[sacw] SACW #1 (10 Sept. 01)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire / Dispatch No.1
10 September 2001
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex

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

[1.] Dear India and Pakistan (by Baljit Malik)
[2.] Pakistan / UK: Demo. in London (UK) seeking the release of Dr. 
Shaikh held in Prison on charges of blasphemy in Pakistan on Monday: 
September 10
[3.] 'The domain of religion should be reclaimed from the bigots' 
(Ayesha Jalal)
[4.] "Being Indian meant all kinds of identities" ( Romila Thapar) [Part 1]
[5.] Kashmir: Maligning Islam Torturing Women ( Sayeda Hameed)
[6.] India: Murder Weapon in Kashipur (Mukul Kesavan)
[7.] India: Lapierre book on Bhopal Gas tragedy 'misleading': Sangathan

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

#1.

[ From: 'Oh! India Oh! Pakistan' by Baljit Malik,
July 2001 (published by Baljit Malik, New Delhi)]

000000000000

Dear India and Pakistan

We are writing to you from No-man's land. From terrain torn by 
partitioned hearts and poisoned minds.

We are writing to you two nations, both of whom we regard as states 
that have failed their people, their enviornment and ecology. Two 
states that have also failed their religions, that too in the name of 
Jehad and Rama Rajya!

India and Pakistan, nations spattered with blood, broken skeletons, 
compromised constitutions and wounded freedom. From our No-Man's 
land, we are clear that we shall not allow ourselves to belong to you.

We shall also not reveal our well atlased location, our positional 
deployment or tactical command for liberation from your illegitimate 
apparatus of misgovernence.

>From one of our strategic observation posts we can see your potential 
pristineness as far as Nanga Parbat just as we must shield our pupils 
against the dusty and polluted plains of Tarain and Panipat. And, we 
can see Waterloo written all over your Nishaan-e-Pollutions and Padma 
Bhootushans. For the two between you have fattened your respective 
moneyed 'elites' into pampered mafias self-jailed in their clubs, 
golf courses, messes, 5-star brothtels and regimental institutes.

It is no use throwing statistics at your two, for your decadence and 
corruption are only to obvious in your over-fed, overclothed, 
over-housed and miseducated upper and middle-classes. Obese, 
aggressive, uncouth and mannerless, these classes and castes have 
vandalised the economy and have spread out an an extravagant net of 
self-serving institutions in the name of progress and development.

In our No-Man's land of conscience, of aspiration, of native 
intelligence, there is no place for those who would mix their supper 
and wine with murder and blood. There is no place for those who would 
engage in deceit and diplomacy in the name of peace and development.

Our trumpet-call to you two nations is to disram and disband your 
apparatus of oppression. The very apparatus you use against each 
other and against your own people. The apparatus of mind and frame 
that destroys the ecology of nature, soul and matter. The apparatus 
of guns and bombs, of foul, language, command and domestic violence. 
The apparatus of industry that manufactures poisons only to market 
and brand them into brain and womb, and finally into our own 
memorials and tombs.

India and Pakistan, let us help you to realise your moment of truth 
in Kashmir. But for this to happen you must lay down and reverse your 
arms in the valley and mountaintops of doom you have wrought on our 
people.

Yes, reverse arms, and then let your generals pick up shovel, broom 
and their prayer-book. Let them then repair the damage they have done 
by commands issued from your shrapnelled brain.

We urge you to chime the bells of freedom on both sides of the 
Chenaab and Jhelum. We urge you to compromise your poisned 
nationalities and midwife a host of new nations of old bound by a 
subcontinental confederacy of self-governance. A self-governance from 
panchayat to mohalla that would act as a new frontier against 
violence, oppression, militarism and the false-god of liberalised 
industrialism.

So, Vajpayee loosen that dhoti, Musharraf dangle those medals..then 
talk of new frontiers, of peace, freedom and development.

Baljit Malik
Kasauli
June 27, 2001.

______

#2.

