[sacw] SACW | 27 Dec. 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE
27 December 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)

#1. Why India and Pakistan Are Backing Down in Kashmir
#2. Hindutva danger to secular India
#3. Kerosene, Weapon of Choice for Attacks on Wives in India
#4. Pakistan: Crimes against women are sanctified by the barbaric Karo Kari
code
#5. Police Firing in Kashipur (Orissa, India)

--------

#1.

Time.com
Sunday, December 24, 2000

Why India and Pakistan Are Backing Down in Kashmir
Cell Phone From New Delhi: With stakes much higher, both sides now share an
interest in defusing a flash point, says TIME contributor Maseeh Rahman

BY MASEEH RAHMAN

Photo: TARIQ NAQASH/AFP
Residence of the area and security officials gather at the site of a bomb
blast

Last year India and Pakistan almost fought a war over Kashmir. Now they
appear set to make peace, with India extending its unilateral cease-fire
against separatist groups there, and now Pakistan beginning to withdraw
its troops. Why the change?

"These are the most hopeful developments in years, and I think they're
occurring because of how close the two sides came to another war last year
over Pakistan's Kargil incursion. There seems to be a realization now that
both sides will lose badly if there is another war. And of course the fact
that both sides now have nuclear weapons creates an added anxiety. There's
a better understanding by the leadership in both India and Pakistan that
something has to be done to reduce Kashmir's potential to be flash point
that ignites conflict between the two. And, of course, the Americans have
helped both sides come to this realization."

Looking at the domestic politics of each side, presumably it's a lot
harder for Pakistan to calm things down on their side of the Kashmir
conflict than it is for India. "Well, yes, in the sense that it may be a
lot harder for the government of General Musharraf to rein in the Islamic
militant groups who're doing much of the fighting in Kashmir. But in the
end, it may be equally difficult for India and Pakistan to step back from
the brink in Kashmir, because Kashmir is far more than a territorial
dispute; it's intimately linked to the national identity of both
sides-with Pakistan's identity as an Islamic state and India's identity as
a secular state."

Speaking of India's identity as a secular state, isn't that challenged by
Prime Minister Vajpayee's statements in support of a campaign to build a
Hindu shrine over the ruins of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, which was
destroyed by a mob of Hindu extremists in 1992?

"Yes, but Vajpayee is playing a delicate political game. And that's taking
India into another dangerous phase, where the [ruling Bharatiya Janata
party] is revealing its hand, trying to exploit Hindu nationalist
sentiments around the Ayodhya issue. Some observers believe that he may be
doing this as something of a distraction for his supporters, trying to
create political space for himself to push through tough economic
measures, which he desperately needs to do. The government is basically
bankrupt, and India is facing an economic slowdown. We're heading back
into a terrible mess, but in a democracy as politically fractured as
India's, it's hard to cut government spending. The alternative is
privatization-the government owns everything from hotels to car factories,
and all they've managed to privatize in recent years was a bakery-but
there's strong ideological resistance. That may be tempting Vajpayee to
distract people with the Ayodhya issue.

"Another explanation is that his party faces a tough fight next year in
the all-important state elections in Uttar Pradesh, the most populous
state, which is considered a key indicator in national politics. Right now
his party may lose its grip on the state, which is where Ayodhya is
located. And some believe that he may be trying to energize the BJP's base
by reviving the issue. But it's a dangerous game, not least because his
coalition allies in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu depend heavily on Muslim
support, which Vajpayee's statement will alienate."

_____

#2.

India Abroad
Op-Ed.
December 22, 2000

Traveler's Perspective: Hindutva is termed danger to secular India

By STEPHEN R. WELCH

The philosophical parent of the Hindutva movement, the Rashtriya
Swayam-sevak Sangh (RSS), is an ideological organization that has an
influence upon domestic conservative politics comparable to that of the
United States' Christian Coalition.

