[sacw] SACW Dispatch | 24 Sept. 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
24 September 2000
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

#1. Pakistan: It's OK to say sorry (Irfan Husain )
#2. Pakistan: Too immune to notice (Manzur Ijaz)
#3. India: Hindu nationalism and its discontents (book review by Aditya
Sarkar)
#4. India: On Ahmedabad Municipal Election 2000 (Wilfred D'Costa & Sonal
Thaker)
=20
-----------------------------------

#1.

DAWN
23 September 2000
Mazdak

IT'S OK TO SAY SORRY=20

By Irfan Husain=20

AT the Liberation War Museum in Dhaka last week, thirty-year old press
cuttings and photographs of slaughter and mayhem brought back a flood of
depressing memories.

Ever since the Hamoodur Rahman Commission's supplementary report emerged a
few weeks ago, our newspapers have been full of articles and letters about
it. Retired generals and their supporters have defended themselves, and
respected columnists have written of length about the report. The focus of
the debate has so far been largely on the conduct (or misconduct) of the
1971 war, the timing of the appearance of the secret document, the guilt or
innocence of those directly involved in the operations, and the political
dimension of the conflict.

The controversy was given a new twist by General Musharraf's recent refusal
to meet the Bangladesh prime minister in New York. At a press conference,
he urged her to "forget the past" and move on. This did not go down very
well in Bangladesh where many people at the conference I had gone to read a
paper at wanted to know why our Chief Executive was so touchy about Sheikh
Hasina's proposal that the UN should oppose and punish those who toppled
elected governments. After all, her father and much of her family were
murdered by elements of the Bangladesh army, so her vehemence and
bitterness are understandable. Far from targeting General Musharraf, she
was sending out a signal to her own generals to stay in the barracks.
Indeed, she has often condemned military takeovers in public speeches in
her country.

But in all this plethora of opinions, arguments and counter-arguments, it
is difficult to discern any remorse or regret over the horrors inflicted on
hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in the name of Pakistan.
Nor have we expressed any sympathy for the families of those who were
raped, wounded and killed. We have been far more concerned about the
humiliation suffered by the Pakistan army and the dereliction of duty by
senior officers identified in the HRC report. The heated controversy in the
press is largely over whether the generals blamed by the Commission for
misdemeanours ranging from cowardice to smuggling to sexual abuse should be
tried or not. Not much has been said or written about those who were the
targets of these excesses.

Another irony in this ongoing debate is that many army officers and
civilians have put the whole blame for the tragedy on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto,
arguing that he had persuaded General Yahya to launch his suicidal
adventure in March 1971. The second point this lobby makes is that the
terms of reference given to the Commission after Bhutto assumed power were
limited to only the military causes of the defeat, omitting the political
reasons.

These people disingenuously overlook the fact that the generals were then
in power and had their own agenda: they took advice from politicians only
to the extent that it suited them. If they took bad advice, this surely
does not excuse them or lessen their guilt in any way. Also, even if Bhutto
somehow worked his magic on Yahya's junta, he was not commanding the
troops, nor did he organize the bloodbath that was universally seen as
genocide. I hold no brief for the late prime minister, but the fact remains
that he paid a price for his real and alleged crimes that no politician or
general in Pakistan has paid before or since.

Incidentally, I would like to put at rest a canard that has been doing the
rounds in the columns of the national press, and that is that Bhutto had
destroyed or doctored the HRC report. The main report is a bulky document
in six or seven volumes containing the testimony of the civilian and
military officers before the Commission, as well as many documents that
were placed before it. I was a young deputy secretary in the prime
minister's secretariat in the latter part of Bhutto's tenure, and my late
(and much missed) boss Hamid Jalal was one of the handful of people who
were given sets of the HRC report to study and advise the PM. Although he
kept the document under lock and key and did not let me even peek at it, he
did tell me that he was one of those who advised against releasing it as he
felt the report would further demoralize our defeated army, apart from
affecting our ties with some friendly countries. I disagreed with him then
as I do now because I feel the truth may hurt initially, but is beneficial
in the long run. Be that as it may, I can confirm that Hamid Jalal's set of
the HRC report was recalled several weeks after Zia's coup.

