[sacw] SACW #2 | 6 June 01

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | Dispatch #2
6 June 2001

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#1. Diversities and linkages in Sri Lanka
#2. Pakistan/ India : Fog and illusions on the road to peace
#3. Pakistan / India: Talk sense and walk the talk
#4. Pakistan / India: Visas & travel restrictions
#5. Cross-border marriages run parallel to Track-II diplomacy
#6. India: Public Lecture in Bangalore: What Ails the Indian Homosexual ?

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

#1.

The Hindu
6 June 2001

Diversities and linkages in Sri Lanka

By V. Suryanarayan

``HISTORY,'' ERIC HOBSBAWM has pointed out, ``is the raw material for
nationalist or ethnic or fundamentalist ideologies as poppies are the raw
material for heroin addiction''. In many developing countries, the sense
of national identity is built on the glories of the past, real or
imagined. In his autobiography, as told to Cindy Adams, President Sukarno
boasts about the greatness of the Malays and the spread of Malay culture
by reeling out words with similar sounds: ``Manila, Madagascar, Malaya,
Madura, Maori, Himalaya''. As is well known, Himalaya has nothing to do
with the Malays. It is derived from the Sanskrit words Hima and Alaya,
which mean the abode of snow.

The People of India Project, the ongoing research programme of the
Anthropological Survey of India, attempts to provide the cultural profile
of all communities in India, the impact of change, and linkages and
diversities among them. One interesting conclusion needs specific mention.
Communities, cutting across religions, share a many cultural traits. Thus
the Hindus share a high percentage of traits with Muslims (97.7 per cent),
Buddhists (91.9 per cent), Sikhs (88.99 per cent), and Jains (77.46 per
cent). Other communities that share a high percentage of traits are
Muslim-Sikh (89.95 per cent), Muslim-Buddhist (91.18 per cent) and
Jain-Buddhist (81.34 per cent). As K.S. Singh, former Director-General of
the Anthropological Survey of India, has remarked: ``Diversities and
linkages, freedom and tolerance go together''.

The diversities in Sri Lanka are well known. According to the last census
held in 1981, the Sinhalese formed 74.0 per cent of the population, the
Sri Lankan Tamils 12.6 per cent, the Indian Tamils 5.5 per cent, Muslims
7.1 per cent and others 0.6 per cent. There is an overlapping of ethnicity
and religious affiliation. Buddhists constitute 69.3 per cent (all
Sinhalese), Hindus 15.5 per cent (all Tamils), Muslims 7.6 per cent and
Christians 7.5 per cent (Sinhalese and Tamils). As far as language is
concerned, Sinhalese speak Sinhala, Tamils and Muslims speak Tamil and all
the elite is familiar with English.

Looking at the past through the prism of the present will lead to
falsification of history. Despite the diversities, the people of the
island, like their Indian counterparts, have come to share many common
cultural attributes. But with the exacerbation of ethnic conflict, the
chauvinists among the Tamils and the Sinhalese, two sides of the same
coin, started projecting the two communities as two antagonistic entities,
who were at war with one another for several centuries. Two illustrations
are given below to substantiate the point that truth and objectivity are
the first casualties in times of conflict.

Satchi Ponnambalam claims that the original inhabitants of the island
were Tamils; Sinhalese were originally Tamils, who later on were converted
to Buddhism and adopted the Sinhalese language and much of what the
Sinhalese consider as their great monuments were actually produced by
Tamil artisans. The Sinhala Commission provides an entirely opposite view.
According to the Sinhala Commission, there is no evidence of a distinct
Tamil community or a Tamil kingdom in the Jaffna peninsula before the
13th century. On the contrary, Sinhala chronicles and inscriptions
indicate that there were large and extensive Sinhala settlements there
from very early times. The Sinhalese were the lawful rulers of and legal
heirs to the Jaffna kingdom until 1815.