In January 1999, one week before my wife and I took our first trip to India
together, news broke of the Graham Stewart Staines murder. The story of the
burning death of the Australian missionary and his two sons, given as it
was in gruesome detail, caused anxiety among a few of my relatives. In
spite of the fact that neither my wife (who is Indian) nor I are
Christian, we found ourselves defending India as safe for travel and
assuring that we would be in no danger. This was, of course, the case, but
we felt a profound regret afterwards for having been compelled to justify
our visit, and essentially our family in India, against the
sensationalized accounts of a hate crime committed in the backwaters of
Orissa.

Since that time I have followed developments in the Staines case, and the
activities of the radical right in India, and have studied the Hindutva
movement in particular.

More than 18 months have passed since Hindu extremists murdered Staines
and his two sons, yet the violence against the Christian minority in India
continues unabated. While the government of Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee
responds ambivalently to this crisis, its cohorts in the religious right
do not- organizations such as the Shiv Sena and Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP) continue to put forth their divisive and inflammatory propaganda.
Whether by parliamentary bill to restrict "mixed faith" marriages,
state-sanctioned "reconversion" campaigns or the movement to rewrite the
history of India as an unalloyed Hindu "Zion," religious nationalism has
asserted itself onto India's national agenda.

This brand of religious revivalism-"Hindutva" as it is known-has the
dimensions of a sustained movement with ambitions of political and cultural
reform. Its rhetoric of Hindu supremacy, virulent with the demonization of
minorities and exaggerated threats to national identity, resonates among
many members of the conservative upper and middle classes. This growing
grass-roots support has emboldened the movement and placed its ideologues
into public office, from local government to the Lok Sabha.

Representatives of the movement offer little regret for the Staines
murders or the other acts of anti-Christian hatred that plague the
country. Instead of unequivocally condemning the violence, mouthpieces of
outfits like the VHP indignantly retort that missionaries are waging a
campaign to deculturalize "Hindu" India by perpetrating "forced
conversions" to Christianity. VHP vice president Giriraj Kishore, for
example, has publicly maligned men like Staines as "traitors" and
"desecraters of Hindu gods," implying in essence that violence against
them is an act of cultural self-defense. In other words, they are getting
what they deserve.

Meanwhile, the Vajpayee government publicly condemns the communal violence
but is reticent when it comes to assigning responsibility. Vajpayee prefers
to rationalize the killings, beatings, and church bombings as aberrations
or "isolated events," and fidgets away from any suggestion that blame
should be laid at the feet of VHP or its militant affiliates, whose
members have been clearly implicated in several cases. This is no
surprise, as the BJP is itself known as the parliamentary arm of the
Hindutva movement.

Evidence has supposedly been uncovered lately that links some recent
incidents with operatives of Pakistan's intelligence services, whose
mission, presumably, is to embarrass India among its democratic peers.
Such claims may take the heat off Vajpayee for the time being, but if true
they should be more cause for alarm than vindication, because they suggest
that the social unrest wrought by Hindutva extremism is so disruptive that
it has invited exploitation by India's military rival.

The divisiveness of Hindu supremacy, then, may not only be dangerous to
India's democratic institutions, but to its national security as well.

But such considerations may be lost on the radical right, for whom
Pakistan is frequently invoked as a source of national ailment. With a
convenient circle of logic, then, not only are the enemies of India
responsible for "forced conversions," but the enemies of India can
likewise be blamed for the vigilante "justice" against the perpetrators of
the conversions.

Ultimately, it is in its definition of "enemy" versus "Indian" where
Hindutva reveals its true colors, for at root is the assertion that the
only "true" Indians are Hindus, while all others-particularly Muslims and
Christians-are not. The latter religions, termed "semitic" according to
the Hindutva theory of history-are alien faiths imposed from the outside
on "Hindu India" by foreign aggressors. Such exclusionism makes Hindutva,
at its philosophical core, not merely "nationalistic" but supremacist. And
any ideology that defines nationhood-with the concomitant rights and
enfranchisement that this implies-by membership in a privileged race,
culture, or religion, is nothing less than fascist.

