[sacw] sacw dispatch (11 June 00)

[Harsh Kapoor]

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

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#1. Pakistan: In Memory of Aziz Siddiqui
#2. India: Goa latest target of communalists
#3. V.S. Naipaul: Knight in saffron robes
#4. Report of the public meeting on nuclearisation in South Asia
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#1.

AZIZ SIDDIQUI: NEVER SURRENDER

by Beena Sarwar

Devastated. Just one word to describe how many of us feel about the
unexpected passing away of Aziz Siddiqui on June 7.
A guide, a mentor, an inspiration, not just as a journalist but as a
human rights activist and a human being.
Unfailingly courteous in the most difficult of circumstances, an old
fashioned courteousness all the more
precious in today's brash and abrasive world.
Siddiqui Sahib was often the first person we turned to for analyses and
comments on difficult issues that we tried
to take up in 'The News on Sunday'. We would discuss a front page story,
or make an outline for a Special Report
and cast about in our minds for the most appropriate person to do the
overview or main article. Most often it
would fall to me to call and ask him to write. If relatively free from
his committments at the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan where he was
Joint Director, he would agree without a fuss.
When he really couldn't he would refuse reluctantly, politely. When very
busy, as he often was, he would
demur, 'There must be other people who could write that,' or mention his
weekly deadline for Dawn. Even then, if the
idea was explained further and caught his attention, there would be a
cautious, 'Alright, we'll see. When do you
need it?' ('Acha, dekhte hain. Kab chahiye aap ko?'). I'd give a thumbs
up signal, because this meant we had
got him. Only once did his 'we'll see' translate into a 'Sorry, I
couldn't do it'.
Once that 'we'll see' commitment had been made, his article, neatly
typed, would arrive bang on the deadline,
or before. He had a way of encapsulating thoughts and analyses so that
everything fell into perspective and
made sense. His way of seeing and his analyses also gave hope and
strength, because of his unflinching faith in
the voice and good sense of the people, who have for too long not been
allowed to give expression to this voice
and good sense. Aziz Siddiqui was among those who tried to enlarge the
space for this expression in every way
he could. The issues he most often wrote on were India-Pakistan
relations, the increasingly aggressive religious right, nuclearisation
of the Sub-continent, minority rights, democracy in Pakistan, the
media=8A
Once, when things seemed very bleak, I voiced my desperation to him,
saying that nothing we did seemed to
make a difference in the long run. Siddiqui Sahib looked me straight in
the eye with a somewhat amused
expression, removed his pipe from his mouth and smiled his gentle smile.
'So what should we do?' he asked in
his characteristically mild manner. 'Surrender arms?' ('Phir kiya
karain? Hathyar daal dein?')
It was of course a rhetorical question. His question has kept me going
in other moments of despair-like now,
when he is no longer there to guide and encourage and support.
Siddiqui Sahib never surrendered arms and he wrote with courage and
conviction, forthrightly and with wisdom,
about most of what is wrong with our country today. It was never a
litany of complaints, however. He always
suggested a way out, a way forward. The best way to honour his legacy is
to continue along the path that he,
and his friends and colleagues, have delineated. This is not the time to
surrender.

_______

#2.

=46rom Deccan herald/Saturday, June 10, 2000
NEWS ANALYSIS

GOA LATEST TARGET OF COMMUNALISTS

>From Devika Sequeira
vicki@g...

VASCO DA GAMA, June 9 (DHNS)

Never before has a place of worship been targetted for attack in Goa, where
the Catholics, who account for 30 per cent of the state`s population, can
be hardly be called a 'minority` in the sense of the term used in the rest
of the country.

The bomb explosion in the St Andrew`s Church in the port city of Vasco da
Gama on Thursday has left a deep imprint on the state`s psyche. ''Only
people without principles could violate the sacredness of a place of
worship,`` a spokesman for Archbishop Raul Gonsalves said last night. The
Church appealed for peace and said it was confident the government would
bring those responsible to justice.

But deep down there is a feeling of disquiet here. Goa has had its share of
sporadic violence, political flare-ups and even caste differences. But
serious clashes on the lines of one`s religious beliefs are practically
unheard of. Even politicians have been cautious about maintaining that
propriety. No longer so, it appears.

>From police officials, to politicians to the general public, the impressio=
n
is that Goa has become the latest target for inciting sectarian passions.
''This incident seems part of a larger plan to target a community and
create a fear psychosis, given similar cases in Andhra Pradesh and
Karnataka,`` said the sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Vasco, Mr S
Thorat, who is in charge of the investigation.

