[sacw] SACW | 24 March 03

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  |  24 March,  2003

#1. India and Pakistan: Get rid of the visa regime (Ishtiaq Ahmed)
#2. Heart patients: Indian offer (Letters to the editor, DAWN)
#3. Pakistan: HRCP man kidnapped by agencies
#4. Pakistan: Banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba Collects Millions in Charity, 
Hides (Mohammad Shehzad)
#5. India: Collective Criminal Narcissism (Mukul Dube)
#6. India: The crisis of modern Hinduism (Akbar S Ahmed)
#7. India's Hindu right tests waters ahead of poll (Myra MacDonald)
#8. Advocacy Group in Washington DC Urges Indian Players to Wear 
Black Arm Bands of Protest Against Genocide
#9. Hindutva at Work:
  - Information & Broadcasting Ministry to bring out RSS founder's biography
- Curb on Togadia tour (Yogesh Vajpeyi)
- Now, VHP to hold mahayagna in Jogiland (Ashwani Sharma)


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


#1.

The Daily Times, March 23, 2003
Op-ed

Get rid of the visa regime

Ishtiaq Ahmed

Both India and Pakistan should announce a new vision of peace and 
cooperation in which people-to-people contacts and communications 
should be an essential feature. For such a vision to materialise it 
is imperative to introduce radical changes in the visa regime
The 1648 Peace Treaty of Westphalia brought to an end one of the 
bloodiest periods in West European history, the epoch of religious 
and sectarian wars. The treaty also established sovereign territorial 
states with clearly demarcated borders as the organisational basis of 
the West European political landscape. Earlier, frontiers rather than 
borders marked roughly where the realm of one prince ended and that 
of another began. The demarcation of fixed territorial boundaries, 
therefore, was a new idea at the time.
Like so many other concepts and structures emanating from Western 
Europe the concept of borders became a norm and after World War II 
became the universal basis of state identity and consolidation. In a 
general sense, a state can be defined as a juridico-political entity 
entitled to sovereign right over specific territory on which it 
claims exclusive rights to impose laws, collect taxes and establish 
other structures of authority. This mechanism is termed the 
government. The existence of borders is thus essential for 
establishing a government's authority.
States have the prerogative to determine who shall cross the 
international boundary. An entire bureaucratic system of passports, 
visa and other documentations and procedures has evolved over the 
years to regulate inter-state and international movement and traffic 
of people. As a general rule individuals do not have the right to 
settle in another country unless legal requirements have been met or 
proper treaties signed and ratified between states. Visits to other 
states are normally temporary and meant for sight-seeing, family 
reunion, religious pilgrimages, promotion of business and commerce, 
exchange of academic and other cultural experiences and sport. 
Permission to visit another country is generally restricted when two 
or more states are unfriendly or hostile to one another and relaxed 
when they enjoy good and friendly relations.
Fifty-five years ago the leaders of the Indian National Congress, the 
All-India Muslim League and the British Government agreed to divide 
the subcontinent between the independent and sovereign successor 
states of India and Pakistan. The International Boundary between the 
two states was established through the Radcliffe Award of August 17, 
1947. Although both states had various objections to the Award, the 
leaders on both sides accepted it. It has since served as the 
International Border between them.
Although the birth of India and Pakistan was attended by societal 
convulsions on a gigantic scale resulting in the biggest forced 
migration across borders, until the first half of the 1950 both 
states exercised a relaxed policy towards their citizens wishing to 
travel to the other side. Since the fifties, India and Pakistan have 
increasingly become more hostile because of a number of internal, 
regional and international factors. The borders between them have 
also become objects of mutual exclusion and isolation. Relations hit 
rock-bottom in times of war (1965, 1971) and since the nineties have 
been steadily deteriorating.
Nothing deepens suspicions, fears and hatreds between states and 
their people as war. One can easily argue that the May 1998 nuclear 
test explosions carried out between the two countries, the Kargil 
military confrontation of May 1999 and the deployment of troops by 
both sides after the December 13, 2001 attack on India's Parliament 
are all indicators of a continually fragile and explosive situation 
in the Subcontinent.
The powerful state establishments and political classes of the two 
countries have been following the logic of tit-for-tat, a sort of 
perverse reciprocity or rather retaliatory policy at all levels. To 
make such policy work, it has become necessary for them to isolate 
people from each other. People-to-people contacts are severely 
discouraged and only those claiming close family relations on the 
other side can generally get permission to visit their relatives. 
Permission for tourist visas has become virtually impossible. Those 
who do get the visa are required to register with the police on 
arrival.
The worst part of the policy is that the visa (permission) is limited 
to specific towns or cities. The policy was brief relaxed during the 
term of Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral (1996-97) and for a while 
during the Agra Summit of June 2001. But the failure of the Summit 
restored the standard policy of severely restricted visa facilities. 
At present, both sides are completely estranged from each other and 
there is virtually no communication between them.
It is important to abandon this policy of mutual demonisation and 
dehumanisation and adopt rules of civilised conduct with regard to 
travelling and visas. There is neither military wisdom nor political 
sagacity nor even sound economic calculation informing the current 
India-Pakistan relationship. For 55 years now, the dream of creating 
democratic, egalitarian, peaceful, and friendly societies which the 
founding fathers of the two states presented in their historic first 
addresses to their nations has been betrayed. In its place, we have 
an unending nightmare of foolish and myopic strategies based on the 
desire for revenge and zero-sum solutions to the existing disputes 
and conflicts. The result has been cumulative abject poverty and 
squalor. What is needed most is free trade between India and Pakistan 
based on the principle of mutual and equal benefit.
The present impasse has to break. One way out is to allow the people 
on both sides to engage in a dialogue on all matters including the 
various disputes. Both sides should announce a new vision of peace 
and cooperation in which people-to-people contacts and communications 
are an essential feature. For such a vision to materialise it is 
imperative to introduce radical changes in the visa regime. The 
governments of India and Pakistan must remove all restrictions on 
free and unrestricted travelling of their nationals and Indian and 
Pakistani nationals should be able to stay on either side without a 
visa for three months. The humiliating practice of police reporting 
and registration must be dropped.