Had Bengali troops carried out a similar carnage in West Pakistan, I wonder
how many of us would have been prepared to "forgive and forget" as General
Musharraf has advised the Bangladesh prime minister to do? I would like to
remind him that crimes against humanity are not subject to any statute of
limitation. To this day, octogenarians are tried when they are caught for
their part in the Nazi horror. Pol Pot and his murderous Khmer Rouge were
held accountable for their part in creating the killing fields of Cambodia.
The South Africans established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to
probe the crimes against blacks committed under apartheid. The Japanese
have apologized (though not very profusely) to the Koreans and the Chinese
for their invasion of these nations, and the crimes committed by the
Imperial Japanese Army.

I know this is not a very popular view in Pakistan, but ever since stories
of the horrors perpetrated against Bengalis began filtering out thirty
years ago, I have felt anguish and guilt. Many of us who were old enough in
those traumatic days chose to ascribe the reports of mass killings,
widespread rape and destruction to Indian and western propaganda. Largely,
people clung to this view because they did not want to believe that our
army could be capable of such actions. But ex-colleagues returning from
what was then East Pakistan confirmed that a bloodbath was indeed going on.

In an attempt to reduce our responsibility in the whole tragic affair, many
people admit that our army did commit some excesses, but maintain that it
was provoked by the torture and killings carried out by the Mukti Bahini
against West Pakistani civilians. The HRC report has also mentioned this,
thus partly condoning army action. I have always been of the view that the
army is a trained and disciplined force, whereas armed civilian groups like
the Mukti Bahini (or indeed the MQM) have neither the discipline and the
firepower, nor the moral authority to be equated with the military.
Criminal action by armed groups cannot and should not be used as a pretext
for over-reaction by the legally constituted armed forces.

On my brief visit to Dhaka last week, I was struck by how fresh the scars
of 1971 still are. People were bitter and angry over the refusal of
successive governments in Pakistan to even discuss the possibility of
trying army officers for the alleged crimes committed against the Bengalis
three decades ago. Even the equitable division of assets is not open to
negotiations by Pakistan. When we are in this constant state of denial, it
is difficult to bring up the subject of national guilt or indeed have a
rational debate on this painful subject.

But we can only put the past behind us by bringing out the skeletons from
the cupboards where they have been stacked all these years. Simply putting
the blame on Bhutto and/or the Bengalis is to refuse to accept and
understand what really happened. People like General 'Tiger' Niazi have
demanded a court martial to clear their names. These offers should be
immediately accepted and an open trial under military law should be started
as recommended by the HRC.

Even before this, we can make a new beginning in our relations with
Bangladesh by saying we are sorry for what happened.

_____

#2.

The News International
24 September 2000
Op-Ed.

TOO IMMUNE TO NOTICE

Dr Manzur Ejaz

The year of 1971 was very lonely for all those who could see the East
Pakistan tragedy in the making and who could foresee a ruthless army
butchering innocent Bengalis. An end to Pakistan's unity seemed unavoidable
to all those who were willing to acknowledge. Most Punjabis and Mohajirs,
young and old, fundamentalists and Marxists, technocrats and politicians
were demanding with one voice "we want Bengal not Bengalis." Later on Tikka
Khan, although excoriated by the Hamoodur Rehman Commission, said the same
thing openly: "We want Bengal not Bengalis."

Very few were there to mourn Bengali intellectuals who were massacred by
Al-Badar and Al-Shamas religious zealots. The Hamood ur Rehman Commission
recommended court martial and other punishments for shameless, brutal and
cowardly acts of Pak military officials. However, such punishments were
recommended for lack of professional ability to keep East Bengal in
Pakistan's hegemony and not for committing crimes against humanity.

No one is mentioning General Sher Ali Khan who provided a primitive
ideological stranglehold to keep Pakistan cowed down for years to come. And
everyone has forgotten about Jamaat-i-Islami's role which jumped on the
wagon for forming Al-Badar, Al-Shamas and for winning fake mid-term
election with a thumping majority.

