[sacw] SACW Dispatch | 29 Nov. 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch 
29 November 2000 
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)

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#1. Pakistan: Initiatives for peace
#2. Pakistan: Education, education, education
#3. Sri Lanka: Social Scientsts' Association (SSA) Website announcement 
#4. India: WHOSE VALUES? Questioning the spirit of science
#5. India: Prestige via Oxbridge?
#6. India: Varsity teachers threaten students, force them into RSS 

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#1.

DAWN - Editorial
28 November, 2000

INITIATIVES FOR PEACE

THE three-day "Pen for Peace" conference held in Karachi has made a powerful appeal for peace in South Asia. This is not the first time that intellectuals on both sides of the border have called for an end to conflict. Concurrently, a "Give Peace a Chance" conference was held in New Delhi which demanded Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's peace initiative to be turned into a "peace offensive". These appeals carry a note of desperation and urgency in them. Significantly, the Hurriyat Conference leader from the Kashmir Valley, Abdul Ghani Lone, has emerged simultaneously as an emissary of peace between India and Pakistan during his visit here.

This new move for peace initiated by civil society and intellectuals in South Asia - another peace conference is to be held in Kathmandu next week - has come at a time when a political and economic crisis grips Pakistan and the nuclearization of the subcontinent has exposed the region to the dangers of a nuclear war. It is understandable that in this dismal situation when no solutions are visible to the problems which confront the masses of South Asia with certain death and devastation, the sane-thinking people are urging the leaders of India and Pakistan to shed their militancy and hardline stance on Kashmir and national security which they have traditionally adopted.

A beginning has to be made. Let it be made now. India has taken the initiative by announcing and implementing a Ramazan ceasefire in occupied Kashmir. The Mujahideen and the Pakistan government have rejected it terming the move a ploy. This response is quite incompatible with the position adopted by the Hurriyat Conference and other leaders from the Valley who are the ones directly affected by the happenings in the occupied territory. The Hurriyat has opted for a cautious acceptance of the truce and its leader Umar Farooq has expressed his willingness to talk to New Delhi. He is also trying to persuade the freedom-fighters to lay down arms.

Regrettably, India has remained rigid in its stance vis-a-vis negotiations with Pakistan. To overcome this hurdle the Hurriyat has proposed that it should be allowed to talk separately to New Delhi and Islamabad to pave the way for a three-way dialogue on Kashmir. This is a sensible approach since in the present circumstances of an Indo-Pakistan deadlock and insurgency in the Valley, talks by the Kashmiri political leadership might open the door for a political process. It is obvious that no negotiations can take place between parties which are locked in an armed conflict. India has already shown a measure of flexibility by allowing two Kashmiri leaders to participate in the OIC summit in Doha and another to visit Pakistan for a family wedding. It should now facilitate the peace process by inviting the APHC leaders for talks and allowing their delegation to visit Islamabad.

Should Pakistan reciprocate? It depends on whether the government recognizes that the level of militarization it has opted for and its failure to be flexible on immediate foreign policy issues for making long-term gains has left the country impoverished and isolated, the masses deprived of a decent quality of life, society brutalized by violence unleashed by obscurantist forces and, worst of all, a pervasive sense of gloom and uncertainty among the people. If this realization has dawned on it, the Musharraf regime should now submit to the will of the Kashmiris and let them determine the conflict resolution mechanism and the ultimate solution.

There are two reasons why we believe a responsible and peace-oriented response is warranted from our end. First, Pakistan has always stood for the right to self-determination of the Kashmiris. Let them now decide how they want this imbroglio to be resolved. If they want proximity talks, why should we be opposed to these? Did we not accept this format at Geneva when the Afghan issue was being negotiated with GenNajibullah? Secondly, more than 35 years ago Islamabad agreed to let Shaikh Abdullah act as an intermediary between India and Pakistan. In fact, the Shaikh even came to Pakistan but had to cut short his visit prematurely when Jawaharlal Nehru died suddenly. Unfortunately, the process could not be resumed then or ever thereafter. Why can't it be done now?

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#2.