What is the reality? Prof. Stanley Tambiah, after years of painstaking
research, has come to the conclusion that the Sinhalese and the Tamils
share many parallel features of ``traditional caste, kinship, popular
religious cults, customs and so on. But they have come to be divided by
their mythic charters and tendentious historical understandings of the
past''. The common belief in Sri Lanka is that Sinhalese are ``fair
Aryans'' and the Tamils are ``dark Dravidians''. Prof. Tambiah has
exploded this myth. Quoting Gananath Obeyesekere, Tambiah adds, ``if it
were possible to trace the present day Sinhalese population's ancestry
far enough, all lines would in major part lead back to South India'''.
According to Obeyesekere, ``Biologically speaking, those whom we call
Sinhala are in fact racially inter-mixed with South Indian peoples and
with aboriginal groups like the Vedda; and the Tamils, who live in the
north and the east, are also similarly biologically mixed''.

Dr. K.S. Singh has pointed out that in India there are several
communities which can be classified as having more than one religion. It
is interesting to note that Sinhalese religious practices also point to
the same direction. The Hindu Bhakti cult has influenced Theravada
Buddhism and there are images of Hindu Gods in Buddhist temples. The deity
of Skanda (Muruga) in Kataragama, located near the Yala sanctuary in the
northeast of the island, continues to be the ``major institutional
intersection of several religious faiths. Hindus, Buddhists, Christians
and Muslims, all go to Kataragama, where the atmosphere is one of
tolerance and goodwill''. During my last visit to the temple two years
ago, I found Buddhist pilgrims far outnumbering the Hindus. The Sinhalese
carry the Kavadi with great devotion and fervour.

According to Buddhist chronicles, the founding father of the first
Sinhala kingdom was Prince Vijaya, a Kshatriya from North India who came
to the island with 700 followers in 544 BC. Vijaya aligned himself with an
aboriginal princess named Kuveni, married her and with her assistance
became the king of the country. Later he drove Kuveni away and married a
princess from Madurai and made her the queen. His followers also married
maidens of high birth from the Pandyan kingdom. In other words, even
according to Buddhist texts, from the very beginning, the Sinhala nation
was a product of assimilation between the Sinhalese and the Tamils.

Given the geographical contiguity, Sri Lanka had close cultural contacts
with Tamil Nadu and Kerala. The narrow and shallow Palk Strait was not a
barrier; it was a bridge through which religious leaders, merchants and
ordinary people moved freely. Few Sri Lankan scholars want to subscribe to
the objective truth that Buddhism was a virile religion in South India and
the spread and efflorescence of Theravada Buddhism in the island had much
to do with fruitful contacts with Buddhist centres of learning in
Kanchipuram, Kaveripatinam and Madurai. Buddhaghosha of Magadha, ``poet,
philosopher and commentator'' of Theravada Buddhism was patronised by
Sanghapala, King of Kanchipuram. It is a matter of pride for the Tamils
that one of the greatest epics of Theravada Buddhism is in Tamil language.
Manimekalai, written in the second century AD, is one the finest jewels of
Tamil Buddhist literature.

Kerala's relations with Sri Lanka and interaction with the Sinhalese and
Tamils remain a neglected area of historical research. According to
Gananath Obeyesekere, when Hinduism began to dominate the religious scene
in Kerala from the tenth century, a large number of Buddhists migrated to
Sri Lanka.

Despite the cultural commonalities, the chauvinists among the Sinhalese
and the Tamils propagate the falsehood of age old animosities between the
two communities, It is my submission that the Sinhala-Tamil conflict is a
product of post-independence politics, an offshoot of the nation building
experiment, when the Sinhalese leaders tried to build the nation on the
basis of Buddhist religion and Sinhala language to the exclusion of
minority claims. The situation was aggravated when the chauvinist
Sinhalese and Tamil leaders began to resort to the politics of ethnic
mobilisation.

In his absorbing novel, ``When Memory Dies'', A. Sivanandan narrates a
conversation between Uncle Para and Vijay. Uncle Para tells Vijay, ``When
memory dies a people die''. Vijay asks Uncle Para, ``But if we make false
memories''. Uncle Para responds, ``That's worse, that is murder''.

(The writer is former Director, Centre for South and Southeast Asian
Studies, University of Madras, Chennai.)

____

#2.

