[sacw] SACW Dispatch #2 | 29 July 00

Sat, 29 Jul 2000 15:59:53 +0200

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch #2
29 July 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

#1. An opinion from Pakistan on India's hate-makers
#2. Pakistan: Origins of Quetta violence
#3. How was it in Dark Ages ... Ritual, Superstition & Astrology rule in
Modern India
#4. Book Review of Same Sex Love in India ed. by Saleem Kidwai & Ruth Vanit=
a
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#1.

The News International (Pakistan)
29 July 2000
Editorial

INDIA'S HATE-MAKERS

Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray has been let off the hook by a Mumbai
court. But this is a temporary reprieve. He was acquitted on technical
grounds. The court said the case against him should have been filed
within the stipulated three-year period. The Congress-led state
government in Maharashtra has vowed to go to the High Court. Thackeray
has been charged with inciting violence in the 1992-93 anti-Muslim riots
in Mumbai. The Sri Krishna Judicial Commission found him guilty and held
the Shiv Sena responsible for loot, arson and killings during a
week-long rampage. However, the commission's findings were conveniently
dumped by the Shiv Sena-BJP coalition in the state, and Bal Thackeray
got away with his contemptuous disregard for law and the judiciary. The
'godfather' fancies himself as the man who can paralyse the city of
Mumbai with the flick of his little finger. Little wonder his potential
for making trouble weighed heavily with the state government, even
though his adversaries were dead set on settling old scores with him.

The Vajpayee government has been making hypocritical attempts to
distance itself from Shiv Sena's mischief. Law minister Jaithmalani was
asked to resign because he cast aspersions on the judiciary's role. But
despite the Supreme Court's observation that coping with law and order
in Mumbai was the government's collective responsibly--the centre as
well as the state government--Home Minister LK Advani refused to deploy
para-military forces requested by the Maharashtra government.
Ironically, the four Shiv Sena ministers at the centre withdrew their
resignations soon after Bal Thackeray was set free, and the high drama
of bullying and blackmail came to a close. Not a word of censure was
uttered by the coalition bigwigs against the threats of violence and
disruption by the Shiv Sena, the ransacking of the assembly chamber, and
above all, Bal Thackeray's revealing pronouncement, "I hate Muslims".
The prophet of communal hate and violence is a friend and ally of the
Vajpayee government, and not an agent provocateur planted from across
the border.

The Indian security agencies have of late been blaming the ISI for
engineering a campaign of violence against Christians, in particular the
spate of bomb blasts in churches in various parts of India.
Notwithstanding the 'Pakistan-hand' fixation, the bid to divert
attention from the Hindu Vishwa Praishad and Bajrang Dal to the ISI is a
crude attempt to acquit the hate-makers of their evil doings. Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has a political compulsion to put up a
facade; he has to sustain a coalition. But the BJP has not abandoned its
communal agenda. It would, therefore, be simplistic to dismiss the Bal
Thackeray phenomenon as the 'lunatic fringe' of Hindutva. The BJP and
Shiv Sena are two sides of the same coin. The only difference is that
Bal Thackeray can afford to be a loud mouth and openly say things which
Mr Advani and his colleagues would put across in more discreet terms.

______

#2.

The News International (Pakistan)
29 July 2000
Op-Ed.

ORIGINS OF QUETTA VIOLENCE

by Asad Rahman

Since the end of the last civil war 1973-77, Balochistan as a whole has
been spared the bloodshed, terror and brutalisation of civil society
witnessed in Sindh and Punjab until the recent rocket and bomb attacks
over the past few months. From all the reports appearing in the press,
the local administration and security forces seem to be at a loss as to
the identity of the perpetrators. This confusion is a reflection of the
apathy of the internal security agencies towards law and order in a
province that has seen four civil wars.

The genesis of these civil wars lies in how Balochistan became part of
the newly created state of Pakistan in 1947. The first two, 1948 and
1958, lasted a few months and ended in surrender of the nationalist
groups along with the incarceration of the then Khan of Kalat, Ahmed Yar
Khan, under house arrest in Lahore for 15 odd years until a few years
before his death. The surrenders were brought about with oath on the
Holy Qur'aan by then Colonel Tikka Khan, later General, to right the
wrongs perpetrated on Balochistan by the federal governments. Nawab
Nouroz Khan, leader of the 1958 resistance, died at the age of 90 in
Hyderabad jail. Six of his companions, his sons and nephews, were hung
until dead in the same jail. His son tied a copy of the Holy Qur'aan
around his neck on the day of his hanging asking for it to be hung along
with him as it was on its oath that they had surrendered.