This label is not applied glibly. The philosophical parent of the Hindutva
movement, the Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh (RSS), is an ideological
organization that has an influence upon domestic conservative politics
comparable to that of the United States' Christian Coalition. The head of
the RSS during the Gandhi era, Madhav Golwalkar, once famously praised
Hitler for showing the world "how well nigh impossible" it is for
different races and cultures, "having differences going to the root," to
be assimilated into a national whole. The purging by Germany of the
"semitic races," Golwalkar goes on to say, is a "good lesson for us in
Hindusthan [India] to learn and profit by."

Such statements, of course, are not widely publicized, though Golwalkar is
still highly respected in Hindutva circles. One need only read
pro-Hindutva literature, however, to find that the spirit of his remarks
is still alive and well. While downplaying the "petty differences" of
creed and race on one hand, or claiming that nationalism is the "religion"
of Hindutva, the RSS, for instance, goes on to assert that in a "free and
prosperous India" Muslims and Christians would "naturally return" to their
"ancient faith and traditions." The message is quite clear -in an India
free of the "appeasement" of religious minorities and vigilant in
cleansing the nation of the polluting influences of foreign missionaries,
converts to "alien" faiths will naturally recognize the superiority of
Hinduism, and re-embrace it. Those without the wisdom to do so would be
suspect, and thus worthy of second-class citizenship at best.

During the last century a diaspora of Indian =E9migr=E9s spread their cult=
ure
to communities as far afield as Johannesburg and Jackson Heights; at the
beginning of this century Indian cuisine, bhangra, literature, and film
enjoy an unprecedented popularity abroad. That Indian culture not only
competes with but also penetrates the commercial monolith of Western
culture testifies to its modern robustness and vitality. For its part,
Hinduism-the amorphous family of traditions and philosophies that comprise
historical reality, and not the neo-orthodoxy of the Hindutva-will
continue to endure by virtue of its inherent inclusiveness, tolerance, and
its unique recognition that no creed has a monopoly over truth.

The likes of Graham Staines or his converts do not pose a credible threat
to India. The true danger thrives in the demagogues of the religious
right, their proselytes, and the creed of bigotry they pander in the name
of cultural revival.

(The writer is an editor for The Secular Web.)
_____

#3.

The New York Times
December 26, 2000

Kerosene, Weapon of Choice for Attacks on Wives in India

By CELIA W. DUGGER

Photo: Namas Bhojan for The New York Times

Geetha, lying in the burn ward of Victoria Hospital, was comforted by her
mother, Mariyamma. Geetha says her husband and mother-in-law abused her for
what they regarded as shirking her housekeeping duties.
An Indian couple, Geetha and Kumar, on their wedding day, June 23, 1999.
Geetha, now hospitalized, says Kumar burned her with kerosene after
scoldings and beatings. He says the burning was a suicide attempt.

BANGALORE, India =97 Every day, year after year, women grotesquely disfigur=
ed
by fire are taken to Victoria Hospital's burn ward here in India's
fastest-growing city. They lie in rows, wrapped like mummies in white
bandages, their moans quieted by the pain-obliterating drip of morphine.

Typically, these women and thousands like them have been depicted as
victims of disputes over the ancient social custom of dowry and as symbols
of the otherness of India, a place where lovely young brides are doused
with kerosene and set ablaze for failing to satisfy the demands of their
husbands' families for gold, cash and consumer goods that come as part of
the marriage arrangement.

But most women on the ward never mentioned dowry when explaining why they
were burned. Some, like Radhamma, 25, described accidental injuries caused
by cheap pump-action kerosene stoves that are often shoddily made and lack
even the most basic safety features.

Others, like Geetha, 20, offered harrowing testimonies, supported by a
growing body of new research, that place them right in the international
mainstream of brutishly mistreated wives. The use of fire as a weapon,
which seems so exotic, is simply expedient: kerosene, a ubiquitous cooking
fuel here, is a cheap, handy weapon, much like a gun or a baseball bat in
an American home.

Geetha, who like many south Indians has only one name, is a survivor on a
ward where most die, but it would be hard to call her lucky.