DAWN - Cowasjee Corner; 26 November, 2000

EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION

By Ardeshir Cowasjee

NO one denies that the bigots in this country outstrip by far the educated. No government since the government of the founder of the nation has acknowledged the fact that the educated have a natural ascendancy over the bigots and that therefore something has to be done to eradicate the dangerous deficit.

This past month in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, the large majority of bigots have had a field day. They killed a Shia because he was a Shia. They killed ten Ahmedis because they were Ahmedis; they orphaned forty and injured thirty. The Government of Pakistan, in its powerful wisdom, has announced that the suspect is 'the hidden hand' of our traditional enemy. It goes without saying that this perennial ubiquitous 'hidden hand' has never been found and chopped off by any of our brilliant governments.

>From the better educated of the educated world, we and the government should learn. A recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts (London) carried the transcript of a lecture given by Professor Bob Fryer, Assistant Vice-Chancellor at the University of Southampton. To quote :

"I sign up completely to the government's slogan of 'education, education, education' and I admire recent iniatives. I make that clear because I want to say a few critical things. My theme is the relationship between schooling and lifelong learning, and while I believe wholheartedly in the importance of education I believe it is dangerous to assume that it can be the sole or even the most effective tool of social change. It is wrong to assume that there is a clear relationship between learning and happiness or learning and work........".

Fryer talked about David Blunkett, the blind British Secretary of State for Education, a man who had been in the education field for years, having been allocated the education portfolio in the shadow cabinet whilst the labour Party was in opposition. His guide-dog, Lucy, a black Labrador, used to be a great favourite in the House of Commons. She retired honourably as an old lady not long ago and has been replaced by a younger, more agile yellow labrador guide.

To quote Fryer on Blunkett :

"David Blunkett has a wonderful vision which he expressed in the Green Paper, 'The Learning Age', and which remains for me a benchmark against which all initiatives need to be tested. In his foreword, the Secretary of State wrote : "We need the creativity, enterprise and scholarship of all our people. As well as securing our economic future, learning has a wider contribution. It helps make ours a civilized society, develops the spiritual side of our lives and promotes active citizenship. Learning enables people to play a full part in their community. It strengthens the family, the neighbourhood, and consequently the nation. It helps us fulfil our potential and opens doors to a love of music, art and literature. That is why we value learning for its own sake as well as for the equality of opportunity it brings."

"I cannot remember an official government publication that was serious enough to capture the idea of spirituality as well as creativity in the breadth of its compass. We need to remember what Mr Blunkett said.

"It is impossible to believe that however good any school and further education system was, it could deal with all the problems encountered throughout life. Increasingly, directors of education, head teachers, teachers and some school governors are realizing that lifelong learning concerns them, but we still have a long way to go and there are many challenges. . . . . . .

"Nearly eight million adults have serious difficulties with the basic skills of literacy and numeracy. We have seven million adults with no qualification whatsoever and 35 per cent of the workforce has never been offered a single day's training. There has been a welcome increase in learning at work in the past decade; the downside is that it goes mostly to professionals who are already highly qualified. We have a widening gap in qualifications, achievement, aspiration, and access to information in communications technology. We have too many people who are indifferent or hostile to the opportunities of learning."

A country with an almost 100 per cent literacy rate has its problems. Naturally of a different and less menacing sort from those of a country such as this one with a true literacy rate of some 20 per cent, with too many people aspiring to learn and too few facilities for them to learn.

Fryer maintains that there is a huge gap between the educationally qualified and unqualified. His question : What can schools do about this? His answer: "They are remarkable resources and I would like to see them made community centres of learning. Schools are the most valued, accessible and safe places in most communities. We need their buildings, their equipment and their teachers to be used and celebrated by everyone.They need to be used not only during school hours in school terms but during all hours throughout the year. In addition to providing opportunities for children to reach their highest possible levels, we need to raise the expectations and aspirations of everyone in the community and imbue in children the attitudes and competences of learning throughout life, not only study skills, but a whole bundle of others, including critical thining and cross-curricular compentence. These should become the norm so that there is a habit of lifelong learning."

We in Pakistan need schools. Period.