But the police officer says it is too early to narrow down suspicion. The
crude, handmade bomb which was implanted in the back window of the Vasco
church has been sent off to the Hyderabad laboratory for analysis after the
state`s bomb squad inspected it and combed the area. The analysis will
provide crucial leads, say the police. Two persons with a grudge against
the church were also picked up by the police but their interrogation ruled
out their involvement, said the SDPO.

Police suspect the bomb which ripped off a window, shattered all the other
windows and caused a huge crack to the outside of the 400-year old church
was placed on the spot the very same morning, possibly after the church
services which ended at 8:20am. No evidence of a timer device was found by
the police. The bomb exploded at 10:50am, barely five minutes after the
recess of the St Andrew`s School which is attached to the church. The
school has 1,500 students who are all over the ground during the break.
Their escape was miraculous, to say the least.

=46r Britto Furtado, parish priest of St Andrew`s, recalls he was working in
his study at the time, and the impact of the explosion startled him to his
feet. He thought the power transformer outside had burst, but the smoke and
smell of gunpowder from the rear of the church proved otherwise.The parish
priest is perplexed by the incident.

Besieged by telephone calls and visitors to his study this morning, he
keeps repeating that he cannot fathom what the motive is behind the attack.
''This town has always had a mixture of communities. There has never been
any tension here, so I see no reason for anyone to do this.`` He points out
there is a big difference between the situation in Goa and other states
where religious tensions have always existed. Besides, he says, the church
is a ''powerful entity in this state.``

Determined not to be cowed down by the incident, a pragmatic Fr Britto, who
also manages the school, carried on with business as usual, holding all the
church services this morning. The debris and glass shards having been swept
away and the ripped window patched up with brick and cement. The school too
reopened for half day. The church has not asked for police protection.
''Why do we need it?`` asked Fr Britto. Nobody was being stopped from
entering the church yard to inspect the damage caused by the blast.

The police official said general vigilance on places of worship was however
being stepped up in the state.

Condemnation has been scathing from Opposition parties here including the
Congress and the NCP. No such incident had ever taken place in Goa`s
post-liberation period before, the Pradesh Congress Committee chief
Luizinho Faleiro pointed out. Mr Faleiro and other Congress leaders like Mr
Ramakanth Khalap and Mr Churchill Alemao believe the Vasco incident is
''part of a trend`` to target minorities throughout the country. They
demanded a thorough investigation be conducted to book the guilty and stop
the attacks.

=A9 Copyright, 1999 The Printers (Mysore)Ltd.

_______

#3.

Hindustan Times
11 June 2000
Opinion

Opinion=20
=20

KNIGHT IN SAFFRON ROBES
(By Amulya Ganguli)

The strenuous, if futile, attempts by V.S. Naipaul to understand the
wounded civilisation continues. He now visits India almost every year
but the country seems to remain as much an area of darkness for him as
before.

In recent times, his anti-Muslim prejudices may have enabled him to see
what he probably believes is a glimmer of light via a warped version of
history. But he may still be left stranded with a view whose obsolete
nature is likely to become increasingly apparent as India recovers from
its dalliance with the far right.

In a recent interview in the magazine Outlook, Naipaul, as is his wont,
rushed in where angels fear to tread. Describing the demolition of Babri
masjid as nothing more than a "minor eruption", he called it "an act of
historical balancing" and claimed that "it is universally accepted that
Babur despised India, the Indian people and their faith."

Unless Naipaul has been learning his history from Murli Manohar Joshi's
pracharaks now running amok in the educational field, it is difficult to
accept this weird view. Even a casual perusal of Babur-nama would reveal
the first Mughal emperor as one of the most "attractive personalities in
Indian or any other history", as Percival Spear noted.

There is nothing in Babur-nama to indicate that Babur "despised" India.
Instead, one can discern an intense curiosity of a first time visitor
and a remarkably detailed description of the country's fauna and flora.
"The elephant", Babur writes, "is an immense animal and very sagacious.
If people speak to it, it understands ... The rhinoceros ... also is a
large animal, equal in bulk to perhaps three buffaloes ... A mouse
people call galahri (squirrel) ... is always in trees, running up and
down with amazing alertness ... The peacock is a beautifully coloured
and splendid animal."

There are any number of pages of such description, including one of
mango as the "best fruit of Hindustan". Hindustan itself is "a wonderful
country", according to Babur, presumably because "compared with our
countries, it is a different world; its mountains, rivers, jungles and
deserts, its towns, its cultivated lands, its animals and plants, its
peoples and their tongues, its rains, and its winds, are all different."

