[sacw] SACW Dispatch | 19 Nov. 00

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Communalism Watch
19 November 2000
(Compiled by South Asia Citizens Web http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)

[India Special]
____________________________

#1. India: SAHMAT Press Note/Saffronisation of Education/Culture/History

#2. India: Secularists lash out at Vajpayee Govt

#3. India: 'Double Standards'... 

#4. India's new school curriculum will promote globalisation& religious fundamentalism

#5. India: Don't Saffronise Embassies Abroad, Says Former Union Minister

____________________________

#1.

SAHMAT 

8 V.P.House, Rafi Marg, New Delhi - 110 001, India.
Phone : (011) 371 1276 Fax: (011) 335 1424

17.11.2000

PRESS NOTE

The BJP has been actively pursuing the RSS agenda on education and culture. In doing so it has undermined the credibility of our academic and cultural institutions, supressed the freedom of expression, trampled on the democratic and fundamental rights of the minorities and secular minded people, and transformed in a big way the content of school education in the BJP ruled states.

Thanks to the school texts introduced by them lakhs of school children are growing up with prejudice and hatred towards the minorities, and in total ignorance of our rich pluralistic and composite heritage.

Enormous government funds are being pumped into implementing the Hindutava agenda; priorities of academic and cultural institutions are being changed with the same purpose, and there is no accountability of any kind to the Constitution, or to the purposes for which , or the people for whom these institutions were designed in the first place.

Undermining of educational and cultural institutions and committees.

* The important research and educational planning and cultural institutions and committees whose complexion has been transformed by filling them with people associated with the Hindutva agenda and linked with the Sangh Parivar are : 

* The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) - Chairman, Prof. B.R.Grover, who defended and argued on behalf of the RSS on the Ram Temple shrine. The Council includes B.B.Lal , B.P.Sinha and K.S.Lal with similar credentials.

* Indian Council for Social Science (ICSSR) headed by M.L.Sondhi, a former Jan Sangh M.P.

* Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Simla (IIAS) - Headed by G.C.Pande a known sympathiser of the BJP and the Anand Marg.

* University Grants Commission (U.G.C). Dr. Hari Gautam whose RSS convictions are well known was appointed chairman.

* Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA).L.M.Singhvi made President for ten years, is a sitting BJP.MP, and the Member Secretary Mr NR Shetty is close to Mr Ananth Kumar,RSS member and Minister of Culture.

* National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) Dr. J.S.Rajput,who has been openly advocating the RSS's emphasis on 'Indianisation, Spiritualisation, Nationalisation of school syllabus and 'Value' education. 
* Kirath Joshi president of Dharam Hinduja International Centre appointed chairman of the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR).
* The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) is headed by Hema Malini who actively campaigned for the BJP during the last elections.

Committees for Review of Elementary and Primary education, Committee for review of the prescribed NCERT syllabi for CBSE, Selection Committees for appointments in NCERT and NIEPA, the Advisory Committee on Education in Haryana, the specially constituted National Elementary Education Mission (NEEM), the Councils in ICHR and ICSSR etc. Grants in aid committees for adult education have been similarly constituted.

Government funds for Hindutva and changed priorities

Govt. funds for the Hindutva agenda in education have been managed in many ways. Priorities of research have changed with the takeover of research bodies and academic institutions. 

In the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) the Towards Freedom volumes have been effectively shelved along with The Economic History of India, on Railway Construction, and Inscriptions of India. The new projects in the pipeline are: three projects on 'Indus Saraswati Civilization' and one on 'Archaeology and Tradition'. A meeting was held on 29-30 October to sanction grants for the new projects. Projects and grants are being awarded with the aim of establishing the Hindutva view of history. 

The Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Documentation Centre, established in honour of their hero, within the ICSSR has been given huge funds. Even the entire campus of JNU City Centre has been changed to 'Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Gateway of Social Sciences'.

