[sacw] SACW | 25 March 03

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  |  25 March,  2003

#1. Indian delegation to attend peace meet in Pakistan
#2. Restoring the missing link between India Pakistan (Tahir Mirza)
#3. Pakistan: Exposure to alien cultures (Anwar Syed)
#4. Ominous signs for the US-UK in war on Iraq (Praful Bidwai)
#5. Midnight massacre pushes the Kashmir Valley to brink (Muzamil Jaleel)
#6. India: No Voodoo Archaeology, Please - Digging up a Pandora's Box 
(Praful Bidwai)
#7. India: Minority report (Vishal Arora)
#8. Publication announcement: The End of India by Khushwant Singh
#9. Hindutva at Work:
- Madhya Pradesh: Bhojshala: The making of communal trouble (Vidya 
Subrahmaniam)
- Campaign on to re-admit Savarkar to London Bar

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


#1.

DAWN, 24 March 2003

Indian delegation to attend peace moot
By Our Staff Reporter

KARACHI, March 23: An eight-member delegation of peace and human 
rights activists from India will be arriving here next week to 
participate in a two-day convention that opens in the city on March 
29.
This is the sixth joint convention being organized by the Pakistan - 
India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD), which was 
formed by a group of peace and democracy loving citizens from both 
the countries, in Delhi (India) in 1994.
The PIPFPD's Shahid Fiaz said that the visiting delegation includes 
Tapan K Bose, Anand Raj Varma, Jatinbabu Desai, Vijaya Jasvantsinh 
Chauhan, Neera Adarkar, Amit Chakarborty and Subasis Chaterjee. The 
visiting team, besides visiting the city, will also go to Hyderabad, 
Lahore, Islamabad and Peshawar.
He said that so far PIPFPD's five joint conventions - three in India 
and two in Pakistan - had been organized and the sixth was being 
organized in the city as decided at the previous convention held at 
Bangalore.
He said that owing to high tension between both the countries in the 
past couple of years, and particularly since Dec 13, 2001, all 
opportunities of interaction, including people-exchange and dialogue, 
had seized to exist between both the countries.
He said that the forum was formed to establish peace and solidarity 
among the people of both the neighbouring countries and to expedite 
efforts to resolve all issues and conflicts between them in a 
peaceful and just manner.
Mr Fiaz said that during the two-day programme a seminar on Indo - 
Pak relations, an exhibition of paintings by young artists and a 
musical programme etc, would be organized under the aegis of the 
forum.

_____


#2.

DAWN, 20 March 2003
The Review

Restoring the missing link
By Tahir Mirza

There are four sisters of what one should perhaps call Indian origin 
who are married to Pakistanis and are naturalized Pakistanis. The 
sisters' father lived in a district town in India. He suddenly fell 
ill and died within a week. One of the sister's lives in Abu Dhabi. 
She tried to get a visa for India from the embassy there but was 
refused. Those in Pakistan knew that even if they got visas, they 
would be able to travel to India only via the Gulf or Kathmandu, and 
working out the time required and the complications involved, 
abandoned any idea of going.
Once the grief had settled down, there was anger among the sisters. 
One of them said she would organize a website for wives of Indian 
origin married to Pakistanis and settled in Pakistan. In that way, 
they would at least be able to keep in touch with one another and 
perhaps create some kind of a pressure group to persuade Pakistan and 
India to ease travel restrictions.
In the aftermath of the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, New 
Delhi had not only scaled down its diplomatic representation but also 
stopped bus and train services. The train service between Lahore and 
Amritsar was not a very satisfactory one. It had no one to look after 
it, and the carriages were dirty, overcrowded and often without 
lights or fans or water. But at least the train chugged between the 
two stations twice or thrice a week and took and brought back a full 
load on every trip. It provided a cheap means of access to divided 
families belonging to the lower-income groups. That link remains 
suspended, although how it is helping India's diplomatic offensive 
vis-a-vis Pakistan is a total mystery.
The bus service between Lahore and Delhi, inaugurated during Indian 
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's landmark visit to the Punjab 
capital, was more expensive. But it had the virtue of being far more 
comfortable than the train service and was still affordable for most 
middle-class families. That too is gone, and on both sides of the 
border, the luxury coaches marked for the service are no doubt 
rusting in sheds.
PIA and Indian Airlines had stopped flying between the two countries 
earlier than the Indian decision to snap travel links. But the 
well-heeled and the well-connected can not only get visas quite 
easily from the Indian embassy in Islamabad but can also afford to 
travel by air via Dubai, with shopping in that commercialized Gulf 
city thrown in as an added bonus.
So, only the less affluent divided families suffer. The cynical view 
is that the number of such families is dwindling. Time is taking care 
of that. Parents and older brothers and sisters are dying, and family 
ties are weakening. They will weaken further as the years roll on. 
Therefore, why bother too much about divided families, the argument 
seems to run: their numbers are insignificant as a percentage of the 
total population in India and Pakistan and not worth bothering when 
it comes to greater political and diplomatic questions. But this 
underlines the streak of petty-mindedness that has come to 
characterize the Indo-Pakistan relationship. It's all cold, 
de-humanized calculation, serving some vague state purpose on both 
sides.
The same streak marks so much else. Pakistan (definitely) and India 
(probably) prohibit normal exchanges of each other's newspapers and 
journals. Books cannot be openly sold, and are pirated. The same goes 
for videos. Indian films cannot be allowed because our so-called 
Lollywood will collapse and there will be cries of "cultural 
indoctrination" and protests about what a columnist once described as 
the "navel invasion" from across the border, although the Bombay 
productions continue to be seen on cable.
Both India and Pakistan have reached the apogee of what is considered 
scientific and technological achievement - the manufacture and 
deployment of nuclear weapons. But both have regressed on the social 
and cultural fronts, and seem to display an almost juvenile 
immaturity when it comes to any kind of normal and civilized 
interaction. President Pervez Musharraf has just said in an interview 
with an Indian television channel that India and Pakistan should move 
forward and discuss all outstanding issues. Let us begin by at least 
restoring travel links and person-to-person exchanges.