DAWN
1st June 2001

Fog and illusions on the road to peace

By Ayaz Amir

THE holy warriors, mindless champions of jihad, are at one end of the
spectrum; the Track Two peaceniks, who dance the bhangra at the sight of
Indian border guards and otherwise babble of peace at all costs, at the
other end. There is, however, no divine ordinance which lays down that
Indo-Pak relations should be a zero-sum game, a choice of absolutes: war or
peace, bitter hostility or headlong retreat.

There are real points of contention between the two countries and given
these, a kind of rivalry or competition between them will exist for the
foreseeable future. Nor is there anything wrong with this. The Berlin Wall
fell in the West. In the sub-continent the Iron Curtain or, since this is
the sub-continent, the Reed Curtain is still very much in place. So it is
not particularly helpful to draw analogies from afar and apply them to our
neighbourhood.

When western ideologues, as relentless in their proselytizing as the
Christian missionaries of the 19th century, say this is the era of
cooperation and not confrontation they should be looked in the eye and
asked, "Pray, for whom?" Europe - minus the Balkans and Russia - beats the
drums of cooperation because it no longer has the Soviet Empire to contend
with, that dinosaur having crashed to earth under its own weight. There
are, however, historical knots elsewhere which remain to be untied. The new
missionaries of globalization and international cooperation should be
reminded of this unfinished business. Of what use is globalization to the
embattled Palestinians? To the human flotsam caught in the wars of Africa?
To the despairing people of Kashmir?

Plutarch said long ago that conquerors were always lovers of peace: they
liked to enter your cities unopposed. Israel is a lover of peace: it would
like the Palestinians to accept meekly the terms of conquest imposed upon
them. The comparison with India-in-Kashmir I would not like to make because
coupling Israel and India in the same breath is grist to the mills of the
hate-India lobby in Pakistan. There is already too much dust (and resulting
confusion) swirling in the atmosphere. We can all do without contrived or
manufactured hatred.

But as an aside, let us bear witness to the new imperialism. The cold war
was an affair of West and East. But the Rome and Carthage of the 20th
century imposed their mutual hostility upon the rest of the planet. Now
that the nature of the game has changed, a new set of values, without
regard to individual differences, is again being imposed from above. The
gospel changes; the commandments undergo a revision. But the fury of the
reigning prophets remains the same.

India and Pakistan must settle their differences by themselves, on their
own terms, and not as a result of outside prodding. India is right in this,
and Pakistan wrong. The Pakistani craving for outside mediation or any
other forms of intervention in the settlement of the Kashmir dispute is
evidence of weakness and intellectual confusion. For it is tantamount to
saying that on our own we are helpless and must count on the favour of
friends for a favourable outcome in Kashmir.

There are two problems with this approach. Firstly, if our own means be
insufficient, why should the world (or the US) give us a free lunch in
Kashmir? Weakness on the ground cannot be turned to victory at the
negotiating table. Secondly, if someone else brokers a deal the terms of it
will still favour the stronger party. The Camp David and Oslo Accords are
not exercises in justice. They hold up a mirror to reality and as such they
come with qualifications attached. Egypt got back the Sinai as a result of
the Camp David Accords but in return agreed to castration at American
hands. It still has a powerful military but this military can fight Libya
or Sudan, not Israel. Camp David saw to this.

Pakistan's on-off fascination with the idea of outside intervention in
Kashmir is thus based on naive foundations. It is also reflective of
adolescent diplomacy. Just because we feel something will go down ill in
India we raise it as a policy option.

True, the UN resolutions on which our Kashmir case rests are emblems of
multilateralism. Nor is there any reason for us to ditch this concept. But
at the same time it would not hurt us to remember that if ever a halfway
solution of the Kashmir issue is struck it will be through the collective
wisdom of India and Pakistan, not through any outside agency. The Simla
Accord was meant to be a victor's document but its insistence on
bilateralism as the vehicle for settling Indo-Pakistan disputes is not
misplaced. Only a fool would extrapolate from this that we should stop
airing our concerns on Kashmir to a worldwide audience. But public
relations is one thing, working towards a solution quite another.