_____


#2.

DAWN, 23 March 2003
Letters to the editor
http://www.dawn.com/2003/03/23/letted.htm#3

Heart patients: Indian offer

I would like to inform you that we are a group of heart- care 
specialists who have performed over 19,000 major surgeries on 
patients, predominantly from poor families, in the last 13 years at 
Kolkata and Banglore, India. We have done over 8,000 operations on 
children - a few thousand of them being newborn - suffering from 
complex heart problems.
We have special interest in children suffering from complex heart 
problems. It is primarily because of our philosophy of life. We at 
Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore, get children from all over the world 
for major reconstructive heart operations in which we have 
considerable experiences.
We attended to several children, some of them were barely 
one-week-old, who came from Pakistan for major reconstructive 
operations, and, by the grace of God, they all had their operations 
and went back home happily. We have noticed that almost all of them 
came from well-to-do families.
All our institutions in India are built for the poor and patients 
coming from working-class families. Of course, we do get large 
numbers of patients coming from rich families but the philosophy of 
our founders and management is to treat patients from lower 
socio-economic strata. I am sure there are thousands of children born 
with complex heart problems from poor families of Pakistan.
Those families which have children suffering from heart problems but 
cannot afford expensive heart operations can contact us for help. 
Heart operations on children are not as expensive as people think 
they are, and there are good numbers of institutions like ours in 
this world where operations on children are done at concessional 
charges, specially for children from poor families.
Once we get the medical details of children, we will plan the future 
course of action. The children who are selected by us for free 
operations do not have to spend any money at all, and we will 
accommodate the child and one parent at our hospital at our cost. 
They only have to buy the air ticket to and from Pakistan.
If anybody needs any other information about our hospital, they can 
access our website www.hrudayalaya.com.
DR DEVI SHETTY
Chairman, Narayana Hrudayalaya, Bangalore, India
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#3.


The Daily Times
March 24, 2003 

HRCP man kidnapped by agencies

HYDERABAD: The Human Right Commission of Pakistan has accused the 
agencies of kidnapping Akhtar Baloch, the coordinator of its 
Hyderabad office, at around 7pm on Sunday.
"This is a message for the HRCP and an attempt to intimidate it into 
silence," said Asma Jehangir, the former HRCP chairperson.
The incident followed a successful HRCP meeting attended by about 600 
people during which speakers criticized the government on various 
grounds. The meeting was followed by a peace demonstration against 
war in Iraq during which full-throated slogans were raised 
criticizing the ambiguous stance of the government on the issue.
According to eyewitness accounts, Akhtar Baloch was traveling in an 
HRCP car after the rally when two people on a motorcycle waylaid the 
car and forced it to stop. Then three people from a white car that 
was following Mr Baloch's car put a gun to the driver's head and told 
him to go away. They bundled Mr Baloch into their car and sped away.
HRCP spokesmen suspect that the agencies are unhappy with the HRCP 
and Mr Baloch on account of their criticism of the government and the 
military. "We know that the government was displeased with our annual 
report which criticized it for various human rights violations. We 
also know that the government is not happy with the fact that we have 
awarded the Dorab Patel Award for Rule of Law to Hamid Khan, an 
eminent lawyer, who is a vociferous critic of the government. Eminent 
people like Fakhruddin Ebrahim, the former law minister, had made 
speeches critical of the government at the ceremony. During the 
Hyderabad meeting, the following day, former minister Iqbal Hyder and 
HRCP chairperson Afrasiab Khattak also laid into the government." 
Eminenet people from all walks of life have condemned the incident 
and are demanding that Mr Baloch be released from captivity 
immediately without any harm being done to him. Since Ms Jehangir is 
an United Nations international rapporteur for human rights, the 
incident could prove embarrassing to the government if Mr Baloch is 
not released immediately. -Staff Report

_____


#4.