There will be a big demonstration in London (UK) seeking the release 
of Dr. Younis Shaikh being held in Prison on charges of blasphemy on 
Monday: September 10
13.00 hrs - 14.00 hrs

Pakistan High Commission London 34-36 Lowndes Square, London SW1X 9JN
Commission Telephone : 020-7664-9200 Commission Fax : 020-7664-9224

Tube: Take Piccadilly Line to Knightsbridge. Take exit on Sloane
Street. Walk south along Sloane Street and take the first left into
Harriet Walk, which leads to Lowndes Square, turn right and the
Pakistan High Commission is located in the corne.

We are very pleased that
- Mr. Jeremy Corbyn MP (Member of Parliament; Labour Party)
- Dr. Evan Harris MP (Liberal Democrat Party)
- Amnesty International
- Sea of Faith
will join the demonstrations.

______

#3.

Tehelka.com

'THE DOMAIN OF RELIGION SHOULD BE RECLAIMED FROM THE BIGOTS'

Ayesha Jalal, the Pakistan historian, first drew critical attention 
with her book on Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of 
Pakistan, called The Sole Spokesman
in 1985. She has also done two other books, one on
Zia-ul-Haq and his Islamisation project. The other was
a comparative study of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
in the 1970s. Her latest book, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and 
Community in South Asian Islam
Since 1950 (OUP) this year. Jalal, who had taught at Columbia 
University, New York, was involved in a legal battle with the 
university authorities about religious and sexual bias. The case was 
not allowed but the judge conceded that there was a case of bias.

Jalal's father was a diplomat, and she did part of her schooling in 
the United States, where she returned to do her college studies, and 
went on to do her doctoral dissertation, the subject of her first 
book, at the University of Cambridge.

Jalal agreed to do an e-mail interview with Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Jr 
when she was in Lahore last month.

There is a personal note in the writing of this book. You describe 
yourself as a "Muslim historian" and you have talked about how 
"imaan" or "faith" has sustained you in writing this book. What is 
the intellectual perspective and commitment that sustained the 
writing of The Sole Spokesman and Democracy and Authoritarianism in 
South Asia, and what has changed in writing this book? Is it a change 
in a historian's faith?
I have added a personal note to the preface of my book as is commonly 
done by most authors. I describe myself as a "Muslim historian" in 
the context of an Iqbal quote where he expresses a hope that an 
insightful Muslim historian will undertake the sort of history I have 
attempted to write. Any individual has multiple identities - for 
example, I am a woman and a South Asian in addition to being a 
Muslim. I talk about "iman" or faith in sustaining me because my book 
was written during years I was battling against religious and 
national bigotry that had crept into the upper echelons of an 
American university. However, Self and Sovereignty was primarily an 
intellectual quest as were my earlier books. It is different from 
them in terms of the questions asked and the range of source 
materials used. I pay more attention in this book to literature, 
culture, society and the informal arenas of politics.

You have rightly pointed to the distortion caused by mostly Indian 
secular historians by dividing the writing of history and the 
perspective into "national" and "communal" discourses. But the 
alternative you suggest, that of "religiously and culturally informed 
differences," seems to pose as many problems. When does this positive 
"difference" slip into a claim for territorial sovereignty in the 
political sphere, and into bigotry? Or, is it an inherent hazard 
which cannot be avoided, whether it is used by Hindus, Muslims or 
Sikhs?
I have called into question the false binary between secular 
nationalism and religious communalism in radically new ways. You have 
not correctly characterized the alternative approach I have adopted. 
I do not essentialise religiously and culturally informed 
differences, but try to see how they emerge and get articulated. We 
need to respect and accommodate differences rather than seek to erase 
them. It is the adamant denial of difference that provokes claims of 
territorial sovereignty in the political sphere. It is necessary to 
make a distinction between religious sensibility and religious 
bigotry. An overwhelming majority of people in the subcontinent have 
religious faith, only a microscopic minority exhibit signs of 
religious bigotry. There is no inherent hazard in the expressions of 
differences by any religious or other type of community - the hazard 
comes when these are not accommodated but denied.