In 1971 Punjabi-Mohajir chauvinism was at its peak and no one wanted
Mubibur Rehman's Awami League to take Pakistan's reins. Asghar Khan and
many other anti-PPP politicians may have gotten a political mileage out of
Bhutto's much touted statement Udar Tum, Idhar Hum but the fact is that no
mainstream political force from Punjab or Karachi was bold enough to go
against a well entrenched and masterly orchestrated mass chauvinism.
Bhutto, in his famous Minar-i-Pakistan address, justified the military
action to please Punjabis, his main constituency and power base. One can
justify Bhutto for responding to his constituents but again a real leader
was supposed to lead the masses and not be led by them.

Smaller nationalities led by Wali Khan and others were raising their voice
against military action but in Lahore and Karachi, there were a few leftist
individuals and groups who were expressing their concerns over the
brutalities. I don't know much about other cities but in Lahore, other than
some old souls from the National Awami Party, there was a tiny leftist
group, Young People's Front led by late Dr Aziz-ul-Haque, which was vocal
against the military action in East Bengal. History has been forgotten but
Dr Aziz-ul Haque was the first Punjabi intellectual who articulated and
openly preached the rights of the oppressed nationalities. It was not easy
in those days.

I still remember that a few of us--wierd Punjabis--who dared to oppose the
military action were as lonely on New Campus Punjab University as were
about fifty East Bengali students who were scared and agonised over the
fate of their relatives and for their own safety. Everyone around us
regarded us as traitors and authorities were openly asked to arrest people
like us.

We were so few and marginalised that the government did not want to get a
bad name by arresting a dozen intellectuals and students from Lahore and
trigger undesirable publicity for the East Bengali cause. Public opinion
was solidly behind the military action and everyone wanted East Bengal not
Bengali Muslims.

One of our Bengali friend, Farooq Raifique, used to question us as to who
was responsible for creating secessionist sentiments in East Bengal. He
used to ask, "We study Urdu poet Iqbal with great fervour. Do anyone one of
you study our national poet Nazar-ul-Islam? We have pictures of all heros
of independence hanging in our homes. Do anyone of you have Sher-i-Bengal
Fazal-i-Haque's picture in your drawing rooms?" He had a list of such
comparisons to which none of us had an answer.

Probably, no one has an answer to Farooq's questions even today. Public
silence over the Hamoodur Rehman Commission report is due to a shared
guilty conscience of people in Punjab and Karachi. In a way these
populations had been immunised to mass destruction. Mutual killings of
Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in 1947 had gone unaccounted. No one, on both
sides of the border, was brought to justice for committing crimes against
humanity in 1947. Therefore, no one feared being tried for committing
genocidal crimes against the Bengalis. No wonder the HR report was never
brought to light.

Hamood Rehman's report had pointed out the involvement of the military in
civil matters had bred corruption in the military which resulted in
professional incompetency. It is abundantly clear that Pakistani military
officials are much more involved in civil matters than they were in 1971.
They cannot dare to persecute those who were responsible for the East
Pakistan debacle. They have done more of the same that their predecessors d=
id.

Furthermore, we are reaping the ideological fruits of what was sowed under
General Sher Ali Khan's leadership. We are facing our own Al-Badar and
Al-Shamas. We are again heading towards some national catastrophe but we
have become too immune to notice such things. It is very lonely to notice
such things. As lonely as it was in 1971.

______

#3.

Tehelka.com
REVIEWS=20

HINDU NATIONALISM AND ITS DISCONTENTS

The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India
by John Zavos

History
Oxford University Press, 2000
Rs 450

By Aditya Sarkar

The emergence of Hindutva Right in India has of late precipitated a number
of scholarly studies on the nature and dimensions of this phenomenon,
attempts to categorise it and locate it historically. John Zavos' book
about the growth of Hindu nationalism in India takes on a wider frame of
reference, but the context for this is clearly provided by recent political
and ideological trends. Despite several problems in the way Zavos tackles
his subject-matter, this book cannot but be welcome. Unfortunately,
constraints of space do not allow for more than a cursory examination of
the important themes and problems it raises.

Zavos' provocative and interesting study does not attempt a holistic survey
of the history it sets out to interrogate. Instead, it seeks to study a
specific them in the growth of Hindu nationalism, which the author labels
the 'discourse of organization', which roughly covers attempts both to
impose organisational structures upon religion by Hindu activists and
reformers, and to present Hinduism as an organised structure.