_____


#3.

DAWN, 23 March 2003
http://www.dawn.com/2003/03/23/op.htm#3

Exposure to alien cultures
By Anwar Syed

According to a report in this newspaper (February 17), the Muttahida
Majlis-i-Amal condemned the PTV's projection of "obscene" materials. An
assembly of the ulema on the same day called upon the government to stop the
electronic media from exposing our people to Indian and western cultures, and
instead promote Islamic values and traditions. No one will dispute the
desirability of spreading Islamic values, but the exclusion of foreign
influences may be a tall order.

Without becoming abstruse, let us say that culture encompasses much of what we
call our way of life: rituals and customs relating to birth and death, and
marriage; societal organization, class and caste distinctions; food, culinary
styles, ways of eating; homes and furnishings; festivals and celebrations;
notions and mores of romance, love and friendship; patterns of interaction
with those who may be older or younger, superiors, inferiors, opponents, or
strangers; humour, jokes; language and literary forms; music and dance;
visual arts.

In the discussion that follows we will focus on India and defer consideration
of the West to another time. Let us first take a quick look at how much our
culture is already Indianized. There is no need to shy away from the fact
that the regions which compose our country are forever situated on a land
mass known as the Indian subcontinent and, for long stretches of time, were
ruled by one or another king located somewhere in India.

Next, barring a small minority that claims descent from foreign gentry
(invaders from the West), most of us are ethnically the same people as the
folks in northern and north-western India. Inevitably, then, there are many
elements of commonality between their way of living and ours.

The following similarities come readily to mind: At birth a boy is more
welcome than a girl; parents have traditionally looked for their children's
spouses within their own caste; parents of Punjabi girls on both sides of the
border pay a dowry to the groom's family; when the girl's family can afford
it (sometimes even if it has to borrow), celebrations connected with the
wedding can extend to three or more days (oiling the bride's hair, covering
her hands and feet with spots of henna, reception for the groom's party and
others on the wedding day) with fine food served to the guests on each
occasion; recording of gifts received from each guest. A woman's status takes
a big fall if her husband dies, and she is expected to reduce her lifestyle
accordingly; widow remarriage is not encouraged in either culture.

The majority of Hindus and Sikhs do not normally eat meat, but the spices used
for cooking vegetables and lintels, recipes and the order in which the
ingredients are mixed, preparation of rice and unleavened bread (chapati) are
virtually the same on both sides..

Identification with one's caste has revived in the Pakistani Punjab. Last
names signifying the bearer's caste abound. The two major groups among the
native gentry (as distinguished from the descendants of foreign invaders) are
the Rajputs and Jats. Rathores, Chauhans, Bhattys (Rajputs) and Noons,
Tiwanas, Bajwas, Chatthas, Cheemas, Ghummans, Kahloons, Sandhus, Waraich, and
others (Jats) will be found among Punjabi Muslims as well as among Sikhs and
Hindus in the Indian Punjab, Haryana, and Rajasthan.

Needless to say, the lower-caste Muslims in Punjab (carpenters, blacksmiths,
potters, shoemakers, barbers, oilseed crushers, water carriers, etc.) are
descended from lower caste Hindus who converted to Islam somewhere along the
line. In other words, the great majority of our people in Punjab, and
possibly also in Sindh, share common ancestry with groups in India.