If the colonial state had not used "religion" as a marker, starting 
with the enumeration in the census based on religion, would the 
politics of identity -- in the cultural and political spheres -- have 
taken a different turn?
The colonial state used "religion" as a marker not in any ordinary 
sense but to define majorities and minorities - the Hindu and Muslim 
categories were used in India in the same way as Catholic and 
Protestant categories in Ireland. It is this, which gave "religion" 
the role it came to play in identity politics of the late colonial 
period. Without this form of colonial political engineering the 
politics of identity may well have taken a different turn. For 
example, the connection between language and nationalism was very 
strong in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Did the intensity of "communal passion" that comes through in the 
Hindi and Urdu journalism of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in the late 
19th and early 20th centuries surprise you?
I can't say that I was totally surprised, though I was struck by the 
vehemence of the tone, especially in the more bigoted articulations 
of communitarian identity.

You have observed correctly that it is the progressive, modern Muslim 
movement which led to the demand for a Pakistan, while the 
traditionalist Muslims stuck to the idea of an undifferentiated or 
amorphous Indian nationalism. It is true of Hindu orthodoxy as well 
because the modern Hindus wanted to change the old religious and 
social structures. Does this mean that the "modernity project" in 
India ends on an ironical note -- emphasising the religious identity 
in the very process of challenging it?
Yes, there is a certain irony in the denouement of the modernity 
project in South Asia. But it should not come as a surprise except to 
those who equate religion with traditions inherited from the past. 
The historian's task is to see how the meanings of religion changed 
in modern times. There is also a strong political overtone in the 
labels "secular" and "communal". Those like Azad who supported the 
Congress brand of nationalism are dubbed "secular" despite the strong 
dose of religion in their politics. I have shown how in the 1945-46 
election campaign both the Congress and the Muslim League resorted to 
religion in their propaganda.

You say that modern, secular Muslim historians write without much 
Islamic learning. It is absolutely true. But do you agree that even 
Shibli, Iqbal and Azad had lacked "Islamic learning" to look at 
Islamic history from a critical perspective, and that they were only 
reconstructing romantic and nostalgic narratives? And that they never 
seem to be aware of a mind like Ibn Khaldun?
There is bound to be an element of romance and nostalgia in poetry 
and this is true of much of Iqbal's poetry. But I don't think it is 
correct to say that Shibli, Iqbal and Azad were oblivious of the 
rationalist intellectual traditions of Islam.

Do you feel the need for a critical reconstruction of "Islamic 
history", from the days of Prophet Muhammad establishing a nascent 
polity in Medina, and charting the ways in which it was completely 
transformed when political power of the Islamic polity moved to 
Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, Granada and Constantinople in the 
subsequent centuries; a reconstruction which would also show how the 
"ummah" or the "universal church" has nothing to do with the 
"universal state'?
A new, dynamic history of religion and state in Islam is certainly 
called for, so long as we do not slide into a rigid church-state 
dichotomy in the process of sustaining the analytical distinction 
between church and state. I have discussed Iqbal's very pertinent 
views on civil society in Self and Sovereignty.

Who are your favourite historians?
Ibn Khaldun is certainly one of them. Among twentieth-century greats 
one would have to mention Fernand Braudel. In the field of modern 
South Asian history today both Ranajit Guha and C.A. Bayly are, in 
different ways, making important contributions.

You seem to have an ambivalent attitude towards Gandhi. It is true 
that he was a cunning politician, but what it is about him that seems 
to inspire young people in the Western world more than in India, 
Pakistan and Bangladesh?
You are probably right in detecting an "ambivalent" attitude towards 
Gandhi, which is not to detract from his greatness. I think a blend 
of admiration tinged with exasperation is not an uncommon way of 
looking upon the Mahatma. I am not sure that Gandhi is admired more 
by young people in the West than in the subcontinent. Young people in 
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh should certainly study his life and 
message more carefully. In fact they need to know more about 
political leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, M.A. Jinnah, Subhas Chandra 
Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru as well as poet-philosophers like 
Rabindranath Tagore and Muhammad Iqbal.

What is your next project?
My next project is tentatively titled Religion and Misplaced 
Secularity: Law and the Arts.

Do you think that in contemporary India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the 
question of identity should ideally move away from that of culture 
and religion?
No, instead the domain of culture and religion should be reclaimed 
from the bigots. We must learn how to respect difference and then 
build unity based on multiple identities and shared sovereignties. 
The age of secular uniformity and monolithic sovereignty is over.

_________

#4.

