[sacw] sacw dispatch #1 (7 June 00)

Wed, 7 Jun 2000 00:42:26 +0200

South Asia Citizens Web - Dispatch #1.
7 June 2000

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#1. India: Tribals re-converted to Hinduism
#2. India: VHP leaders deliver fiery speeches against Christians
#3. Rediff Interview | Shauna Baldwin 'We haven't dealt with Partition'
#4. RSS Asks Cadre To Shun Bjp's Work To Survive
#5. East is East: A Deadly film

__________________________

#1.

The Statesman
6 June 2000
Op-Ed.

BAPTISM BY FIRE
Tribals re-converted to Hinduism

SIXTEEN months after the grisly murder of Australian missionary Graham
Staines and his two minor children at Manoharpur village in Orissa, 72
Christian tribals were converted to Hinduism in a ritualistic extravaganza
at the same village. The organisers chose the location to emphasise the
Sangh Parivar=92s argument that the Staines murder was actually a popular
backlash against Christian conversions and thus attempt to justify the
killings. By getting the Sankaracharya of Puri to participate and later
give an inflammatory speech calling all conversions after partition illegal
and part of a conspiracy to turn India into a Christian country, the
organisers attempted to give a stamp of religious authority to their
actions and those of Dara Singh, the main accused in the murder case.
Dara Singh is finally in judicial custody after months of evading arrest.
He along with 17 others will have charges framed against them on 1 August.
His supporters hope that by holding conversions at the very site of the
gruesome murder and getting support from a religious head, they will be
able to give a veneer of credibility to their argument that the tribals of
Manoharpur were unhappy with activities of the missionaries, and the deaths
were the result of local resentment; it is also intended to frighten all
missionaries and minorities. Inquiries into the Staines murder have
revealed that the attack was politically motivated, instigated by the
Bajrang Dal, and Dara Singh was a supporter of the Sangh Parivar and their
Hindutva agenda. The ritualistic Hindu re-conversions were also political,
proven by the fact that the local BJP MLA and other leaders were present at
the gala function. If religion is a matter of personal choice, then why do
conversions =97 to any denomination =97 have to be public events complete wi=
th
politicians to give approval? Just as the Sangh Pa-rivar argues that
missionaries pressurise tribals to convert by offering inducements, is it
suggested that inducements were scrupulously avoided on re-conversions?
Will the Sankara-charya agree that these re-conversions were also illegal?
_______

#2.

Hindustan Times
Tuesday, June 6, 2000, New Delhi
=20

VHP LEADERS DELIVER FIERY SPEECHES AGAINST CHRISTIANS

by Amitabh Shukla

Bero (Ranchi), June 5
THE TWO-DAY festival of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in Bero, the first
of its kind in the tribal hinterland, turned out to be an attempt to impose
the value system of the Sanatan dharma on the followers of the Sarna
(nature worship), practiced by the tribals here.
The senior leaders of the VHP, who had congregated here to make their
presence felt amongst the tribals, made inflammatory speeches against the
Christian missionaries and the religion itself. Some of them even went to
the extent of ridiculing the followers to the extreme.
As a result of the VHP's propaganda, a law and order problem threatened to
stall the proceedings. A group of tribals under the banner of Central Sarna
Samiti and the Akhil Bhartiya Adivasi Vikas Parishad (ABAVP) demonstrated
at the venue and criticised the attempts of the VHP to club them with the
Hindus. "We are not Hindus. We have a separate value system and religion,"
read one of the placards carried by the demonstrators.
Some tribal organisations point out that this is the first time that a
militant Hindu outfit like the VHP is spreading its propaganda in the
tribal belt. "The area no longer remains a belt of tranquility as both the
Hindu hard-liners and the Christian missionaries are locked in a battle of
supremacy," said Ram Chandra Gope, a long-time resident of Bero.
"We have launched several programmes to make the Vanvasis aware about
their glorious past and the fact that they are a part and parcel of the
Hindu society," said Mr Ganga Prasad Yadav, Vice President of the Bihar
unit of the VHP. He said that the religion, which the tribals follow, is an
extension of sanatan dharma, just like Sikhism, Jainism and Buddhism. He
refused to buy the arguments of the anthropologists who say that the tribal
religion is different from the Hindu practices.
When asked about the motive of honouring the pahans (religious heads of
the tribal villages), Mr Sushil Kumar, an office-bearer of the south Bihar
unit of the VHP said that it was through them that they are hoping to
penetrate into the tribal villages. "As the pahans are influential, we want
them to take the initiative and proclaim that the Sarnas and Hindus are the
same," he said. Mr Kumar said that though they did not have any immediate
plans of reconverting the Christian tribals to Hinduism, they would start
doing it once a consensus emerges.
The meeting passed six resolutions that demanded a complete ban on
conversions, investigations into the activities of the missionaries, ban on
the recruitment of tribal Christians in government jobs, transfer of the
property of the converted sarnas to those who still follow the religion,
ban on the practice of converting community centers into churches and
government initiative to check the proliferation of Churches in the
villages. The VHP leaders asked the tribal chiefs present on the occasion
to raise the slogan of "Jai Shri Ram" as a mark of approval to the
proposals. Amidst the blow of conch shells, some of the tribal chiefs
raised the slogan while the remaining watched the proceedings silently.