Archaeological Survey of India is similarly preoccupied with funding excavations and publications to prove that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of India and that Indian civilisation is essentially 'Aryan' civilisation. 

The ICSSR that only funds research is now utilising huge funds for a Shyama Prasad Mookerjee international conference with a view to presenting and generating new data relevant to the shaping of the national and global agenda. 

The ICSSR has also established a new Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Centre for Social Welfare, whose one major activity was the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Memorial Lecture delivered by the BJP President, Bangaru Laxman.

In the Open School texts already written, approved and paid for, have been shelved and not published because of the association of secular historians in framing the syllabi for them.

Govt funds have also been made available to thousands of RSS schools and the VHP run Ekal schools under the govt scheme of one teacher schools and to non formal centres and Continuing Education Programmes being run by sympathisers. RSS type of books are being pushed into the literacy centres and rural libraries established in the last decade under the National Literacy Mission directed adult education programme. All the old publications have been shut down and the old grants in aid committees were dismantled summarily without notice, the decisions taken by them were not implemented. Through a directive that makes all schools running for ten years automatically entitled for affiliation and recognition, the BJP has ensured large transfers of funds to RSS schools in the BJP ruled states.

Since the BJP's take over, value education, moral science, patriotism, and nationalism have become synonymous with Hindutva in the government vocabulary. The NCERT and the UGC now filled with their own people; have followed suit. The NCERT has seriously taken up the task of introducing a course on value education in schools on the model of the 'moral science' taught in RSS linked Vidya Bharti and Shishu Mandir schools. Enormous funds have been given for a resource library at the NCERT to 'help towards devising the course', and although there will be token representation of other religions, the Hindutva line will be inculcated through giving voice to every festival, fast, yatra, writings of so called sants and sadhus, and so on.

Funds have already been sanctioned for courses on Vedic rituals and astrology in a number of Universities and institutions of higher education. 

It has been decided to introduce compulsory courses on patriotism in the state universities and science and professional colleges. While its content has not been worked out it is obvious, given what the BJP has introduced by way of history in the school texts, this particular course will be Hindutva politics in another bottle. 

In the school texts in UP and in the examinations Hindutva has so pervaded the system that one can hardly have a simple maths problem in a question without reference to the Sangh propaganda.

Attacks on Cultural Expression :

Cultural festivals are funded by the Department of Culture and ministers associated with promoting the identity of Indian culture with brahmanical myths. The Birth-Centenaries of Ashfaqullah Khan and Udham Singh totally ignored.

The new Harappan Civilisation Gallery at the National Museum in Delhi seeks to project the Hindutva reinterpretation of this culture as Vedic/Sanskritic against accepted archaeological evidence and scholarship.

The Lalit Kala Akademi has funded and put up an exhibition on Vajpayee's visit to the US, which by no stretch of imagination can be justified as relevant to the aims and objectives of the Akademi.

The Sangeet Natak Akademi did a show to laud the government's efforts on Kargil, and more recently a program to celebrate 50 years of the founding of the Republic. The Akademies are thus being made the cultural PR agencies of the government.

Jan 2000 : Attack on Deepa Mehta's film " Water"

Jan 2000: Take over of IGNCA to change the complexion and basic priorities of the institution.

Feb 2000: ABVP threatened young people and attacked shops and restaurants selling Valentine Day Cards in Kanpur

March 2000: Self appointed culture cops of ABVP tried to forcibly enforce a dress code for girls in Kanpur

April 2000: Communal campaign against the students of Jamia Millia, and A.M.U. were also branded as breeding ground for ISI agents by VHP and Bajrang Dal during the course of this one year.

June 2000: tried to inject communalism into the film industry by a public campaign against the " Muslim" heroes. Articles to this effect published in RSS journal Panchjanya

June 2000 : Sanctioned courses on Vedic rituals and astrology in Universities.

