[sacw] SACW #1 (17 Oct. 01)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | Dispatch #1.
17 October 2001
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

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

#1. Pakistan: Peace activists condemn American attacks on Afghanistan
#2. We would have had so much fun shooting them down ( Shahidul Alam)
#3. India: Anti War Event : Poster Release, Readings & Statements,=20
Songs & Poetry (20 Oct., Delhi)
#4. The Indulgences of Hindutva. (Vijay Prashad)
#5. New Crusades (Shankar Gopalakrishnan)
#6. "Informative Missive", Newsletter of Jammu & Kashmir Public=20
Commission on Human Rights
#7. India: Civil liberties endangered (Rajindar Sachar)

________________________

#1.

The News International
16 October 2001

Peace activists condemn American attacks on Afghanistan

Our correspondent
ISLAMABAD: The Citizens Peace Committee (CPC) staged a demonstration=20
in front of the United Nations office here on Monday.

Dozens of peace activists took part in the protest. They said the=20
police detained three wagons of activists coming from Rawalpindi.=20
They were denied entry to Islamabad to prevent them from taking part=20
in the demonstration.

In a resolution addressed to the UN secretary general, the CPC=20
condemned the military attacks by the United States and Britain on=20
Afghanistan which are causing large-scale civilian casualties in=20
Afghanistan as well as immense damage to areas of high population=20
density.

The CPC said by carrying out these attacks, the United States has=20
undermined the norms of democratic multilateralism and has=20
irreversibly damaged the credibility of multilateral forums of=20
conflict resolution. The unilateral action carried out by the United=20
States has amplified a conflict that will only feed on itself.

The attacks are also endangering the lives of millions of defenseless=20
Afghans, and are pushing more and more civilians to flee their homes=20
and seek refuge in other countries. This situation is exacerbating=20
the already acute humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and the serious=20
refugee crisis in Pakistan.

In addition, the response by extremist groups in Pakistan has incited=20
further terror in the common citizen of Pakistan. CPC condemns the=20
fanatical violence engaged in by these groups, particularly their=20
wanton attacks on the lives and property of public interest=20
organisations in the NWFP, the resolution added.

In this condition of reckless violence, citizens throughout Pakistan=20
and Afghanistan feel insecure. Their interests are being trampled=20
upon by the United States and its allied governments and by the=20
religious extremist groups. There is a clear and urgent need for the=20
United Nations to play its due role in combating terrorism. The CPC,=20
in its shared commitment to the principles of justice, peace and=20
democracy, thus calls on the United Nations to:

1. Force the United States and its allies to cease all military=20
action in Afghanistan immediately. The secretary-general of the=20
United Nations must step in forthwith as a mediator to resolve the=20
conflict non-militarily;

2. Set up a task force to carry out an investigation of the September=20
11 attacks and present all evidence to the world citizenry;

3. Coordinate action against suspected perpetrators of the crime and=20
bring them to face trial before the International Court of Justice on=20
the basis of proof;

4. Immediately respond to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan by=20
negotiating with all powers in the country for safe passage of relief=20
aid to reach the most needy. At the same time, ensure the provision=20
of basic necessities to Afghan refugees in Pakistan without placing=20
undue burden on the host population;

5. Establish a high-level multi-national task force to inquire into=20
the reasons for international terrorism and non-violent ways to=20
control it. In this respect, the hasty and incomplete definition of=20
terrorism adopted by the Security Council is inadequate and must be=20
abandoned forthwith; and

6. Democratise its own internal working by granting maximum=20
decision-making power to the General Assembly and taking away=20
permanent seats and veto powers in the Security Council.

______

#2.

Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 22:58:27 -0000
From: Shahidul Alam ( Dhaka, Bangladesh)
We would have had so much fun shooting them down

Paris, Charles De Gaulle airport, 13th October 2001.