A common language is a powerful incentive for people to come together. Punjabi
spoken in Pakistan is the same as that spoken in India, and it is the same in
popular entertainment programmes offered by radio and television. Urdu and
Hindi spoken on the street, in homes, and in most movies are easily
understood in both countries. There has been a great deal of mixing between
Urdu and Hindi during the last couple of hundred years, and it goes on at the
popular level.

Note also that Urdu is just about the only language in the world which has no
verbs of its own. Almost all of its verbs come from Hindi without
modification; only a few are taken from Farsi (for instance, "azmana" which
derives from Farsi "azmudan"). Classical music in Pakistan is the same as the
Indian. The fact that Muslim musicologists (Amir Khusro and others)
contributed a great deal to its development does not change its origin.

There are Arab, Iranian, Central Asian, Bangladeshi, Malayam, and Indonesian
cultures-all of them belonging to Muslim peoples - but is there such a thing
as an Islamic culture? As the late Maulana Maududi would have had it, music,
dance, romantic poetry, painting of human subjects, and sculpture cannot be
Islamic any more than gambling or drinking can be. There is Muslim art, but
Islamic art is a contradiction in terms for the most part. We have holidays
and celebrations that may be called Islamic. Certain forms of greeting, and
expressions of encouragement, praise, gratitude, regret common in Muslim
usage may also be called Islamic. But on the larger scale, the import of the
advice that we should stick with Islamic culture, to the exclusion of alien
influences, is not clear.

It is likely that the ulema, and the conservatives generally, are agitating
more against obscenity than against the cultural expressions referred to
above. But, then, all of us - even Europeans and Indians-disfavour obscenity
and have made laws to discourage it. It is moot whether, and to what extent,
a book or a movie can corrupt its readers or viewers. But if obscene movies,
books, periodicals, symbols, gestures, and actions press upon us wherever we
look, their message is bound to influence the way we use our minds and
imaginations. Thus they shape our character and personalities.

What is obscenity? We can probably agree that it is associated with the
explicit and public display of sex-related acts or parts of the human body.
But this agreement will not exhaust the subject, for that which looks obscene
to a Pakistani may not appear the same to a French woman. According to the
United States Supreme Court (Miller v. California, 1973), if the average
person, applying contemporary community standards, finds that a publication
or presentation is likely to arouse prurient interests or lascivious thoughts
and desires in the viewer's mind, well, then the material in question is
obscene.

The court's reference to the prevailing community standards is one way of
identifying obscenity. Another is to consult the scriptures and act on the
criteria they provide in making a determination. In actual practice, the
likelihood is that prevailing standards, more than the scriptures, will
influence attitudes and judgments.

As a point of departure, let us say that sexual activity in public view is
indisputably obscene. On another plane, note that any number of American and
European women will wear a "halter," in the summer that shows all of their
backs, arms, and bellies, and shorts that show virtually all of their legs.
Is that obscene? Americans and Europeans may think of such attire as a trifle
provocative but not obscene.

But a Pakistani woman dressed in this fashion, and appearing in public, will
probably be arrested. Many Muslim women in the Arab world wear skirts that
show their legs, but a Pakistani Muslim woman doing the same will cause a
stir. As in other countries, fashions in Pakistani women's dress come, go,
and return. For the last ten years or so, tailors in Lahore and Islamabad,
who stitch women's clothes, have cut the shirt's neck and back low enough to
make the wearer look a bit like an exhibitionist.

The "shalwar" is cut short enough to show one's ankles. Is this obscene,
improper, daring, or just attractive? Take your pick, but I wouldn't be
surprised if the more conservative among us regarded it as obscene. More than
the fashions in women's clothing, the obscenity which the critics want to
shut out from our television screens is the one projected in western and
Indian movies.

Those in love are shown as scantily dressed, using a lot of explicit body
language. Wiggling of hips, tight hugs, and even rolling on top of each other
were shown in the Indian, especially Punjabi, movies even before
independence. But all of this is now being done much more blatantly; the
gentle, sentimental kiss on the cheek has gone out of fashion.

What can be done to stop these trends? The Pakistan Telecommunications
Authority has recently asked internet providers to block a hundred or so
websites that show pornographic material. But it transpires not only that
blocking even that many websites is technically very hard, but that there are
countless other websites that do the same and of which no one can keep track.
Banning cable or dish antennas has not worked in Iran and it will not work in
Pakistan.

In other words, there is nothing that public authorities can do to keep out
western or Indian influences. They can be excluded only if the internet users
and movie viewers choose, of their own accord, not to look for them. That is
a choice our young people will, or will not, make depending on how their
families have raised them.