Tehelka.com

"BEING INDIAN MEANT ALL KINDS OF IDENTITIES"

Romila Thapar, eminent historian and an authority on ancient India, 
in conversation with Rinku Pegu, fervently, but methodically, 
demolishes the assertions of the Sangh Parivar in its attempt to 
saffronise history as taught in schools
New Delhi, September 7

Why has history become so important to political discourse in India, 
especially in the last three years?
It has to do with a crisis of identity. The process of 
nation-building is, to a large extent, concerned with origins and 
identity. During the national movement, there was an attempt to bring 
as many people into it as possible. It was what we call an "all 
inclusive" movement. Consequently, there was this recognition of 
multiple cultures, societies and identities. From what I remember of 
the national movement (I was in school at the time of Independence) 
there was really no concern for a single Indian identity. The word 
"Indian" included all kinds of identities - and its definition was 
deliberately left vague.

The crisis today, 50 years after Independence, is that attempts are 
being made - through the political philosophy of the Sangh Parivar - 
to create a very specific identity, that of "Hindutva". So history 
now has to focus on how to make Hindutva exclusive. From an 
all-inclusive nationalism, we are moving towards a nationalism that 
excludes - one that gives the right of being an Indian to one 
category of people, excluding the others. As a result, there is a 
need to rewrite history in ways that would legitimise and justify 
that exclusion.

This kind of historical writing goes back to the ideology of the 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of V D Sarvarkar and M S Golwarkar. 
Their argument, made in the 1920s and 1930s, was that only those for 
whom the subcontinent was punyabhoomi (holy land) and pitribhoomi 
(fatherland) could be called Indians. Now, pitribhoomi is a 
sufficiently open definition, since it simply means "land of one's 
ancestors". But punyabhoomi has a more closed meaning, by which those 
who belong to religions that did not originate in India are regarded 
as aliens. This is one way of demarcating and saying, for example, 
that Muslims and Christians are aliens for following religions that 
were created outside India. Thus, in effect, the inheritors of the 
land are Hindus and Hindus only, and that they have always been 
indigenous and have existed on Indian soil from the very beginning of 
history, as it were.

But isn't it a historical fact that the Harappan civilisation 
predates that of the Aryans, who originated elsewhere?
Caste Hindus have always traced their ancestry back to the period 
when the Vedas were composed. After the discovery of the Harappan 
civilisation, it became difficult to shoehorn the Vedic culture into 
the Harappan culture, and the argument was made that the Harappan 
civilisation preceded the Vedic.

In such a context, two problems came up. First of all, to trace the 
ancestry of caste Hindus back to the beginnings of history, one has 
to prove that the Harappan civilisation - the foundational culture of 
Indian history and civilisation - is not only indigenous but is also 
the same as the Vedic. Therefore, Hindutva also has to prove that the 
Vedic culture is entirely indigenous. That would mean going against 
all the theories of history that have existed for the last 100 years, 
whereby scholars have argued that the Indo-Aryans came from Iran and 
Afghanistan.

Initially, there was this invasion theory, which said that 
Indo-Aryans came from outside India and defeated and subjugated an 
existing population. Nowadays, most scholars accept that there was no 
invasion, but a gradual migration. The Indo-Aryan language is 
believed to be closely related to what is technically known as a 
cognate language - to Old Iranian and to the Indo-European language 
that was spoken in Central Asia. The language, in fact, was not 
restricted to India: its process of creation had to do with other 
languages outside India.

Now, in order to insist on the indigenous origin of Indian culture, 
it is necessary to argue that the Aryans were indigenous, and that 
the language of the Indo-Aryans from which Vedic Sanskrit sprang was 
indigenous to and developed in India. This is the basis of the theory 
that is now actively being propagated by the people in power.

How is the present regime proceeding in its mission to establish the 
Hindutva ideology as a historical truth?
The Sangh Parivar is proceeding in various ways. One, of course, is 
by changing the textbooks. They have already changed the textbooks in 
states like Gujarat, where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in 
control to suit their needs. The Gujarat government introduced the 
theory that the Aryans were the indigenous inhabitants of India, 
implying that only Hindus are true Indians. They are also propagating 
the notion that the Harappan civilisation was a Vedic civilisation. 
By rewriting textbooks, one can immediately influence a large 
percentage of the population, and that too children of a very 
impressionable age - between eight and 13 years. At such an age, 
children are not going to question what is written in their textbooks.