As she related her story, she held her head immobile, barely moved her lips
and turned only her dark eyes on a visitor to avoid stretching the raw,
burned skin on her neck. Her wizened mother caressed her long brown hair,
which spread out on a pillow like a mermaid's under water.

Geetha explained that she had been the pampered baby in a family of 10
children who had rarely been expected to cook or clean. Marriage was a rude
shock.

Like most brides in India, Geetha moved in with her husband's family after
an arranged marriage. That was in 1999. Within months, Geetha said, her
husband and mother-in-law began beating her with whatever they could grab =
=97
a kitchen ladle, a broomstick, a stalk of sugar cane =97 because they
believed that she was shirking her housekeeping duties.

"All the scoldings and beatings were to correct my mistakes," she said.

One morning her husband ordered her to do all the chores before he returned
home to the slum where they live on the outskirts of Bangalore.

She sifted stones from the rice, fetched the water, washed the clothes and
fed her husband's nephew. But she said she had not yet spread a dung
mixture smoothly on the front step by the time he got home.

"I had done everything except this," she said. "But he was angry with me.
He said I was lazy. He said if he could get another wife, she would do
everything."

That afternoon, as she walked toward the kitchen, she said, she felt
something splash on her back. Then she burst into flames. When she turned
around, she saw her mother- in-law holding a kerosene can and her husband
with a matchbox.

Her mother-in-law, Kempamma, a petite, gray-haired woman, and her husband,
Kumar, a slight man with a sweet smile, denied that they had attacked
Geetha. Rather, they said, Geetha poured the kerosene on herself in a
suicide attempt.

Out on bail and working at a stand where he makes sugar cane juice using a
hand-cranked press, Kumar, 25, said Geetha had been a disobedient wife who
"talked back to me."

She did not make the special dishes his relatives liked. She did not treat
his mother with proper respect. She did not prepare his breakfast on time.
Sometimes, he said, she refused to do the heavy work, like heating water
for his bath.

"When she did not listen to me and I was angry, I would hit her," he said.
"Most of the time I would just scold her."

Violence against wives is a common problem in India, as it is in many
societies.

More than half of married women justified wife-beating in a recently
released survey of 90,000 women sponsored by India's Health Ministry, most
commonly for neglecting housekeeping and child-rearing duties, showing
disrespect to in-laws, going out without a husband's permission or arousing
a husband's suspicions of infidelity.

In a second survey of 10,000 Indian women, financed by the United States
Agency for International Development, more than half of the women said
violence was a normal part of married life. Again, the most common reasons
given were a wife's perceived failures to perform household duties.

The larger survey estimated that at least 1 out of every 5 women had
experienced domestic violence, while in the smaller survey 2 in 5 reported
such abuse.

Dozens of surveys taken around the world have found that from 10 to 50
percent of women have experienced domestic violence =97 and that the most
common reasons were related to wifely shortcomings.

The smaller Indian survey also found that dowry was a factor in the
violence, though less important. Twelve percent of the women said they had
been harassed for dowry, which is generally given at the time of engagement
and marriage but is sometimes demanded later.

The survey was one of eight on domestic violence in India paid for by the
development agency, supervised by the International Center for Research on
Women in Washington and released in the last year and a half.

Nata Duvvury, who supervised the studies for the center, said researchers
had discovered that dowry had been overemphasized as a cause of abuse. The
dowry focus, in turn, distorted responses to the problem.

"Until we get away from burning and dowry, we'll never get close to
understanding violence against women," said Veena Talwar Oldenberg, a
historian at the City University of New York and an expert on the dowry
death phenomenon.

The Research Center for Women's Studies in Bombay found that even
investigators in all-female police units set up to handle crimes against
women in the states of Gujarat and Karnataka often took only dowry- related
cases seriously and felt that "private family matters were not a concern of
law enforcement."

It was horrific cases of brides set ablaze in dowry disputes that
galvanized the Indian women's movement two decades ago and led to criminal
laws to punish guilty husbands and in-laws, not only in dowry-related cases
but for other physical cruelty to wives.