Musharraf took over this country from a corrupt undisciplined man, a dangerous despot, who sought to become the Shadow of God on Earth, the Ameerul Momineen, by threatening to promulgate his 15th constitutional amendment. Musharraf initially set out, so he obliquely once informed us, to be another Attaturk. We saw him relaxed and smiling, standing with his family and dogs. Soon Attaturk was ditched and the dogs were removed from the public limelight. For a few months I had quite a job convincing people that he is no relative of Big Chief Wumilong Umboppa and that the dogs have not been eaten up. Luckily and to my great relief, in his August interview on the BBC, when asked a foolish question about dogs being 'anti-Islamic', he answered, "Well I don't think dogs are anti-Islamic, certainly. I don't know who called them anti-Islamic. Well, let me admit to you very frankly, I love my dogs and my dogs love me also. It's a mutual love."

In April this year, he made noises about introducing procedural safeguards against the application of the highly controversial blasphemy laws. These were and are being used to incriminate innocent people. He was navigating soundly. Then suddenly, under fundo-pressure, he retracted. Not even a weak man likes a vacillating general.

The most important problem that Musharraf must address is that of an illiterate population explosion which means an explosion of bigots. Each minute eight babies are born in Pakistan, or 480 each hour, or 11,520 each day, or 4,204,000 each year. Let us assume that infant mortality takes its toll. Even then, at the end of five years, the survivors, some three million-plus, would need to find schools with places available. How does this government hope to educate, in the true sense of the word, the coming generations and endow them with free minds unless, as of now, it makes some move to contain the obscurantists, the bigots?

Any suggestions? Will the educated educate us?

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#3.

From: "Dr Uyangoda" 
Date sent: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 

We write this note to announce the availablity of a new website from Sri
Lanka launched by the Social Scientsts' Association (SSA) and Pravada
Publications. The site is <www.skyberlink.com/ssa>

The SSA is a progressive reseacrh, publication and advocay body that has
been in the forefront of the struggle for democracy, human rights, gender
equality, minority rights and peace in Sri Lanka. The webiste, as usually,
provides basic information about the SSA and its activities. But, its most
attractive component perhaps is the analysis of current sri Lankan events.
We plan to provide regular analysis and commentary on developments in Sri
Lanka with alternative news stories.

We shall appreciate if you could publicize our website through your
network.

Thanking you in advance,
Kumari Jayawardena and Jayadeva Uyangoda
Social Scientists' Association
425/15, Thimbirigasyaya Road
Colombo-5, Sri Lanka

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#4.

The Statesman
28 November 2000
Editorial

WHOSE VALUES? Questioning the spirit of science

What is this Centre for Spirituality that is to be set up in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, of all places? Apparently, it has something to do with “value education”, an idea that has sprung straight from the HRD Minister’s mouth, the assumption being that higher education in this country is synonymous with vice and immorality, since nobody knows how to chant the Vedas anymore or do pranayam at 4 o’ clock in the morning. Especially in JNU which has been running an insurgency against Indian culture. Something similar, called the Centre for Value Education, is to be set up in the IITs to mitigate the essential godlessness of science and all the unhappiness that can cause by way of jobs abroad and a healthy, affluent lifestyle.
Obviously, the corresponding assumption on the minister’s side is that values must essentially come from religion, in some way or the other; there can’t be a sphere of morality outside faith in God. As if all scientists are potential mass murderers, Moriartys in disguise. The greater danger, of course, is that this misplaced emphasis on anachronistic values imbibed uncritically will affect the nurture of other values that are more important for the functioning of a modern and free society — values such as objectivity, freedom of thought and expression. The HRD secretary, Mr MK Kaw predicts the emergence of a new science and draws a specious analogy with astronomy and chemistry, both of which grew out of the hitherto occult disciplines of astrology and alchemy. A new science of spirituality? Let us see it and subject it to the usual scientific scrutiny, establish that its scientificity is inextricably linked to the morality it proposes, and then admit it as an academic discipli!
ne worthy of study. The conduct of several so-called spiritual leaders — the devious Chandraswami or the licentious Osho or the Naga sadhus who run violently and nakedly amok in Allahabad during the Kumbh Mela — belies this hypothesis. The other complication is that, if it is Hinduism that is in question, a consensus on values would be very difficult to establish. In any case, a realm of knowledge accessible only to those who practice superior virtue, will be a real breakthrough.
The facts, however, are that the Sangh Parivar is making inroads into the campuses in Delhi, the BJP’s student wing, the ABVP, has just won the students union elections in JNU and there is a group, within the faculty, which calls itself “Teachers for Vajpayee”, which is openly interested in pushing the saffron agenda in higher education. Besides which, JNU — and the IITs — being directly administered by, and therefore dependent on Central aid, are in no position to defend their basic character or their academic mission from any kind of ideological encroachment. A centre for spirituality or value education sounds like a saffron Trojan horse aimed at tilting the ideological balance in the academic world, since both words belong essentially to the ideological universe of the BJP, as against, say, dialectical materialism. It is an ideological project.