On their part, the ulema should temper their concern for our morals with a
sympathetic understanding of our need for a bit of fun. They are much too
stern for most of us to take as our models. Many of them will not let us have
even a good laugh, not to speak of playing a few hands of bridge, listening
to Iqbal Bano, or mixing soda with anything that might elevate one's spirit.
If they do not step down from their high horse to the ground where we mortals
stand, their audience will continue to diminish.

E-mail: syed.anwar@attbi.com

_____


#4.

Inter Press Service

Ominous signs for the US-UK in war on Iraq

By Praful Bidwai

New Delhi, March 24:

Four full days into the "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq, it is 
becoming apparent that the shrunken war coalition comprising the US, 
Britain and Australia will probably not enjoy the luxury of a swift, 
smooth, decisive, victory despite its overwhelming military 
superiority over Saddam Hussein's forces.

If the Anglo-American troops are slowed down in their advance and get 
sucked into the quagmire of urban warfare, the entire course of the 
conflict-and especially its political complexion-could radically 
change.

A messy military engagement, with high casualties both among 
non-combatant civilians and US-UK troops, could undo some of 
America's super-ambitious plans for re-drawing the borders of the 
Middle East and reshaping the world after its own image.

The US pledged a virtually bloodless, extremely swift war, its 
calculation being that it would inflict a decapitating strike on 
Iraq's leadership. Even if that failed, Iraq's army would 
disintegrate or lose its will to fight under "shock and awe" attacks. 
A quick victory, America hoped, would silence critics and confer ex 
post legitimacy on what is an unprovoked, unjust and illegal war.

This plan has run into serious hurdles. Despite desertions, Iraq's 
army has not disintegrated. It has shown a capacity for resistance. 
The Iraqi people see Americans not as "liberators", but as occupiers.

The truncated war coalition, already politically isolated for 
violating the United Nations Charter, has been jolted by a series of 
setbacks. The US admits that 10 of its personnel have died and 12 are 
missing. Iraqi forces have captured at least five American soldiers, 
and also exhibited other videos showing dead and wounded personnel.

Apart from a fratricidal attack in a Kuwait camp, killing one, there 
have been two major mishaps: the collision of two British helicopters 
and the shooting down of a British warplane by a US "Patriot" 
missile, leading to two deaths.

In contrast to the US claim that there would be few casualties, Iraq 
says that over 70 civilians have died and more than 400 have been 
injured. Disturbing evidence is emerging that clusters of civilian 
houses were bombed in supposedly "high-precision" raids. Many of the 
injured are children: under-15s account for half of Iraq's population.

As the civilian toll mounts, there will be growing revulsion against 
the war the world over, and a strong response from the peace movement.

Perhaps the most worrisome military development for the war coalition 
is the resistance it encountered in virtually every town during its 
swift advance towards Baghdad. Thus, three days after Umm Qasr was 
officially announced captured, US and British forces, backed by 
airpower and tanks, are still battling for full control over it. Umm 
Qasr is Iraq's only deep-sea port and holds the key to supplies of 
heavy weapons and humanitarian aid.

No less significant have been battles in the towns of Nassiriya and 
Najaf, around Basra, and now Karbala. US officials admit that there 
is "a lot of tough slogging ahead" as they enter a "particularly 
dangerous" part of their mission.

For the first time, war coalition officials last weekend used the 
word "guerrillas" to describe the source of the unexpectedly tough 
resistance to them, especially at Umm Qasr and Nassiriya.

The use of guerrilla tactics by the Iraqi military and Baath 
loyalists can enormously complicate the Anglo-American coalition's 
task. The events so far may only be a miniature trailer of what could 
come in Baghdad, where US-UK forces might get drawn in close-quarter 
combat not just with 75,000 elite Republican Guard troops, but even 
more importantly, with militias and civilian snipers. (According to 
one estimate, about five million of Iraq's 23 million people possess 
firearms.)

Aerial attacks so far have failed to scare large chunks of Iraq's 
army into surrender or desertion, or "soften" Baghdad to a point 
where it cannot be defended against ground attack.

If this situation holds over the next few days, the US will have two 
broad options: get drawn into close combat with guerrillas-urban 
warfare-, or apply more force, less discriminately.

Under the second choice, the US will use new, far more destructive 
methods to cripple the Iraqi army's internal communications-for 
example, "e-weapons" or "microwave pulse-bombs".

Although these are called "non-lethal", these weapons can cause 
extraordinary damage to the healthcare infrastructure and people. 
Microwave pulse-bombs release powerful electromagnetic radiation, 
which instantly "fries" all electronic circuits within a radius of 
2-2.5 kilometres. The pulse melts down radars, computers, radios, 
hospital machinery, ambulances, water-pumps, even hearing-aids and 
pace-makers. This last is like a person's heart exploding.

