[sacw] SACW Dispatch | 31 Aug. 00

Harsh Kapoor aiindex@mnet.fr
Wed, 30 Aug 2000 22:56:24 +0200


South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
31 August 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

#1. Learning From Afghanistan
#2. Desperately Seeking the Disappeared in Kashmir
#3. The war against women [in Kashmir]
#4. Support Indian Historian re Cultural Property in Conflict situations
#5. Hindu Supremacist Right plans a yatra across the US
#6. Attempt To Stifle Academic Freedom In Montreal Fails

--------------------------------------------

#1.

Published in The News (Political Economy)
August 27, 2000

LEARNING FROM AFGHANISTAN
By Kaiser Bengali

Landing at Kabul or any airport in Afghanistan conveys the message, loud
and clear, that one has arrived in a war zone. Off the runway, the grounds
are littered with debris of anti-aircraft guns and planes, some burnt and
charred, some partly blown off, and others lying in various angles. Airport
buildings are pock-marked, interior furniture and furnishings have
apparently been looted, and the few international passengers are dealt with
at improvised immigration desks by officers wearing crumpled shalwar kameez
and slippers, who make entries in registers bought in Peshawar book shops.

The drive to the city shows more signs of war damage. Charred and twisted
tanks, armoured cars, trucks etc., litter both sides of the highway.
Entering Kabul reveals the full horror of the war. About two-thirds of the
city is completely destroyed, with about a dozen or at most two dozen
buildings standing in the centre. One can drive for miles in the city and
all one can see is rubble. Imagine driving in Rawalpindi along Murree Road
and onwards to Raja Bazaar, or in Lahore around the Assembly area along
Mall Road, or in Karachi along M.A. Jinnah Road or University Road, or in
Quetta along Jinnah Road, or in Peshawar through Chowk Yadgar or Hayatabad
and every building on either side as far as the eyes can see is a pile of
rubble. That is Kabul today.

Public utilities are rudimentary. The only vehicles on the streets are
taxis and UN jeeps. The few private cars are mostly owned by government
officials. Ninety percent of shops are either boarded up or empty,
apparently looted. The Palace built by King Amanullah is also in ruins.
Standing there, one can make out where fountains and other garden
adornments must have been. Otherwise too, one can make out that Kabul was
once a beautiful city, with broad two-way roads lined by trees and green
belts and with several gardens and parks. But that is the Kabul that was.

Standing amidst the physical destruction leaves one numb and speechless.
Most painful, however, is the human destruction; so plainly visible. The
number of deaths and missing run into hundreds of thousands. But those who
have survived are paying a continuing price. The war has shattered families
and destroyed lives. More than once, I encountered old women who asked me
to find sons who had been taken away by armed men and had never returned.
More than once, I had to deal with old men who held my hand and wept
because their sons had died. Standing on a corner of the city, I lost count
of the number of disabled adults and children; some without arms, others
without legs, some blind in one eye, others blind altogether. The sight of
children without both legs crawling before you or children with one arm
asking for alms is most heart breaking.

One family of five consists of a man and four minor children. The man is
crippled on account of war wounds and cannot work. His wife was killed. The
four minor children are the bread earners of the family. In the words of
the man, sometimes they eat and sometimes they don=EDt. Hunger is endemic. =
A
survey in a northern city revealed that one fifth of households subsist
largely on bread, onion soup and tea. Over three fourths of households do
not consume any meat, milk or fruits. During the survey, surveyors reported
the women interviewed wept when asked how much of mutton, chicken, eggs,
milk or fruit they consumed. Several said that their children did not know
what these items tasted like.

It is also common to come across mentally disturbed people. One relatively
well dressed man blocked the way of our vehicle and began to make a speech,
as if in a public meeting. The driver had to get out and gently nudge him
out of the way. Another man was found sitting motionless, face cradled in
his right palm and legs crossed, on a pile of rubble on a street where
houses on both sides had been bombed out. On inquiry, I was told that the
house besides which he was sitting was where he used to live with his
family. While he was away, the house had received a direct hit and the
entire family had been killed. He arrived there every morning and left at
sunset.