What is not clear is what exactly the Sangh and BJP forces want to do 
with history, because the Human Resources Development (HRD) Ministry 
has also come out with a statement saying they want to abolish the 
teaching of history from class six to 10 and introduce social 
sciences, a kind of motley package of economics, civics, anthropology 
and sociology. At the moment it is still unclear. There has not been 
any public discussion on it.
What impact will the withdrawal of history as a separate subject from 
the school curriculum have on children?
It depends on what kind of history the ministry is going to put in 
the social science package. They might simply talk about origins, 
primary citizenship, and about which group of people have the longest 
history in this land. This would automatically underline the 
centrality of the Hindu community and Vedic sources. The argument 
being given, according to latest statements by Dr Murli Manohar Joshi 
in Parliament, is that history is being removed because the burden of 
the sheer number of subjects is too great for a child. But if social 
sciences, which will replace history, consist of four subjects as 
stated, then surely the burden will only be greater.

This means we will have a generation of school children growing up 
without any understanding of history. As for changes in textbooks, 
doubtless, new notions of Hindutva history will be introduced, which 
will not simply be restricted to Aryans and the Harappans, but will 
also touch on topics like Indian civilisation being the cradle of 
world civilisation, or the golden age of the Hindus and how the 
coming of the Muslims totally destroyed it. What will also be 
highlighted is the antagonism between the Hindus and Muslims. We are 
waiting to see whether they come in the form of history textbooks or 
social sciences.

Don't you think the government has discarded several accepted norms 
in its perusal of Hindutva ideology through the medium of education?
I have had some experience with academic organisations like the 
National Council of Educational and Research Training (NCERT) because 
we wrote textbooks for them. In the 1960s, they formed a committee of 
historians headed by R C Majumdar, and with people like Biseshwar 
Prasad (then head of History Department, Delhi University), and 
Dashrath Sharma. They asked me to write a textbook on ancient India 
for class six. Even when this committee was disbanded, it was 
replaced by another committee of historians. Procedures were followed 
and it was controlled by academics of that discipline. Now what is 
happening is that nobody seems to know whether there is a committee, 
and if there is, who its members are, and what decisions they are 
taking. People keep referring to directors and officials in the NCERT 
who are not really historians. We want to know who the historians 
are. Who are the historians who have decided that the existing books 
should be replaced? Who will then decide (or may have decided) who 
will write the new books that will replace the existing books?

What we have been arguing for is that there has to be transparency in 
these matters. You cannot have the HRD minister and his friends, or 
the director of NCERT and his friends, appointing people to write 
textbooks. There has to be a professional peer body. That 
transparency is lacking.

Another example is that of the new National Curriculum Framework for 
School Education (NCFSE) that has been drafted. Every curriculum 
change has to go through what is called the CABE, which has not met 
since 1997, when the present authorities were shouted down. Without 
the CABE's assent, the NDA government's agenda to push through the 
new curriculum is absolutely unconstitutional. The Central HRD 
ministry has to ask the CABE to comment on the changes they are 
making. This is not being done. We want to know what procedures are 
being followed.

But this deliberate interference in favour of a Hindutva ideology has 
not been restricted to the school level, its tentacles have spread 
even further
So far, the HRD Ministry has not interfered with history at the 
university level, but one never knows. What is happening, however, is 
that research institutes like the Indian Council of Historical 
Research (ICHR), Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICCSR) 
and the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) are busy with 
projects that are aimed solely at propagating the greatness of 
ancient India. I am a historian of ancient India and I think this 
endeavour is a great publicity for ancient India, but there is great 
deal of Indian history that is not covered by these projects.

Areas like gender history need much more attention, as it is 
essential for an understanding of Indian society. The entire history 
of northeastern India needs to be looked at afresh, taking into 
consideration ecological and technological factors that need 
investigation and exploration. Intellectual history, and a great deal 
of social and economic history are still not covered in an intensive 
way on several areas. All that is set aside by the present regime and 
the main focus is on the greatness of Indian civilisation, its 
achievements and that it was the cradle of world civilisation.