Sure, size and economic clout give India the advantage at any bilateral
table. How to correct this inherent imbalance? This was Pakistan's
strategic problem in the wake of defeat in the '71 war and the Simla Accord
which soon followed. For close on 17 years - that is, from 1972 to 1989 -
Pakistan stopped making even ritualistic noises about Kashmir. That was
India's historic chance to settle with the Kashmiri people and bring them
closer into the Indian Union. But it bungled the opportunity and is paying
the price of failure ever since. When India ruefully contemplates the wreck
of its efforts in Kashmir, it should take time out from blaming Pakistan
(and the ISI) and ponder a bit over its own lapses.

India's loss was Pakistan's gain. The moment Kashmiri Muslims rose
against Indian rule, the scales of bilateralism, hitherto tilted against
Pakistan, were restored to a semblance of balance. From the shadows where
the Kashmir dispute had lain for full 17 years it emerged once more into
the light. A strategic error once committed cannot be corrected by
piecemeal measures. India has responded to the freedom uprising in Kashmir
by force and repression and not the tools of imagination. Therein lies its
continuing failure. As for Pakistan, it has merely manipulated the lever
placed into its hands by a combination of Indian folly and Kashmiri
discontent. In its crucible of dirty tricks it did not forge the lever in
the first place.

The fact that the roots of the Kashmir uprising lie within Kashmir also
accounts for the ultimate failure of the propaganda blitz mounted by India
over the issue of "cross-border terrorism". It brought India handsome
dividends, and Pakistan no small embarrassment, while it lasted. But it
could not erase the facts on the ground. Heaping embarrassment on Pakistan
could not by itself put an end to the armed struggle. Hence the change of
tack which is less a concession to Pakistan than an acknowledgement of
reality.

None of this is cause for Pakistan to gloat over. Whatever India's
compulsions, it is in Pakistan's interests too to walk, in Mr Vajpayee's
evocative phrase, the high road of peace. Resources poured into
militarization and such follies as the sub-continent's nuclear race are
resources taken away from social and economic development. We need quiet
and tension-free borders much as India does. Will the Kashmir uprising last
into eternity? What if it peters out? What will balance the bilateral
scales then?

For a true equilibrium in the subcontinent, our universities and colleges
must hold their own against India's; our scholars should be of the highest
quality; our research institutions the envy of the East; our maestros the
finest exponents of subcontinental music; our skill at technology the best
in the region; our agriculture the feeding source of countries near and
far; and Lahore's famed Hira Mandi, now sadly going to pot, the hottest
international destination between Singapore and the Suez Canal.

With inner strength comes outward grace. On Kashmir we must stand firm
without feeling the need to protest too much, the very consciousness of
fortitude allowing us to speak with a softer tongue. In this context, there
is no harm in admitting that the Indian invitation to General Musharraf was
more sensitively worded than our response which had the wooden imprint of
the foreign office all over it. When will we learn the more subtle use of
words?

The challenge for both countries is to realize their limitations.
Pakistan cannot win Kashmir by force, India cannot browbeat Pakistan
through a mix of swagger and misplaced snobbery. In any true negotiations
both sides will have to give something, retreat a bit from their dog-eared
positions. Not that a solution to their problems is around the corner. It
is foolish even to think on these lines. But both countries will have
registered a major advance if they can learn the art of conversing with
each other without making a sticking-point of every quibble or comma.

The scope for miracles when Musharraf and Vajpayee meet is thus out. But
if the two leaders can lay the basis of a politer discourse in the
subcontinent - a discourse free of the hectoring and finger-pointing which
seems part of our common inheritance they will have done their bit by
history.

_____

#3.

The Friday Times
1st June 2001

Talk sense and walk the talk

S. P. Udayakumar

Prime Minister A B Vajpayee=92s invitation to General Pervez Musharra=
f
for talks is a welcome development. General Musharraf may be a military
ruler and, in the democratic sense, unrepresentative of the people of
Pakistan, but by all indications is going to be at the helm of Pakistan=92s
affairs for sometime to come. Moreover, despite widely regarded in India as
the architect of Kargil, for more than a year now he has been indicating
his willingness to talk to India "anywhere, anytime and at any level."

However, the framework for the talks remains flawed. It is
the ruling classes in New Delhi and Islamabad who are going to dialogue.
The people of Kashmir do not appear anywhere in the picture. Nor do the
"ordinary citizens" of India and Pakistan who have been deprived of any
chance to engage in a national debate before this political climax takes
their lives in a different direction. In fact, the Delhi rulers have not
even taken the Indian opposition parties into confidence before embarking
on their dramatic diplomacy.