One teenager works as a tea boy in a donor office. His father is a
professor at Kabul University, but has not been paid the meagre salary for
months. His elder brother is an engineer, but sells old things on the
street. His sister was a final year student at the University, but could
not complete her education because of the Taliban edict. She just sits at
home, doing nothing. He himself is the major bread earner of the family and
cannot afford to go to school. He knows that without education his future
is bleak, but surviving the present has to take precedence over the future.

The irony of the two decades of conflict in Afghanistan is that the city of
Kabul was largely intact by the time the Russians left in 1989. The
destruction was wrought on the Afghan people by the Mujahedeen commanders,
the blue-eyed boys of the CIA and the ISI. Driving along a road in Kabul,
one is told of Hikmatyar's control on the left side and Masood's control on
the right. Further along, one is pointed out the area under Hizb-e-Wahdat
control and so on. Different commanders controlled different areas of
Kabul, shelled each other with the heaviest weapons available, and turned
Kabul into rubble; murdering families and destroying lives. The Mujahedeen
period from 1989 to 1996 is remembered by Afghans for its anarchy and
lawlessness. Groups of armed men barging into homes, taking away any young
men or older boys with them, looting whatever took their fancy, and raping
women was a common occurrence.

The Taliban may be the bad boys in the eyes of the west and the drawing
room liberals in Pakistan, but they have to be credited with imposing
absolute peace in the parts of the country under their control. One may not
agree with Taliban laws, but they have to be acknowledged for instituting
the rule of law. Despite widespread hunger, robberies and holdups are rare.
Truckers can drive from one end of the country to another without anyone
accosting them for money or any favours. Most of all, women are safe. They
can walk alone on the streets, albeit in a burqa, without any fear of being
harassed. None of these claims can be made for the territory controlled by
non-Taliban forces. And incidentally, none of these claims can be made for
any part of Pakistan either.

The Islamic regime imposed by the Taliban is harsh indeed, particularly for
women. In reality, however, what appears to have occurred in Afghanistan is
not Islamization but tribalization. Prior to the war, whatever semblance of
modernization there existed was limited to the city centres of Kabul and
some other big cities. The modernized elite, who wore western dresses and
sent their daughters to universities, was narrowly centred around the royal
family and the military officer class. Outside of this island of relative
modernity, Afghanistan existed in the medieval age. Mountain tribes had had
no experience with electricity or telephones or with education or health
facilities. In the world that they knew of, girls never went to schools and
women never went to hospitals because there never ever had been any school
or clinic in their village or in any of the villages that they knew of.
When these mountain tribesmen gained the reins of power in Kabul, they
could not but impose a social and political order that they were aware of
and familiar with. What really occurred was that the Afghan hinterland
arrived in and took over Kabul. For want of an ideological platform,
however, they chose the banner of Islam.

The Taliban regime is also egalitarian in some respects. Ministers=ED offic=
es
are modest and they sit on the floor and eat like any body else, the head
of Kabul airport commutes to work on a bicycle, and so on. However, the
egalitarianism appears to be borne out of sheer poverty rather than
conviction. This is indicated by the fact that the Taliban have reversed
the land reforms of the =EBcommunist=ED era and the lands distributed to po=
or
peasants have been reverted to the feudal lords and tribal chiefs. For a
war ravaged country, where one in seven household does not have any adult
male or an able bodied male, the ban on women=EDs work amounts to condemnin=
g
these families to starvation and only betrays the Taliban=EDs callousness
regarding the plight of the under-privileged.

The lessons for Pakistan from the Afghan experience are profound.
Afghanistan was a dual society. The elite lived comfortably and even
luxuriously. The mass of the people merely eked out a living without any of
the trappings of modern civilization. There was a rising urban bourgeoisie
which was progressive enough to clamour for egalitarian change; but their
efforts amounted to too little, too late. The pressures of duality
fractured the society, leading to political upheavals and war, and the
consequential deaths and destruction on such a vast scale. The criminal
role of the two superpowers in using Afghanistan as their cold war battle
ground and destroying at least two generations of a part of humanity cannot
be over-looked, but the internal conditions for such a situation were
provided by the Afghan ruling classes themselves.