July 2000 : National Commission for Women brought out a document on the status of women. The document, contained strong communal overtones representing the ancient period as a " golden age" when women's condition was good, and blaming " Muslim" rule for deteriotation in the condition of women.

August 2000: Attack on SAHMAT's exhibition in Toronto; The govt. forced a withdrawal of grants to the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and other organisations which were funding the effort

August 2000 Disruption of the presentations by secular Indian historians at the Conference of African and Asian historians held in Montreal.

August 2000: Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute pressurised to withdraw grant to Waterloo University (Canada) for the Conference " Accomodating Diversity"

Sept. 2000 : Forced National Gallery of Modern Art to withdraw from an exhibition Surendran Nair's painting Icarus.

Sept 2000 : ASI and ICHR official linked to Sangh Parivar tried to distort the archaeological findings from excavations at Fatehpur Sikri.

Nov. 2000 : Attack on a journalist of Nai Duniya in Indore by RSS men

______

#2.

Hindustan Times, New Delhi
18 November 2000

SECULARISTS LASH OUT AT VAJPAYEE GOVT 

HT Correspondent 
(New Delhi, November 17) 

IS THE Vajpayee Government turning India into a "modern Hindu version" of Saudi Arabia, blessed by multinational corporations allowed to exploit the market while the state is free to pursue its own social agenda in a comfortable quid pro quo? 
This eloquent description of what Sahmat and an eminent group of dissenters presented today as the government's Hindutva agenda may well rub into popular psyche in the days to come, as they get ready to raise the issue in Parliament when it reconvenes for the Winter session on Monday. 
The secularists rolled out a thorough condemnation of the BJP's "active" pursuance of the RSS agenda on education and culture, with examples cited in plenty of the systematic assault launched on secularism, democracy and unity. Prof. Irfan Habib, Congress MP Eduardo Faleiro, CPI(M)'s Sitaram Yechuri and archaeologist Suraj Bhan lent adequate sheen to the case that Sahmat built up. 
Examples: Important research and educational planning and cultural institutions and committees being filled with people loudly identified with the Hindutva agenda and linked with the Sangh Parivar,such as the Indian Council of Historical Research, Indian Council of Social Science Research, Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, University Grants Commission, Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, National Council of Educational Research and Training, Indian Council of Philosophical Research and National Film Development Corporation. 
Hindutva activists, the secularists alleged, have similarly taken over the Committees for Review of Elementary and Primary Education, Committee for Review of the prescribed NCERT syllabi for CBSE, Selection Committees for appointments in the NCERT and NIEPA, Advisory Committee on Education in Haryana, the specially constituted National Elementary Education Mission, the Councils in the ICHR and ICSSR and Grants-in-aid Committees for Adult Education. 
Government funds have been channelled to propagate the Hindutva agenda with the research centres changing their research priorities. Examples: the shelving of the Towards Freedom volumes being published by the ICHR, the setting up of the "Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Gateway of Social Sciences", Archeological Survey of India devoting itself to establish that the Aryans were the original inhabitants of India and that the Indian civilisation is essentially Aryan, and the ICSSR funding an SP Mookerjee international conference "with a view to presenting and generating new data relevant to the shaping of the national and global agenda." 
The year 2000 till date has proved to be a period of intensified intimidation campaign by Hindutva activists. Examples: in January, attack on Deepa Mehta's film "Water", in June a public campaign against Muslim film actors and actresses as well as the sanctioning of courses on Vedic rituals and astrology in universities, in September the National gallery of Modern Arts forced to withdraw Surendran Nair's painting "Icarus" and in this month an attack on a Nai Duniya journalist in Indore by RSS activists. 
Speaking about the exhibition in the National Museum on the Harappan civilisation, Prof.Suraj Bhan said, "The exhibition and the dissemination of the distorted views of history only help further the ideological cause of the RSS or the Hindutva at the cost of the national exchequer." Among the many "gems" collected from textbooks taught at RSS-sponsored schools were the following: lakhs of foreigners came during these thousands of years but they all suffered humiliating defeat. Mughals, Pathans and Christians are today some of these people; the cow is the mother of us all, in whose body Gods are believed to reside; and Lord Krishna was a builder of Indian culture. 