I am not conversant with most work on this subject, but as a student
recently out of school, I found it stimulating to read a book that does not
treat Hindu nationalism and communal ideology as an incidental outcrop of
the activities of the Muslim League, a practice all too common even in
liberal and secular school-level texts. While locating Hindu nationalism
historically and interrogating, to a degree, its connections with other
processes, Zavos does attempt something like an immanent critique.

Zavos situates 'the discourse of organization' with in the broadening
public sphere of the late nineteenth century, as a colonial discourse
mediated and contested by the emerging professional middle classes, as an
attempt to counterpose their hegemony to that of the colonial state. These
somewhat unspecific probings are not sufficiently developed by Zavos.

Instead, he moves into an

Zavos studies the 'transformative' nature and structure of the Arya Samaj:
in particular, its attempt to displace caste, ideologically, from the
superiority of birth to the dictates of the Vedic canon

examination of a double-edged colonial discourse: one which sought to
propagate images of the organisation of the state (law, communications,
education and bureaucracy) on the one hand, and images of the
disorganisation of Indian society on the other - Jones' accent on the
Golden Age of Aryan civilisation, and Mill's religious periodisation of
Indian history with its ideological over-determinations being instances of
this.

Further, Zavos foregrounds the language of representation that British
policy, as exemplified in the Queen's Proclamation and subsequent
valorisations of liberal constitutionalism, implanted on the discourse of
organization. However, Zavos does not adequately examine the media through
which this language communicated itself to the Hindu middle classes and
early nationalists; nor the degree to which it was transformed through
mediation.

Moreover, this language, with its emphasis on, among other things,
religious liberality, had reverberations beyond pure Hindu nationalism, and
especially among the early, 'moderate' nationalists - a theme Zavos does
not address.

Most of the rest of the book is an attempt to relocate specific programmes,
organisations and movements within the paradigm just sketched out. Zavos
studies the 'transformative' nature and structure of the Arya Samaj: in
particular, its attempt to displace caste, ideologically, from the
superiority of birth to the dictates of the Vedic canon, and one of its
institutions, the Samaj Mandir, a structure that asserted unity through
congregation.

He appears less concerned with what must be seen as an essential aspect of
Samaj ideology, and of Hindu nationalism in general - its valorisation of
an invented tradition of Hindu organic unity, and of the Vedic Age - an
aspect with reverberations, in, among other things, much nationalist
historiography.

Counterposed to the vertical restructuring that Zavos sees as implicit at
least in the ideas and organization of the Arya Samaj, which addresses
questions of hierarchy and difference within Hinduism, is the orthodoxy of
the Santana Dharma Sabhas and the Bharat Dharma Mahamandal. These
represent, according to Zavos, a trend towards the horizontal organisation
of Hinduism, binding it together with all its hierarchies, seeking to
undercut questions of caste, status and divisions in general in search of
an underlying, essentially conservative unity.

As Zavos rightly and importantly points out, this horizontal model was to
gradually displace transformative models in course of the development of
Hindu nationalism. The discussion of the Mahamandal, in particular, is
welcome and long overdue, though insufficient. More puzzling is Zavos'
accent on the language of representation that the different mobilisation
energies within middle-class Hinduism shared. Surely the sharing of a
notion of representation, by itself, does not constitute something as basic
as a shared language?

Zavos also does not substantiate his assumption of the novelty of
representation and its specific, late-nineteenth and twentieth-century
forms. To what degree, in other words, were ideas of representation new in
the themselves? Zavos' more substantial point - the acceptance of certain
representational idioms as a constitutive framework for public discourse -
is inadequately developed, and rests on the somewhat worn bedrock of
colonial state policy.

Without doubt, this was an important agent in the development of public
discourse. But however ambivalent and naunced one's understanding of the
relations between state and ideology are, its necessary to move beyond this
to study a more complicated set of socio-political relations, which this
book fails to do. Instead, very often, and quite unconvincingly,
assumptions of straight causality are assumed.