But the police, prosecutors and judges have tended to try to squeeze
women's accounts of violence into the box of dowry harassment, researchers
say. For that and many other reasons, efforts to prosecute dowry-related
violence end with the vast majority of defendants acquitted, official
statistics show.

While dowry deaths, including suicides and murders, have risen to 6,975 in
1998 from 4,648 in 1995, according to official figures, researchers and
others in the legal system say they believe domestic violence cases are
often inaccurately classified as dowry deaths.

A female investigator in Karnataka's anti-dowry unit in Bangalore estimated
that only a quarter of the unit's cases were related to dowry harassment.

For three years Pratima, a plump, sprightly young woman with a robust sense
of righteous indignation, has moved briskly through the Victoria Hospital
burn ward, asking the charred, fatally wounded women there why they were
burned.

She is a caseworker for Vimochana, a women's organization that tracks the
cases of married women who die unnatural deaths each year in Bangalore,
more than half from burns.

Their stories of despair are as varied as the bad marriages that produced t=
hem.

Seven women complained of dowry demands. But by far the most common stories
=97 related by more than half of the women =97 involved drunken, abusive
husbands, often irregularly employed.

One recent morning, Pratima went on her daily rounds but came back
frustrated. "How did you get burned?" she asked two new women. Both said
stove accidents.

"Very few open their mouths," Pratima said.

There is evidence that stoves can be deadly. Official figures show that
7,165 people died in stove accidents in 1998, and 1,280 of them were men =
=97
a fact suggesting that not all of the deaths were a result of hidden
domestic violence against wives.

Cheap pump-action kerosene stoves, used mainly by the urban poor, are the
most dangerous, say surgeons and experts.

R. B. Ahuja, a surgeon who is secretary of the National Academy of Burns in
India, an association of burn doctors, estimates that perhaps a quarter of
the injuries he sees are a result of accidents with kerosene pump stoves.

Pratima and Gurumurthy, the doctor who heads the Victoria Hospital burn
ward, believe that most of the burn cases they see are actually attempted
murders or suicides, but that the women, fearful and dependent on their
in-laws, keep the secret. Often a woman like Geetha starts out saying she
was burned in a kitchen accident, only to later change her story.

That is why some women's advocates here resist the idea that thousands of
mostly poor women are dying in stove accidents every year. Women's groups
are pushing for new laws to combat domestic violence. The government is
considering a bill that would enable a woman to initiate civil proceedings
against an abusive relative and obtain a court order of protection.

But changing laws will be easier than changing attitudes.

Geetha believed it was her responsibility as the wife to adjust to her
husband's family. She said she tried to do what she was told. And she never
told anyone, not her parents and certainly not the courts, that she was
being throttled.

The youngest of five sisters, she knew that her elderly mother and father,
poor subsistence farmers, had gone deeply into debt to pay for her dowry
and wedding. "With great difficulty they had married me off," she said. "I
did not want them to know I was suffering. I wanted them to believe I was
happy."

Even when Kumar, dissatisfied with Geetha, returned her to her natal
village four hours from Bangalore, she kept her miseries a secret. "It was
to teach her a lesson," Kumar explained indignantly. "I took her there so
her parents would advise her to be obedient."

Geetha's father soon returned her to Kumar in Bangalore. Neighbors who
lived in the same slum say they heard Geetha's husband and mother- in-law
berating her. "I advised her to adjust at home if there was any quarrel,"
said Gangamma, a matron who lived several houses away.

Geetha took such advice to heart. Her silence almost killed her.

Yet even now, struggling to recover from burns on 57 percent of her body,
quivering in pain beneath a shaggy brown wool blanket, she expresses no
rage against her husband. "What is the point?" she asked.

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

_____

#4.

The Friday Times
22 december 2000

Crimes against women are sanctified by the barbaric Karo Kari code and the
killers get off with light sentences

by Fariha Razak Haroon

14 year old Rahima Mugheri's wedding day was March 20 this year. She
married 28-year-old Niaz Mugheri in a colourful ceremony at Sajawal Junejo
village near Larkana. Attired in traditional red, she waited nervously for
her bridegroom for what was supposed to be the beginning of a new life with
him.