The third civil war lasted six years from 1962 to 1968. Only two battles
of any note took place in these six years with heavy losses on the
paramilitary side and victories for the Baloch. The Baloch did not
suffer much in terms of human losses but lost a huge number of livestock
(their mainstay economic activity) through bombardment. The fourth and
last civil war, 1973 to 1977, was the bloodiest in terms of human and
economic terms. The army and paramilitary forces engaged in this war
numbered around 80,000 men supported by Iranian helicopter gunships,
armoured vehicles and mortar artillery. It was the first civil war in
which the elite SSG Commando units were also sent into battle. Against
this the Baloch resistance fielded some 1,000 guerrilla fighters at any
given moment with antiquated second world war weapons like the Enfield
.303, hunting rifles and locally made Darra rifles. It is estimated that
the government forces suffered nearly 5,000 casualties while the Baloch
guerrilla forces suffered 1,500 casualties, both combatant and
non-combatant.

The scale in which modern weaponry was used in this civil war forced
some 7,000 families to seek refuge in Afghanistan where they remained as
refugees for sixteen years until their return to Balochistan in 1992.
These wars were the result of political and economic mismanagement by
successive federal governments in their relations and resource
allocations to the smaller (in terms of population) provinces of
Balochistan, Sindh and NWFP. The tribal setup of Balochistan, with some
radical nationalist Sardars, Nawabs and an armed population was always
in the forefront in demanding equitable provincial rights. Instead of
acting in a patriotic, nationalist and accommodating manner, all federal
governments have resorted to repressive force to quell their aspirations
of identity as Pakistanis, economic progress and a standard of living
equal to that of the other developed areas of the country.

With dismal education and economic standards, shackled in an oppressive
tribal system, the general public still has no say in the political
affairs of Balochistan and have to depend on their Sardars, Nawabs and
influentials to represent them at the provincial and national levels.
Historically, the institution of Sardar was democratic and was elected
from any section or family of the tribe whom they felt could best
represent the interests of the tribe. It was British colonialists who
converted this institution into a hereditary one and thus contributed to
the emergence of an oppressive, repressive and exploitative institution.
In the light of this development, some Sardars and Nawabs took on the
role of representatives for the whole of the Baloch nation. Thus formed
the ruling elite of the Baloch who, following in the footsteps of the
national ruling elite, indulged in corruption, repression of their own
people and used their people's armed power to serve their own self
interests, aggrandizement and projection.

This was the situation in the 1970s when a few young educated people
from Lahore and Karachi were invited by (then) radical nationalist
leaders of Balochistan, Nawab Khair Baksh Marri and Sher Mohammed Marri,
to come into their tribal area for social work. These boys not only made
significant contributions in the armed resistance from 1973 to 1977 but
also made another vital contribution in raising the awareness of the
people to the exploitative nature of the tribal and Sardari system. It
is because of this awakening of the people that has led to internal
tribal conflicts between the Sardars and their tribal subjects. These
conflicts are epitomised in the ongoing conflicts in the orthodox Marri
and Bugti tribes. In the Marri tribe, the conflict has its beginnings in
the refugee camps in Afghanistan when the Bijarani sections led by Sher
Mohammed and Mir Hazar Ramkani began to question the role of Nawab Khair
Baksh Marri, Sardar Ataullah Mengal in the 1973-77 resistance war and
the aid that they had purportedly received from various sympathetic
countries and sources for the war effort.

This falling out between the Bijaranis and the Nawab split the tribe
into three factions, the pro-Nawab and anti-Nawab factions and those
that remain neutral. The Bijarani section is the majority of the tribe
constituting nearly 55%, while the Gazainis number around 30% and the
remaining 15% are the Loharanis/Sheranis. Nawab Khair Baksh belongs to
the Bhawalanzai subsection of the Gazainis. The position of the Nawab at
present is very precarious even amongst the Gazainis as most have turned
away from him due to his stance against any economic or political/social
development for his tribe. The Bijaranis on the other hand are trying to
cooperate with the provincial and federal governments to develop the
areas that fall under their control. They have invited the oil company
that holds the lease for their area (block 28) to come in and explore
for oil and gas. On their own they have begun to mine coal from the
Kohlu area against the wishes of the Nawab. The Nawab allegedly
retaliated by having one of the coal transporting trucks attacked in
which one Pathan was killed and some others injured. The mining
operation continued with the Bijaranis providing security to the coal
transporters. Subsequently the murder of Justice Mohammed Nawaz Marri, a
Bijarani, was committed a few months ago. The local authorities arrested
Nawab Khair Baksh for allegedly instigating this murder. The Nawab's
sons are also wanted for interrogation but are absconding.