Pakistan is no less a dual society, with sub-layers within each layer.
Societal fault lines have primarily been created through parallel education
systems. At one end are the westernized English-medium educated propertied
class, whose life-styles would be the envy of any upper class family in any
developed country. This class classifies itself as =EBmodernized=ED and
encompasses the military, the civil bureaucracy, the judiciary, the major
political parties, professionals, and even the nascent NGO-cracy. At the
other end are the non-propertied Urdu-medium or Madrassah educated class.
Both have a totally different and conflicting world view. While the upper
elite subscribe to liberal values such as individual rights, gender
equality, etc., the Madrassah graduates reject such liberal values and do
not even subscribe to notions of democracy or human rights.

Pakistan is not Afghanistan by any stretch of imagination. Unlike
Afghanistan, even the remotest village in Pakistan has been exposed to
elements of modernity: electricity, telephones, schools, dispensaries, etc.
The danger of a takeover by 14th century minded tribals is non-existent.
However, it cannot be ignored that Pakistan is also a society fractured
along multiple fault lines. The =EBmodernized=ED upper elite is limited to =
E
and F sectors in Islamabad and the Defence Societies in Lahore, Karachi and
Peshawar. The =EBmodernized=ED upper elite has assured the best housing,
education, health and recreation facilities for itself. It bears only about
15 percent of the tax burden, which will be reduced further now that Wealth
Tax has been abolished. It has turned a blind eye to the fact that the mass
of people live in slums, send their children to worthless schools and
madrassahs, suffer morbidity and mortality on account of poor nutrition and
health facilities, and yet bear over 85 percent of the tax burden. That the
vast hinterland of the dispossessed Urdu-medium and Madrassah educated
cadres will one day take over the capital cities is inevitable. That
Pakistan too may suffer the nightmare of Afghanistan is something one can
only pray against.

______

#2.

The Times of India
Wednesday 30 August 2000

DESPERATELY SEEKING THE DISAPPEARED

By Mohua Chatterjee

NEW DELHI: In the last 11 years, over 2000 people, between the ages of 10
and 70, have disappeared from the Kashmir Valley after they were allegedly
picked up by the security forces. They have left behind desperate families
who have tried everything to trace their dear ones, but to no avail. Now,
100 relatives of those missing will gather in Srinagar on Wednesday -- the
International Day of Disappeared Persons -- to tell the world their tale of
misery.

The relatives have drawn up a list of those who have disappeared since
1989. Consider these:

* Zahoor Ahmed Sofi. Arrested on August 8, 1994, by 15th Battalion, BSF.
Petition filed under 491-CrPC no.20/99. Still missing.

* Mohammed Rafiq Bhatt. Arrested on August 19, 1992, by BSF. Petition
filed under 491-CrPC No.19/99. Still missing.

* Mushtaq Ahmed Khan. Arrested on midnight April 13/14, 1997, by 20th
Grenade Army C/O 56 APO. Petition filed under 491-CrPC No. 15/99. Still
missing.

These and many more cases will be discussed at the meeting, organised by
the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). ``The APDP,
formed in 1994 by relatives of the missing people who met in various courts
while trying to file and follow up habeas corpus petitions, comprises
mainly poor, uneducated, women who stepped out of their kitchen for the
first time in their lives, in search of their missing family members. They
went to security officials, police stations, politicians, courts and
prisons in different parts of the country, with a photograph of their sons,
fathers and husbands,'' said Parvez Imroz, human rights activist and APDP
spokesperson.

And what did they end up with? Official apathy, according to Imroz who
points out that the state government does not acknowledge the phenomenon of
disappearances. ``The elected government blamed the previous governments
for them and initiated a process in 1996, of inviting applications with
details about the missing people from their relatives. People reacted
immediately and submitted the details. But nothing has happened ever
since,'' he said.

The APDP wants Amnesty International, which has already opened an action
file on it, to be allowed to investigate the cases of disappearances in the
Valley.

``There is a method in these disappearances,'' says Imroz. According to
him: * The law enforcing agencies arrest people during raids, routine
patrolling, search operations.

* Then the relatives of the detainees, approach the security officials who
usually assure them their relatives will be released shortly. That never
happens.

* After a few visits the relatives are told that the people they are
looking for were not arrested.