A little while after going into the bedroom,
the groom came out and announced that his wife had confessed to having had
a sexual
relationship with another young man. The entire family immediately got
together to discuss
the matter and decide on a course of action. Rahima had to be killed. The
groom's eldest
brother fired the first shot, two of his other brothers followed, and the
last bullet to be pumped
into Rahima's inert form was from her bridegroom of a few hours. Soon the
14-year-old bride
lay covered in a pool of blood, the red matching her dress.

The news spread fast. It was only when the murder came to the knowledge of
Sindh's human
rights activists and the incident was reported in the press that the police
took notice. The
groom managed to escape but was later arrested. The girl's distraught
mother Singheer
could not believe that the child who had left her home in a bridal dress
had been shot and
buried within hours of her wedding. The girl's father Bahram Mugheri told
the police, "my
daughter was killed because the groom had an enmity with the man he accused
of having a
relationship with his bride of a few hours". The 21-year-old, who was
accused of being the
girl's lover fled for his life as according to Karo Kari tradition, a
tribal practice that decrees
death for anyone suspected of an illicit relationship, he too would have
been killed.

Rahima's is just one of the more recent cases. There are numerous similar
ones, which no
one knows about. These are the nameless, faceless women who cannot speak fo=
r
themselves. Bounds in chains of oppression, their stories are more or less
the same. Only
the names and circumstances change.

It is a barbaric tribal custom that cuts short women's lives under the
guise of the Karo Kari
code. Islam prohibits such punishment. In fact, the Quran says, "As to
those of your women
who are guilty of whoredom, bring 4 witnesses against them from among
yourselves; and if
they bear witness, then keep them in houses, until death releases them or
God makes for
them a way." (4:19). It further states: "And if two of you commit it,
punish them both, but if they
turn and amend, then let them be. And God is relenting, merciful." (4:20)

In 1998, 475 people were killed for the Karo Kari custom. Among them there
were 318
women, while the rest were men. 70% of the victims were under the age of
25, and about 100
of the women were unmarried. 1999 presented an even worse scenario. 500
people were
killed. In 2000, 345 people have already been recorded killed. Despite the
government's
announcement decreeing honour killings to be murder, cases of Karo Kari
continue to take
place with regularity. Most go unreported. Almost all go unpunished.

Tragically, this custom continues in countries other than Pakistan as well.
There, it goes by
different names. And as in Pakistan, the killers are frequently able to
carry on with impunity.
Sentences handed out to killers are so light that they make a mockery of
the term justice. In
Jordan for example, where one in four homicides is an honour killing, men
serve only three to
12 months for the cold-blooded murder of their female relatives.

The story of 16 year-old Yasmin Abdullah is a case in point. She was raped
in March 1998.
She reported the attack to the police which immediately imprisoned her for
her own safety.
This is common practice in Jordan where women resort to living behind a
veil for protection.
Since Yasmin was no longer a virgin, she could expect violence from the men
in her own
family. After three days in jail, Yasmin was released when her father
signed a guarantee
required by the prison, stating that he would not harm his daughter.
However, when her
brother Sirhan saw Yasmin again, he shot and killed her. "I was proud to do
it, to clear my
family's name," he says. "It's better to have one person die, than have the
whole family die
from shame". According to Sirhan, his sister facilitated the rape by being
in the wrong place.
He received a 6-month sentence. A year later, Sirhan is seen as a hero.
"Now the men in my
family can sit with other men, without losing face," he says.

Women in many countries are fighting to change the laws. In Israel, Jewish
and Arab women
jointly run an underground railroad to rescue Muslim women targeted by
their families. In
Jordan, female activists are working to persuade parliament and the king to
ban ancient laws
that allow honour killings to continue with impunity.