Such weapons will greatly increase "collateral damage", a term people 
everywhere have come to intensely dislike. They could speed up 
Baghdad's fall; but they cannot guarantee that there will be no urban 
warfare, with guerrillas sniping at invading troops, and these 
retaliating with excessive force-just as Israeli forces do in 
Palestine, causing worldwide outrage.

The US may have made a big blunder in underestimating the strength of 
Arab nationalism and its own unpopularity in Iraq's 
neighbourhood-despite Saddam Hussein's despotic rule. For instance, 
in Jordan, the ratio of positive to negative perceptions of the US 
has decreased from 34/61 to 10/81 after the US announced it would 
attack Iraq. In Morocco, 88 percent now hold a negative view of the 
US, compared to 61 percent earlier.

The US has been rattled by Iraq's capture of five American prisoners 
of war (PoWs). It has accused Iraq of mistreating them and invoked 
the Geneva Convention under which mistreatment is a (punishable) war 
crime.

However, there is no evidence that Iraq has harassed the PoWs or 
humiliated them. It has displayed their pictures and allowed 
television interviews by the local media. This does not amount to 
humiliation or official interrogation. It is doubtful if the mere 
display of PoWs' identity violates the law. Besides, nobody would 
believe the Iraqi claim on PoWs unless their presence were publicly 
displayed.

The US' double standards on PoWs are starkly revealed in Guantanamo 
Bay in Cuba, where over 500 Al-Qaeda suspects lie detained, often in 
chains and inside cages. Brutal methods have been used to extract 
information from them. The US does not even accord them the status of 
PoWs, nor of foreign civilians detained on American soil. The US 
courts have no jurisdiction over them.

Invoking the Geneva Convention, while violating a far more important 
international statute, the UN Charter, makes little sense. Equally 
deplorable is the US threat to treat Iraq's army officers as "war 
criminals" merely because they are employed by the government, while 
insisting that American soldiers be treated, when held, as PoWs!-end-


_____


#5.

The Indian Express, March 25, 2003

Midnight massacre pushes Valley to brink
24 Kashmiri Pandits shot outside a police outpost
Muzamil Jaleel

Nadimarg (pulwama), March 24: To the milestones in the Valley's 
blood-drenched road, add one more: Nadimarg. Exactly three years and 
four days after the Chittisinghpora massacre, terror sneaked in at 
midnight again in this remote village in south Kashmir, dragged out 
the sleeping minority Hindus, 11 men, 11 women and two infants and 
sprayed them with bullets.

The massacre, coming a day after the killing of moderate Hizbul 
leader Majid Dar, has not only shattered the three-month-old calm 
since the Mufti government took charge, it also threatens to push the 
Valley once again to its familiar brink.

So gruesome was this killing that even in a place where trauma and 
tragedy have become cliches, everyone, from the media to the 
administration, was searching for adjectives. Consider this:

* Suraj had gone to sleep after celebrating his third birthday. His 
mother, among those who was asked to come out and fall in line, tried 
to hide him behind her. The first bullet got the mother, the second 
his father, then another crushed Suraj's right toe, shearing off 
three fingers. One and a half hours later, he died crying.

* Monu was just 2-year-old. The bullets had made sieve of his chest. 
His three-month old brother is the only survivor in the family. His 
parents too were killed next to him.

* Pritima, a 23-year-old woman who could not walk because of a 
disability, was dragged out and shot dead.

* Mohan Lal Bhat, 19, spent the day today looking at his father, 
mother, sister and uncle, all covered in white, their names scrawled 
in blue ink on the cotton.

A Muslim woman offering water to the family member of a Kashmiri 
Pandit killed on Monday. Javeed Shah
* The first two bullets hit Chunni Lal in his thigh and arm. He fell 
down and found himself in a pile of bodies. As the guns fell silent, 
the gunmen came to check for any living. In a pool of blood, he held 
his breath, feigned dead and thus survived to tell the story.

* Phoola Devi (60) slipped away from the line and hid herself in the 
bushes just metres from the massacre site. Gripped with fear, she had 
to watch her husband Bansilal and 22-year-old daughter Rajni die 
crying for help.

The irony is that this Kashmiri Hindu hamlet had a police picket too 
and the massacre took place right in its compound. Out of the nine 
policemen supposed to guard the Hindus, three were absent while the 
other six were sleeping. In fact, the unidentified killers had first 
barged into their picket, collected their guns and kept them locked 
inside till half of the residents were done to death.