_______

#3.

[The below item is only an excerpted version of the original]

www.rediff.com
6 June 2000
Books | Interview | Shauna Singh Baldwin

'WE HAVEN'T DEALT WITH PARTITION'

Shauna Singh Baldwin belongs to an Indian family, was born in Canada and
is now settled in the United States. She describes herself as a "diasporic"
writer and is obviously quite at ease with all her "nationalities."
Her book, What The Body Remembers, deals with a Punjabi family in the
years preceding the Partition. Baldwin weaves the tumultuous times in India
into the lives of her characters. Her protagonists are women, two women
married to the same man actually, and her writing is sensitive and feminist
at all times.
She has recently been awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book
in the Canada and Caribbean region this year. What the Body Remembers has
also been shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize, meant exclusively
for women writers.
In this quick interview to Amberish K Diwanji and Suhasini Haidar, Baldwin
says it is fitting that she has won in the category meant for the Canadian
and Caribbean region, rather than in the Eurasian region representing
India.
It obviously irritates you to be pigeon-holed in terms of your origins, so
let's start by clearing this up. Where are you from?
I just don't like being excluded from any country. I am certainly a part
of India and I am certainly part of Canada and I am also part-American. I
have never held an Indian passport, so I can't technically lay claim to
being Indian... So when somebody says I am an Indian writer, this is not
technically true. I am a second-generation Canadian and an American
passport holder. And that is why I resent being pigeon-holed.
I find we are in the "third phase" of Indian writing now. First, we had
Indian writers writing from India. Then, we had immigrant writers. And now,
we have something called diasporic writers. We are all of Indian origin,
but our perspective is different from that of Indian writers. Shani Mootoo,
Jhumpa Lahiri and I fall into that category. [...]
Tell us a bit about the work that went into your book: you said it took
three years.
Well, it would have taken me 12 years to write this book without the
Internet. I did some research on the Net. Cyberfriends paved my way
everywhere, they made appointments for me in Pakistan, showed me around.
I went to Pakistan to look for the setting because the problem that every
writer on the subject in India and Pakistan has is that the setting comes
from one side of the border, even if the story comes from the other. It's
very difficult for an Indian writer to travel through Pakistan without
someone breathing over your shoulder and telling you to sign in at the
local police station. A Pakistani writer has to do the same in India and
stand at a police station here for four-five hours a day. You don't get
much research done that way.
Manju Kapur, the author of Difficult Daughters, was telling me how
difficult it was for her even in Lahore. She didn't even try to go further
west. I was able to go all the way up to the Khyber Pass because I am
Canadian.
Don't you feel the theme of Partition has been overdone, with so many
books out on the subject?
Do you really think that a lot of people have dealt with this? Indeed...
and who? You are talking of maybe one book: Train To Pakistan. Do you think
that is enough? Partition happened. There are 70,000 books written about
the American civil war. About Partition, I can count the books on the
fingers of one hand.
What about the Holocaust? Do you know how many books are written about that=
?
Let's put it another way: do you think the Partition still strikes a lot
of chords here 50 years later?
It should. We haven't dealt with it. In the Punjabi diaspora, we are still
feeling the effects of this. In my book, I am mainly dealing with
patriarchy and colonialism and that sort of thing. But there were 17
million people displaced by Partition/Independence.
And the slash is very important in that statement because that's what it
was. It was a slash right across the country. And we have not dealt with
what we did to each other. This was not state-sponsored violence. We don't
have anyone to blame this on.
And if 1984 (when the Sikh riots took place) taught us nothing else, it
should have taught us that this feeling is not dead. Or dealt with. Did the
Babri Masjid riots teach us anything? No, because if you don't talk about
it, write about it, deal with it, it will still be out there.