Zavos subsequently moves through a series of themes: the establishment of
representative associations imbricated with the discourse of organisation,
the emergence of moderate nationalism, Tilak's attempts to expand
nationalist consciousness. There is an interesting discussion of the
tensions generated in the projections of Hinduism in the wake of the
decennial Census - in particular, the difficulties faced in identifying
religious boundaries, and the multiple hierarchical boundaries within
Hinduism.

This links up with a discussion of Phule's contestation of Brahmanism in
the context of growing low caste mobilisation. There follow two closely
argued and perceptive discussions. The first concerns the cow protection
movement and in particular the Nagpur Gaurakshini Sabha, as an example of
horizontal organisation, binding together rather than unseating established
structures of hierarchy through the projection of the endangered cow as a
symbol of organic Hindu unity.

The second is about Shuddhi, the 'articulation of caste as the defining
framework of religiosity', as a means of organisation and formalisation of
hierarchy, of the definition of religious boundaries, and as a blow against
missionary conversions: something with audible resonances in today's India,
when the RSS organises the liquidation of Christian missionaries and the
Prime Minister calls for a debate on conversions.

Zavos develops his argument through a discussion of the moderate/extremist
tension over strategies of contestation of colonial hegemony, Tilak's work
in the Poona Sarvajanik Sabha from 1895, and the reactions to the
Morley-Minto reforms and its projection of constitutional reform and the
communal principle. U.N. Mukherji's 'dying race' theory constitutes both
the most clearly articulated (till that point) othering of the Muslim
community and a shift from vertical to horizontal ideas of organization.

There is a lengthy discussion of the elaboration of this 'binding-together'
process through the activities of the Hindu Sabha in the early twentieth
century. There is an extended exploration of Gandhian Satyagraha as an
attempt to reproduce the preoccupations of middle-class Hindus at the level
of public discourse, flowing from a sense of propriety and a horror of the
'riffraff'.

Gandhian strategies of leadership are also studied as strategies of
organization (through his Volunteer Corps), breaking down at Chauri Chaura.
There is, however, no significant discussion of the tensions between Hindu
nationalism and Gandhi's stands on issues of religion and religious
dispute. This omission is surprising, given that the Mahasabha and RSS
attack of Gandhi - and, of course, his eventual assassination - were such
important touchstones in the growth of militant Hindu nationalism.

Further, Zavos' attempts to integrate Gandhi's attitude to caste within the
framework of horizontal organisation, based on Gandhi's perceptions of
Harijans as essentially passive recipients of justice rather than as agents
in their own right, is valid to an extent but ends up unconvincingly.
Gandhi's ideas were more ambiguous and complicated than they appear in this
account.

Zavos studies the articulation of perceived dichotomies between mutually
exclusive religious blocs through discussions of the issue of music before
mosques as Hindu assertion, and of the Moplah rebellion and the issue of
forced conversions as symbol of the 'loss of strength'. This leads into the
last section of the book, a discussion of Hindu nationalist organization in
the twenties. The dual foci of the chapter are the Hindu Mahasabha and the
RSS.

There is an extended exploration of Gandhian Satyagraha as an attempt to
reproduce the preoccupations of middle-class Hindus at the level of public
discourse, flowing from a sense of propriety and a horror of the 'riffraff'

Swami Shraddhanand's invocation of the Golden Age of the Aryans, and his
articulation of the idea of a primordial Hindu organicity or sangathan are
discussed at some length, and the Mahasabha is seen as representative of
the 'triumph of horizontal organization'. Following a discussion of
Savarkar, there is section on the RSS, largely in terms of its
organisation, its articulation of Hindu nationalism in populist terms, and
its rejection of caste.

This is by a long way the weakest section of the book, its weaknesses
accentuated by the awful proximity of the RSS to present institutions and
structures of power in India. The discussion of Savarkar, to begin with,
does not address hi definition of Indianness as defined by pitribhumi and
punyabhumi, which are at the base of the ideology of Hindutva.

The collapsing of the Hindu and Indian identities into each other -
apparently by a play on the word Hindustan, but actually by a devastating
exclusion of all who reject the label Hindu, an exclusion determined by
fascist tests of loyalty imposed upon non-Hindus - is completely ignored.

