sudipto Acharya, Independent Film Maker
Shekhar Krishnan, Writer and Research Scholar
Allwyn Rodrigues, Computer Programmer
Hussain Shaikh, Student Activist
Sameer Khedekar
Neeraj Sahay
Vinod Shetty

HOW WE WORK

To further the agenda of a democratic media, the IPMC has held
numerous screenings of documentaries and non-commercial films,
developed simple poster and photograph exhibitions, made low-budget
films, organised public meetings and media workshops, and
participated in various activist programmes.
We interact closely with civil rights and human rights groups, trade
unions and social movements, theatre artistes, media practitioners,
and anyone else who works for the people. Our work brings us in
regular contact with college students all over Mumbai.
In all our activities, we encourage an analysis of the content,
underlying messages, and the economics and politics shaping the
commercial media. At the same time, we work to evolve alternative,
democratic media practices which address people's concerns. The
enthusiasm with which our programmes have been received is a clear
indication of more such activities in the future.

OUR HISTORY

1997
In April 1997, our founding members decided to make a short
documentary film about an incident of police brutality in a suburban
slum called Golibar, inhabited largely by the minority Muslim
community in Mumbai. Shooting on a hired camera and without proper
lighting or microphones - and otherwise working with equipment and
facilities donated by friends in the media, students and activists -
the film reconstructed the narrative of police violence, and mapped
the larger networks of power in which slumlords and local dons work
with the police and state apparatus.
This visual narrative, composed solely of the voices and
experiences of the slum-dwellers, has since been screened in slums,
hostels, colleges and public halls throughout Mumbai. The production
of Golibar gave impetus to the formation of IPMC as a collective
effort dedicated to intervention in the media.
In late 1997, the IPMC organised a photograph and poster exhibition
about a police firing on ten Dalit lower-caste slum-dwellers in July
1997 which ignited a political controversy throughout the State of
Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. Seeking to tell the real
story of state connivance in the police firing on the protesting
residents of Ramabai Nagar in the suburb of Ghatkopar, it exposed the
shortcomings of official and mainstream media accounts of the
incident, and the exhibition was taken to various slums and public
meeting areas in Mumbai and Pune.

1998
Besides participating in the Bertholt Brecht Birth Centenary events
in February 1998 and organising a public meeting against state
censorship of the media, IPMC lent its support to the agitation of
film, media and television students against the privatisation and
commercialisation of the prestigious Film and Television Institute of
India, whose new director has introduced curricular changes to
accommodate the corporate film and television culture of
post-liberalisation India. When in May 1998 the BJP-led Government
detonated the devices which brought India to world attention as a
nuclearised state, the IPMC participated in anti-nuclear protests and
screened several documentaries in city colleges about nuclear
weapons. This led to a day-long live music festival held in Mumbai,
Peace Together, attended by over 15000 students, and to IPMC's
participation in the anti-nuclear march held by the Citizens
Committee for Commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
IPMC is a member of a citizens' committee to agitate for the
implementation of the Srikrishna Commission Report - a judicial
enquiry which identified those responsible for the wave of
Hindu-Muslim communal riots in Bombay in 1992 and 1993, including
senior politicians, party leaders and police officials, in which
thousands of mostly poor people of the minority community perished.
IPMC participated in signature and poster campaigns and public
meetings. December 1998 saw IPMC sponsoring a three-day workshop on
street theatre for the students of National College.

1999
Since its inception, IPMC has regularly held screenings of foreign
and Indian documentaries and feature films on everything from women
and the law and the role of the media to Christian missionaries and
the cosmetic industry. Since July 1999 our screenings have been
mostly in city colleges. Additionally, in August 1999, IPMC
co-organised a seminar on problems of higher education, in which a
suitable film was screened.
In the past year IPMC has envisioned a deeper engagement with
contemporary social and political issues, and with mapping through
the media the changing relations between the local, national and
global in the wake of the new political regime in India - its new
economic polices, communal and majoritarian character, and
anti-people policies. In September 1999 IPMC became involved in
supporting the retrenched workers of Mumbai's historic textile mills
in their struggle against eviction from their jobs and their homes,
as their lands have become prime property for new office and leisure
complexes, film and media studios, luxury high-rises for the urban
and transnational elites.

