[sacw] SACW #2 | 11 Mar. 02

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch #2 | 11 March 2002

* For daily news updates & citizens initiatives in post riots 
Gujarat Check: http://www.sabrang.com

** Also see new information & analysis section on the recent Communal 
Riots in Gujarat on the SACW web site: http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/

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#1. Stepping-stones to barbarism? Reflections of an ashamed Indian 
(Aseem Shrivastava)
#2. M.N.ROY MEMORIAL LECTURE : 2002 By Professor Sumit Sarkar (21 
March, New Delhi)
#3. Did Babri demolition plan begin in '90? (UMESH ANAND)
#4. Ashutosh Varshney INTERVIEW - Small Steps Go A Long Way

__________________________

# 1.

Stepping-stones to barbarism?
Reflections of an ashamed Indian

"While God waits for his temple to be built of love, men bring stones."
- Rabindranath Tagore

by Aseem Shrivastava

The ides of March has not arrived yet. I write these lines before the day of
reckoning at Ayodhya. The construction of the Ram Mandir by the
saffron-shirts, in ugly defiance of Supreme Court orders, has not begun yet.
There is a little window of precious "peace" between the Gujarat genocide
and what might easily turn into something yet worse. For we are discovering
new depths to our barbarism with each passing month of these ghastly times.
Who knows where the bloody, ongoing, rath-yatra of the sangh-parivar takes
us next!

I write this from a foreign country. One has to explain the pogroms of
Gujarat to many people for whom India once meant Gandhi. And still means
democracy. The "world's largest one" too! Yes, this genocide has taken place
in the land of the Mahatma. In fact, in his very own backyard, Gujarat. Yes,
it has been led by the same folks who masterminded his assassination in
1948. The ones whose founding fathers drew their ideological inspiration
from Hitler and the Nazis. Yes, it is appropriate to compare Chief Minister
Modi with Milosevic. Yes, this is ethnic cleansing of the Indian kind. Yes,
the editor who sees Rwanda as India's latest role-model is not seeing ghosts
in daytime. Yes, we are headed for Dachau and Auschwitz if the present
rulers of India have their way in the future and the people of India give
them any chance. We have shown ourselves capable of imitating only the worst
features of Western civilization. Yes, Churchill was right to predict that
Indians would not be able to govern themselves after the exit of the
British. Yes, secular democracy is in danger in the sub-continent. Yes, the
state has all but collapsed.

No, it is not a good time to visit India. No, it is not a good time to be an
Indian. No, it is not an easy time to be a decent human being. If
Afghanistan may prove to be the enduring metaphor for the world, Gujarat may
prove likewise for India. If the powerful cowards at the helm have their
way. Wake up Mr.Vajpayee, wake up before the petrol-bombs are hurled at your
convoy too! Remember Indira Gandhi? Remember Rajiv? Am I mad? Or are you?
Make your plans, or stop pretending to sleep. India burns! And Indians weep.
We have disgraced ourselves and all that is precious in our past lies
unclaimed, rejected or just trampled underfoot as your rath-yatra heads for
Hindu glory. The future has never looked darker.

The brutal facts: anywhere from 500 to a few thousand innocent Muslim
children, women and men have been slaughtered in what has been the worst
holocaust since the Bombay riots of 1993 (which followed the Hindu Right's
destruction of the Ayodhya mosque). Eyewitnesses are careful to point out
that this was no mere riot. There was much more method in the madness than
in the past and the violence was all one-sided. Much like the pogrom against
Sikhs in North India, orchestrated by Rajiv Gandhi's Congress party in 1984,
to avenge Mrs.Gandhi's assassination by her own bodyguards. Only worse,
because this time economic assets of the Muslim community in Gujarat have
been targeted. The aim has been to cripple them permanently, to force them
to leave the state of Gujarat.

Seemingly to avenge the Godhra attack on Hindu kar-sevaks, mobs of young men
with saffron bandanas and scarves (kesari patkas), wielding trishuls and
swords, often led by local leaders of the BJP, the VHP, the ABVP, the RSS
and the Bajrang Dal (all proud members of the sangh-parivar) roamed Gujarat
city streets and had a field-day, burning, pillaging, destroying and killing
at will. Moreover, the evidence mounts every passing day on the connivance
and participation of the Gujarat state government in the systematic
identification and destruction of Muslim lives, homes, property and
businesses. Children with charred bodies and stripped women with sundered
limbs have been found lying in heaps of rotting flesh at chowks and nukkads.
The mobs have shifted their focus to the countryside. Entire villages have
been emptied of Muslim residents. Over 100,000 refugees have been created
within a week.