Not that it does not have faults. Babur details them also in his
customary meticulous manner under the heading "defects". He says "there
are no good horses, no good dogs, no grapes, no musk-melons or
first-rate fruits, no ice or cold water, no good bread or cooked food in
the bazaars, no hot baths, no colleges, no candles, torches or
candlesticks." Its people, too, have "no good looks; of social
intercourse, paying and receiving visits there is none; of genius and
capacity none, of manners none ..."

Still, it is not an area of darkness, for under the heading
"advantages", Babur writes: "Its air in the rains is very fine.
Sometimes it rains 10, 15 or 20 times a day; torrents pour down all at
once and rivers flow where no water had been... Not only in the rains,
but also in the cold and the hot season, the airs are excellent ...
Another good thing in Hindustan is that it has unnumbered and endless
workmen of every kind. There is a fixed caste for every sort of work..."

The following passage describing a visit to a Hindu temple is also worth
noting. "We rode from the flower garden to the idol houses... Some are
two, and some are three storeys high... On their stone plinths are
sculptured images. Some idol houses, college fashion, have a portico,
large high cupolas and madrasa-like cells, each topped by a slender
stone cupola. In the lower cells are idols carved in the rock. After
enjoying the sights of these buildings we left... " This was on
September 29, 1528. There is little to suggest from these passages that
Babur was full of animus against the Hindus.

Ignorance is not Naipaul's only fault. He also ventures into the field
of "historical balancing" to justify the Babri masjid's demolition,
casually equating the uncivilised norms of the 16th century with an
event in the 20th. It probably does not occur to him that the medieval
ages had no concept of religious or of any other kind of tolerance.

It was a cruel age when criminals and spies were routinely ordered by
the rulers to be buried or skinned alive or impaled or trampled to death
by elephants. Life was nasty, brutish and short. Bigotry and
superstition were rife. Law was what the king or the feudal lords or the
clerics decreed.

It takes remarkable obtuseness, therefore, to refer to what happened in
those barbaric times to exonerate those behaving in a similar fashion
today. It has also to be remembered that religious places were not
perceived by newcomers to a strange land only as places of worship. They
must have also seen these as centres of possible opposition to their
rule since shrines were perhaps the only places where the local people
routinely gathered.

Besides, even the simplest mind can see that the question of "historical
balancing" is nothing other than a call for revenge. It is not a simple
act of auditing where once the ledger books show the same figures at the
end, the clerks can close shop and go home. If such an accounting
procedure is tried in a complex society, the bottom line will have to be
written in blood - if anyone survives to write it. It is beyond belief
that anyone with a modicum of intelligence can suggest such a solution.

If "historical balancing" is indeed an act of faith with Sir Vidia - the
knight in shining saffron armour - what advice will he give to the Jews
to balance the six million deaths of their relatives and friends in the
Holocaust? Significantly, there is no gap of four centuries in this
case. The Holocaust was a medieval act of barbarism committed in the
20th century.

The absurdity of Naipaul's views is, therefore, obvious. He is, of
course, merely parroting the Sangh parivar's line. The essence of this
line is dislike and distrust of the minorities. Naipaul's bias, evident
in his books on the Muslim world, has made him gravitate automatically
to the saffron camp.

But the Hindutva weltanschauung is more than just anti-Muslim. It
includes the Christians, too, in its demonology. It is here that Sir
Vidia may have some difficulty since he is an admirer of the white man's
world. He has been careful enough, therefore, to note that Christianity
has been "much more humane" in the 20th century than Islam. So, breaking
mosques is okay for him, but not wrecking churches.

________

#4.

(Recieved from Aaj kay naam [London], 11 June 2000)