* In desperation, they approach other security officials and move
applications to civil authorities like the district magistrate, divisional
commissioners and even political leaders, who seem equally helpless.

* The local police authorities almost never file an FIR against the
security forces.

``Meanwhile, lakhs are spent in running from pillar to post - travelling
from one interrogation centre to the other - in search of the detenues,''
adds Imroz. But the wait still continues.

The fall-out of these disappearances is mostly economic since it is the
earning member who goes missing, leaving behind `half-widows' and children
who are sooner than later, deserted by their in-laws.

But more corrosive is the psychological impact - constant agony and
trans-generational trauma. ``After this continues for some time, they
develop into physiological and psychological disorders. And these people
cease to live normal lives'', according to Amit Basu, psychiatrist who will
be helping the organisation to set up trauma centres in the state.

Copyright =A9 2000 Times Internet Limited
_____

#3.

Indian Express
30 August 2000

THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN

by Anupreeta Das

Photographer Sheba Chhachhi's images of women in Kashmir (wives,
mothers, daughters, professionals, sisters, victims of rape, refugees)
and their accompanying stories, captured in bold, black type, remain
etched in your mind long after you've left the exhibition hall. Titled
Women's Voices from Kashmir, Chhachhi's exhibition, which is part of a
recently-concluded symposium on human security organised in New Delhi by
WISCOMP, an NGO committed to looking at security issues from a gender
perspective, brings into sharp focus two things.

One: civilians, especially women and children, are the most severely
affected in war-related violence. Additionally, the tendency to
generalise women as a weak, victimised group which needs to be protected
in times of conflict, helps perpetrate their exclusion from the
decision-making process, both in times of war and peace.

Wars in the post-Cold War era have become increasingly localised, and
more often than not, are fought along ethnic fault-lines, which means
that local people get caught amid the gunfire. Chhachhi's photographs
bear testimony to this. There is Kunan Poshpora, which is known as
Kashmir's ``raped village'' nine years after security forces raped 30 of
its women in February 1991. Then, there are women speaking about the
economic and social costs of war from refugee camps in the Capital, and
glimpses of the emotional hardships suffered by those who have lost a
husband, son or brother in conflict.

The 1996 UN Human Development Report estimates that about 75 per cent of
those killed in war are civilians, and of the total war casualites, a
majority are women and children. Of the nearly 2,80,000 people displaced
by last year's Kargil war, 80 per cent were women and children.

This growing realisation of the human cost of conflict -- in terms of
the loss of innocent life, habitat, infrastructure and dignity -- has
prompted several civil society institutions to re-examine the concept of
security. Explains Vibha Parthasarthy of the National Commission of
Women: ``Security in the new millennium has to be viewed holistically.
Access to food and health services, a safe environment, the provision of
human rights and emotional and cultural well-being are integral to the
security of any people.''

An organisation like WISCOMP (Women in Security, Conflict Management and
Peace), for example, looks at security primarily as a `people's
prerogative', but through a gender lens. Of course, one could argue that
it's nothing but the Guns versus Butter (or Bombs versus Bread, if you
find it more relevant) dialogue with a new twist, born out of the old
rhetoric that increased defence expenditure necessarily implies a
compromise in the budget for welfare measures. If human security means
the provision of basic needs and access to social opportunities in an
atmosphere of well-being, a gender perspective within this alternative
security paradigm is justified because women (cutting laterally across
identities of class, community or nationality) are a marginalised group.

While the responsibilities of women -- in keeping families together,
providing for the household, raising children and caring for war victims
-- have increased in a heightened atmosphere of conflict (insurgency,
civil war, border wars in almost all corners of the globe), their voices
are often obscured or misrepresented. Also, with rape being increasingly
used as a weapon of war by armies, women are especially susceptible to
victimisation during wars that are not of their making. Whether one
looks at the scale and organisation of rape during the war in Bosnia, or
the sexual exploitation of women by rebel armies in northern Uganda in
the past decade, rape is intended to defile women and demoralise the
`enemy', a brutally skewed assertion of `manhood' and `virility' that is
associated with power.