Saffron flags hang from desecrated mosques and mazhars. At least 22 of them
have been razed to the ground. The state has been unable to provide
protection even to Muslim judges and senior police officers. A UNI reporter'
s car was burnt to ashes; Star TV anchor Rajdeep Sardesai's jeep was smashed
5 minutes after his interview with the Chief Minister; even the Defence
Minister George Fernandes' car was not spared. The state did not merely fail
to function. It ceased to exist. Or pretended to do so. To allow the pogrom
to proceed unimpeded. To allow Modi's marauding mafia to do its job with
maximum efficacy. Bravo! This is India's darkest hour since independence,
the day of the Hindu Ghazni. And Nobel-laureate V.S.Naipaul, longing for
ancient Hindu glory (as though it could be obtained through such means, and
by such worthless men), should be pleased by the fortnight's events.
Primitive scores are being settled and India can look forward to the
recovery of its soul, lost amidst the debris of Muslim conquest and colonial
rule.

Was this the violence of frustration Mr. Prime Minister? After the
well-deserved defeat of your party in the state elections last month?
Gujarat is the only state where the BJP still continues to be in power,
thanks to the large proportion of upper caste votes. If there was any sense
of responsibility, maturity or moral decency left in this land, the Gujarat
Chief Minister ought to have resigned or the central government should have
ushered him out of power and asked for President's Rule. Surely that would
have been done had a Congress government been in power and the people dying
in the violence were caste Hindus? Instead Vajpayee's cabinet wants to
introduce President's Rule in UP, the state which has just voted out the
BJP.

The state and central governments have shown a paralytic inability to
protect the lives of the citizens of the country. On the contrary, they have
defended the organized violence of the Hindu militias as the natural
reaction to an act of terror. Should Giuliani and Bush in the wake of the
September 11 attacks have similarly justified public retribution against all
Arabs and Muslims?

They have no right to rule, these thugs who pretend to be our leaders in
India. In fact, were it not for a rare display of courage by many reporters
in the media, we would still be in the dark about the events of the last 10
days. Much justice needs to be done in Gujarat if the virus of hatred is not
to spread from there.

Let us move beyond Gujarat. What have been the highlights of the 4 years in
office of the BJP-led coalition in New Delhi? They tested the nuclear bomb
weeks after taking office, provoking a similar response from Pakistan and
consigning the sub-continent to the permanent threat of the mushroom cloud.
Most recently they have ordered the biggest-ever mobilization of troops in
the sub-continent. One million soldiers man the borders today, draining
critical resources in both countries and keeping everyone under threat of
nuclear destruction. The sub-continent has never been more insecure.

Meanwhile the forces of corporate globalization and privatization are
running amok in the country, thanks to the patronage they are enjoying from
their swadeshi hosts. The hypocrisy is nauseating. Enron, the US energy
corporation, seventh largest in the world, with 15 senate committees
investigating it for serious corruption after it declared bankruptcy in
January, has been enjoying the patronage of the present rulers of India for
the past several years. The mutual exploits of the corporation and their
Indian hosts has been admirably documented recently by Arundhati Roy.

The Sangh-parivar are also proceeding at breakneck pace to Saffronise
education in the country, rewriting history texts to fulfil their
ideological goals, replacing history with mythology. India's finest
historians Romila Thapar, Sumit Sarkar and Irfan Habib have been described
recently by our delightfully moral education minister as "worse than
terrorists." There is hardly an Indian historian of note who has not openly
criticized in the harshest words the accelerated propaganda attempts of the
ruling bigots. To little avail.

While all political energies of the men in power are focussed on ideological
and militaristic initiatives, 350 million Indians continue to starve even as
60 million tonnes of foodgrains rot in public godowns. There are no plans
afoot to put two and two together. Such is the bankruptcy of imagination and
political will. Urban slums are bulldozed out of sight when the skyline has
to be cleared for the visits of foreign dignitaries. Something which even
Sanjay Gandhi's men in 1976 only achieved with resistance now happens as a
matter of routine. The growing ranks of urban unemployed youth serve as
catchment areas for the recruitment of fascist death-squads like the Bajrang
Dal.

The construction of the Narmada dam in Central India, displacing hundreds of
thousands of people, and crippling their economic lives permanently,
continues unobstructed, Medha Patkar's brave NBA notwithstanding. Arundhati
Roy, who has once again written with singular courage about the heroic
struggle against big dams in India, has narrowly escaped a prison sentence.
Not just the government, the justice system too is on auction in India
today!

These are some of the achievements of the BJP and their cronies in their 4
years in office. The present regime has no future vision for the
long-awaited economic development of the country. Money for health and
education declines while arms dealers steal away the government budget.
Floods, famines and cyclones eat away at the lives of the indigent every
year.