South Asia Tribune
March 23-29, 2003

Banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba Collects Millions in Charity, Hides

By Mohammad Shehzad

ISLAMABAD: Despite a ban on soliciting donations for jihad, Jamaat ud 
Dawa (the defunct Lashkar-e-Tayyaba) raised funds worth Rs. 710 
million by collecting 1.2 million hides of animals sacrificed last 
month on Eid in Pakistan.

The Jamaat outperformed all its competitors-from the known 
Jamaat-e-Islami, Edhi Foundation, Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust of 
Imran Khan, etc to a plethora of unknown mosques, seminaries and 
charity organizations. Around 3.0 million animals were reportedly 
sacrificed this year. The net value of their hides was about Rs. 1.8 
billion.

Jihadi outfits depend heavily on charity for their bread and butter. 
The Aga Khan Development Network's survey on philanthropy estimated 
that in 1998 the total giving by individuals in Pakistan was Rs. 70.5 
billion. A major portion of this comes from the sale of hides. Until 
recently, a large chunk of the entire sum went to the seminaries and 
mosques. It has now been diverted to the jihadi outfits and ensured 
them a secure future.

To donate the hides to mosques, seminaries, trusts, charity 
organizations and even beggars has been a religious practice amongst 
Pakistani Muslims. Hides were a great support to the cause of these 
entities. They were always seen in the run for hide collection and 
worked very hard to outnumber each other. The competition became 
tough in the wake of the mushroom growth of jihadi outfits. Islamic 
militants also started competing with them.

When the jihadi outfits had not been banned, the trend of donating 
hides heavily tilted in favor of Jamaat-e-Islami (an orthodox 
religious party headed by Qazi Hussain Ahmad), mosques and 
seminaries. Only liberal Muslims (who are a negligible minority) 
donated hides to charity organizations, orphan-houses, educational 
institutions, social welfare organizations, etc.

The ban on jihadi outfits in the aftermath of the 9/11 totally 
changed the masses' giving behavior. Lashkar should be singled out as 
the only outfit which exploited the ban very cleverly to enhance its 
image. It resorted to a professional advocacy strategy and turned the 
public opinion in its favor.

It reportedly even bribed prayer leaders in the nook and corner of 
Pakistan. Using the best tool in their hands-the powerful 
loudspeakers installed on the rooftop of every mosque-the prayer 
leaders glorified jihad around the world, Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Hafiz 
Saeed (Lashkar's honcho) while condemning General Musharraf's 
policies. They motivated people to invest in jihad through unique 
ways and means. People started donating their children for jihad. 
Such donations were exalted as wakf (trust) for the cause of Islam.

A month before Eid, Lashkar launched a massive campaign for hides' 
collection. It added a special page on its web site which preached 
that the sacrifice was not for Allah but for the holy warriors of 
God! Only they deserved the benefits of sacrifice as well as hides. 
This propaganda was spearheaded through internet, Lashkar's 
publications such as Ghazwa, sermons of prayer leaders who were given 
monetary incentives for airing the message through loudspeakers that 
hides should only be donated to Lashkar.

"Hides are only for the mujahideen who have sacrificed their lives 
for Islam." "Hides are only for the parents, widows and children of 
martyrs who waged jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan." "Hides are for 
free dispensaries, ambulance service, wells, and seminaries." These 
were the catchy slogans on Ud Dawa's web site

The Lashkar set up camps in almost every city, town and village of 
Pakistan. It collected hides from Abbotabad, Attock, Bahawalpur, 
Chakwal, Dera Ismail Khan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Gujrat, Hafizabad, 
Hyderabad, Islamabad, Jhelum, Karachi, Kasur, Lahore, Mirpur (Azad 
Kashmir), Mirpur Khas (Sindh), Multan, Muzaffarabad, Okara, Peshawar, 
Quetta, Rahimyar Khan, Rawalpindi, Sahiwal, Sargodha, Sheikhupura, 
Sialkot, and Vehari.

Ud Dawa also urged the Muslims to donate cash so that it could 
sacrifice animals on their behalf soliciting Rs. 12,000; Rs. 1800; 
and Rs. 3500 for a cow, share in a cow and a goat respectively. The 
web site served a great marketing tool. It was visited by the Muslims 
all over the world.

Diplomatic sources disclosed that Lashkar has established its roots 
amongst British Muslims. There are around 675,000 Muslims of 
Pakistani origin in Britain out of a total Muslim population of 1.6 
million. Lashkar was able to raise funds worth Rs. 1.4 billion from 
Britain in the name of Eid sacrifice.

The British High Commission in Islamabad was unable to confirm this 
information when this reporter approached one of its senior 
diplomats. However, the diplomat did say that Lashkar was a terrorist 
organization and banned in Britain.

The writer is a free lance journalist based in Islamabad. Email: 
rageshri2@yahoo.com


_____


#5.