''I was about to go to sleep when there was a knock at the door. My 
mother opened the door and there were three men wearing army uniforms 
(olive green), helmets and bullet-proof vests. Two of them were 
bearded and they asked everybody to come out,'' said Mohan Lal Bhat, 
whose entire family was wiped out in the massacre. ''One of them 
spoke in Kashmiri which roused suspicion and when my father tried to 
resist, they dragged him out. Then they dragged out my mother, sister 
and uncle. I heard the commotion on the door and hid behind a tin 
sheet upstairs,'' he said. Within 15 minutes, Bhat said, he heard the 
gun shots and wails. ''I spent the entire night there in shock and 
disbelief''.

Eyewitnesses revealed that a group of 12 men armed with AK rifles and 
attired in olive green uniforms, bullet-proof vests and helmets, 
swooped on this remote village, 80 km south of Srinagar, at around 
9.45 last night.

''They told us that they were armymen and had to search the houses. 
They asked everybody to come out,'' said Phoola Devi. ''I came out 
with my husband and daughter. But when they asked us to line up in 
front of the police picket, I slipped away towards the bushes. Within 
seconds, they started firing indiscriminately,'' she said. ''And when 
they (the gunmen) left the village, I looked for my family. My 
husband and daughter were lying dead but my son Chandji had also 
escaped. He had hidden inside the house.''

In Chittisinghpra, a group of unidentified gunmen had swooped on a 
Sikh village, lined up 36 men and shot them dead on March, 20, 2000. 
There was no change in the modus operandi - the only difference is 
that this time around, the killers did not even spare the women and 
children.

The village was full of people as the entire Muslim neighbourhood had 
come to join the mourning. There was also a beeline of politicians 
from government to the separatist parties. The first to arrive was 
the Pradesh Congress chief Ghulam Nabi Azad who put the blame 
squarely on Pakistan and promised strengthening of security to the 
Kashmiri Pandits still living in the Valley.

''The security provided to the 9,000-odd Kashmiri Hindus who had not 
migrated in 1990 should be the priority of the government,'' he said. 
Senior Hurriyat Conference leader and JKLF chief Yasin Malik had also 
come along with another separatist leader Nayeem Khan.

''It is a shameful act against humanity. It is brutality and nobody 
can accept such a heineous crime,'' he said. '

'We want an impartial probe into this heineous massacre and the 
Hurriyat Conference will fully co-operate,'' he said. He said that 
the problem of Kashmiri Pandits has nothing to do with Kashmir 
dispute. ''They are an essential part of Kashmir. This tragedy is a 
human issue and has nothing to do with any politics''.

Another senior separatist leader Shabir Shah arrived in the afternoon 
as the police and local administration were waiting for Chief 
minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.

He immediately took over and soon the villagers -both Hindu and 
Muslim - started shouting slogans of unity and against the 
unidentified killers. There was a lot of commotion in the crowd when 
Mufti arrived along with his daughter Mehbooba and senior ministers 
of his administration. Mufti called the massacre a ''major setback to 
the peace process.''

As the bodies were being taken for the funeral, an old man was 
bitterly crying on the verandah of his house. ''I have not just lost 
my family. I feel my roots have ditched me. I will never belong to 
Kashmir again,'' he said.


_____


#6.

The Praful Bidwai Column
24 March 2003

No Voodoo Archaeology, Please
Digging up a Pandora's Box

By Praful Bidwai

By ordering fast-track archaeological excavation at Ayodhya, the 
Allahabad High Court has inadvertently set in motion not so much a 
scientific investigation as a quasi-military operation, clothed in 
secrecy. This represents one more twist in the unfolding of the 
Ayodhya controversy since 1949 when Hindu idols were stealthily 
spirited into the Babri mosque in the dead of night. The excavation 
is unlikely to lead to a conclusive, clinching, final determination 
of the question: Did a Hindu temple exist, and was it destroyed, 
where the Babri mosque was built in 1528? Nor will it settle the 
Ayodhya title-suit before the Lucknow Bench of the High Court, which 
originates in a property dispute in the modern period, not in 
medieval history.

Some of India's eminent archaeologists and historians have sharply 
criticised the excavation order and its acceptance without legal 
challenge by the Archaeological Survey of India, as well as the 
appointment of a private company, Tojo-Vikas International Pvt Ltd, 
as an "adviser" to the ASI. The operation has attracted other 
contenders too for the coveted land in Ayodhya, who claim they are 
"hurt" by history's "wrongs" and want to become a party to the title 
dispute. For instance, an organisation representing the Jains says a 
Sixth Century Jain temple existed at the site before any Hindu 
monument was built. Also controversial, to put it mildly, is the 
award of the labour contract for the digging to the Bajrang Dal-VHP 
activist K. K. Pandey. The fraught excavation order is certain to 
promote a new round of bitter contestation over the Ramjanmabhoomi 
issue, in keeping with the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's agenda. No wonder 
the VHP and the RSS are using the excavation activity to revive the 
local public's all-but-dead interest in the Ayodhya temple issue.