Essentially, the RSS extended this conceptual framework into the realm of
strategy and practice, established through their Shakhas and educational
institutions, where they seek to institutionalise the othering of 'alien'
communities and the repudiation of individual rights. All this is sidelined
in Zavos' analysis. And while the RSS celebration of a naturally
homogeneized Hindu community is discussed, the relations between this and
its communalism are left unexplored.

In Hindutva ideology, the Muslim or Christian is not so much rejected from
Indian society as accorded an inferior position within it, unless she
repudiates her identity as Muslim or Christian. Zavos does not explore
this, nor does he to any substantial degree explore the RSS notions of the
nation.

To conclude, a few general points. First, Zavos' foregrounding of the
discourse of organisation does, unlike many other such metadiscourese,
yield many valuable and important insights, especially when he is dealing
with specific movements of organizations, his discussion of the vertical
and horizontal organization of Hinduism so often very strong, though
sometimes overstated. However, the very concept of organization is replete
with slippages and elisions.

Within this concept, in Zavos' framework, there are the actual
organisations that articulated Hindu nationalism, there is the strategy of
organisation that constituted these articulations, and there is, perhaps
most importantly, the formulation of ideas of unified, homogenised
community that still inform Hindu nationalism. The reluctance to make
distinctions hinders Zavos' argument.

The discourse of organisation is also an insufficient guide to the
understanding of ideology. This, in my view, is because it confuses
strategy and doctrine. The extent to which organisational ideas were a
means to the realisation of community, and the extent to which they
constituted and that realisation themselves remains unclear, particularly
in the absence of a clear study of exactly how these ideas were mediated
and transformed. At key places, there - for instance in the discussion of
Tilak's mobilisational activities - the relations between strategy and
belief are not addressed.

Zavos also does not sufficiently explore the problem of the emergence of
organisational ideas. To attribute them solely to a reaction to British
images of organization/disorganization is unsatisfactory, since it involves
the assumption of a straight causality with an extremely limited set of
variables. Neither the ideological nor the social sources of the ideologies
that Zavos is concerned with can be explained by such directly causal
relationships.

Finally, Zavos' overriding concern with the development of the discourse of
organisation tends to displace the subject of his enquiry, the growth of
Hindu nationalism. Once again, there is a problem with identifying straight
lines of causality. The discourse of organization cannot autonomously
generate ideas of the Hindu nation.

The processes that led to the growth of a particular kind of national
consciousness are thus taken more or less of granted, and neither their
structural logic nor their relations with other ideological processes is
interrogated. This lies at the heart of the weakness of the studies of
Savarkar and the RSS - the central constituent of Hindutva, the picturing
of the nations, is shoved into the margins.

However important organisation may be, Zavos' own analysis tells us that it
ultimately serves a purpose. Sadly, what that purpose is left to the
perception of the reader. And even more sadly, the reader does not need to
a perceptive person to identify it. It is the purpose that destroyed the
Babri Masjid, Graham Staines and his children, and threatens to destroy
Indian democracy. It is also the purpose that is running the country. Which
is why it is so very important to understand it, in all its shades and in
all its horrors. Zavos' book, ultimately, welcome though it is, fails to do
this.

copyright =A9 2000 tehelka.com

_____

#4.