The power trip also extends into the notion that men have to fight wars
to protect the `honour' of their women, an idea sustained by the
repeated invoking of mythological heroines like Sita and Draupadi. Even
when women have taken to battle -- portrayed effectively in Santosh
Sivan's The Terrorist, where Ayesha Dharker plays a suicide bomber for a
terrorist outfit, or the more euphemistic Dil Se by Mani Ratnam, where
Manisha Koirala is an agent of terrorism -- they are usually pawns in a
game they have no control over. As one of the women in Chhachhi's
photographs says: ``If we become militants, what will happen to the
children?''

Either way, women stand to lose the most in situations of violence and
conflict, though their experiences are hardly represented in war
discourse. This selective interpretation of how armed conflict ravages
society, says noted Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist Asma
Jehangir, leads to the belief that ``security is not an issue for women.
Decisions in circumstances of conflict or peace-time are mostly
undertaken by men, which leads to the disempowerment of women.''
Obviously, as long as national security is equated with increasing
nuclearisation, militarisation and (a corresponding rise in)
belligerence, the idea of human security, which can be regarded as a
precursor for human development, will not take hold. ``Women'', says
Jehangir, ``are repulsed by the concept of war,'' and if brought into
decision-making, would better facilitate the peace process among
nations.

_____

#4.

[Please help professor Shrimali in his research effort, on monuments &
other cultural property in wake of conflict; We hope that those familiar
with the massive destruction of properties due to the ongoing war in
Kashmir (both Sides of India and Pakistan) and in parts of India's North
east will report to the below e-mail address by the 10th of September 2000]

From:
Krishna Mohan Shrimali
Professor of History
Delhi 100 007, India
E-mail: shrimali@d...
Phone: (0091) (0)11-7256659

REPORT ON THE DESTRUCTION OF CULTURAL PROPERTY IN CONFLICT SITUATIONS IN
SOUTH ASIA

Dear [Friends],

The World Archaeological Congress (WAC) has assigned me the responsibility
of preparing a report
on the aforesaid subject. It is being done as part of a larger project to
collect relevant information from different parts of the world. Eventually,
it is expected to help formulating broad policies to preserve world
heritage.

Broadly, the parameters of 'Cultural Property' are taken as those defined
by UNESCO. For purposes of our report, 'Conflict Situations' are seen that
involve (a) armed conflicts; (b) heightened social tensions amongst
different communities on account of conflicting claims on and problems of
access to ancient remains and cultural property; (c) advance of commercial
interests.

[...] I seek your cooperation in identifying (a) specific cultural
properties that fall under the above criteria; (b) efforts being made by
local administration, state administration and local communities to prevent
destruction (to be spelt out separately); (c) nature of destruction, if
any; (d) steps taken after the destruction; (e) difficulties being faced by
you and your colleagues; (f) private bodies, if any, engaged in the task of
preserving / conserving cultural property; and (g) nature of consciousness
among people about the value of cultural property and efforts being made by
you or other agencies in creating / developing such consciousness. You may
kindly respond to any or all of these queries, as the case may be. I am
particularly looking forward to recieve your cooperation in generating
information on cultural property in different parts of India.

In case you have any consolidated list of Remains, Monuments, Cultural
Property in the area under reference, I shall be happy to have it.

Looking forward to recieveing your response by the 10th September 2000 at
the latest.

yours sincerely

K.M Shrimali

_____

#5.

Outlook
September 04, 2000

VHP
THE COWBOYS HEAD WEST
LURED BY THE PROMISE OF NRI GREENBACKS, THE VHP PLANS A SAFFRON YATRA IN
THE UNITED STATES

By Rajesh Joshi

In a build-up to the Babri masjid demolition in the early 90s they created
a saffron wave in India by taking out several Ram rath yatras countrywide.
Now, in the new millennium they're set to take out a yatra in hitherto
'impure' lands across the seas. And this time it=92s the turn of the United
States. Mahamandaleshwars, jagadgurus, swamis, acharyas and sadhvis of all
hues will swamp the US in the first week of September under the aegis of
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, America (vhpa). This VHP-sponsored plan to
saffronise America will be implemented through what the VHP sadhus are best
at: taking out a dharma prachar yatra, or the dpy as the American chapter
of the VHP calls it. The DPY is slated to criss-cross at least 15 major
cities across the US.