[...] .
______

#4.

Indian Express
7 June 2000

RSS ASKS CADRE TO SHUN BJP'S WORK TO SURVIVE

by DEVESH KUMAR

NEW DELHI, JUNE 6: In a significant move, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
(RSS) chief K S Sudershan has asked his men to stay away from politics
and concentrate on expanding the stagnant Sangh network. This follows
the new leadership's assessment that the excessive involvement of its
workers in BJP's activities is one of the main causes for the Sangh
reaching a plateau in the past few years.

The problem came out starkly at the pratinidhi sabha held earlier this
year in Nagpur where Sudershan assumed charge. It was noticed that
although attendance at the shakhas had gone up from eight to 10, the
total number of shakhas across the country had remained static at 44,000
since 1997.

This realisation has caused considerable concern among the new leaders
of the RSS, especially since the stagnation seems to have coincided with
the rise of the BJP to power, whether at the Centre or in the states.

=46or instance, statistics compiled by prant pracharaks from across the
country suggest that the problem was particularly acute in states where
the BJP is in power or had a stint in power, like Gujarat, Maharashtra,
Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. On the other hand, in states such as
Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, where the saffron party still has a
long way to go before acquiring power, the RSS has managed to register
slight growth.

Bihar was the surprising exception. Although the BJP has yet to come to
power in Laloo-land, the RSS seems to have reached a glass ceiling in
this state.

In the face of this, many in the Sangh are increasingly feeling
convinced that the involvement of its swayamsevaks in political
activities during the 10-year period of the BJP's phenomenal growth has
served to stunt the mother organisation. ``Instead of concentrating on
the growth of shakhas, the attention of our swayamsevaks has been
diverted to helping the BJP win elections and to the task of
coordination between the government and workers,'' a senior leader
pointed out. ``Problems have also arisen because of the non-fulfillment
of the swayamsevaks' expectations from the Government, leading to
demoralisation in the organisation.''

The editor of the RSS mouthpiece, Organiser, Seshadri Chari, however,
disagreed with this contention. According to him, the shakha network has
grown over the past years, small as the increase may be. But he admitted
that the Sangh organisation has shown fastest growth in the face of
adversity or in special circumstances such as the euphoria generated by
the mandir movement. ``Past records show that the number of shakhas has
shot up either when there was an overwhelming acceptance or when the
environment became quite hostile. For instance, they grew remarkably in
north India, especially in Punjab and Delhi, after Partition. They also
showed an upward trend during Emergency and the Ayodhya movement,'' he
said.

According to him, the growth in shakhas was not visible to many people
because of the importance now being attached to peripheral activities
such as those of the VHP, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashrams and Friends of Tribal
Societies. ``The RSS has lent many of its pracharaks to the services
rendered by these allied organisations, and they are doing tremendous
work in their adopted fields,'' Chari pointed out.

Another problem that seems to have beset the shakhas is careerism. ``As
our society becomes more and more achievement-oriented and competitive,
the youth become more concerned about their future than attending
shakhas,'' a senior RSS leader explained.

Ever since they took over the reins of the organisation, the new
leadership has been grappling with these problems and wondering how to
stem the rot. Apart from asking its swayamsevaks to lay off politics,
Sudershan together with Sarkaryavaha Mohan Bhagwat, 50, have decided to
themselves concentrate on revitalising the shakhas. ``Aided by the other
office-bearers, the duo will visit all the prants every year to
reinvigorate these functional units,'' a senior leader said.

Copyright =A9 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
______

#5.

The Santa Fe New Mexican
June 2, 2000
P-63

PASATIEMPO
=46ILM ABOUT A FAMILY, NOT A FAMILY FILM

by Andrea Shapiro

The untimely circumcision of a 13-year-old boy is among the comedic high
points of the 1999 United Kingdom hit East Is East.

But wait. There's more funny stuff-if what strikes you as funny is the
display of affection by a Great Dane (not Hamlet) for an obese teenage
girl (not Ophelia).

This film about a family is unlikely to be confused with a family film.
Yet despite the so-called British humor, the movie succeeds-even on these
rude shores-at generating laughter. And tears.