REPORT OF THE PUBLIC MEETING ON NUCLEARISATION IN SOUTH ASIA=20
On 25 May at a hugely attended meeting at Conway hall antinuclear
campaigners from South Asia and Britain exposed the folly of going nuclear
in South Asia . The public meeting was jointly organized by CND (campaign
for nuclear disarmament), Liberation and aaj kay naam (a campaign for human
rights, social justice and democracy in Pakistan) Praful Bidwai and Achin
Vanik, two leading anti nuclear campaigners were the star speakers.
Bruce Kent, Campaign Against Nuclear Disarmament, introduced the speakers,
praising their book for making the best contemporary case against the
nuclear option and for globalnuclear disarmament.
Praful Bidwai focused on the domestic situation in India leadingup to the
May 1998 Nuclear tests. He railed against the massmedia for e.g. CNN for
presenting the popular reaction to the tests in both India and Pakistan as
supportive of their respective governments. Where were the images of
protest andanger that were also reactions of large sections of the
people?In fact in the same way there was no pro-nuclear consensus amongthe
people, even the establishment was divided. The tests wereconducted in
India without the prior authorization of the Cabinet.The foreign policy and
defence establishment was by no means unitedin support of the BJP
government. In parliamentary debates afterthe tests, 60% of the legislators
criticised the government's upping of the nuclear ante.
The argument of nuclear deterrence was also demolished in the testsand
subsequent events. Instead of creating stability and peace,a year after
both countries tested their nuclear devices they wentto war over the line
of control in Kashmir. This war was extremelyexpensive for both countries
and created a climate of xenophobia, which had not been present before
leading to a national securitycomplex among the elite. This is one of the
most dangerous legaciesof the 1998 tests.
Meanwhile both countries have raised not diminished their militarybudgets.
In India alone the 2000 budget raises defence spending by28%. Such that
spending in this area is now twice the combined spending on health,
education and social security.
The hollowness of nuclear nationalism lies revealed in the
astoundingstatistic that some 450 million Indian live below the official
povertyline (or calorie intake of 2200 calories per day). Which is
greaterthan the entire population of India at independence in 1947!Achin
Vanaik in his contribution located the chain of events in Indiawithin the
international context of nuclear weapon states and to alesser extent the
regional context of South Asia.
South Asia today is a more dangerous not a safer place because of
thenuclear tests. After the end of the cold war (for better or worse)
andthe resolution of hot wars (for better or worse), India-Pakistan is
nowthe longest running hot-cold war in the world. Some fifty years after
the creation of both states! The prevailing conditions of
politicaltensions, skirmishes along the line of control which flare up
intowar and the occupation of Delhi and Islamabad by Hindutva
communalistand military governments respectively, South Asia is a
tinder-box waiting to explode. Without being alarmist the first use of
nuclearweapons anywhere in the world may be in South Asia.
The reason for this is not that non-white people are less responsiblethan
white people when it comes to the nuclear button - in fact 'responsible
nuclear powers' is an oxymoron Vanaik pointed out to laughter in the
audience - rather unlike the Western nuclear weaponstates both countries
lack the institutional development of commandand control mechanisms which
would make the first use of nuclearweapons easier, more difficult to
regulate, and more difficult toreverse. The time taken for a nuclear device
between a major Indianand Pakistani city is less than eight minutes.
Vanaik went through the reaction of the major NWS to the Indianand
Pakistani tests. He pointed out the hypocrisy and self-servingnature of
this club. Its message to both countries now is that itwill tolerate their
possession of this capability so long as otherstates aren't introduced to
it. He singled out for condemnation inparticular the response of Britain,
the US and France.
He warned about the potential for escalation of nuclearisationif the US New
Missile Defence programme (so-called Star Wars)becomes a reality. He
appealed to British campaigners to preventthe sittings of NMDs in Britain
and suggested that this issue wasone of the ways in which the anti-nuclear
movement could remobilizeitself. Vanaik suggested that though the window of
opportunity forglobal nuclear disarmament was narrower than it had been
before,it still existed and our struggle was to prise it open.He praised
the emergence as a consolidated bloc of anti-nuclearweapon states in the
international negotiations for globaldisarmament as well as the initiative
of south-east Asian statesin the Bangkok Declaration to move towards a
nuclear weapons free.
Achin strongly suggested to other non-nuclear South Asian nation to join
the nuclear free Asian zone to deliver moral snub to both India and
Pakistan for going nuclear.Vanaik heralded the new anti-nuclear movement in
India, whichwill be having its first national conference in November. This
willbe a launch pad for civil society campaigning, and will be attendedby
other South Asian delegates including from Pakistan. He invitedBritish
campaigners to attend and participate.
Vanaik closed by warning us that attitudes towards these events werenot
about good people vs. bad people but rather about those who weremorally
indifferent as against those who weren't.
Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran MP, criticized huge spending on the British
government's Trident missile programme as totally unnecessary. He also
praised the holding of the meeting to coincide with second anniversary of
the nuclear bombs.
Dr Arif Azad , of aaj kay naam, spoke about gathering anti-nuclear protest
in Pakistan and possible environmental consequences of the nuclear
explosion. He asserted that nuclear explosion in Pakistan has provided a
new lease of life to jiahdi Islam and military rule in Pakistan. " 12
October military coup should be seen in the context of changed nuclear
scenario in Pakistan as well" This sinister development, coming on top of
economic and environmental cost of nuclear explosions, does not bode well
for the future of Pakistan. "There is a greater need to forge linkages at
South Asia level to fight the narrow interests of the ruling elites of both
countries currently being expressed through nuclear nationalism." He
said.At the end meeting sent a message of solidarity to anti-nuclear rally
to be held in Islamabad on May 28 to mark two years of nuclear explosion.

______________________________________________
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