"The yatra has been planned in a manner so that all of America is covered
with Hindutva," Amrit Sharma, coordinator of VHP's videsh vibhag told
Outlook. Taking advantage of the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious
and Spiritual Leaders beginning on August 28 at the United Nations, the VHP
sadhus, after the conclusion of the summit, will fan out in small groups to
different cities in order to spread the message of Hindutva. According to
vhpa coordinator Anjlee Pandya, the yatra will begin on September 1 and
last a week. The grand finale will be a public meeting in New York on
September 9. Significantly, PM A.B. Vajpayee has agreed to be the chief
guest at the 'cultural event' which will be attended by, among others, top
NRI [Non Resident Indian] professionals and businessmen. But the hardcore
elements in the saffron brigade aren't too happy about Vajpayee gracing the
occasion. Says a senior VHP leader, "Vajpayee won't be coming for purely
religious reasons. He's emulating Clinton and will go with a battery of
industrialists." This could also be due to the growing differences between
the VHP and the prime minister, but, apparently, it was the VHPA that
insisted on inviting Vajpayee.

In this first-of-its-kind yatra, the VHP's sadhus will visit local temples
where they=92ll give religious discourses and field questions from the
audience. The VHPA's already appealed to its activists and volunteers to
make the necessary arrangements. Among the prominent sadhus participating
in the yatra are Swami Satyanand Saraswati and Swami Satyamitranand who
will go to Chicago, Swami Chidananda Maharaj and Swami Avdheshanand will
cover Miami, Baba Paramjit Singh, Karamjit Singh (Sikh priests) and Swami
Rambhadracharya will visit Detroit. Jagatguru Shankaracharya Divyanand and
Swami Jitatmanand of the Ramakrishna Mission will go to Orlando, and
Acharya Dharmendra and Swami Vigyananand to Los Angeles. VHP leading
lights, acting president Ashok Singhal and vice-president Acharya Giriraj
Kishore, will also have their own meet-the-people programmes.

Ostensibly, the yatra seeks to "spread the message of the Peace Summit" but
the real goal is to woo the dollar-earning nris. Interestingly, even
earlier, a substantial chunk of donations for the proposed temple at
Ayodhya came from abroad; and this jan-sampark exercise is expected to
augment the VHP's kitty for the construction, slated to start next year.
Says Acharya Dharmendra, "We want to address the lack of dialogue between
India and the nris. There=92re a lot of misgivings about the VHP, that it i=
s
an intolerant organisation and so forth, therefore dialogue is a must. If
they (the Americans) have problems we will explain our position."

Sadhus and sadhvis like Rithambhara and Acharya Dharmendra, whose oratory
has often raised hackles, make no bones about what they want to tell the
American people. As Acharya Dharmendra told Outlook, "Whenever I go abroad
I always ask people, why should there be a mosque in the birthplace of Ram?
Why should there be an Idgah adjacent to the birthplace of Krishna and why
should there be a mosque next to the Kashi temple? These are the symbols of
our humiliation which generate an inferiority complex. And as long as there
is an inferiority complex, peace cannot be achieved: Jo satya hai, voh kaha
jayega (I'll present the truth)." Dharmendra also clearly says he will use
this opportunity to observe and understand the way Hindus live in the US:
Bahar rahne se sankraman ya pradushan ki sambhavnayein rahtee hein. Hum
chahenge ki unhen apne samskar dein (Once you live outside there is always
a high possibility of contamination and impurity; we want to inculcate our
culture into people who live there).

The VHP's success stems from its steadfast, though hotly contested, bid to
project itself as the sole representative of Hindus worldwide, never mind
its image of being an intolerent and fundamentalist organisation at home.
The VHPA, which was established in 1970, has of late been organising dharma
sansads for its overseas members. In the first dharma sansad held in 98 in
the US, a resolution was passed declaring the vhpa an umbrella organisation
of all Hindu outfits in the West. It reads: "The VHPA should be the voice
of Hindus in the western hemisphere. All religious, spiritual, cultural
organisations, temples and ashrams should associate, endorse and/or
affiliate with the vhpa to make the Hindu voice more effective."