SACW, 23 March 2003
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/2002/MDMarch03.html

Collective Criminal Narcissism.

by Mukul Dube

Despite Lal Krishna Advani's strident and menacing rath yatra and its 
culmination in the engineered catastrophe at Ayodhya in 1992, most of 
us paid little attention to the onward march of the Sangh Parivar 
until last year's horror of Gujarat. Evidence was piling up, but it 
was in bits and pieces and so was ignored. Our picture became 
well-rounded and coherent only when the Parivar itself put forward a 
comprehensive example of its goals and methods. We saw the Beast only 
when it unambiguously revealed itself. So noisome is it that we may 
well have wished not to see it while it lurked and built up its 
strength.

When Gujarat 2002 happened, it shook us to our roots. We felt our 
world crumbling, the very earth shifting beneath our feet. Ideas and 
values which we had always held dear, though usually without making a 
fuss about them, lay in smouldering ruins. Many of us were stunned in 
a quite literal way: it took us weeks to comprehend what had 
happened, and then more weeks to rouse ourselves. The sun shone but 
we could not see the sunlight. It was months before we were able to 
laugh again.

We looked on, disbelieving, as, while report after report indicted 
Modi and the goons of his Parivar, Modi himself, ably supported by 
his mentors Advani and Vajpayee, went on and on howling about how his 
Gujarat - the Hindu Gujarat - was being maligned the world over. None 
of the abuse he threw at the prime villains, the "national 
English-language media" and the "pseudo-secularists", was supported 
by anything that could be called objective or which could be tested.

Today we look on, disbelieving, as the Sangh Parivar roots about in 
the mess of trivia at the depths to which it has pushed our political 
discourse, depths unprecedented and unimaginable. The hunger of 
hundreds of thousands becomes irrelevant while the country reads 
daily essays about Atal Behari Vajpayee's dietary preferences. While 
reports document how poorly India does in providing potable water to 
its citizens, the leaders of the country wax eloquent on the virtues 
of cow's urine. Centre-state relations are reduced to whether or not 
the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh asked for and received the 
blessings of the Prime Minister.

We look on, disbelieving, as the likes of Modi and Togadia make 
venomous speeches against religious minorities and get away with this 
spreading of poison because those in power can ignore their duty to 
enforce the clearly written laws against inciting communal hatred. We 
look on as the administrative machinery of Gujarat incarcerates and 
prosecutes those suspected of engineering the Godhra carnage, while 
refusing even to register cases against those repeatedly identified 
as responsible for the over 2,000 deaths of Muslims in the weeks that 
followed Godhra. The Constitution of India, from which derive the 
powers of the State's functionaries, might just as well be a roll of 
scented toilet paper covered with printed flowers.

The title of my first article, "The Vedic Taliban", arose from what I 
see as a natural, inevitable progression. The Taliban of Afghanistan 
were a bunch of blind bigots who, in the name of Islam, took their 
country back several centuries. That is precisely what the Sangh 
Parivar seeks to do in the name of Hinduism. It takes but a moment to 
see that what the Sangh Parivar touts as Hinduism is a travesty, 
resolutely backward-looking yet entirely ahistorical, whose only end 
can be the complete marginalisation - through annihilation, expulsion 
or suppression - of religious, ethnic and ideological minorities and, 
we must never forget, of the entire female half of our society.

The Sangh Parivar seeks to justify its every action by reference to a 
mythic past. This past is not what really existed, so far as 
historians have been able to reconstruct it: it is a creation, taking 
on new features daily to meet new requirements. Not content to mess 
with the present, the Parivar moulds the past as well, applying the 
adjective "Vedic" to anything it pleases, without a glimmer of 
understanding of what the word represents. This ahistorical 
construction of the "Vedic", cobbled together piecemeal, is then 
sought to be pressed with a steam roller on all Hindus, all Indians, 
on the whole of India. The extent of the Sangh's deception is seen 
from these two paragraphs taken from Sukumari Bhattacharji ("The 
Vedas and Hinduism", from the Ganashakti web site, a translation by 
the author of an essay in her book Manthan, Naya Udyog, Calcutta, 
2000).

"The Sanghis argue that the study of the Vedas is necessary for an 
understanding of the tradition of India. But which India are they 
talking about? Is there an Indian tradition which has not embraced 
the pre-Aryan civilisation and culture commingled with the Dravidian, 
the Austric, the Mongoloid or the Islamic-Christian-Sikh-Jain streams 
of tradition? Each one of these is a distinct and separate cultural 
tradition and each of these cultures is as much Indian as the Vedic 
culture is Indian.

"An argument often advanced is that the Hindu Culture is the most 
ancient culture known to human history and the Vedas are its oldest 
extant texts. The truth is - among the ancient cultures, not only is 
the Vedic not the oldest, it is actually the youngest. Civilisations 
such as the Chinese, the Sumerian, the Assyrian, the Babylonian, the 
Greek, the Roman, the Iranian and the Mexican are more ancient than 
the Indian. Evidence is available of some such civilisations 
pre-dating the birth of Christ by five thousand years, while the 
Vedic civilisation had had its origin some time before the tenth 
century B.C. Therefore, from the point of view of antiquity, the 
Vedic civilisation was the youngest of the ancient civilisations."