______

#3.

The Hindu 
Nov. 18, 2000

Double standards 

By Kuldip Nayar 

FANATICISM IS not peculiar to one country or one community. It is a 
product of environments where bigotism weeds out tolerance. Individuals 
become blind with passion and they commit the most heinous crime in 
the name of their faith. The tragic part is not that some persons lose 
their head but the fact that very few condemn the perpetrators. There 
may be two explanations: either the community is afraid to speak out or 
it gets so contaminated that it holds fast to an opinion without reason. 

When five Ahmediyas were killed in Pakistan the other day, there was 
no word of reproach, no note of criticism. Of course, the suspects were 
arrested. But the Muslim community in Pakistan remained quiet to a 
man. Not even political parties opened their mouth. The Ahmediyas 
have been declared non-Muslims in Pakistan and they are prohibited 
from going to mosques or observing such rites which may suggest that 
they are Muslims. That the killers were guided by religious bias is clear. 
Strange is the behaviour of liberals. They prefer to stay silent. 
Sometimes I wonder whether liberalism is the facade behind which they 
hide the prejudice which the fanatics unashamedly wear on their 
sleeves. Pakistan may be an extreme case. But intolerance is spread 
all over. 

India, otherwise a democratic, secular country, has different standards 
for different areas and different communities. When it comes to Kashmir 
or the Northeast, the conscience of most in the country becomes dead. 
The worst of conditions - and atrocities - are tolerated because the 
security forces are engaged in an operation connected with India's 
`defence'. What an ordinary person cannot brook in Delhi, Mumbai, 
Calcutta or Chennai, he accepts in Srinagar or Kohima. The feeling has 
come to prevail that any criticism of the security forces will hurt their 
morale. 

True, the militants from across the border, including foreign 
mercenaries, target members of the security forces particularly. The 
violation of their human rights is in no way less reprehensible. The 
problem arises when the security forces in anger or desperation indulge 
in excesses. Nowhere is it written what should be the response. Still it 
is understood that the reaction cannot be so indiscriminate or so 
dictatorial that it violates the rights which a person is entitled to enjoy 
as a human being. 

The Valley is littered with instances where the innocent have paid for 
what the militants have done. The security forces only accentuate 
sufferings by picking on those who happen to live in the localities where 
the militants disappeared. 

The Kashmir CPI(M) leader, Mr. Yousuf Tarigami, says poignantly in a 
statement: ``Death and destruction continue to knock at every door, 
swelling the ranks of mourners. Each passing day sees the miseries 
and sufferings of the common man scale new heights and further 
worsen the situation which is already grim... Without apportioning blame 
or taking pontiff postures, the focal point that stares us in the face is 
that the ultimate sufferers in this complex situation are the hapless 
people of the unfortunate State.'' 

There are numerous cases of barbarity. I personally took up a case of a 
couple who had been shot dead allegedly by a BSF jawan in daylight on 
the main road in Srinagar. The authorities attributed the killings to cross-
firing. A stock reply. It did not satisfy me. I met the then Inspector-
General, Mr. K. Vijay Kumar, at the BSF headquarters in Srinagar to 
request him to investigate the case personally. 

Nothing happened till I voiced my protest through a letter to the Union 
Home Minister, Mr. L. K. Advani. Mr. Vijay Kumar's reply is as follows: 
``...As regards the case cited by you in which a couple travelling in an 
autorickshaw was killed in Srinagar city, I admit there has been a delay 
on my part in keeping you apprised. I had the incident investigated and 
no culpability of any BSF persons was found. It was purely a case of 
cross- fire between militants and BSF personnel in which the couple 
was caught. Government of Jammu and Kashmir had also ordered a 
magisterial inquiry into the incident and I thought I should incorporate its 
findings also in my reply to you. As soon as inquiry report is available, I 
shall keep you apprised. We have requested the Government to 
expedite the report of inquiry.'' 