It is a known fact that Nawab Khair Baksh and Sardar Attaullah have
nurtured the dream of a greater Balochistan for decades constituted by
the Baloch areas of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistani Balochistan. It has
been reported that a hitherto undeclared Balochistan Liberation Army is
claiming responsibility for the recent bomb blasts and rocket attacks in
Quetta. It is also noteworthy that ever since Nawab Khair Baksh has been
under arrest that these bombings have taken place periodically and their
frequency has increased. Is there a connection keeping in view the
history of the four civil wars, the dream of a greater Balochistan, the
attacks on the Bijaranis opposing Khair Baksh, the murder of Justice
Marri and the emergence of the Balochistan Liberation Army? These are
the questions that the investigating and security agencies have to
answer in order to unravel this dangerous situation and stop it from
escalating.

The federal government too needs to play a positive role in
de-escalating the tension between the provinces and centre, while the
provincial government needs to patronise and help the forces that are
demanding development and groups that oppose the dismemberment of
Pakistan. Only by a concerted effort at both the federal and provincial
level, the feelings of deprivation, discontent and marginalisation of
the people of Balochistan can be obviated. Royalties, duties,
development surcharges and other levies owed to the province by the
centre must be paid. Development work should be carried out in the
fields of infrastructure development, water for irrigation and drinking,
education, health and productive economic activity.

______

#3.

Indian Express
Friday, July 28, 2000
Op-Ed

BACK TO THE DARK AGES

by A.J. Philip

As an young boy, I watched in awe the elaborate puja conducted before
our new bus was handed over to us at the TVS body-building workshop at
Madurai. The ritual was over only when six lemons were crushed under the
tyres of the bus before we set out on our long journey. Later, an
elaborate prayer in the best Syrian Christian tradition was organised
with the priest waving the incense burner and filling the bus with the
fumes of frankincense. Yet, on its maiden regular service linking two
famous temples in Central Travancore, the engine stalled and it required
the expertise of TVS' own mechanic to restart it. But before the bus
could ply again, four precious days were lost. Clearly, neither the puja
nor the prayer had propitiated God for the bus met with three accidents
in succession and ruined us financially.

What I narrate is nothing unusual in this country where the hold of
superstition is much more than all the religions put together. In fact,
there is reason to believe that religions thrive on the superstitious
beliefs of the people. Yet, it was surprising that the West Bengal
police thought it necessary to arrest Sabal Karmakar, the father of
four-year-old Anju, who was married off to a dog, Bullet, to "ward off
evil spirits". He was so considerate a father that he even thought of
the possible widowhood of his daughter if she was married to a goat as
was originally planned and the goat found its way into the butcher's
hands. Instead, a dog was chosen as her bridegroom, although the life
span of a dog is less than 10 years. He did all this in the belief that
it would ensure a better future for his daughter, on whom he doted. In a
country where female infanticide is common and the Tamil Nadu government
had to devise a scheme to save female infants from meeting an early
death at the hands of their parents, heshould have been honoured for his
paternal concern. Contrast this with the report about a village in
Rajasthan, notorious for female infanticide, which witnessed the first
"baarat" in 100 years. The police are never learnt to have arrested a
single person guilty of foeticide or infanticide in this village or
anywhere else. Yet poor Karmakar is forced to cool his heels in jail.