In many countries, discrimination and violence against women begins before
birth. Because
of the Chinese government's strictly enforced one baby per family policy,
even a woman in the
seventh month of her pregnancy with a second child can be forced to abort.
Many women in
China who become pregnant without the official birth permit, or who defy
China's one child
policy, are subjected to forced abortions. Others give birth, only to see
doctors kill their infants
with a lethal injection. The new mothers are then sterilised. The one child
policy, which was
intended as a temporary solution to a population explosion, has also led to
abandonment of
baby girls and infanticide.

Preference for a boy is prevalent in most under developed countries where
failure to produce
a male heir can result in divorce or men taking second wives. In India,
even villages have
ultrasound machines to determine the sex of the foetus. Females are
habitually aborted. In
Madras, a survey of 1250 women found that more than half of the unborn
girls were aborted.
Many are killed immediately on birth. According to the Edhi Foundation in
Karachi, 99 percent
of all murdered babies in the city are girls.

Crimes against women, such as Karo Kari, belong to a barbaric past. It is
not enough for
governments to pay lip service to demands for justice. "Honour killers"
must be given
exemplary punishment. However, the root causes of such savagery cannot be
fought unless
the state follows a meaningful reform agenda, and makes primary education
compulsory.

______

#5.
Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2000 03:17:19 -0800 (PST)
From: Sukla Sen

Police Firing in Kashipur (Orissa, India)

Rivers and springs of Ranibeda, Doraguda
Springs and water of Koral, Kampar
Baphlimali, Kutrumali, Sijijharan
Destroy not the Baphlimali, Kutrumali, Sijijharan
Give not them to the Company
Ruined will we be in the name of development
Cheated will we be in the name of jobs

(tranlated from the Oriya original)

For over 7 years, the hills of Kashipur Block of the Rayagada District of
Orissa have resounded to the strains of this song composed and sung by the
tribal youths to the beat of their drums. The song expresses the growing
unity and consciousness among the villagers (new names are added to the
song as village after village joins the movement) and their determination
to resist the depredations of the mining companies and defend their homes
and communities, the environment and natural resources of their homeland,
their culture and their way of life against this unwanted invasion.

Since 1993 the tribals and other villagers of the area-leaving aside the
few locals who lured by the promise of jobs and money served as henchmen
and touts for the mining companies of Hydro, Hindalco and Alqua against
their own brothers-have been protesting against the project. The local
people are firm in their resolve not to allow the project-the bauxite mines
and the Alumina Plant to uproot them, to destroy and pollute their land and
lives as similar projects have done to their tribal brothers and sisters
all over the country (and the world).

The media, the myth-makers of our day, persist in scornfully dismissing the
movement as instigated and controlled by outsiders-in this case an NGO,
Agragamee, which has no role in this present movement-and the Adivasis as
simple and innocent (read stupid and ignorant) and as such incapable of
understanding their own interests in the great scheme of "Development" that
the Government , the mining companies greedy for profits and the political
parties are preparing for them The tinkle of coins falling into their
begging bowls from the coffers of the mining companies, both Indian and
foreign have deafened the media to the songs of resistance into which the
tribals are pouring out their hearts.

Are there none then who are misled, instigated by outsiders ? Of course
there are. Those who dream of steady employment and prosperity, of hefty
compensation that will enable them to rebuild their homes elsewhere on a
better basis, those who have embraced the company's interests as their own.
They are the real misled ones. Instigated by the Government and Company
(the real 'outsiders' who have come seeking profits to this bauxite-rich
area to extract bauxite from Baphlimali and to set up an aluminium
processing plant near Kucheipadar, to despoil and pollute for their own
gain) to betray their brothers. They are the ones who are given prepared
speeches to parrot before press and camera to blame their brothers and
sisters fighting for the survival of their homes and communities.

Since 1993, Kashipur block has seen the movement growing steadily. There
have been several attacks on the tribal youth by the Company's goons and
the police. The resistance has grown in strength so much so that there are
certain villages into which the police or goons dare not venture. There
have been padyatras to reach out to organise neighbouring villages, some of
them in remote, difficult-to-reach areas; the subject is discussed at
weddings and market places, wherever tribals meet. After all, it is a
matter of life and death to them (also to all of us who understand the
threat to our environment from the huge projects touted by the
Developmentwallas). They are living in danger of displacement, of being
uprooted from their lands and homes to be thrown, scattered, onto the
rubbish heaps of the cities called slums or jhuggis where tens of thousands
of their uprooted brothers have been flung.