That was seven months ago. Whenever an incident becomes public or 
is committed in the open, there is much ado about it as if the 
Government is really concerned. The attention remains focussed for 
sometime. But memory is short. The administration depends on that. 
What is forgotten is that the wounds leave scars. They become part of 
people's psyche. The alienation deepens. India as a nation is not 
responsible for it. Some men, some officers, some politicians have 
battered the liberal face of the polity. 

Inquiry reports, it appears, have been doctored in several cases. The 
formality of conducting an inquiry is fulfilled but the real purpose to find 
causes as well as culprits is lost. I wish that human rights activists 
could be associated with the probes conducted. Had this been done, 
the recent reports on the exoneration of security forces in one of the 
major incidents, where some `militants' were killed and buried, would 
not have been questioned. The credibility of official reports is zero and 
there is also a question mark about magisterial inquiries. The National 
Human Rights Commission still enjoys some reputation in Kashmir. It 
should take notice of happenings suo motu. 

Understandably, the armed forces are inept in handling civil commotion. 
They are trained to kill and they have only one target: the enemy. The 
lesson is that they should not be deployed in domestic situations. The 
use of American troops in Vietnam is an example. The phrase, killing 
fields, was coined at that time. 

Many lessons were supposed to have been learnt by the military all over 
the world. One thought that the chapter of atrocities was closed. But the 
barbarities committed in what was once Yugoslavia or in Chechnya 
again underlined the lack of discretion or even discipline in the troops 
engaged in the operations. There was pure murder. 

The manner in which Israeli forces have tried to punish the stone-
throwing urchins shows that the Government considers every protest a 
challenge to its authority. The Jewish community, which has seen 
murder and worse at the hands of the Nazis during the World War II, 
should know that bullets are not the answer to stones however sharp or 
pointed. How one curbs the protest is what human rights are all about. 
Security forces cannot run amuck. 

India is as much wanting in its ways as any other country which is 
facing militancy. In Kashmir, the local police has become more brutal 
than the security forces. There is no accountability. Ultimately, the 
responsibility lies on the shoulders of New Delhi which is directly 
involved in the affairs of Kashmir. 

Things cannot be allowed to remain as they are. India's name is 
involved. If the nation does not want to be merely remembered as a 
cavalcade of people that cross the stage, it will have to devise ways 
whereby it is considered just and fair. Protection of human rights 
constitutes an essential part. 

Copyrights © 2000 The Hindu & Tribeca Internet Initiatives Inc.

______

#4.

The Hindustan Times
19 November 2000

Guest Column: Different strokes

Opinion 

Guest Column: Different strokes 

The new school curriculum will promote globalisation and religious fundamentalism at the same time says Anil Sadgopal 

On November 14 (Children's Day), the Minister for Human Resource Development presented the revised version of the National Curriculum Framework for School Education to the nation. Authored by an NCERT group, the document raises more new and perplexing questions than it answers. It is true that the document is not termed a policy and is cautiously called a mere curriculum framework in order to obviate the need to seek the sanction of the Parliament which will be necessarily preceded by an uncomfortable and embarrassing national debate (remember the storm in October 1998 when the same Minister tried to sneak in a new saffronised educational agenda at the State Education Minister's Conference and was persuaded to backtrack!). This time, the attempt to achieve the same objective is not just well-camouflaged but can be credited for being both tactful and suave. 

Yet, the new policy perspective reflecting the socio-cultural and political thinking of the dominant party in the Central Government is too evident to be hidden. The rhetoric and the smokescreen needs to be deciphered. For this, we need to construct a framework which will be defined by at least the following three major Constitutional concerns : 
* Universally accessible education of equitable quality for all children in order to build up a cohesive society and ensure Fundamental Rights; 
* An ever-widening democratic space for the articulation and development of each community in the multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Indian society; and 
* A forward-looking educational system that will enable the unfolding of the holistic potential of each child (and not just those of the elite). 