There is no question that there have been achievements. Quite 
justifiably, it is argued that India had great mathematicians like 
Aryabhatta, Bhaskar and Lalla in the middle of the first millennium 
AD. But they were working in a world context. They were producing 
ideas in India, but there was an exchange with other cultures. If 
there was a great outburst of systems of knowledge at that time, it 
was not something that was produced in isolation in India. It was 
something that emerged out of an interaction between civilisations. 
That interaction is not being examined because the attitude of the 
present regime is to try and prove that everything originated in 
India.
CONCLUDING PART OF THE INTERVIEW TO FOLLOW

_________

#5.

Indian Express
Sept 4 2001

MALIGNING ISLAM TORTURING WOMEN

Syeda Saiyidain Hameed

The date for the expiry of the deadline imposed on the women of 
Kashmir for wearing a veil is September 1 2001.

A few weeks ago, in Srinagar, there was an acid attack on two college 
girls and two teachers. The responsibility for this heinous act was 
claimed by an unknown group, which called itself Lashkar-e-Jabbar. An 
ultimatum was issued whereby all the women who did not observe Purdah 
or Hijab by the deadline September 1, would be mutilated by similar 
acid attacks. These reports were widely circulated by media; 
photographs of girls in Hijab, of shops selling Burqas, of police 
patrols in front of colleges and schools were displayed on front 
pages. Once again, Islam was projected in the media as the most 
gender unfriendly religion. Every political and religious group in 
Kashmir and elsewhere, condemned this as the worst outrage against 
women. Jama'at-i-Islami, Hizbul Mujahideen, Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba, 
Hurriyat leaders like Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, all proclaimed that this 
violence was repugnant to the tenets of Islam. But the date stuck in 
public consciousness as an ugly possibility. No one knew who was 
Lashkar-e-Jabbar, no arrests were made, and the possibility was not 
ruled out that this was a ploy to malign Islam by once again using 
women as soft targets.

In 1947 the women of my family gave up observing Purdah; and even 
after the situation normalized no one ever thought of reverting to 
it. Fifty four years later some maniac organization issues a fatwa in 
the name of Islam:`Observe Purdah or be disfigured for life'. 
Outraged by these depraved actions, I went to the Quran to identify 
references in the various Surahs to Purdah, women and coercion. I 
wanted to see the truth by my own light and not depend on 
interpretation and analysis of others. In the Surah Al Nur (The 
Light) the matter of clothing for men and women is explained. The 
very same words are used for both in the matter of appropriate 
modesty for men and women:

Say to the believing women (and men)
That they should lower their gaze and guard
Their modesty: that will make
For greater purity for them

The Arabic words `wa ya hafazuu furuujahum' literally mean protection 
(hifaazat) of their private parts (furuujaham). So far there is no 
difference between the command for men and women. But then there is a 
difference; women are asked to restrict the use of ornaments when 
they appear before strangers and to draw the veil over their bosoms 
(Source: Abdullah Yusuf Ali and M.M.Pickthall). The context of this 
injunction seems to be the customary dressing practices of women 
during the days of the Arab Jahiliyat, since it also refers to the 
practice of `striking the feet to draw attention to hidden ornaments'.

This is the sum total of the `dress code' for women and men in Islam. 
But this should be read with another important injunction in the 
Quran which needs to be placed front and center before all those who 
presume to impose their dress (or any other) diktat on the community.

In Ayat 256 of Surah Al Baqr, the Quran clearly states that there is 
no compulsion in matters of religion.
La ikraa fid Din
These four small words contain the essence of Islam and convey a 
wealth of meaning for the Muslims. In his Tarjumanul Quran, Maulana 
Azad translates them to mean that in matters of Din force is never 
needed because Din is born of deep faith and faith can never be 
inculcated with force. In his commentary on the same text he says:

In matters of Din and belief no compulsion is permissible. The path 
of belief springs from the heart. And belief can be generated only 
from `Dawat' (invitation) and `mau'izat (exhortation), not by 
coercion and force. The Quraish of Meeca, he says, wanted to spread 
Islam by force. Quran ne iskey khilaf jang ka hukm diya(Quran decreed 
war against this). The how could it support an act that it condemned 
in such unequivocal terms? His metaphoric explanation for this 
follows: `When darkness prevails the only requirement is that light 
should appear; and when it does, darkness disappears by itself.' 
Hence the question, where in Islam is there need of Jabr (coercion)?