Of course, the father is guilty of a superstitious practice in a country
whose the Constitution enjoins upon the state, in the chapter on
Directive Principles, to build the scientific temper among the people. A
few days after the police struck at Karmakar, the Indian Navy acquired
its most sophisticated Russian-built submarine Sindhushastra which can
detect enemy movement within 10 nautical miles and fire anti-ship
missiles with precision. The handing-over ceremony was not complete at
the Russian shipyard without the chanting of Vedic hymns and the
breaking of coconuts. If the new UGC chairman has his way, very soon
there will be qualified, exportable pujaris who can serve the Indian
diaspora and bring in precious foreign exchange. He is also toying with
the idea of introducing a superspeciality course in Vedic astrology to
fulfill the needs of people who can predict with precision when, for
instance, the Kargil heights will be reoccupied by the Pakistanis and
the appropriate time when they should beejected. Come to think of it, in
the 16th century, the Rajputs could have aborted Babar's dream of
building his empire in India. Under Rana Sangha's leadership, they had
surrounded Babar's much smaller force at Khanua. Defeat stared Babar's
army in the face. But Rana delayed his attack under astrological advice
even as Babar's forces mustered courage. Otherwise, the history of India
would have been different. Of course, Rana's astrologer did not have the
benefit of training under the UGC!

Why blame Karmakar when the dashboard of every other Maruti car is a
sanctum sanctorum with idols and pictures of gods and goddesses, when
Amitabh Bachchan goes on a pilgrimage to pray for the success of his
son's maiden film while his own enterprise is in a shambles (Harivansh
Bachchan is not known to have gone on a pilgrimage before Sholay was
released), when even senior politicians encourage yagyas, when cricketer
Kirti Azad reverentially touches a cow's tail before filing his
nomination papers against Sheila Dikshit in Gole Market constituency and
when every film producer organises an elaborate muhurat before the first
clap is shot? It's selfishness, not religiosity or love of God, that is
on display.

It was for this very reason that Madhya Pradesh Speaker Srinivas Tiwari
took the lead in a yagya at the new Vidhan Bhavan in Bhopal in the
belief that it was the "construction and layout of the building" that
was responsible for the death of 12 legislators after the Assembly moved
into the new building in 1996. A few years ago, N.T. Rama Rao had the
gates of the State Secretariat changed to suit the Vastushastra
specification, only to die of "exertion" in the bedroom a few days
later. If, instead of changing the gates, the Andhra Pradesh government
had repaired the Governor's house in time, the ugly spectacle of the
ceiling fan falling on the governor's wife and injuring her could have
been averted.

Why only politicians? An editor I know was fond of flaunting a ring a
godman had "produced from nowhere" (why not a pumpkin, which can't be
hidden so easily, is a different question) and who wrote in his column
about the godman's ability to be present in two places at the same time.
I saw another prostrating before a smaller, though well-connected
godman.

Twenty years ago, A Statement on Scientific Temper was released among
others by P.N. Haksar and Raja Ramanna which stated, inter alia, that
"the role of reason is to apply scientific knowledge to problems, to
grapple with them through the methods of scientific inquiry and to work
for social transformation inspired by scientific temper. The first
Indian, perhaps, to work for the scientific temper was Rammohun Roy, who
in a memorandum to the British opposed the government's move to start a
Sanskrit college in Calcutta and said "the Sangscrit system of education
would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness." But two
centuries later, the Centre's emphasis is on popularising Sanskrit "so
difficult that almost a life time is necessary for its perfect
acquisition, is well known to have been for ages a lamentable check on
the diffusion of knowledge" as Roy put it and such esoteric subjects as
Vedic astrology.

Instead of reformers like Rammohun Roy, Ishwara Chandra Vidyasagar and
Akshaykumar Dutta, we have a plethora of organisations, all claiming to
belong to a joint family, which want to reintroduce outmoded forms of
worship to provide jobs for pujaris and astrologers. They have not said
one word to condemn the superstition inherent in the man-canine marriage
because it will not suit their long-term interests. It is easier to
arrest Karmakar than to fight superstition in this country.

______

#4.

Tehelka.com
Literary Review

IN INDIA, WOULD EROS HAVE DESIRED ADONIS?