As the Indian elites tend to consider Kashmir more as a piece
of real estate than anything else, their Pakistani counterparts adopt a
patronising attitude toward the Kashmiris. The two big brothers together
seek to decide the Kashmiris=92 fate between them and in the process promot=
e
their own self-interests. While New Delhi has ruled out any role for the
All-Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) in the upcoming summit, Islamabad
seems to be torn between not making an issue out of APHC=92s non-involvemen=
t
and engaging it in a private consultation that could undermine the very
summit.

Just like the exclusion of the Kashmiris, the abruptness of
this whole summit drama is rather intriguing. The BJP-led government does
not elaborate on the sudden change of mind on several important concerns
that they have had for so long. Military rule in Islamabad, cross-border
terrorism, and a whole array of such issues have been cited by the Vajpayee
regime since the Kargil conflict for not talking to the Musharraf
government. Only three months ago on February 19, Prime Minister Vajpayee
expressed a rather strong view that =93we have categorically said no to a
dialogue till Pakistan returns the land it occupies in Kashmir.=94 Given th=
is
background, the sudden talks initiative gives rise to several pertinent
questions: How did the BJP-led government come to reconcile with their old
reservations? Why did they reverse their Kashmir strategy so abruptly? What
are the tangible developments that might have prompted such a reversal?

The way the K C Pant mission is left high and dry by New
Delhi betrays the capriciousness of the summit initiative even more. Why
couldn=92t the BJP-led government wait until the Pant mission come to some
logical conclusion about the conflict in Kashmir? What is more troubling
than the thoughtless negligence of this ambitious preparatory task is the
sheer lack of a future road map for the talks. Delhi invites General
Musharraf to talks and then re-entrenches itself in the traditional
position on Kashmir, a talk-stopper.

The moves of the BJP-led government have to be understood in
the context of this abrasive abruptness. It is quite possible that the BJP
would like to replace their traditional war cry with a peace plea and
please their newfound friends in Washington D.C. Moreover, the BJP=92s
political fortunes have been dwindling slowly and steadily and there are
serious speculations that their shaky government in Delhi may collapse in a
year or so. The Hindutva party desperately needs to divert the attention of
the Indian society from the nationwide rejection that they have suffered in
the recent state elections. Their government=92s economic reform policies a=
re
taking a heavy toll on the poorer and weaker sections of the Indian
society. Since the politically tired, economically anxious and militarily
fatigued Indian nation is not in a combative Kargil mood, the traditional
war cry of =93Pakistanis are coming=94 may not work now. So let the same
Pakistanis come for peace this time!

Are the Pakistanis themselves prepared for peace? In a
typical Orwellian paradox, the Pakistani department of war is coming to
talk about peace. The entity that is least interested in peace with India
and stands to gain the most from the national enmity with India is coming
to mend relations with their arch-rival. As a military man, General
Musharraf should be a firm believer in the philosophy of qui desiderat
pacem praeparet bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war).

Quite ironically, the democratically elected Pakistani
leaders never had a free hand in talking peace with India either. Whenever
Ms Bhutto or Mr Sharif tried to work with the Indians, the army generals
started looking over their shoulders. Whenever the army generals looked
over their shoulders, these leaders started punching the Indian shadow.
Peace has been more threatening to the Pakistani elites than war. Hence the
one-step-forward-two-steps-backward approach!

But peace comes in handy now for the Pakistani army generals
to gain more legitimacy in the international arena. Peace talks also help
diffuse the intensifying international pressure on the nuclear weapons
program, and to distance Islamabad from the motley groups of mullahs who
want to liberate the Kashmiris but keep all the women, children and
minorities ruthlessly oppressed. Not surprisingly, the Lashkar-e-Taiba sees
the invitation as an act to deceive Pakistan. Similarly, Hezb-ul Mujahideen
is skeptical about the outcome now since talks of the last 53 years have
not produced any positive results. Harkat-ul Mujahideen considers the offer
as a fraud that India holds whenever it is under pressure. Obviously,
General Musharraf has not done his homework of convincing the jihadis about
the peace possibilities.