The very name Lashkar-e-Jabbar is anathema to the spirit of Islam as 
enshrined in the above words. Therefore their deplorable threat 
should be condemned by Muslim civil society with one voice, as an 
affront to Islam and as yet another ploy to torture and subjugate 
women. The state should bring the real culprits to book and rip open 
their real motivation before the public eye. Women of Kashmir should 
take comfort in the support of not only their Muslim sisters but 
women of all religions, castes and classes who demand their 
protection by every force in command of the state and every pulpit in 
command of religious leaders.

(Syeda Saiyidain Hameed is convener of Muslim Women's Forum) 

_______

#6.

The Telegraph
9 September 2001

MURDER WEAPON IN KASHIPUR 
BY MUKUL KESAVAN

The deaths in Kashipur in Orissa have become a national scandal. They 
make newspaper headlines and television news shows (notably on Star 
News) regularly provide footage from Kashipur besides featuring panel 
discussions in which politicians and nongovernmental organizations 
offer their separate explanations for the tragedy. The pub- lic 
discussion of the deaths centres on one issue: did the dead of 
Kashipur die of starvation or not?

The government of Orissa (and the government of India) have 
consistently argued through their spokesmen that the people who died 
died because of food poisoning, while its critics maintain that they 
starved to death. This is, in a sick way, about as polarized an 
argument as you are likely to encounter: one side adamant that people 
died on account of something they ate and the other certain that they 
died because they had nothing to eat.

A few days ago the Orissa government's case was made on Star News by 
an articulate member of parliament who belonged to Orissa's ruling 
party, the Biju Janata Dal. Rhetorically, the government's argument 
was made up of three elements: a preliminary expression of regret for 
the tragedy: an attempt to put the deaths in "perspective", that is, 
the longstanding poverty of Orissa, the failure of the Union 
government to classify Orissa as the lowest form of basket case and 
the consequent failure of successive central governments to give 
Orissa the wherewithal for tackling hunger and, in a startling shift 
from the general to the particular, an insistence that the deaths in 
Kashipur were caused not by hunger, but by poisoned mango kernels.

Mango kernels. I had never heard the two words said together before 
the Kashipur deaths became news, so it took a while to work out that 
the MP was talking about guthlees, the Hindi word for the large hard 
seed buried inside the mango. According to the MP, tribal communities 
regularly ate powdered mango kernels. In the case of Kashipur, these 
kernels had become toxic through long storage, so when they ate them, 
they died.

When he was asked why they hadn't been given rice to eat instead, the 
MP insisted that the consumption of mango kernels wasn't a result of 
their inability to buy other staple foods like rice. These tribals 
liked eating mango kernels. This was said with all the ethnographical 
authority of an Evans-Pritchard explaining the exotic food habits of 
the Nuer. The MP assured his audience that the collector of the 
district, well known for his expertise in the matter, had certified 
that the deaths were caused by kernel-poisoning, not starvation. The 
otherness of tribals, their odd habits and their peculiar 
preferences, their difference from people like you and me, formed the 
real context for their deaths.

The MP was a well-spoken man and this must have seemed a particularly 
good alibi because it made the Kashipur deaths a function of tribal 
choice rather than government callousness and inaction. But he forgot 
to explain why the mango kernels had been stored so long that they 
became toxic. Might this not suggest that mango kernels were, for a 
malnourished community experienced in hunger, a food of the last 
resort?

Besides, if the MP's explanation was correct, what were we to make of 
the footage of very thin residents of Kashipur telling us on camera 
that the public distribution system had broken down, that their kin 
had died of hunger?