The documents were impressive. I had an official letter from Le
Directeur des Rencontres, Ministere de la Culture of Mali certifying
that a visa was awaiting me in Bamako, a certificate of accreditation
and an invitation letter from Olivier Poivre d'Arvor, a well-known
personality in France and the director of AFAA/French Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. Still, I left well in time, knowing there might be
problems. I was to do a report for the Prince Claus Foundation in the
Netherlands and was on my way to attend the Fourth African
Photography Encounter in Bamako. I also had my yellow fever
certificate.

None of what happened at the airport seemed sinister, until you
realised what it was leading to. The immigration in Hall B in
Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle is BEFORE the check-in desk. The
questions started well before then. Where was I going, what did I
have with me, why was I going. We went over and over the same things.
Lengthy manoeuvres that kept slowing me down. Still, there was almost
an hour to go to departure time when I reached the check in desk, and
immigration had already been done. I had a confirmed ticket, so I
wasn't worried. There were plenty of passengers at the check in desk,
but when it came to me, the officer calmly said, "Sorry sir, the
flight was closed at 10 o' clock." No degree of persuasion, or my
insistence that I had arrived at the designated place in the airport
well in time and that the delay was due to airport officials, seemed
to matter. The fact that immigration, security and airlines check-in
desks operate independently, made it easier for the check-in desk to
deny responsibility. I had one of these cheap tickets, non-
refundable, non-endorsable, so I was stuck. Eventually, when I
pointed out to the individuals who had delayed me, they did offer me
an alternative booking for the outgoing flight. I could leave on a
date FOLLOWING my date of return. No doubt they found it funny. I
offered to pay to get onto another flight, but that too couldn't
apparently be done. By then I had worked out what was going on, and
asked them to book me on the date they suggested, AFTER my due date
of return. This they did. I could see people were still checking-in,
and knew, if I could get through the blockade, I would get on the
flight.

So I took a flight out to the nearest airport from which I could get
a connecting flight. The idea being, that if I went through the check-
in procedure elsewhere, where such barricades might not be present,
they would no longer have grounds for refusing to let me fly. I left
early in the morning from my hotel in Strasbourg, taking the tram and
the bus through the fog at night to be the first person to arrive at
the check-in desk. The woman at the desk at this small airport was
extremely helpful. When I said I wanted to go to Bamako with a
connecting flight, she immediately took my ticket and issued me a
luggage tag to Bamako. Then of course she discovered I was not booked
on the flight. She made a tentative booking, issued me a `boarding
pass' without a seat number, and put in a note in the computer that I
was a passenger bound for Bamako. She even gave my luggage (now
tagged for Paris, in place of Bamako) a priority tag, so I would not
lose time changing planes.

The luggage arrived early as planned. I rushed across to terminal B,
arriving well in time to lay a claim to a seat. People were still
checking in. When I approached the officer in charge, she whipped the
temporary boarding pass from my hand, tore it to bits, and with a
dramatic gesture, let the flimsy flight coupon fall to my hand. "The
are no seats" was the terse reply.

This vulgar demonstration of power, reminded me of the article I had
been reading on the 13th, the day I was first refused onto the plane,
in the Wall Street Journal Europe (October 12-13, 2001, Brussels,
page 3). [Lt. Ken, a 28 year old pilot from Washington state was
munching on Twizzlers candy at the controls of his jet when the 57-
millimeter artillery rounds started exploding below. "I've been
peppered before, hunting pheasant, but it doesn't really compare." He
said in Vinson's ready room. Vinson's air wing is trying to put all
its pilots through combat flights =96 learning the tricks "before the
other guys get smart," as Capt. Wright puts it.

Capt. Wright saw two MIGs parked at the end of the runway. He fired a
laser-guided bomb at one; the pilot of another F-14 nearby hit the
second. "When they blew, they blew big =96 you could see they were full
of fuel and ammunition." But infrared images indicated that the MIG
engines were cold, which means that the jets weren't about to take
off =96 much to Capt. Wright's annoyance. "We would have had so much
fun shooting them down" he said. As Capt. Wright flew back to the
ship, chewing on a peanut-butter sandwich and sharing his post-battle
emotions with the flight officer sitting behind, they suddenly had to
dispense death to a different enemy: a cockroach had crawled up the
airman's legs. "We got a little bit of hilarity on that," he said.]