Arguably the chief casualty in the Sangh Parivar's raj is the truth. 
The truth has no meaning for these people, it figures nowhere in 
their scheme of things. Different limbs of the Family describe the 
same subject or event in radically different terms - and yet see no 
contradiction. For the Parivar, a "fact" is merely that which happens 
to be convenient at the time, never mind that it may be wholly 
imaginary. A fiction today can become a fact tomorrow. The tape 
measure that these people use is made of elastic material. An "inch" 
can be anything between a nanometre and several miles. Kilo today, 
quintal tomorrow. Nothing in their universe is fixed. There is no 
unchanging reference point of the kind that we all need to navigate 
through life, through good and bad, through right and wrong. Their 
statements cannot be depended on, for their words mean nothing in an 
absolute way. Every lie is explained away with an essentially 
brahminical sophistry and double-talk.

While Gujarat burned, Advani kept silent, only occasionally opening 
his mouth to intone that his man Advani was in control and should not 
be disturbed. It was only in London in August, when people refused to 
buy this tripe, that he admitted that something very bad had 
happened. Back in India, though, he became again his poker-faced 
lying self. Vajpayee, for months silent about the horrors wrought by 
Hindutva in Gujarat, admitted only in New York, when on a visit to 
the United Nations, that they had indeed been uniquely devilish; but 
like his deputy, he too abandoned the truth when he returned to his 
kingdom.

The lying is part of a larger phenomenon. These Sangh Parivar's 
people have, throughout history, in any field of human endeavour, 
done nothing worthy of recognition or praise. Now they have upended 
the universe to make themselves out to be the heroes. They wildly 
elevate one another and so establish their claim to the honours which 
have so far eluded them. No member of the Parivar need fear a dearth 
of praise - for those other members sing his praises whose praises he 
himself sings. For the present, those who decide on the honours 
bestowed by the State are of the Parivar: so we have the spectacle of 
hundreds of mediocrities and worse being given all manner of awards. 
We have the spectacle of Savarkar's portrait being put up in 
Parliament along with those of Gandhi and Nehru. Only one of these 
three national heroes carried the freedom movement forward by 
abjectly promising to be of service to the imperial power.

The procedure is simple. Since the world has long known them to be 
nothing other than touts and middlemen who have contributed nothing 
to it, ever, they have fashioned their own little world in which each 
is a king, or whatever he chooses to have the others define him as. A 
happy world cobbled together from fictions and untruths. A bunch of 
odious playwrights casting themselves in heroic roles. Notions of 
good and bad which were established over the centuries, mean nothing 
in this redesigned world, for the Sangh Parivar has fashioned the 
rules precisely so as to be able to determine from them that it alone 
is and always has been all things good.

The reverse of ordinary name-calling is at work here. In preference 
to rational argument, the Parivar calls its opponents names without 
offering a shred of evidence. In exactly the same way, without any 
proof or backing, they sing paeans to themselves. It might perhaps be 
described as a kind of collective criminal narcissism. You tickle my 
willy, I tickle yours.

Nor is evidence needed when calling Muslims and Christians names. 
Every crime under the sun can be attributed to the religious 
minorities, for to be blamed for all evil is the reason why they have 
been placed on this planet. Guilt and punishment are not related to 
each another in the foul miasma that is the mind of the Sangh 
Parivar. Some Muslims burn a railway carriage, all Muslims are held 
guilty and made to suffer. A Muslim did something bad hundreds of 
years ago, vengeance is visited today upon all Muslims alive now. And 
it is not only the living who suffer: for the hatred is so utterly 
beyond reason that a grave is dug up so that the bones in it might be 
burnt with the help of petrol. The ordinary Muslim, every ordinary 
Muslim, is held to be so transcendentally evil that even his rotting 
bones need to be destroyed by unholy fire so that the land may be 
pure again.

In a mad stampede of the mind, the soldiers of the Sangh Parivar are 
given no time to think, are barely allowed to breathe. Tanika Sarkar 
writes that a "breathless climate of terror and counter-terror is the 
cement that consolidates Hindu unity under Sangh terms" ("Semiotics 
of Terror", Economic and Political Weekly, 13 July 2002). Here are 
minds firmly kept from rational, productive thought, being filled day 
and night with a concocted poison of blind hatred. The tempo never 
flags: the lies follow one another so rapidly that none can be 
questioned. The pace is, in a singularly apt word, breathless.

And no one else is given time to breathe either. As the sociologist 
Nasreen Fazalbhoy says, the chief difficulty today is that we all 
must "accept the agenda set by the Togadias of the country and end up 
working within that" (personal communication, 10 March 2003). Unable 
to look forward as we should, we must devote our time and energy to 
undoing the damage that these resolutely reactionary people do by 
every so often letting yet another preposterous genie out of their 
bottomless bottle. No sooner is one mess is cleared away than another 
gigantic cobweb, glutinous and immobilising, is made to descend upon 
us. It is almost impossible to recall when a serious economic or 
social issue was last raised and put to the people. The very future 
of the country now hinges upon a probably mythical temple to a 
character in a fairy tale.