Objections to the excavation project fall into three categories. The 
first concerns the social morality of the move. Even assuming that 
the ASI finds that a Hindu structure existed at the site prior to 
1528, would that merit or retrospectively justify the razing of the 
mosque as part of the process of "getting even with history"? Many 
monuments were built in ancient and medieval India on top of 
demolished religious structures, whether animist, Buddhist, Jain, 
Hindu, Jewish or Muslim.

What if it is found that the Taj Mahal, or some of the greatest Hindu 
temples, belong to that category? Should this country go on a spree 
of bloodletting and razing of monuments regarded as examples of 
history's "wrongs"-in the way the Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan 
Buddhas? Can the vandalism of the past justify revenge-driven 
vandalism today? The ethical answer must be a resounding no.

Most Indian scholars accept this ethical proposition. In 1993, the 
principal organisation of the country's historians, the Indian 
History Congress, voted "by an overwhelming majority" against the 
egregious view that "a monument can be destroyed or removed if there 
are any grounds for assuming that a religious structure of another 
community had previously stood at its site." It also said such 
"post-facto rationalisation of what was done on December 6, 1992, 
would place in jeopardy the fate of numerous historical monuments all 
over the country, an increasing number of which are being targeted 
for destruction by the communal forces."

What would be the practical outcome of the archaeological excavation 
at Ayodhya? If irrefutable evidence is found that a temple did exist 
at the site before 1528, Muslim organisations say they would give up 
their claim to the land and allow a Ram temple to be built. But the 
obverse is not true. Hindu groups have had far more ambivalent 
positions on the issue. Some, including VHP office-bearers, opposed 
excavation in the past; and some sadhus still do so. The VHP employs 
double standards. If the prior existence of a Hindu temple is 
confirmed, it will vigorously press its demand for building a Ram 
temple (without a mosque) on the entire acquired land. But it refuses 
to say it will drop its demand if no such evidence is found! 
Tomorrow, the BJP-RSS-VHP can turn around and say the Ayodhya issue 
concerns "faith", not "facts". This puts a question-mark over the 
utility of the whole effort.

The second set of objections relates to the methods of excavation and 
the competence and impartiality of the agencies conducting it, in 
particular Tojo-Vikas and the ASI. According to a document issued by 
eminent scholars, including medieval historians KM Shrimali and Irfan 
Habib, and archaeologist Suraj Bhan, Tojo-Vikas is a Kalkaji 
(Delhi)-based company which has "no previous experience of 
archaeological surveying." Nor are the credentials of Claude 
Robillard, a Canadian, and the company's "adviser and chief 
geophysicist", "any less doubtful." The company's report doesn't 
furnish his bio-data. Tojo-Vikas was earlier asked by the High Court 
to conduct a "non-intrusive" geophysical survey at the site. Its 
results were inconclusive.

However, for a strange reason, Tojo-Vikas did not use the standard 
combination of magnetic and resistivity techniques which respectively 
help locate metals, and filled pits, buried walls, etc. It only used 
the resistivity technique through ground-penetrating radars. 
Strangely, Tojo-Vikas reveals in its otherwise taciturn report that 
it was somehow expected by certain quarters to trace some "pillars". 
This seems to derive from the colourful but dubious claim of the 
pro-sangh parivar archaeologist B.B. Lal of his "discovery" of 
certain "pillar bases", presumably of a temple. This curious 
coincidence casts a doubt over Tojo-Vikas's objectivity.

As for the ASI, the scholars quoted above raise questions about its 
competence to conduct rigorous, scientific and impartial excavations. 
For about 10 years, this organisation hasn't had a professional 
archaeologist heading it. It reports to the Central government, 
leading and controlling which are important BJP ministers charged 
with instigating the razing of the Babri mosque in 1992, including 
Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani and Human Resources Development 
Minister M.M. Joshi. Say the scholars, when such ministers 
"themselves stand accused of having participated directly in the Babi 
Masjid demolition, no agency under their complete control can be held 
to be above suspicion."

The excavation period is compressed to just one month under Court 
orders. Serious archaeological excavation cannot be done in a hurry, 
or throughout the year. Professor M.K. Dhavalikar, former director of 
the highly regarded Pune-based Deccan College, says: "An ideal 
time-frame would be three full seasons of three to four months per 
year".

The third set of objections is even more fundamental and relates to 
the nature of archaeology as a discipline and the quality of evidence 
from excavations. Archaeology is a social, not a natural, science. 
Archaeological finds are subject to a wide range of interpretations. 
Says noted archaeologist Shereen Rutnagar, "the mere discovery of 
objects, however, well-preserved or 'tell-tale' they might seem, does 
not count as archaeological evidence". Objects and artefacts are mute 
and do not speak for themselves. Their context-stratification, 
physical relationship to the surroundings, and their place in a 
certain material culture-is all-important in interpreting them. 
Proper excavation can only be done layer by layer, establishing each 
stratum's age and provenance.