Which great thinker of erstwhile India would stand for this vulgar nonsense
on display today, all in the name of Hinduism? Who among them would be able
to stomach the Sangh-parivar version of Hindu thought without choking? Would
Ram Mohun Roy? Would Vivekananda? Would Aurobindo Ghosh? What a curse they
are to the religion they profess, these latter-day bigots of the Hindu
Right! They have reduced all the spiritual might and glory of the authors of
the Upanishads and the Vedas to the ugly calculus of political violence in
the name of religion. They have desecrated the legacy of Buddha, of Gandhi,
of Tagore, abusing each one by turns. The Buddha wept when the nuclear tests
took place in 1998. Tagore must be rewriting his essay on Nationalism,
addressed to his own countrymen this time. The picture of Gandhi needs to be
brought down from behind every politician's desk. The "Nation of Hindutva"
website proudly announces:

"It is time that the Hindu stopped being the ever-compassionate, excessively
tolerant, all-accepting coward that he has been --we must shake off the
counter-productive, pathetic, spineless legacy of the Gandhian era. It is
time once again for the lion of Hindutva to roar throughout the world."

The madness of such religion springs from true irreligiousness. Such
religion is spiritually devastating. The forces of Hindutva are trying to
forge an astonishingly repulsive combination of Western materialism and
bigoted Hindu atavism.

One wonders if there is anyone left in the portals of power who feels even
by a whisker the immensity of the sufferings their countrymen are living
with. Far from that they are heaping further sufferings upon Indian people
every day they stay in power. There are very few patriots left in this crowd
of Hindu jingoists at the top.

The writing on the wall has been quite clear for a while now. The bankruptcy
of the ruling coalition in Delhi is quite thorough. They lack all
legitimacy. At best they have 10% of the country with them, though they
pretend that they speak for the majority. They would not be in power without
the politics of Hindutva. If they did not keep alive the fear of the "enemy"
(Muslims/Pakistan), they would not last a day in office. For they have no
vision with which to tackle the country's immense problems.

The recent verdict of the electorate in the four states (including India's
largest state, UP) which went to the polls last month is telling. The BJP
was voted out everywhere. The UP verdict is particularly important. It shows
that for ordinary people, the construction of the Ayodhya temple is of
little importance. Nor is the massive military build-up on the border with
Pakistan of any significance to them.

The hope for India lies in the accumulating follies of the Sangh-parivar.
Some years back, after the destruction of the Babri mosque at Ayodhya, I
remember going to listen to Amartya Sen at MIT. He had argued then that the
"epistemic foundations" of the Hindu Right are so weak that history will
have no room for them in the future. But an alternative must emerge if the
Hindu fascists are to leave the stage. It seems thus far that failure is not
enough.

The Ayodhya showdown on March 15 might prove to be a critical watershed. It
might determine whether India is taking steps towards the disintegration of
its secular democracy (to which the government is sworn by the
constitution), towards more barbarism, further partitions of the
sub-continent, or whether history will finally take a long-awaited turn.

______

#2.

INDIAN RENAISSANCE INSTITUTE
and
INDIAN RADICAL HUMANIST ASSOCIATION
Cordially invite you to the
M.N.ROY MEMORIAL LECTURE : 2002
By
Professor
Sumit Sarkar
eminent historian
On
HISTORY WRITING TODAY: PROBLEMS AND P0SSIBILITIES
On Thursday, 21st March 2002, 5.00 PM
At
Speaker Hall , Constitution Club, Rafi
Marg, New Delhi-110001
Professor Mushirul Hasan
will preside

R.S.V.P.
N.D.Pancholi
Secretary, I.R.I.
A-12, Neeti Bagh,New Delhi

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#3.

The Times of India
Did Babri demolition plan begin in '90?
UMESH ANAND
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2002 2:07:10 AM ]
NEW DELHI: If the communally charged atmosphere in the country has 
been upsetting you, here is a snappy quiz on Ayodhya to make you feel 
a just a little bit worse. Who wrote the following words to whom and 
when?
"I will have to bow my head in shame if the mosque is now forcibly 
brought down."
It was Ram Jethmalani to Lal Krishna Advani in 1990, a full two years 
before the Babri Masjid was actually demolished.[...].
http://203.199.93.7/articleshow.asp?art_id=3405131

_____

#4.

The Times of India
INTERVIEW
Small Steps Go A Long Way
[ MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2002 1:28:22 AM ]
As Gujarat emerges from yet another spate of communal rioting, 
Ashutosh Varshney discusses some of the steps that local communities 
and the media can take to maintain peace. Formerly at Harvard, 
Columbia and the University of Notre Dame, Mr Varshney is currently a 
professor of political science and the director of South Asian 
studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He draws on his 
extensive work on communal violence, captured in his book 'Ethnic 
Violence and Civil Society: Hindus and Muslims in India', as he 
explains to Manjari Mahajan how small, civic measures can make a 
world of difference in containing communal strife: [...].
http://203.199.93.7/articleshow.asp?art_id=3405915