John Wayne might have died, but these Texan-led soldiers could well
have been riding into the prairie to `cut em off at the pass'. Five
hundred years later, they continue to find new `Indians' to `dispense
death to'.

As for the luxuriant growth of hair on my face. I've decided to let
it grow longer.

Shahidul Alam
Drik Picture Library
www.drik.net, www.chobimela.org, www.banglarights.net

______

#3.

Reply-To: Shabnam Hashmi (SAHMAT, New Delhi)
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 16:43:25

"JANG, JANGON KE FALSAFE KE KHILAF
AMN, PUR AMN ZINDAGI KE LIYE"

SAHIR LUDHIYANWI

To protest against the unilateral declaration of war by the US on the=20
entire Afghan people.
To reaffirm the commitment towards peace.

Assemble at a Sit-in
at Vithalbhai Patel House Lawns,
Rafi Marg, New Delhi-110001 [India]

4 pm to 7 pm on Saturday 20 October , 2001

Anti War : Poster Release
Anti War Readings and Statements: Arundhati Roy, Praful Bidwai, Mushir ul H=
asan
Anti War Songs: Susmit Bose,
Anti War Poetry: Manglesh Dabral, Gauhar Raza, Vishnu Nagar

More details and names of artists would follow soon.

SAHMAT
8, Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg, New Delhi-110001
Tel- 3711276/ 3351424

______

#4.

Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001

New Crusades

by Shankar Gopalakrishnan

In the aftermath of the September 11th atrocities in
the US, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that
many of us in India have lost some of our critical
faculties. Much of the progressive Indian press has
been full of opinion pieces calling on the US to
respect innocent civilian lives but also simply
accepting the definition of 'terrorism' the US
provides. Many have run editorials wondering how the
attackers could be so insensitive to innocent human
life.=20
The difficulty with these approaches is the sudden
acceptance of the notion that these were fundamentally
isolated individuals, part of these shadowy
'terrorist' networks essentially outside the realm of
normal humanity. But what, after all, is terrorism?
Seems a difficult question. Two weeks ago, a BBC
Hardtalk interviewer confronted the EU's head of
security, Javier Solana, with the issue. Solana
responded in an interesting fashion: he could not
define terrorism, he said, but he could define
terrorist acts. Never mind for the moment that the EU
had already declared its support for a 'war on
terrorism', in other words for a war on something it
could not define. Rather, let=EDs focus on this word,
with whose adjective form Solana was comfortable, but
whose noun form was far more troublesome.
Commonly, terrorism is defined as the use of violent
force against an innocent civilian population for the
purposes of political gain. Defined as such it is
unambiguously a crime. Recent history abounds with
instances of this kind of terrorism, but the culprit
is not always one we might expect. For instance, the
weeks of the Gulf War in 1991, when the US-led
coalition killed an estimated 200,000 Iraqis during
its campaign to drive Iraq from Kuwait. Evidence has
since emerged that the US Air Force also deliberately
targeted water treatment plants and power stations,
with full knowledge and expectation that tens of
thousands would die from ensuing diseases. In fact, a
Harvard Study Team later found that some 170,000 Iraqi
children had died from war-related causes in the six
months following the war. Subsequent US-sponsored UN
trade sanctions on Iraq have killed at least 500,000
children, according to UNICEF and FAO, and other
estimates place the total death toll at over 1.5
million. The toll goes up by approximately 200 people
every day. Marc Bossuyt, a legal expert on the UN
Subcommission for Promotion and Protection of Human
Rights, has noted that the embargo violates several
provisions of the Genocide Convention, thus making it
a potential case of genocide. Genocide, notably, is a
crime against humanity that far exceeds instances of
=EBterrorism=ED in its horror.
Yet we do not see the USS Kitty Hawk taking up
position to bomb Washington. When Madeleine Albright
came on TV six years ago and proclaimed to a reporter
that the killing of 500,000 Iraqi children was 'worth
it', Tony Blair did not make a speech about the
sanctity of human life. In other words, no one is
making war on this terrorism.
A second definition, then. The US State Department
and others narrow the definition of terrorism to
'sub-state groups' that use violence against civilians
for political purposes. Again, though, there seems to
be some discrepancies here. The Bajrang Dal, the VHP,
and the Shiv Sena, for example, massacred hundreds of
Muslims, put up signboards calling on them to leave
the country or die, and otherwise terrorized the
Muslim populations of north India during the Ayodhya
riots. In a smaller fashion the attacks on churches
and assaults on individuals in the Dangs by VHP cadres
three years ago was explicitly for the purpose of
frightening the Christian population. It seems
doubtful, however, that Ashok Singhal is on the CIA=EDs
assassination list. If anything, the government seems
much more interested in targeting his Muslim
counterparts, though with substantially less evidence
and for much smaller 'crimes'. Again, the 'war on
terrorism' is thinking of a different kind of
terrorism.
In other words, the more we explore definitions, the
more we indulge in increasingly absurd conditions on
what constitutes 'terrorism', the more intractable it
appears. In the end, the problem arises from a
difficult but clear fact: terrorism is a tactic, not
an ideology. Organizations do not set out to become
'terrorists', though they may well decide to use such
horrific tactics on the way. The African National
Congress in South Africa, for instance, used car bombs
and other 'terrorist' actions in the course of its
fight against apartheid. The crimes of Al Qaeda and
those who committed these attacks are not excused by
this fact, of course. Yet, it helps us understand
how senseless a 'war on terrorism' actually is.
Making war on terrorism is like making war on killing.
One cannot stamp out terror tactics any more than
one can stamp out war itself. Organizations in
certain positions, be they the 'defenders of freedom'
in the US government, the anti-apartheid African
National Congress, or the essentially fascist Taliban
and Al Qaeda groups, will always choose to use them.
This 'war on terror', then, is much more a war on
certain enemies of the US government and those who
currently share its interests. Masking this under the
word 'terrorism' is an easy way to depoliticize and
dehistoricize an eminently political phenomenon. Call
someone a terrorist and there is no longer any need to
worry about the political antecedents of their
behavior. They exist outside the human, 'civilized'
pale, and therefore require no response except
incarceration or, preferably, elimination. The more
we fall into this trap of uncritically accepting
'counter-terrorism' and the discourse that goes with
it, the harder it becomes to understand its oxymoronic
and fundamentally meaningless nature.
This does not require us to suspend criticism of the
forces involved. The Taliban and Al Qaeda have
already shown their fascist leanings. If a war were
genuinely and absolutely necessary to bring democracy
to Afghanistan, to remove the more fascistic elements
of both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, some
would welcome it. But that is not the issue of this
war. The US has already made it clear it will not
engage in 'state building', or, put more crudely, the
mess after US intervention will be for the Afghans to
deal with.=20
Besides, this war has already shown signs of its own
fascistic components. For instance, the repeated
admonitions that 'a war on terrorism is not a war on
Islam', which it certainly should not be. But why
even assume that only Muslims are terrorists? Even
accepting government definitions of terrorism, what
about the Catholic IRA and the generally Hindu LTTE?
Or the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? But the governments
involved have consistently failed to point this out,
and their failure to do so has been a godsend for
communalists everywhere.
In short, supporting the American 'war on terror' is a
very different thing from opposing fascism,
communalism, and the brutality that produced the
attacks of September 11th or numerous other war
crimes. Opposing terrorism and hatred, in whatever
form they may come, is a moral obligation on us all.
This 'war on terrorism', though, is just that: a war.
Thousands have probably already died in this 'war on
terror' , both from starvation and direct attack, and
given the record of the US and the other governments
involved many more will now. Their families will
rarely appear on CNN. For many of those on the
receiving end, this will not be a war on terror; it
will be a war of terror.
In the end, one wishes that the rhetoric were true.
If only 'terrorists' really were a minute subset of
the world population, a few fanatics and lunatics with
twisted minds. If only, in one fell swoop of the
all-powerful American military, genocide, barbarity,
fascism, and terrorism could be wiped off the face of
this earth. Would it not be wonderful if cruise
missiles and aircraft carriers could teach us
compassion?=20
As Hannah Arendt might put it, evil is too banal to
succumb to such measures. We have only to consider
the Americans who cheered at their TV screens while
their Air Force killed lakhs of civilians in Iraq, or
any of us who see 25,000 disappeared Punjabi Sikhs as
just one more 'human rights violation.' What is to
be wondered at is not only how those hijackers lost
all sense of humanity; it is how easily the rest of us
do the same.