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#5.

The Daily Star (Dhaka)

Prestige via Oxbridge? Kissa Kursi Ka!

Praful Bidwai writes from New Delhi

Governments should not make bequests to foreign universities to promote area studies, languages or culture. If these are worthy of serious attention, the universities concerned should promote them. Many indeed do. Endowments are best left to the expatriate community. An Oxbridge professorship is no longer what it used to be in prestige or providing leadership.

The Vajpayee government has mocked India's academic community by endowing Rs. 12 crores to Oxford University for a chair in Indian history and culture. For foreign minister Jaswant Singh, this was an "exciting" fulfilment of a long-held "dream".

For India's finest research institutions, this may be a nightmare. This contemptible search for false prestige distorts our education priorities. It does not show the "new" confidence of a "resurgent India", but just the opposite.

All the government has done is buy up a chair. This won't be the first India-related chair at Oxford. There already exist five positions. Some have been occupied by distinguished scholars, including Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

So Mr Jaswant Singh's claim to have created the first India chair reflects his own ignorance, natural for someone who joined politics after an undistinguished army career. So he is using public money to pursue a private fantasy. This is reprehensible.

His "dream" is worse. A major nation with a thriving scholarly community shouldn't have to buy chairs abroad. Here, New Delhi is following its own bete noir Pakistan. Bhutto and Zia-ul-Haq also made endowments to Oxford and Cambridge. But Bhutto was an Oxford alumnus, whereas the Singhs and Vajpayees had humbler education, which they are compensating with vaulting ambition.

Governments should not make bequests to foreign universities to promote area studies, languages or culture. If these are worthy of serious attention, the universities concerned should promote them. Many indeed do. Endowments are best left to the expatriate community.

An Oxbridge professorship is no longer what it used to be in prestige or providing leadership. Today, any Oxford teacher can get a "titular" professorship for the asking.

However, the present case is particularly deplorable for the disproportion between the government's generosity to Oxford and the way it treats Indian universities. Today, the average budget of each Indian university, with hundreds of teachers, is less than Rs. seven crores.

The Oxford endowment is three times the budget of the Indian Council of Historical Research and more than one-half the budget of the Indian Council of Social Science Research, to which 27 institutes are affiliated.

Grotesquely, most of the 27 institutes have no assured funds to pay even salaries. Many live from hand to mouth. Most can't even pay University Grants Commission-scale salaries. For instance, ICSSR senior researchers, with a doctorate, earn Rs. 1,250 per monththree times less than a chaprasi, well below the minimum wage.

Most ICSSR-affiliated institutes have been plunged into bankruptcy under the new chairman's "austerity" measures. Acclaimed scholar Partha Chatterjee, director of Calcutta's Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, has threatened to resign unless the grants are restored.

The ICSSR headquarters is horribly depressing. As a former Governing Council member, I still cannot forget my disgust with its functioning. For years, it operated from a sadistically maintained building without usable toilets.

At the Council's meetings, attended by India's topmost social scientists, we were never once served a hot meal comparable to what students eat. Worse, we were routinely insulted by petty bureaucrats, who relished telling us we would get no money from the sole funding source: the education ministry. And the ICSSR is an "autonomous" institution!

The justification for keeping ICSSR institute directors on tenterhooks is unvarying: there's no money. Strangely, however, under chairman M.L. Sondhi, it is setting up new institutes. The latest are "Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Gateway of Social Sciences", "Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Centre for Social Welfare" (whose sole major activity was to organise BJP president Laxman's talk) and "Centre for the Study of National Security"created in collaboration with JNU, without consulting its academics.