Such interpretation needs meticulous record-keeping-trench notebooks, 
materials notebooks, dig-house notebooks and photographs. These 
records must be available for scholarly scrutiny and peer review. But 
the ASI has in the past refused to share records. Besides, there can 
be a lot of ambiguity about what constitutes, say, a "temple relic". 
For instance, a carved stone or brick, dating back to the 13 to 15th 
century, which comes from a domestic dwelling, can be easily confused 
with a "temple relic" by misinterpreting or distorting its context or 
surroundings. The lay public can be easily fooled by the mere display 
of such "relics". The VHP can work up emotions by 
claiming-"Ganesh-drinking-milk"-style-that the objects are images 
from the Puranic period or, as Mr Togadia says, in total violation of 
all scientific knowledge of the human past, from 160,000 years ago!

Such "voodoo archaeology" must be debunked and its abuse prevented. 
Indian historians have grappled hard with the Ayodhya issue. But, 
according to Professor Habib, they have found no "acceptable proof" 
that the Babri Masjid was built at the site of a Hindu temple: "None 
of the 14 inscribed Persian verses of the time of the original 
construction even remotely mentions this". Nor does Goswami Tulsi 
Das, an Ayodhya resident, writing his Ramayana within living memory 
of the mosque's construction. The 1991 Historians' Report to the 
Nation by R.S. Sharma, M. Athar Ali, D.N. Jha and Suraj Bhan 
conclusively showed, says Prof Habib, that "there was no reference, 
in any document, of the mosque having been built on the site of a 
temple". This claim wasn't made until nearly 250 years after the 
construction!

A reputed American historian of medieval India, Richard M Eaton, in 
his Essays on Islam and Indian History, (OUP, 2000) carefully 
documents "the desecration of each and every Hindu temple between 
1192 and 1760". The total adds up to 80. This figure doesn't include 
a Ram temple at Ayodhya. The Ayodhya issue couldn't be decided with 
finality by history. It won't be settled by archaeology either. The 
excavation may only dig up more confusion.-end-


_____

#7.

The Hindustan Times, March 25, 2003
Minority report
Vishal Arora
  Why is the Gujarat government so desperate to prepare a 
community-based database of the Christians in the state
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/250303/detPLA01.shtml

_____


#8.

The End of India  
by Khushwant Singh

Analysing the communal violence in Gujarat in 2002, the anti-Sikh 
riots of 1984, the burning of Graham Staines and his children, the 
targeted killings by terrorists in Punjab and Kashmir, Khushwant 
Singh forces us to confront the absolute corruption of religion that 
has made us among the most brutal people on earth. He also points out 
that fundamentalism has less to do with religion than with politics. 
And communal politics, he reminds us, is only the most visible of the 
demons we have nurtured and let loose upon ourselves. Insurgencies in 
Kashmir and the North-East, caste wars in Bihar, scattered Naxalite 
movements, and the ghettoization of minorities are proof that our 
obsession with caste and regional and racial identity has also 
splintered the nation, perhaps beyond repair.

Penguin India
http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/
Published : 3/15/2003
ISBN:  0143029940	(Paperback)
172 pages	   |  	  Rs 250

_____


#9.

[ HINDUTVA AT WORK ]

The Times of India, March 25, 2003
Bhojshala: The making of communal trouble
VIDYA SUBRAHMANIAM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=41294301

o o o

The Hindu, March 23, 2003

Campaign on to re-admit Savarkar to London Bar

London, March 23. (PTI): Bhasker Ghorpade, a leading London-based 
Indian Barrister, has taken up the issue of re-admitting Savarkar to 
the Bar in London.
Ghorpade said he had started the campaign for Savarkar being recalled 
to the Bar posthumously as "the activities of both Savarkar and 
Mahatma Gandhi were aimed at the freedom of India."
Savarkar came here to become a Barrister and studied at Gray's Inn, 
from where he passed his final examination.
He was arrested in London in 1910 on charges of inciting revolt and 
violence against the British.
Before his deportation to India, the Benchers of Gray's Inn decided 
that he was not fit to be called to the Bar.
"Soon after Gandhi was readmitted to the Inner Temple (he was 
debarred because of charges of sedition) I started a campaign that 
Savarkar be called to the Bar posthumously," Ghorpade said.
The Greater London Council had unveiled a plaque at 10 Howley Place, 
where Savarkar lived in London, describing him as an "Indian patriot 
and philosopher," he added.

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