And here is the final picture! An ambivalent party and an
unqualified party are going to talk about peace in Kashmir without the
actual party at the table! For both Vajpayee and his Parivar and Musharraf
and his brigade, the upcoming summit is a matter of great importance.
Ironically, both of them will gain whether the summit succeeds or fails!
They had better remember that expedient talks for propaganda purposes could
make things worse and cause greater damage to the already fickle bilateral
relations. Any empty insincere "bhai bhai" talks will be equally useless.
Talk sense and then walk the talk!

_____

#4.

The Hindustan Times

The Far Country

Saif Shahin

Wagah: One of the only two crossings

Armed with a personal invitation from the Indian Prime Minister himself,
Gen Pervez Musharraf probably won't face too much trouble securing a visa
for his expected trip this side of the border. But that does not happen to
be the case for the hundreds of thousands of people-both in India and
Pakistan-who stand in queues for a visa to the other side-not just for
hours, but days, only to return home disappointed.

The two countries profess an extraordinarily rigorous visa regime against
each other-made worse by a series of other travel restrictions-rendering
people-to-people contact between them among the lowest between any two
neighbours in the world. Under the regime, an extremely low percentage of
applicants are allotted visas from either side. According to officials of
the Pakistan High Commission, while some 10,000 Indian visa applications
are received every day, only 400 to 500 of these fructify. On the Indian
side, over 6,000 applications are received from Pakistan daily, but only
250-odd visas are issued.

Further, the visas issued are not valid countrywide, and separate visas are
needed for every city. Officials of both countries concede that issuing a
visa for more than one city to a visitor is a rarity. Visitors also have to
regularly report to the local police station throughout their period of
stay. Neither of the two countries has such strictures in place with
respect to any other country. Authorities accept that the regime is
rigorous, but contend that with bilateral relations being as caustic as
they are, there is little that can be done about it. Says Jalil Abbas
Jilani, Deputy High Commissioner of Pakistan, "After Prime Minister
Vajpayee's visit to Lahore in March 1999, steps had begun from both sides
to relax the regime, particularly for some specific categories like judges,
doctors, academicians, journalists, etc. But the Kargil war came along and
things were back to square one."

But, counters Nirmala Deshpande, once the personal secretary of Acharya
Vinoba Bhave, and now a crusader for peace between the two countries, "A
relaxed visa regime will actually go a long way in normalising relations
between us. We all know that millions of families were divided at the time
of Partition. We also know that visiting friends and relatives on occasions
of marriage, death and the like has been a part of our common culture. It's
natural that thousands of people in both countries desire to visit the
other side. Allowing them to do so can create tremendous goodwill and will
be a significant step towards peace."

_____

#5.

Tehelka.com

Cross-border marriages run parallel to Track-II diplomacy

While Vajpayee and Musharraf try to work it out
at the upcoming summit, a number of marriages
across the border on the ground level are bringing
the people together, reports Masood Hussain

Srinagar, June 4

Regardless of whether Pakistan Chief Executive General Pervez Musharraf
and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee manage to pave way for
better relations between the two countries, cross-border marriages continue
to reunite people on either side of the Line of Control (LoC). Given the
media blitzkrieg associated with these weddings, the trend is as close to
the skin of Track-II diplomacy as is possible.

After Abdul Gani Lone and Sheikh Abdul Aziz of the All-Party Hurriyat
Conference (APHC), whose kin married in Pakistan in the actinic glare of
the media, it is now turn of the Kashmir Mass Movement (KMM) leader
Fareeda Begum aka Behenji. Word is out that she is slated to be part of yet
another high-profile wedding later this fortnight. Then reports are
pouring in from Islamabad that former APHC chairperson Mirwaiz Umer
Farooq's relatives in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) are joining him at
the marriage of one of his relatives here.

About a dozen relatives of the Mirwaiz in PoK, including Molvi Mohammed
Ahmed, have applied for visas at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad to
enable them to attend the marriage of the son of Jan Mohammed, brother of
the assassinated Mirwaiz Molvi Farooq. Molvi Mohammed Ahmed is the son of
the first president of PoK, Mirwaiz Yusuf Shah, who fled to Muzaffarabad
within days of the Partition.