Same Sex Love in India
ed. by Saleem Kidwai and
Ruth Vanita
Anthology
St. Martin's Press
$49.95

by Urvashi Butalia

An enterprise such as the one Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai have
undertaken in this book is always a risky one. How do you even begin to
cover, in a manner that can be remotely comprehensive, a terrain which
has been virtually unmapped. More, how do you take the next, perhaps
more difficult step, of reading back into literature - much of it
canonical, sacred, religious - for evidence that will help build your
thesis ? How guard against the skepticism (and that is the mildest
reaction) that is bound to greet such a work ?
Saleem Kidwai and Ruth Vanita, both well known scholars in their own
right (the one a historian, the other from the field of literature) have
chosen to do this in an interesting and innovative way. As Ruth Vanita
points out in her carefully researched and nuanced introduction to the
first part of this four-part study, what the authors intend to do is to
make an exploration of the depiction of sexuality (in the broadest sense
of the word, not limited only to sex) through the prism of love.
Passionate love, Vanita points out, whether it is between a man and a
woman, or two people of the same sex, has been a major preoccupation of
much literary writing over the centuries. But there's very little to
tell us whether those attachments were acted upon sexually or not. This
is the reason, the editors tell us, that they have chosen to focus on
love, rather than sex.
But there is, to my mind, another, unstated reason: and that is that
while we are all too ready to recognize that love can be the motivating
factor in many heterosexual relationships, and sex need not form such a
major part of it, we are curiously unwilling to recognize this in same
sex relationships where everything seems to be determined by sex rather
than love. Thus a homosexual couple is almost always assumed to be one
where two people of the same sex have sex with each other, not one where
two such people are in a love relationship
with each other.
Divided into four parts, this book looks at (1) Ancient Indian materials
(2) Medieval materials in the Sanskritic tradition (3) Medieval
materials in the Perso-Urdu tradition and (4) Modern Indian materials.

Tracking the history of love in India, and particularly in Indian myth
and lore makes it evident that several writers, whatever their own
sexual orientation, wrote and thought about love between people of the
same sex, and that androgyny, or people taking on different sexual roles
was considered perfectly normal. Starting with the story of the
female-male (stripumans) Sikhandin, the book takes us through the
Panchatantra where animals routinely exchange roles, the Kamasutra where
love between women and between men is described with the same ease as
heterosexual love. We then move through the Purans and the
Kathasaritsagar where familiar tales are reread and re-interpreted.

The third part examines mainly Perso-Urdu materials, ranging from Amir
Khusro to Mir Taqi Mir and here we see different patterns of friendship,
of celibacy within the same sex community, cross dressing and androgyny
and the blurring of the borders of gender identity that takes place when
gender identities are thrown into question. From this the editors move
to what they call the modern period, which looks at the harshness of
British colonial laws and their concern with sexuality, bringing the
debate upto the present, where there is a seeming openness to same sex
relationships. Kidwai describes the dilemma within this seeming
openness: in today's India you may be able to live in a same sex
relationship because same sex friendships are permissible in this
society, but you can only do so by always pretending to be something
other than you are. In other words, you can never be entirely honest
about your sexuality or your sexual orientation. A fascinating section
in this part of the book looks at Ramakrishna and his attitude to
sexuality.
Perhaps as important as the content of such a book is the politics that
informs its making. In the West Queer Studies, as the study of
homosexuality and lesbianism has come to be known, has now become
acceptable as a subject within academia. In India, and indeed in much of
our part of the world, we are still to recognize the subject as a
legitimate one for enquiry. In this, Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai have
performed an important service: for with the rigorous quality of their
research, with the careful attention to detail, with the excellent quality
of the translations they include, this book makes
a significant contribution to a field that is yet to emerge. This is why
it is also particularly important that the editors have deliberately
cast the book within an academic mould - for any new enquiry to be
recognized as a legitimate area of research, it needs to find a place
within academia. This is not a particularly desirable state of affairs,
but it is unfortunately, something that we cannot simply wish away. It
is for this reason that it is especially unfortunate that such a book
should be published not within India, but outside.
Because it is the first of its kind (there have been other books which
explore the issue in the recent past but none that has taken a
historical perspective and none that has covered such extensive ground),
Kidwai and Vanita's work cannot clearly take in everything, and there
are gaps. But these are to be expected in any such enterprise, and they
don't, in any way, detract from the book. Rather, the interest and
curiosity lies in this: If this is what a first book can bring to light,
how much more there must be to be explored ? Hopefully Kidwai and Vanita
will not stop just at this, but will continue the enterprise they have
begun, by exploring further into the literatures of India, and going
this time into languages they have not been able to cover here, to re
veal just how much we need to learn about the blurred and porous borders
of gender identities in Indian literature.
If this is what a first book brings to light, how much more there must
be to be explored?

(Urvashi Butalia is a writer and co-publisher of the feminist publishing
house, Kali for Women. she lives in New Delhi.)

______________________________________________
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