Meet the Kahns, a multiethnic nuclear-family meltdown where Dad is an
abusive autocrat and Mom is the demilitarized zone between her husband and
their kids. Patriarch George arrived in England in the late 1930s to find
work to support his wife in Pakistan but after buying a fish-and-chips
shop in Manchester, he conveniently settled down with Ella, an English
working-class girl who wields words as well as a fish knife.

After 2 1/2 decades, they're still passionately wed-albeit in perennial
battle over the upbringing of their seven children. And if Ella sometimes
gets a little out of hand, George simply threatens to send for the first
Mrs. Kahn.

So far the second wife's wisecracks easily have repelled George's threats
but his Old World Muslim values have begun to terrorize his New World
ecumenical offspring.

It's 1971 and though history has turned the corner on the "Swinging '60s,"
teens in the industrial suburbs of Great Britain are still dancing the
frug in white mod boots.

The inexorable flow of time eludes George, whose one concession to
modernity is headgear. He dons a sheared-lamb Astrakhan cap and his wife
wears a Jackie Kennedy pillbox hat.

But George would sooner have his daughter in a sari than a miniskirted
school uniform and he'd rather see his boys in ceremonial robes than
hippie bell-bottoms.

When Dad arranges a wedding for his eldest son in fundamentalist Muslim
style, the young man bolts at the altar to fulfill his preferred destiny,
running a millinery shop with his boyfriend.

In George's despotic eyes, the defection brings shame on the family
name-cause enough, he reasons, to thereafter impose his will without
reason. The father endeavors to surprise the next sons-in-line by
ensnaring them into arranged marriages.

But it's George who gets ambushed.

"In Islam, no black man. No white man. All equal," George says, hoping to
appeal to his disco-king son's egalitarian spirit-while holding a knife to
the kid's throat.

"OK," the rebel boy effectively says. "I'll take a Muslim wife. And then
I'll marry an English girl too-jus' like me' dad."

Ayub Khan-Din's screen adaptation of his autobiographical award- winning
play appears not to have strayed far from the stage. Under the direction
of first-time feature filmmaker Damien O'Donnell, the breast-beating
confrontations and broad jokes easily could play to the top balcony.

Only film, however, could lay bare the characters' subtler motivations
magnified under the lens of director of photography Brian Tufano
(Trainspotting).

Merely despising George would be difficult. Portrayed by the fine Indian
actor Om Puri- whose credits include more than 30 films in the United
States (Wolf), Asia and Europe as well as television's The Jewel in the
Crown-George is fearsome enough to make his kids race around the kitchen
with a can of air-freshener to disguise the smell of just-cooked bacon
before he enters the house. But the tyrant also is smooth enough to perk
up a 25-year marriage by bringing home what he believes is a real score,
an old barber chair in which he seduces his wife.

Otherwise that wife, played by Linda Bassett of Oscar and Lucinda, is
tough to pin down- particularly when she fields her mate's iron fist for
the sake of their mixed-blood brood, then swiftly takes his side when the
children show him disrespect.

Conflicts pertaining to respect are the ballasts of this tale-one that
describes the political climate of the United Kingdom in the midcentury,
when Asians suffered widespread racial discrimination and some of
Parliament's opposition leaders raised the specter of repatriation.

George personifies the fears of the Pakistani community during that era
but also embodies the ambivalence of racially blended families of any era.
George is a first-generation immigrant who proudly assimilates and then
insists his kids bear the burden of maintaining unalloyed ethnic identity.

As ethnic identities merge, clash or fade throughout the story, whether
one culture's loss is another's gain is unclear.

On the occasion of a family van ride, Pakistani Top 40 tunes resounding
from an 8-track tape player in the vehicle juxtapose the Wuthering
Heights-West Yorkshire countryside.

When the family sits in a crowded British movie theater, they munch on
popcorn while on screen a Pakistani odalisque slinks across a silk-covered
couch. Though exotic smudges of oriental kohl soften the concubine's
features, something about the face is occidental-the doe eyes of Sophia
Loren, the high cheekbones of Ingrid Bergman--as though East has morphed
with West.

The Kahns could be Jewish. Or black. Or Irish. Or =8A well, you get the
idea. Their story is the wages of diversity and suggests that East is
East-for now perhaps but probably not for long.

______________________________________________
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