What happened on the 15th and 16th of December was the outcome of an
all-out effort by the State, the companies and the political parties to
crush this growing movement. The Prakritik Sampad Suraksha Parishad
(Council for the Protection of Natural Resources) had given a call for
Rasta Roko (road block) on 20th December to demonstrate the opposition of
the Kashipur Block tribals to the Almunium Plant. The villages were all
preparing for the agitation. On the other hand the police, the company and
their minions in various political parties together hatched a plot to
prevent the people from demonstrating their unity and strength before the
whole of Orissa.

An all-Party meeting to express support for the Project was convened at
Maikunch on December 15th just 5 days before the Rasta Roko. The local
people protested against this meeting being held in their village. The BJD
Party's musclemen and goons clashed with the protesting people. As at a
pre-arranged signal, armed police descended on Maikunch village the very
next day. Having received advance warning of the advent of the police, the
men of the village retreated into the neighbouring hills while the women
stayed behind with one or two youths. On the way, the police party had
frightened some passing villager into giving some names of youths who were
among the protesters. Armed with this list of names, the police approached
the village. Two young boys, aged 7 and 10 grazing their cows had the
misfortune to run into the police. The police questioned them as to the
whereabouts of the men whose names figured on their list. When the cowherds
denied knowing them and fled in panic. The " protectors of the people"
fired and one boy was injured, the other boy has not been traced up to this
day.

The `killer pack' (what else can one call those who can shoot at two
children ?) continued towards the village. They tried to terrify the women
into giving the whereabouts of those who had confronted the BJP goons. The
women and young girls refused to be cowed down and stood their ground. The
trigger-happy police fired in the direction of the hills and continued to
shoot at any villager they came across. The bullet wounds on the noses,
ears, neck of many of the injured speak for themselves. The toll was 3
dead, several injured some very gravely. A few youths have not returned
since to the village.

The media all over Orissa poured out the police version "innocent tribals
incited by outsiders-in this case an NGO Agragamee which was nowhere in the
picture) attack police burn police vehicles, police compelled to fire.
Anybody who has been part of a workers' or peasants' or slum-dwellers'
rally which was fired upon without provocation will find this line familiar=
.

The injured were carried away to hospitals, the dead cremated, police
terror stalked the Kashipur block. The media churned out its daily quota of
lies and half-truths about subdued and terrified villagers, and tried to
deflect the whole issue by questioning the role of NGOs and the
parliamentary opposition followed suit. The villagers meanwhile wiped their
tears and prepared to continue the fight. They were neither subdued nor
submissive. They demonstrated their will to resist the tyranny of police
and company goons and in spite of all police efforts to stop people
reaching the venue, 8000 collected at Rupkana where the Rasta Roko had been
scheduled. To understand their determination one had only to see the 500
and odd people from Maikunch, the village where the firing took place, who
walked 2 days to reach Rupkana 40 Kms away to join the demonstration.

The tribals and dalits of Kashipur are fighting for their right to survive,
the right to till their land, to maintain their community life, to preserve
their environment and their culture. If they fall to the juggernaut of
Development, it will be our defeat too. As with the Narmada Valley people
these tribals and dalits are fighting the forces of dehumanisation calling
themselves Civilisation and Progress.

[For further information: ]
Indo-Swiss NRM Programme Orissa G-695, B.J.B.Nagar, Bhubaneswar-751 014
Khurda, Orissa, India Tel: 00 91 674 433580, 433582 Fax:433581 E-mail:
nrmpo@s...
______________________________________________
SACW is an informal, independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since 1996.
Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
at http://www.egroups.com/messages/act/
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Disclaimer: opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily correspond to views of SACW compilers.