Ironically, the Millennium World Peace Summit, which is supposed to resolve
conflicts and bring about peace through spiritual means, is going to have
Indian guests like Sadhvi Rithambhara who was once booked for rabid
communal speeches and inciting violence. But it seems clear that those who
want to make the "Hindu voice more effective" have now set their eyes on
the US. And that could well divide the Indian diaspora along religious
lines.

Ostensibly, the yatra will "spread the message of the peace summit", but
the real aim is to propagate Hindutva.

=A9 Copyright Outlook 2000

----

DHARMA PRACHAR YATRA
(Destinations of the Yatra from September 1, 2000 to September 8, 2000)

NEW YORK
A gala reception for the Dharma Gurus and PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee is
planned on September 9. An invitation has also been extended to
President Clinton as the head of the host nation
Local Coordinator: Dr. Ila Sukhadia

LOS ANGELES
Key figures: Acharya Dharmendra and Swami Vigyananand

CHICAGO
Key figures: Swami Satyanand Saraswati and Swami Satyamitranand

CINCINNATI
Local Coordinator: Renu Gupta

St. LOUIS
Key figures: Jagatguru Ramanandacharya Ayodhyadas

PITTSBURG/HARRISBURG
Local Coordinator: Hasu Shah

HOUSTON
Key figures: Sumedha Thero and Sadhvi Shiva Saraswati

DETROIT
Key figures: Baba Paramjit Singh, Karamjit Singh and Swami
Rambhadracharya

HOUSTON
Key figures: Sumedha Thero and sadhvi Shiva Saraswati

ATLANTA
Key figures: Swami Chinmayanand and Bhante Gyan Jagat

BOSTON
Local Coordinator: Nachiketa Tiwari

NORTH JERSEY
Local Coordinator: Arvind Patel

SOUTH JERSEY
Local Coordinator: Dr. Veena Gandhi

PHILADELPHIA

WASHINGTON D.C.
Key figure:Swami Mrigananda

MIAMI
Key figures: Swami Chidananda Maharaj and Swami Avdheshanand

ORLANDO
Key figures: Jagatguru Shankaracharya Divyanand and Swami Jitatmanand

THE OBJECTIVES:
* To clear the misconceptions about the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
* Establishing a dialogue with NRIs and spreading awareness about Hindu
culture, especially among the younger generation of the NRIs
* Enrolling activists at the local levels
* Asserting the VHP's point of view about issues like the Ayodhya
movement
and attacks on Christians

FLAG-BEARERS
Ashok Singhal: The acting VHP president has been instrumental in
entrenching the VHP on foreign shores

Swami Chinmayanand: Member of the margdarshak mandal and also a BJP
parliament member

Acharya Dharmendra: Margdarshak mandal member, known for his fiery
oratory

Bhante Gyan Jagat: One of the main Indian Buddhist monks and a member of
the VHP's executive

Acharya Giriraj Kishore: Vice-president and spokesperson of the VHP

Shankaracharya Swami Divyanand: MP from Bhanupura, also a member of the
margdarshak mandal

Swami Avdheshanandji: (From Prabhu Prem Ashram, Ambala) a member of the
margdarshak mandal

Sadhvi Shiva Saraswati: Member of the margdarshak mandal

Mahant Aditya Nath: BJP MP from Gorakhpur

=A9 Copyright Outlook 2000
______

#6.

PRESS RELEASE

ATTEMPT TO STIFLE ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN MONTREAL FAILS

On Monday 28 August a group of delegates from India at the 36th ICANAS
(International Congress of Asian and North African Studies) attempted to
have a round-table on "The Re-writing of History: intellectual freedom
and contemporary politics in South Asia" removed. A letter was
addressed to Dr. Charles LeBlanc, President of the Congress, signed by
delegates from India, M.M. Sankhdher, Daya N. Tripathi, T.D. Dwivedi and
B.R. Grover. They asked him to stop the round-table from proceeding.
They characterized it as a "vilification campaign launched by K.N.
Panikkar of Jawaharlal Nehru University...and his camp followers in
Montreal against [Indian] national institutions of research and learning
such as the Indian Council of Historical Research, the government of
India as well as intellectuals and academics who do not subscribe to
their ideology." They said that the round-table was attempting to give
"scholarly respectability" to political actions.