______

#5.

The Indulgences of Hindutva.

Vijay Prashad
15 October 2001.
counterpunch/znet

Opportunism is the name of the game. Israel takes advantage of the=20
world's focus on Afghanistan to pummel the Palestinians, to drive=20
tanks into a moth-eaten Palestine, to paint opposition as terrorism=20
and beget terrorism itself. Tony Blair dons the robes of headmaster=20
to a boy's school in decline and decides to cane the Afghans to make=20
up for a Great Game gone sour. And India, never far behind, led by a=20
rapacious and unscrupulous government of the Hindu Right, begs for=20
entry into the impatient coalition, pleads for permission to be the=20
Gunga Din of the oily New World Order, to sow terror among its own=20
people as it shows its democratic teeth to the world.

Twenty thousand take over the streets of London, fifty thousand=20
across a united Germany, a hundred thousand in Italy (land that=20
produced the first aerial bomber), and at least fifty thousand,=20
despite a heavy downpour, in Red Calcutta. An opportune time to be on=20
the streets, to force the global media to recognize that decent=20
people dissent from the madness.

Somewhere, someone gathers the figures of those dead. Two hundred=20
dead in Nigeria during an anti-war protest turned riot; a dozen or so=20
dead in South Asia, primarily in Pakistan where the regime's future=20
is as bleak as that of those who live in Afghan cities; and finally,=20
those who live in those Afghan valleys, a few hundred by a stray=20
bomb, a few more by shrapnel from ammunition dumps, and eventually=20
many more from the starvation and desolation produced by war. Even if=20
the numbers do not match Dresden or Hiroshima (100,000 in each case),=20
whatever remains of the productive capacity of Afghanistan will be=20
destroyed, and a new generation of children who have suffered the=20
indignity of a guerrilla war will carry in their ears the shrill=20
sound of precision bombing, and the sight of those tracers, like=20
firecrackers, moving toward their homesteads. Many will be dead even=20
if their hearts continues to faintly beat.

South of the War, in India, the Hindu Right is gleeful.

Right after 9/11, the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, considered=20
a moderate in his party, but nevertheless far right of reason, sent=20
off a letter to George W. Bush to mark the condolences of the Indian=20
people. But further, he pointed out like the Israeli government, that=20
India has lived with terror for some time now, and that terror, he=20
intimated, has an Islamic face.

The message was set: India has lived with terrorism for years, and=20
the government and military would be ready to put any means at the=20
disposal of the US government and military to thwart it. Vajpayee=20
sent his External Affairs and Defense Minster, Jaswant Singh, to meet=20
with the Bush administration on 1-2 October, but also to turn over=20
two urns to Mayor Guiliani. The urns, one with waters from nine of=20
India's rivers, and the other with the soil of India, are to be=20
interned in the memorial to the fallen.

Mr. Singh continued Vajpayee's message with a string of banal words:=20
"India's commitment to values that we share with the United States of=20
America to democracy, to free speech, to freedom of individuals to a=20
certain way of life, of which terrorism is the very antithesis, and=20
our commitment to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States=20
of America for these values, in this fight against terrorism, is in=20
no fashion less than anyone else's."