Whatever the political fallouts of these cross-border marriages, a general
opinion is that such occasions and events are offering the people on both
sides of the border a better understanding of each other

Although it was not immediately known whether the Government of India (GoI)
would grant visas to the Mirwaiz family, observers assert that this trend
will partly help in normalising the situation between the two
countries.

It all started when Sajjad, son of Abdul Gani Lone, visited Pakistan and
met Asma, daughter of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader
Amanullah Khan. The two soon decided to get married. After initial
reluctance, the GoI granted Abdul Gani Lone documents to travel to
Pakistan, which made big news. The marriage took place on November 20 last
year and the list of invitees, apart from all the militant leaders,
included New Delhi's High Commissioner in Islamabad and his wife.

Lone's utterances, especially on the status of foreigners in Jammu and
Kashmir, and on the ideological basis of the 12-years old separatist
movement, generated a storm, making him a controversial figure. This was,
perhaps, the reason why he was more or less neglected by the Islamabad
establishment. This was followed by yet another marriage, on April 18
this year. This time, it was the younger brother of Sheikh Abdul Aziz,
the chief of the faction ridden pro-Pakistan People's League and one of
the seven members of the APHC executive. Aziz's brother Sheikh Yaqub
married the daughter of a Kashmiri mohajir at Rawalpandi, a militant of the
al-Jehad, an outfit that had ceased to exist in 1993.

The GoI also granted travel documents to Aziz after initial reluctance. He
was accorded a red carpet welcome because of his staunch pro-Pakistan
ideology. And now, there is a third marriage on the cards. Reliable
sources say that Islamic Front leader Bilal Ahmad Baig is marrying the
daughter of another Kashmiri mohajir in the famous health resort of Muree.
A high-profile militant, he has been associated with the erstwhile Students
Liberation Front (SLF), which became the Ikhwan-ul-Muslimeen and finally
metamorphosed into the Islamic Front.

Baig is a close relative of Fareeda Behanji, the first Kashmiri woman to be
detained under Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA)
in Tihar Jail for her involvement in a blast in Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi.
She was freed last year after completing her term. She is, at present,
heading the Kashmir Mass Movement (KMM), a separatist political party and
one of the 23 parties that make up the general council of the APHC. Sources
said that she will fly to Islamabad to participate in the marriage slated
later this fortnight.

Whatever the political fallouts of these cross-border marriages, a general
opinion is that such occasions and events are offering the people on both
sides of the border a better understanding of each other. Since these
marriages are cementing relations between a divided people of the same
ethnicity and race, observers presume that in the long run, this may pave
way for a much broader platform for interaction between the two people.

High-profile weddings apart, more than 200 Kashmiri youths have married
Pakistani and PoK girls. "Whatever the politics of the situation, I believe
the strife has brought Pakistanis and Kashmiris closer to each other,"
says Tahir Mohi-ud-Din, editor of Kashmir's lone tabloid Chattan.

_____

#6.

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HOMOSEXUAL: HUMAN RIGHTS OF SEXUAL MINORITIES IN INDIA'

By Dr. R. RAJ RAO, gay writer, poet and activist

On 9th JUNE, SATURDAY

>From 5.30 PM to 7.30 PM

At ASHIRVAD, 30 St. Mark's Road Cross, Near Petrol Pump (Opposite
SBI), Bangalore - 1.

ABOUT THE LECTURE: Some of the issues that will be covered include
1.What it means to be homosexual/lesbian/gay/queer in India; 2. What is
queer identity; 3. How and why queerness determines queer identity; 4.
Queer liberation; 5. Need for coalitions with other marginalized groups; 6.
Queer theory and queer activism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Dr. Raj Rao is currently with the English
Department in the Pune University. He has to his credit many publications
including 'One Day I Locked My Flat in Soul City', 'Nissim Ezekiel: The
Authorised Biography' and many critical articles/reviews/papers.

SANGAMA
1st Floor, No. 7, 8th Main, 3rd Phase, Domlur 2nd Stage, Bangalore - 560
071

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