The heads of the Sangh Parivar's acolytes are packed full of lies and 
myths tangled together, the supply of which is truly endless. One 
nephew of mine, a student of medicine, sought to justify the violence 
of Gujarat by referring to the supposed collective celebration in 
Muslim mohallas in India of victories of the Pakistani cricket team. 
Another nephew, an engineer about to begin doctoral studies in the 
U.S.A., justified it by another myth, that acid had been used in the 
attack on the railway carriage in Godhra. An older nephew, a computer 
professional, held that anything done against India's Muslims was 
already too late, because they were (he said) 17 per cent of the 
population and would become 25 per cent in a decade.

The stunning absurdity of such convictions, the profound idiocy they 
represent, leaves one aghast and speechless. They follow one another 
thick and fast. Where in the impenetrable jungle does one begin to 
snip away with the puny scissors of reason? Should I say that I was a 
fan of Hanif Mohammed's and used to celebrate every high score by 
that fine batsman - without in any way lessening my admiration for 
Vijay Manjrekar? Should I point out that the forensic science 
laboratory's report speaks only of inflammable material in the 
carriage and says that testing suggested that that could not have 
been introduced from without? Should I offer a simple equation which 
will show even to a school child that, if present rates of growth are 
maintained, every percentage rise in the Muslim population of India 
will take India's total population that much closer to overwhelming 
the entire planet? Or should I simply say that when the starting 
point itself is false, any construction built on it has to be ordure?

Where does one begin? I do not know if there is any way in which mere 
reason can fight such staggering unreason, such perverse blindness. 
My three nephews are intelligent individuals who have been successful 
in their chosen fields. Yet they swallow such obvious lies wholesale, 
laying aside the routinely used tools of logical evaluation and the 
checking of facts, tools in the use of which they have been specially 
trained for their professional lives. The fovea can be dealt with, 
but how does one attack the blind spot? It is ultimate blackness, 
invulnerable to attack.

Narendra Modi, with surpassing wit, speaks of "Hum panch, hamare 
pachchees". Then he bare-facedly says that he was speaking not of 
Muslims but of the population explosion. But the illogic of his words 
is swallowed unthinkingly. The goons of Hindutva do not stop to 
consider that each Muslim man in the country cannot have four wives 
because there simply are not enough women to go around. According to 
the 1991 Census of India, the sex ratio among Muslims was 930 females 
to every thousand males. If some men have four wives each, there will 
be a very substantial number of men who have no wives. A further 
piece of nonsense lewdly implied is that polygamous Muslim women 
reproduce more than do monogamous women. But who needs sense when 
flinging abuse? Who needs facts and rationality? Not Modi in his 
smutty demographer avatar. Not Advani, when he trots out his daily 
piece about madrasas and terrorism. Not Vajpayee the would-be 
statesman, when he makes his muddy statements about the world-wide 
danger posed by "jihadi Islam".

Unfortunately, though, those who are abused are uncooperative and 
resentful. "An Urdu writer and activist ... describes other 
dimensions. Young Muslim men are bitter about being suspected, 
baselessly, of being pro-Pakistani, and [about] being regarded as 
potential terrorists. Older women live a nightmare life of anxiety 
over the safety of their sons" (Vimal Balasubrahmanyan, "Holy Truths 
and Communal Facts", Mainstream, 15 February 2003). I am certain that 
this is not the kind of life I would wish for any mother, not even 
one whose darling son ties a saffron scarf around his head and goes 
about stabbing, raping and burning my fellow citizens.

Some of those who have read the articles reproduced here have 
criticised me for being "one-sided". Behind this is the view that no 
one should speak of post-Godhra Gujarat without first lamenting, 
loudly and at length, Godhra itself, and the displaced Pandits of 
Kashmir, and the sack of Somnath, and Aurangzeb, and bin Laden, and - 
the list will end only when every Muslim since the birth of Islam has 
been named.

Can I not make the simple statement that curare is a poison without 
having, every single time, to read out the entire Schedule of Poisons 
from the pharmacopoeia? In what way is my condemnation of the Hindu 
Right a defence or denial of the Muslim Right? Can I not call a crime 
a crime without first listing out all the crimes ever committed, 
anywhere and by anyone? The magicians of Sangh Hindutva, who are 
all-powerful and can do anything, seem to think that I too am a 
sorcerer, one who can pack a damn encyclopaedia into every 500-word 
newspaper article.

I shall use another's words to show how one-sided is the Sangh 
Parivar. "As regards criticism of Muslim madrasas, it is possible 
that some or even many may be teaching fundamentalism. But there are 
quite a number of educational institutions being run by the RSS which 
too teach religious fundamentalism. Both deserve to be banned" 
(Satyapal Dang, "On RSS' Shaurya Smriti Samaroh", Mainstream, 15 
February 2003).