The government's position on reaching food to the poor was that it 
was happening, that they were compiling lists of people who were BPL. 
The acronym, used knowingly by politicians, journalists, even judges 
in the aftermath of the Kashipur deaths, instantly made hunger an 
expert matter. BPL, in case you haven't worked it out, means Below 
the Poverty Line. Before starving people get food from the state they 
get BPL cards so they can establish their malnourished bona fides. 
Economists spoke of the need for systems to ensure that food 
subsidies reached the poor instead of being diverted into the hands 
of profiteers. The minister of food supplies announced that 
food-for-work programmes were being made operational on a war 
footing. He reiterated his posi- tion that the Central government was 
willing to release the country's over flowing, rat-ravaged foodstocks 
free to any needy state government and regretted the inability of 
state governments to "lift the stock".

Reaching India's surplus rice to Orissa's poor began to seem a 
remarkably complex, expert matter. There were insuperable transport 
costs, a corrupt delivery system, the lurking danger of depressing 
grain prices by providing free grain promiscuously, poverty to be 
classified, cards to be made... An NGO lady pointed out that the 
public distribution system absurdly expected the starving poor to buy 
their whole entitlement (some sixteen kilos of rice) in one go. It 
was a very good point, but watching her on television, I wanted 
someone to explain to me in small words, why the rice couldn't be 
given to the hungry of Kashipur, free?

The how of it wasn't difficult. Send the food in via the army. Yes, I 
know that it isn't the army's job. But when has that ever stopped the 
Indian state in times of calamity? If the civil admi- nistration 
isn't up to the task of averting starvation (or acute malnourishment, 
if that makes the government feel better) and if the state at the 
Centre or in Orissa can't bear the humiliation of asking Oxfam what 
to do, why not call in the army? There would be no hesitation in 
times of quakes or floods, so why this restraint now?

Then I saw the difference. The reason the Indian state is relatively 
quick to react to quakes and floods is that they are natural 
calamities. They're god's will, nature's caprice and, most 
importantly, nobody's fault. So the army goes in to rescue the 
wretched and ministers, both prime and chief, do helicopter 
inspections within days of the first reports. In contrast it took the 
chief minister of Orissa weeks of hostile media coverage to make up 
his mind to tour Kashipur. That's because it is impossible for a 
politician to act the concerned voyeur when the disaster is man-made, 
created or compounded by uncaring governance.

Just how uncaring was illustrated by a Star News report. A Delhi 
businessman, Mr Kalia, moved by reports of starvation, went directly 
to Kashipur, bought rice for a lakh of rupees from the collector and 
personally supervised its distribution. It was exactly as simple as 
that. Mr Kalia didn't claim that he had solved the problem of world 
hunger but he had made sure that scores of families had a month's 
worth of rice to eat. It wasn't in the end an expert matter; Mr Kalia 
responded to an emergency with concern, cash and compassion. Why 
couldn't the government of Orissa have done the same on a larger 
scale?

Because the government knew that the dead of Kashipur were poisoned. 
They had identified the bodies and found the murder weapon. Mango 
kernels. They then closed the case because there was nothing left to 
be done.

_______

#7.

Source: http://www.thenewspapertoday.com/india/inside.phtml?NEWS_ID=27010

LAPIERRE BOOK ON BHOPAL GAS TRAGEDY 'MISLEADING': SANGATHAN
PTI
Bhopal, September 09, 12:58
The Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangthan on Sunday hit out at the 
latest book on the 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster written by noted French 
author, Dominique Lapierre and his nephew Javier Moro, saying it 
contained a lot of "misleading information."

The Sangthan convenor, Abdul Jabbar said although Lapierre was trying 
to portray himself in the book It was five past midnight as a 
sympathiser of the disaster victims, he was actually trying to help 
the Union Carbide in whose plant the disaster had taken place.

He charged Lapierre of falsely claiming the then Carbide Chief, 
Warren Anderson, had been treated badly when he had come here soon 
after the disaster. "Everyone knows that Anderson was given a VIP 
treatment in Bhopal," he said.

Jabbar said that Lapierre appeared to be creating an atmosphere under 
which it may not be possible at all to extradite Anderson for 
standing a trial in the case relating to the disaster.
He also dismissed as dubious Lapierre's claim that the money earned 
from the royalties on his book would be spent on the gas victims.

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

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://groups.yahoo.com/group/act/messages/ . To 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.