23 September 2000

AHMEDABAD MUNICIPAL ELECTION 2000
=20=20
Municipal elections this year saw a new twist to electoral politics in the
city - the entry of Shiv Sena. Even though the city has already ghettoised
on communal lines since the 1969 riots and the Babri Masjid demolition
progrom of the Sangh Parivar, the BJP Is now being challenged as a mild
communal force (pseudo Hindutva) by the Shiv Sena. The city, already rocked
by election riots, Is poised for greater tensions as Shiv Sena moves in to
cash on the communal sentiments built by the Sangh Parivar after decades,
while the BJP uses the police force to consolidate its gains.
=20=20
SAMVAD, an NGO working with the urban poor of Ahmedabad for their rights to
housing and communal harmony for the past 10 years solicited pre-election
views from the slum leaders to know what is happening at the grassroots.
Slum leaders from over 25 slums on the Sabarmati riverbanks in both Eastern
and Western Ahmedabad were contacted during 10-17th September. Most of them
are either party workers (BJP and Congress) or active campaigners of local
candidates.
=20=20
Majority of them lamented the lack of serious politicking in the present
elections. The manifestos or sankalp patras of the major parties were not
only rehashed from earlier elections but had mere hoodwinking slogans
(hatheli maa chaand). All the candidates and parties liberally promised
housing rights, water and gutters to all slumdwellers. But going by past
history of several elections, nobody really believes them.
=20=20
Most of our respondents told us that even though political parties promised
them the moon, they were sure that after the elections, they would be
moving ahead with the Sabarmati Riverfront Project and oust over 10,000
families living in over 50 slums on the riverfront. Even though most of
them were actively campaigning for their party candidates or their
political patrons now, they were ready to be at loggerheads with them on
the riverfront project issue and would see that no slumdweller is
displaced. They are all part of the city level slum organisation
"Nadikantha Jhupdavasi Sanghatan (Riverfront Slumdwellers Organisation)", a
federation of over 70 slum committees on the riverfront. The federation has
been organising slumdwellers on the riverfront for the past 3 years to
oppose the anti-poor riverfront project, which seeks to privatise public
space to further consumerism and profits for the rich.
=20=20
Several blamed both the BJP and Congress for ignoring active workers and
giving away tickets to useless people. The leadership feud in the Congress
also meant that many good workers were denied opportunity because they
belonged to either Solanki or Vaghela groups.
=20=20
Raneshbhai of Azadnagar (Dudheshwar), an active RSS worker cursed both the
BJP and Congress for not helping them during demolitions. Badruben of
Barfiwala bhawan slums (Shahpur) condemned the Congress for not giving her
a ticket despite years of political hardships. She blamed the poor people
for forgetting their civic issues and running after parties who gave them
some money or free liquor. However the wife of Prahladbhal (Shanker bhuvan)
was happy that her husband was too busy in election campaigns and she had
no family disputes as he was away most of the time. Raziaben of Baba
Lublabi slum (Behrampura) was angry at the way BJP was communalising their
slum of 300 households. BJP people sponsored the 12th temple In the area,
which has 2 masjids also. For the first time this year, BJP people supplied
huge stock of raw food for prasad during Ganesh Chaturthi.
=20=20
Manjuben of Kablr Tekri (Vadaj) expressed disgust at the ways another local
slum leader (a temple pujari) minted money from both the BJP and the
Congress and also lured the people with liquor. She was sad that the people
are axing their own feet by casting votes for such corrupt people.
Rameshbhai of Ram Rahim Nagar was also angry with the political parties as
they had merely paid lipservice to the compensation demands of several slum
families whose houses were demolished by the recent floods. However, as any
concrete help is yet to come after months, they have to contend with empty
assurances and oral support from the candidates.
=20=20
Similarly, Samshubhai of Santosh Nagar (Behrampura) is also angry with the
parties that they are served with eviction notices (for 40 houses) during
election campaigning and the political leaders cannot do anything about it,
apart from hollow sympathies. Even though a BJP candidate called up some
AMC official in their presence, nothing happened and the people feel that
it was mere electoral stunt!
=20=20
The sincere effort by BJP to capture the votes of Muslims as well as
anti-communal Hindus by putting up many Muslim candidates (a la Laxman
rekha) has really disturbed several RSS activists, grown up on years of
anti-Muslim rhetoric. Several local leaders with the saffron brigade feel
that rebellion by Yatin Oza and the entry of Shiv Sena is already sending
jitters into the hardliners camp who feel that it will be ideologically
difficult to counter them as they are logically sound on the Hindutva
communal ground prepared by the RSS and VHP after years of solid work. The
BJP will only use force to silence dissent and opposition, more and more to
its disadvantage.
=20=20
Wilfred D'Costa & Sonal Thaker.
SAMVAD
A10 RUTVIJ, Opp. AEC, Naranpura, Ahmedabad 380 013.=20
Email: samvad@w...

_____________________________________________
South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch (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
by joining the ACT list run by SACW. To subscribe send
a blank message to <act-subscribe@egroups.com>
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
[Disclaimer : Opinions carried in the dispatches
are not necessarily representative of views of SACW compilers]