The new Centre will collaborate with numerous institutes arbitrarily chosen by Mr Sondhi. The ICSSR is also funding a gigantic "SP Mookerjee International Conference" on "the national and global agenda," no less.

This is part of Hindutva's foray into higher education, reflected in its takeover of the University Grants Commission, National Museum, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, National Council of Educational Research and Training, and Indian Council of Philosophical Research.

The sangh parivar's foray abroad is a pitiable attempt to gain a figleaf of intellectual respectabilitysomething it has always craved but never achieved. In the 75 years of the RSS's existence, its ideologues have failed to produce any scholarly work. Their highwater-mark is a few tawdry pamphlets full of venom against secularism, social reform and the minorities. By contrast, India's Left-liberal scholars have produced world-class work in history, economics, sociology and political science.

No wonder Hindutva proponents use extra-intellectual methods to combat their opponentsraucously disrupting debates, physically attacking conferencesICHR's chairman B.R. Grover recently disrupted a seminar in Montreal, closing exhibitionsas in Delhi's National Gallery of Modern Art, and banning books and films.

The only time I was heckled and prevented from speaking against nuclear weapons was on May 16, 1998. The heckler was Mr Sondhi. However, it is extremely doubtful if reputable Western institutions, which respect academic freedom, will bestow legitimacy upon sanghi academics. A case is the Hindujas' early 1990s effort to establish a chair in Vedic studies at Columbia University. The faculty refused to entertain this even with a changed title ("Indic" studies).

So overbearing was the Hindujas' interference in syllabus and personnel selection that the project collapsed. The Hindutva agenda means subverting rational norms of academic functioning, including balance and democratic decency values alien to the parivar. But because many Western universities are turning mercenary, there is a danger that their resistance to Hindutva's depredations will weaken. This must not be allowed to happen.

One final point: The Hindujas have been charge-sheeted in the Bofors scandal by the Central Bureau of Investigation on new evidence in Swiss courts. The government must have no track with them. And all academic institutions must sever their links.

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#6. 

Deccan Chronicle (Hyderabad, India)
28 November 2000

Varsity teachers threaten students, force them into RSS

New Delhi, Nov. 27: A large number of the students from Dr Y S Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry at Solan in Himachal Pradesh have written to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee seeking his intervention on the issue of organising of "shakhas" by a section of teachers and the attacks on minorities in the campus, allegedly by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad activists.

The university has witnessed unprecedented violence during the last ten days and its is learnt that all the academic activities have been suspended and the hostels have been vacated.

A spokesperson of university students, Sandeep Kumar who is also the State convener of the Himachal Students Union was injured in the recent clashes.

"We want the senior political leadership at the Centre to take note of what is happening at the University. We even want the Indian Council for Agriculture Research to take note of the developments. Various incidents have been taking place since November 18. The authorities have been tampering with the facts and misguiding the police."

"There is a sense of insecurity amongst the students. The absence of police all along has baffled many as the campus has witnessed violence for the last so many days and even on November 24, the police was called only after the students locked up two university officials," said Kumar showing his badly bruised face.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the students coming from Jammu and Kashmir and other minorities, Lokesh in his letter addressed to the Prime Minister has alleged that the teachers from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cadre organise “shakhas’’ at the campus in the mornings and compel the students to join them and get affiliated to the ABVP.

The letter mentions, "Since there is internal grading system in agriculture universities, it is very difficult to ignore them. If we don't join the shakhas and their student wing the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, then we are to face suppression and also attacked time and again."

The letter mentions that on November 22 and November 23 students from Jammu and Kashmir were attacked by the ABVP activists on similar grounds on being provoked by the teachers from the RSS cadre and criminal cases were also framed against them.

The students of Jammu and Kashmir have stated in the letter to the Prime Minister, "This has led to tense and ugly situation and the university is closed for 10 days. You are requested to intervene in the matter immediately and save minorities in the matter immediately and save the minorities at the campus of Parmar University."

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SACW dispatch 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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