When they were unsuccessful and the round-table proceeded as scheduled
at 2pm they entered the conference room and tried to disrupt the
proceedings raising points of order along the lines that this was a
private Indian matter, dirty linen should not be washed in public, it
was an attack on the government of India. Substantive points of dispute
were never raised. Prof. K.N. Panikkar addressed the gathering with a
presentation "Outsider as Enemy: Politics of Rewriting History in
India". B.R. Grover, the head of the Indian Council for Historical
Research was given the opportunity to respond. In addressing the
assembly he was unable to disprove points of information provided by
Prof. Panikkar.

Earlier this year, two volumes of documents from the [Indian]
independence movement against British colonial rule -- part of a mega
project entitled "Towards Freedom" submitted to Oxford University Press
were arbitrarily withdrawn by the Indian Centre for Historical Research
(ICHR). The volumes were edited by two eminent and veteran Indian
historians, K.N. Panikkar and Sumit Sarkar.

Since coming to power last year, the present Indian governmet lead by
the Hindu fundamentalist party, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has
started an assault on all democratic and secular educational
institutions. It has placed its sympathizers on the Board of the ICHR.
The BJP policy on education has involved a major doctoring of school
texts in the states ruled by the BJP and there has also been a
systematic and continuous attack on secular historiography, on
democratic cultural expression and on minorities.

The speed, frequency and impunity of the attacks and the dismantling of
independent and autonomous academic instutions are part of the public
domain, apparent to any India watcher. This spring, Indo-Canadian Deepa
Mehta's filming of "Water" the third of her filmic trilogy was abruptly
ended due to harrassment and threatened violence by militant members of
the one of the group of organizations affiliated to the Sangh Parivar
(of which the BJP is the political wing).

And the tentacles of interference with the search for truth and academic
freedom have been extended overseas and in Canada as well. What happened
at ICANAS is not the first such attempt. On July 27th, Prof. Hugh
Johnston, President of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, a bilateral,
non-partisan academic institutions jointly funded by the governments of
Canada and India pulled support from an art exhibition in Ontario, as a
result of pressure brought to bear on the Shastri Institute by the
government of India. (Globe & Mail, Sat. 26 Aug, and Toronto Star, Mon.
29 Aug.)

At the round-table, Mr. Grover explained his orders to Oxford University
Press to withhold publication as being generated by a concern about an
"imbalance in selection of documents". Later he said that he himself had
not perused the manuscript. When questioned about the logic of
withholding publication based on an uninformed premise, he responded by
saying he had not made that statement. He also denied other statements
he had just made to the assembly such as "complete distortion of facts",
when later pressed on those points.

Prof. Michael Witzel of Harvard University, an academic of international
repute who has challenged spurious claims in recent Indian revisionist
history, and who was quoted by Prof. Panikkar was also in the audience.

Addressing the point that such a round-table had not place in an
academic conference, the moderator of the round-table said that in fact,
historians had grave concerns that tampering with historical works had
serious consequences. In fact the attempts to stifle discussion and then
disrupt the proceedings only served to prove that the concerns of the
organizers of the round-table were well-founded.

Later that evening, Prof. Panikkar addressed an audience at McGill
University. At the end of the talk about 50 members of the audience
signed a petition registering their "grave concern at the attacks on
academic and intellectual freedoms in India and the implications for
minorities and democracy in that country."

What happened at ICANAS cannot be seen as an isolated attempt by
well-intentioned but misguided Indians trying to defend the image of
their country abroad. The non-engagement with issues at hand,
bureaucratic responses, linguistic gymnastics and leaps in logic that
were demonstrated show systematic attempts to obfuscate issues. These
are not the innocent foibles of absent-minded professors. Rather they
fit an insidious pattern. It has to be placed in the larger context of
what is happening in India where fear, intimidation, violence, killings,
distortions and fascist tactics are becoming the order of the day.

CERAS
3720 avenue du Parc
Montreal, Quebec
Canada; H2X 2J1
Phone: (514) 982-6606; ext. 2248

______________________________
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