2000
Our latest project is a documentary film on the Voluntary Retirement
Scheme (VRS), a strategy used by managements under the current
neoliberal regime to retrench workers and break the back of organised
labour. Sunil Saigal, Sethu Pande, Neelam Patil, and Desmond Roberts
comprise the core production team for this film about workers and
unions, told by workers and unions.
Also known as the 'golden handshake', VRS is presented as a lump
sum of money to workers to leave their permanent jobs and facilitate
the closure of public and private sector industries. While this offer
often appears attractive to workers, the benefits of VRS appear
illusory once the money is eroded by the payment of debts, marrying
children, and price rises in food, transport, and other essential
services and commodities - which the new economic policies only
encourage. Left pauperised and without a secure livelihood, many
workers' dreams of investing their earnings or becoming self-employed
are betrayed. With competition from domestic and transnational
corporations who have cut rate prices, and thrive on sweated labour
in the informal sectors of the economy, tens of thousands of workers
are finding themselves and their families plummeting into
unemployment. The rank and file of unions is quickly dwindling away.
And though VRS is supposed to be 'voluntary', employers create a
situation of fear and insecurity by using tactics of withholding
wages, harrassment and intimidation, lockouts and illegal closures -
thereby forcing workers to take VRS.
The policy of VRS is an insidious attack on organised labour,
unionism and the rights that have been won through years of hard
struggle, movements which go back to the beginning of this century.
VRS is a part of a global strategy through which our ruling classes
are outsourcing production to sweated and unorganised labour, so they
can make super profits and have a free reign to exploit workers as
they please.
We are currently making a documentary film in Hindi/English,
based on policy research, case studies, and interviews from workers
and unions, on VRS. From workers who have been forced to take VRS
because of lockouts, to workers who opted for VRS and are forced to
return to work for a fraction of their older wages, this film will
document the injustices being practised through this anti-people
policy. This film will be a tool for unions to educate and organise
the people to struggle against the dispersal of the ranks of
organised labour, and fight against the increasing attacks on working
people - by national and global corporations, by the WTO, the World
Bank and IMF, and the state which is in their service.
We have been assured support from the following unions and
workers' organisations in Mumbai - Hindustan Lever Employees Union,
Blue Star Employees Union, Trade Union Solidarity Committee, Girni
Kamgar Sangharsh Samiti, Nicholas Employees Union.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

In its three years of activity, the IPMC has attempted to foster a
dialogue between dialogue between media practitioners, social and
cultural activists, to propagate the idea of a democratic media, one
which truly belongs to the global masses. The scope for this project
of political and ideological construction is immense, and we are now
attempting to give ourselves a more cohesive identity, in order to
extend our activities.
We are a small organisation right now. Our growth depends on our
enthusiasm - and that of other concerned and committed people. As a
voluntary, non-profit forum, our activities depend on donations
collected at screenings, meetings, discussions and other events. We
do not believe in taking funds from corporations, NGOs, and
international funding organisations, as we feel that money and other
forms of support should be raised from the people themselves.
The working budget for our current project on workers'
retrenchment and VRS is Rupees 150,000, or approximately US$3500, for
a thirty-minute documentary film. Once the film is completed, we plan
to make and distribute about a hundred prints to trade unions and
workers' organisations, colleges and educational institutions, and
other supporters in India and abroad. The production of this film
depends on your donation.
In the future, we hope to further our discourse on democratic
media through film clubs and workshops for film-makers and activists;
research and publications analysing current social, political and
cultural issues, and their relation to democratic media practice; as
well as continuing to produce new documentary films on contemporary
issues of concern to the people. In the next several months we plan
to digitise our resources online and also provide electronic images
and video about issues of concern to us. We are also attempting to
make contact and cooperate with the various media activist groups
that have been at the forefront of the recent protests against the
tyranny of global financial and trade institutions, as well as other
groups and individuals who share our vision of a democratic media
globally.
We are in the process of registering ourselves as a non-profit
public trust. Cheques should be drawn in favour of 'Indian People's
Media Collective'. We also welcome donations in the form of equipment
and other supplies. For more information, or to make a donation,
kindly contact us at:

______________________________________________
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