Not two decades ago, no major Indian leader promised such fealty,=20
indeed most Indian leaders, even the pro-US Rajiv Gandhi, tried to=20
maintain some distance from the State Department and the Pentagon. US=20
interests in South Asia rarely matched those of the Indian state, and=20
furthermore, most Indian leaders recognized that the canard of=20
democracy did not do justice to the truth of US foreign policy. The=20
US, for almost four decades, preferred to sit with the Pakistani=20
generals than with the incomplete democracy of India. Things have now=20
changed, even as Chief Executive Musharraf sits on a tightrope=20
stretched out by the Bush administration, the Hindu Right hopes to=20
ingratiate itself with the powers that be.

The military centrality of Pakistan to this assault meant that India,=20
once again, was to be relegated to the sidelines of the US war and=20
diplomatic plans. But the Hindu Right dominated government was=20
nonplussed. It almost immediately banned the Students Islamic=20
Movement of India (SIMI), a group formed in 1977 to represent the=20
abysmal educational opportunities for Muslim youth in India, but=20
which has in an environment poisoned by Hindutva or Brahmin=20
supremacy, turned to a defensive and outrageous sectarianism of its=20
own. It arrested six students from a socialist group in eastern Delhi=20
as they distributed pamphlets against the war - the charges amount to=20
sedition, not against India, but against the US! It invoked the=20
specter of Islamic terrorism within India to scare the people of=20
Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in the republic, to vote for Brahmin=20
supremacy at all costs in the upcoming state elections. And much of=20
the latter was accomplished by the flourish of a single date: 12 May=20
1993.

On 12 May 1993 explosions rocked the city of Mumbai (once Bombay) and=20
over two hundred people died. These Mumbai blasts are the symbol now=20
of India's 9/11, of India's claim to being a victim of terrorism.

But what are the Mumbai blasts and are they sui generis? By all=20
indications the underworld of criminals, movie financiers and=20
Dubai-based 'businessmen' set explosives in several buildings in=20
Mumbai as a ghastly and senseless retaliation for the Hindutva=20
engineered massacre of Muslims and others during the Mumbai riots of=20
December 1992-January 1993, an event that shattered Mumbai's=20
cosmopolitanism.

A look at the Srikrishna Commission documents and to the three=20
volumes of documentation turned in by the government of Maharashtra=20
to the Justice Liberhan Commission (and studied ably by Praveen Swami=20
and Anupama Katakam in Frontline magazine) make it clear that the=20
organized Hindu Right bears responsibility for the riots and,=20
crucially, should be found guilty of premeditated violence. There was=20
nothing spontaneous about this riot, and even the word 'riot' does=20
the organized violence an injustice. Intelligence officials collected=20
data on Hindutva's armed brigands ("some of the activists are likely=20
to carry lathis and daggers") and noted that all anti-Muslim=20
sectarian activity "should be nipped in the bud." Nothing was done=20
because a senior official felt that these are "purely religious=20
activities."

"For five days in December 1992 (December 6 to 10) and fifteen days=20
in January 1993 (January 6 to 20), Bombay, prima urbs of this=20
country, was rocked by riots and violence unprecedented in magnitude=20
and ferocity, as though the forces of Satan were let loose,=20
destroying human values and civilised behaviour": so wrote the High=20
Court Justice B. N. Srikrishna at the start of his official report on=20
the massacre (delivered on 16 February 1998, and already gathering=20
dust). The report, for all its flaws, shows us that the riots came as=20
a result of Hindutva's demolition of the historical mosque at Ayodhya=20
in northern India and as a result of an emboldened Hindutva activist=20
base wanting to participate in some way in that insult to Indian=20
Muslims. "From January 9, 1993, at least," the Srikrishna Commission=20
reports, "there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena [the organized arm of=20
Hindu militancy in the region] and Shiva Sainiks took the lead in=20
organising the attacks on Muslims and their properties under the=20
guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena=8AMr. Bal Thackery [the=20
notorious leader, and satirized by Salman Rushdie as Ramon Fielding=20
in The Moor's Last Sigh], who, like a veteran General, commanded his=20
loyal Shiv Sainiks to retaliate by organised attacks against=20
Muslims." If you doubt the pogrom, the report shows us that of the=20
nine hundred or so killed in the riots, five hundred and seventy five=20
(or almost two thirds) were Muslims. For the past fifteen years, at=20
least, Indian civil society has taken a beating from these very=20
theocratic organizations, now in power in India. The Hindu Right, as=20
well as the gerontocratic Congress Party, has engineered anti-Muslim=20
and anti-oppressed caste riots, as well as marginalized all those who=20
do not fit into its narrow mold of Indianness.