It is on this bedrock of Constitutional concerns that the new policy perspective fails to make educational sense. Let us begin by looking at the intriguing placement of Article 51A listing Fundamental Duties of Citizens as the frontispiece of the document. It made me wonder why the Fundamental Rights have not been given this place of honour; in fact, the Fundamental Rights are hardly mentioned. One may recall that the Article 51A was added at the middle of the political emergency of the mid-seventies and indicated the emerging phenomenon of the abdication of Constitutional obligations by the State. Hence the need to emphasise Duties of the citizens to the exclusion of their Rights. The NCERT document goes on to then add its emphasis (if not over-emphasis) on value education. An impression is almost given as if it is the first time that an official statement on education policy is emphasising value education. 

There is hardly a policy statement issued since independence, including the 1968 and 1986 policies, that did not expound upon the need for value education. There is also hardly a curriculum that does not consciously incorporate a programme of value formation. It is for this reason alone that the hype on value education in the new document becomes highly suspect. I wish, instead of re-iterating the rhetoric, the new document would have analysed the rich Indian experience of more than half a century in value education in order to bring out the reasons for its failure to counter the rapid decline of values we see in national life today. The lack of this historical analysis persuades me to ask the question as to why is there this over-hyped rhetoric on value education in a school system that does not reach half of our children and two-thirds of our girls. 

The answer becomes evident when you notice an equal emphasis in the document on Information Technology-based education. How come the Government which has failed to provide classrooms, black boards, books, maps, globes, tat-pattis and of course teachers to even half of India's children, can now think in terms of providing Information Technology to schools? The message, therefore, is clear. For hardly 15 per cent of India's children belonging to the middle class and the elite, the Government plans to provide facilities for Information Technology. For the rest i.e. almost 85 per cent of the children, the new policy will impose value education so that they will be trained in good conduct, regularity, punctuality and obedience, the values carefully listed by the policy makers. 

These values will ensure that 85 per cent of our children will grow to become efficient workers for the global capital. To be sure, the list of values to be inculcated in 85 per cent of the children include patriotism and nationalism. Both of these latter values are in any case of not much relevance to the 15 per cent of the better-off children to be educated in Information Technology since majority of them will eventually migrate to USA and Europe! The new document talks of measuring children in terms of their 

Intelligent Quotient (IQ), Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Spiritual Quotient (SQ). IQ is an over-baked concept which was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century in the west to presumably calibrate the intelligence levels of the children. The concept was part of the attempt by the western psychologists to provide a tool for categorising children. This was then used to claim that the low IQ levels are genetically pre-determined and the poor children have low IQ levels not because of the socio-cultural conditions but because of their genetics. Later, the IQ was also used to racially denigrate the blacks and all other non-white ethnic groups and further to claim that any public expenditure on their education would be a waste since nothing can be done to change their IQ levels. Such a distorted thinking has already been rejected by a majority of the academic community but continues to be used for racial and fascist politics. 

As far as Emotional Quotient (EQ) is concerned, there has been only descriptive records of what can be termed as desirable emotional attributes. Even here, the cultural framework of EQ is hardly understood which would make such a concept totally inappropriate for a multi-cultural country like India. Given such a fluid basis of understanding, there is no question of having any scientific ground for talking of measuring the emotional attributes of children. Indeed, this concept can not be called as being even quarter-baked. 

The Spiritual Quotient (SQ) has not even a fragment of descriptive research basis. There is no understanding, not even in a specified cultural milieu, of an acceptable definition of spiritual attributes. Why then the NCERT scholars have proposed the use of such over-baked, quarter-baked and unbaked concepts for evaluation of children ? The only plausible answer will come from the understanding of a political agenda combining both globalisation and religious fundamentalism. It is only in this paradigm that education psychologists will be required to lend their services to calibrate, categorise, label and eventually marginalise the vast masses of the poor children so that a stable globalised market can be built up in India for the benefit of 15 per cent of the nation's population. 