A warning has been held out by the Parivar's generals many times 
after the Gujarat massacre. Do this, they say, do what we ask - or 
else there will be a "spontaneous upsurge" and we will not be 
responsible. This is of course not a warning but a threat. The kennel 
keeper starves and provokes his hounds so that he may say that he 
cannot hold them back. A strange kind of leadership, in which 
"popular sentiment" is cited as the cause of the most inhuman actions 
- while denying through silence the ugly passions that have been 
systematically whipped up. This "popular sentiment" is not something 
which has arisen naturally - it is a fire lit and stoked by man. 
Creating it is part of the larger plan which culminates in citing it 
as the justification for butchery. Pile up the wood, light the tinder 
- and then scream, in pretended surprise, that the fire is out of 
control.

I too have a warning. Soon the fire will be out of control, and then 
what will you do? Sow the wind, rear the Beast - reap the whirlwind 
and be consumed.

_____


#6.

The Daily Times
4 Mar 2003

The crisis of modern Hinduism

AKBAR S AHMED
Gandhi wrote in September 1931: "I shall work for an India in which 
the poorest shall feel it is their country in whose making they have 
an effective voice, an India in which there will be no high class or 
low class of people; an India in which all the communities shall live 
in perfect harmony"
"Akbar Bhai, isn't it a singular tragedy that our countries are 
blowing up so wantonly the great opportunity our independence gave us 
of shaking off the deadening burden of long centuries of downslide 
and degradation?"
Addressing me as bhai, or brother, with the usual courtesy common to 
South Asian culture, Virendra Prakash raised the rhetorical question 
when we met recently at a seminar on South Asia in Washington. 
Prakash added, with some indignation: "And that, too, in the name of 
Allah and Ram! Could it be that in reality God has forsaken us, 
leaving our people at the mercy of the leaders we have?"
Prakash is a distinguished Indian. In the best traditions of the 
Indian civil service, he has combined senior posts in government, 
such as secretary to government and chief secretary, with academic 
interests. He holds a master's degree from Harvard. Now that he is 
retired, Prakash has joined the struggle to define his great religion 
- Hinduism.
Prakash was aware that the Gandhian vision of a tolerant and 
compassionate Hinduism was challenged in February 2002 by the savage 
communal killing in Gujarat, India, by fundamentalist Hindu 
nationalists. This was especially ironic, as Gujarat is Gandhi's home 
state.
Prakash presented me with his first book, "Hindutva Demystified" 
(2002). As few people are really aware of the debate between 
nationalist communalists and pluralists within Hinduism, I am 
reproducing some relevant excerpts that highlight the important ideas 
of Prakash. The opening lines plunge us into the crisis in Hinduism: 
"Godhra, Gujarat, Orissa - oh! The anguish, the sorrow, the shame! Is 
this what we got our freedom for? Is this how India is to be brought 
down - to the level of a Rwanda or a Serbia?
"Is rabid communalism of the majority under Dvija-inspired ideology 
the best we can come up with? Is killing helpless men, women and 
children the way to enhance the glory of our Motherland? Is the Sangh 
Parivar's 'Hindutva' the answer to India's agony? Let us ponder over 
the predicament of this ancient civilization, of a billion-plus 
humans, believed to be a unique example of unity in diversity."
"'Hindutva,' as articulated by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and adopted 
by Hedgewar as the bedrock of the ideology of the Rashtriya 
Swayamsewak Sangh (movement) has little to do with the real, noble 
faith of the Hindus."
Prakash is sceptical of the leaders: "It has always been so. The 
masterminds, who plan and organize violence and carnage in God's 
name, pandering to their sadistic egos and pursuing their diabolic 
designs, stay behind the scenes, safe and secure with their families, 
friends and worldly possessions. They watch the 'fun,' bask in the 
glow of their notoriety and relish the fruits of human tragedies 
enacted by them, and prepare to stage the next great dance of death 
and destruction.
"The months of February and March 2002 have witnessed the orgies of 
violence of the most mindless and virulent kind in the Indian state 
of Gujarat." Prakash calls the killing of the Muslims a "pogrom."
He is indignant with the developments after Gujarat: "As if the 
continuing mayhem against the Muslims in Gujarat was not enough of a 
national shame, the RSS compounded it by holding out a brazen threat 
to the Muslims that they must earn Hindu goodwill to secure their 
safety in India. Prakash quotes the leading ideologue of the party: 
"From this standpoint, sanctioned by the experiences of shrewd old 
nations, the foreign races in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu 
culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in a reverence 
Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of the 
glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e. of the Hindu 
nation, and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu 
race; or may stay in the country wholly subordinated to the Hindu 
nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any 
preferential treatment - not even citizen's rights."
Prakash is rightly proud of the great religious traditions of South 
Asia: "Buddha, Mahavira, Nanak, Ram Mohan Roy, Vivekananda, 
Dayananda, Gandhi - these great sages of India represent the noble 
tradition of critical introspection on the state of our religious 
thought and practice since times immemorial.
"To most Hindus these 'men of God' represent the true, the noble and 
the fundamental spirit of an oceanic religion into which are 
assimilated many of the world's mighty religious rivers."
In the end, appropriately, Prakash quotes Gandhi, who wrote in 
September 1931: "I shall work for an India in which the poorest shall 
feel it is their country in whose making they have an effective 
voice, an India in which there will be no high class or low class of 
people; an India in which all the communities shall live in perfect 
harmony."
That vision of Gandhi today is under challenge.
Professor Akbar S. Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at 
American University, Washington, DC, is author of "Islam Today: A 
Short Introduction to the Muslim World" (Revised 2002)

_____


#7.