Two days after the outrageous blasts of May, the right-wing Home=20
Minister, L. K. Advani denied that the RDX blasts had any connection=20
to the engineered pogrom. Tragedy brings forth its own kind of=20
political amnesia. And now, the Hindu Right brings up May 1993=20
without any consideration of January 1993, simply to show its fealty=20
to the US in what it sees as a war against Islamic terrorism, whether=20
in Kashmir or elsewhere.

All this would have been inconceivable prior to 1991, when the Indian=20
government (then run by the tired Congress party) turned to a=20
full-fledged neoliberal agenda. The US, under Clinton, sensed that=20
the size of the Indian market (the size of France, salivated Lloyd=20
Bentsen, Clinton's first Treasury Secretary: "within India lies an=20
upper middle class economy the size of France, and the challenge is=20
to unlock that potential and spread that prosperity," October 1993).=20
An immediate impact of neoliberalism for India was that six million=20
workers won their pink slips in 1992-93 and eight million more joined=20
them the following year. The "potential" is in the profits, not in=20
the well being of the population. Clinton's visit to India, the=20
military links between the Indian and US army, the tie-ins with=20
Israel, the further 'liberalisation' of the economy, the creation of=20
the Bill Gates (Seattle)-Chandrababu Naidu (Hyderabad) virtual axis,=20
the employment of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh as=20
practically a mouthpiece for the US State Department (as my friend=20
journalist P. Sainath put it so clearly), the anti-China rhetoric of=20
the Hindu Right and the nuclear tests to ensure that the US has a=20
second front against China - all this amounts to the catalogue of=20
India-US relations, a marked change from the Nehruvian Third Way.

But the rate of return for servility is very low. India's economy=20
remains in the doldrums (with an increase in inequality with each=20
budget), its military has not been invited to be the junior partner=20
in Afghanistan (indeed it seems likely that, for the near future,=20
Pakistan will come back in US favor - if Musharraf survives), the=20
Kashmir question will not be solved as per Hindutva's specifications,=20
and furthermore the collapse of the Nasdaq and of the tech-world=20
means that one of India's new exports (IT workers and software) will=20
be sharply hit.

The indulgence of Hindutva is not in any of this, because its reason,=20
driven by its own astrological forecasts, is this: to make Islam the=20
global enemy and to wait for the day when Delhi-Tel Aviv-Washington=20
(and London, somewhere on the axis) becomes the new global cities=20
that count. These cities, the Hindu Right hopes, will be the=20
centerpieces of the Communities of Democracy envisaged by Madeleine=20
Albright, the harbingers of US-driven free market policies the world=20
over; and, like any good middle-man, Hindutva hopes to get a few=20
percent cut on the global takings. The indulgence of=20
Hindutva-Zionism-Manifest Destinyism is this: the crazy and=20
unjustifiable attacks forgive their own acts of commission and allow=20
them freehand to produce the world in their image.

I'm in awe of those who stood in Calcutta's downpour and cried out=20
for a better world.

_______

#6.

September 2001 issue of "Informative Missive", which is a Newsletter=20
of Jammu & Kashmir Public Commission on Human Rights is available to=20
all interested.
Should you require a copy of the Newsletter (fully formatted MS word=20
file) drop a note to <aiindex@m...>

_______

#7.

The Hindu | Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Civil liberties endangered
By Rajindar Sachar
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/05172524.htm

_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

SACW is an informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service run by
South Asia Citizens Web (http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since 1996. To=20
subscribe send a blank
message to: <act-subscribe@yahoogroups.com> / To unsubscribe send a blank
message to: <act-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com>
________________________________________
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.

--=20