Fortunately, for the promoters of the joint agenda of globalisation and religious fundamentalism, 15 per cent of India's population will provide a market as big in size as the entire Europe! Clearly, the NCERT document is the declaration of a new education policy for strengthening globalisation on the one hand and religious fundamentalism on the other. 

The writer is head of the department of education, Delhi University 

______

#5.

DON'T SAFFRONISE EMBASSIES ABROAD, SAYS FORMER UNION MINISTER

RAJYA SABHA MEMBER OF Parliament Eduardo Faleiro has gone on the offensive
against the alleged communalisation of the Indian state, and has charged the
BJP with using Indian missions abroad to spread Hindutva, or the brand of
religion alloyed with politics for electoral and other questionable purposes.

"A fresh allegation has been levelled against the (Union human resource
development) ministry for 'using the Indian missions abroad to promote the
Hindutva agenda'," reported New Delhi-based daily 'Asian Age'.

The paper said that Eduardo Faleiro, himself a former minister of state for
external affairs, made this charge at a meeting of the parliamentary
consultative committee for the Ministry of External Affairs last Friday.

Faleiro alleged that under the directions from the HRD Ministry, India's high
commissioner to Canada, Rajnikant Varma had put "undue and unwarranted
pressure on the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute" to withdraw its support to an
exhibition organised jointly by a Canada-based artists group Hoope Curatorial
and the Indian Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust.

The charge comes as the debate continues over the alleged saffronisation of
institutions in India.

This Canadian exhibition being referred to was titled 'Dust on the Road'. It
featured the works of hundreds of Indian and Canadian artists. 

The exhibition also included reproductions of posters that appeared in the
Indian media over the last couple of years, to record the growth of religious
intolerance and fundamentalism in India and the attacks on artists and their
work.

In another case, Mr Faleiro charged, Mr Varma put pressure on the Shastri
Institute to withdraw support to a conference titled 'Accommodating
Diversity', which was organised by the Canadian University of Waterloo.

"I have definite information that the Indian diplomats had acted on clear
instructions from the Ministry of HRD," Mr Faleiro was quoted by the newspaper
as saying.

The meeting of the MEA consultative committee was chaired by Minister of State
for External Affairs, Ajit Kumar Panja. Mr Faleiro asked Mr Panja to "check
interference of the HRD Ministry in the affairs of the MEA".

The Goa Rajya Sabha MP also asked Mr Panja -- incidentally a former Congress
partyman -- to "reiterate standing instructions to the Indian missions abroad
to promote the image of India as a democratic nation, committed to the culture
of peace and tolerance, rather than of an authoritarian state intolerant of
dissent and inclined towards a sectarian agenda".

He also referred to a letter written earlier by 42 members of Parliament to
external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, objecting to the "undiplomatic
behaviour of the Indian consul general in Toronto and the high commissioner".

The MPs had said in an earlier letter: "Our high commissioner visited the
exhibition on June 26 at Toronto and called it 'a work of fiction rooted in a
jaundiced imagination' and the consul-general termed it 'a sort of political
propaganda against the BJP and other organisations'."

Mr Faleiro maintained that "our missions abroad are forced to take a partisan
stand under instructions from officials in Delhi".

He urged the government to respect the apolitical character of the civil
services, including diplomats, "so that they serve the country rather than the
partisan interests of the government of the day". (ENDS)

______________________________________________
SOUTH ASIA COMMUNALISM WATCH (SACW) is an
informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service
run by South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex)
since 1996. Dispatch archive from 1998 can be accessed
at http://www.egroups.com/messages/act/
////////////////////////////////////