AlertNet, 16 Mar 2003 

India's Hindu right tests waters ahead of poll
By Myra MacDonald

NEW DELHI, March 16 (Reuters) - The fight to win India's national 
elections has started, with ruling Hindu nationalists and the secular 
opposition party staking out campaign grounds well ahead of the poll 
due by 2004. And excavations underway in search of a lost Hindu 
temple in the northern town of Ayodhya have given the Hindu 
nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a perfect opportunity to 
decide how hard to play up religion in the elections.[...]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP277508


_____


#8.


PRESS RELEASE:
March 22, 2003

Advocacy Group in Washington DC Urges Indian Players to Wear Black 
Arm Bands of Protest Against Genocide

For Immediate Release:     Contact Person: M.K. Rahman (516) 567-0783

Indian Muslim Council-USA (www.imc-usa.org), a Washington based 
advocacy group working toward safeguarding Indian society's pluralist 
and tolerant ethos,  congratulates the Indian Cricket team on their 
marvelous performance so far in the Cricket World Cup. "We wish them 
the Best for the world Cup Final to be held on this Sunday, the 23rd 
of March and hope that they will not only regain the cup and the 
glory of Cricket but will also regain the honor of the nation that 
was lost when the land of Gandhi was taken over by those who killed 
him" said Dr. Shaik Ubaid, IMC-USA President.

This World Cup has seen many an old records shattered and new heights 
of fame and performance achieved.  But long after the most talked 
about performances have been forgotten, one noble deed of courage 
will continue to shine, immune to the passage of time, and be a 
beacon to the players and spectators alike. The courageous protest 
against political tyranny by Henry Olonga and Andy Flower of 
Zimbabwe, undertaken at the risk to their lives, will continue to 
inspire young aspiring stars and  the established superstars alike.

This is the standard that the Indian team must strive to reach and 
beat.  For the tyranny Henry Olonga, now in hiding, was protesting 
pales into insignificance when compared to the evil now gaining 
strength in India.  This world cup is being played in the month of 
the first anniversary of the Gujarat genocide.  It was in the month 
of March 2002, that Gujarat, the state where Mohandas Gandhi was born 
saw Hindu extremists mobs, espousing the fascist ideology of 
Hindu-supremacy (Hindutva) burn little boys and gang rape hundreds of 
young girls before their parents.  Pregnant women had their bellies 
slit open and the full term unborn infants torn from the sanctuary of 
their mothers wombs and flung into fire.  More than 2000 people were 
thus brutally burnt or hacked to death and more than 200, 000 
rendered homeless.

A year has passed and yet the killers roam free, threatening more 
genocides and more ethnic cleansing. They openly vow to "cleanse" 
India of its hundreds of millions of Muslims and Christians and to 
cremate India's secular constitution in the funeral pyre lit by 
religious hatred.

By protesting against the tyranny of Hitler-loving Hindutva-fascists, 
the cricket players of India will gain a fame so illustrious and so 
long-lasting that no amount of accumulated dust of time will be able 
to dampen its luster.

IMC-USA hope that this Sunday when the Indian Cricket team takes to 
the field, in the land of South Africa - where Gandhi launched his 
struggle against oppression - for the highest laurel in Cricket, they 
will be wearing black arm bands of protest and defiance. Indian 
captain Sourav Ganguly  and the Superstar batsman Sachin Tendulkar 
must show the spirit of noble warriors and take on the demons of 
religious and political tyranny with the same resolve they take on 
the opponent bowlers but only with more contempt.

We hope that they will rise to this occasion and wish them success in 
the game of Cricket and the reality of life.


_____


#9.

[Hindutva at Work ]

The Indian Express, March 24, 2003

I&B to bring out RSS founder's biography
Anuradha Raman
New Delhi, March 23: The celebrations couldn't have been more timely. 
Coming as it does when the BJP-led Government is celebrating five 
years in the saddle and over two decades in existence. It's payback 
time now. And the I&B Ministry is rising to the occasion.
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=20742

o o o

The Telegraph, March 24, 2003
Curb on Togadia tour
YOGESH VAJPEYI
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030324/asp/nation/story_1797758.asp

o o o

The Indian Express, March 24, 2003

Now, VHP to hold mahayagna in Jogiland
Ashwani Sharma
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=20741

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South Asia Citizens Web (www.mnet.fr/aiindex).

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.