[sacw] SACW | 1 April 03

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  |  1 April,  2003

#1. Peace group calls for Pakistan-India talks
#2. Pakistan-India: Ayesha Jalal's lecture on Partition violence 
(Muhammad Badar Alam)
#3. Irish lessons for Kashmir (A.G. Noorani)
#4. The Great India Cow Debate:
- Pissed Off With Cows (Mukul Dube)
Bovine absurdity is taking India by storm (B. Gautam)
#5. India:  Excavating Hindutva (Gautam Bhatia)
#6. India: Re the Indian Supreme Court Judgement
- Maintaining communal harmony
- Ayodhya: SC rejects Centre's plea
#7. India: Online Petition - Drop Charges Against Sandeep Pandey and 
=46ellow Activists
#8. India: A Fascist Stares at Gandhi (Sudhanva  Deshpande)
#9. Cricket:
- This passion is a six (Shashi Tharoor)
- Not Just Cricket (Mir Ali Raza)


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

#1.

Gulf News (Dubai)
March 31, 2003

Peace group calls for Pakistan-India talks
Karachi |From Our Correspondent

A leading Pakistan and India peace group yesterday demanded the two 
South Asian neighbours immediately resume talks to resolve their 
differences and end the costly arms race which is hurting the common 
man on both side of the border.

"We the members of Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace and 
Democracy, Sindh Chapter, express our serious concern at the further 
deterioration" in the relations of the two countries, the group said 
in a resolution.

"Not only are formal relations between the two governments at the 
lowest ebb ever, unprecedented obstacles have been created to prevent 
the civil societies in the sub-continent from interacting for the 
mutual good," the group said.

The conference, attended by more than 500 peace activists, writers, 
poets, intellectuals and political activists, said in its unanimous 
resolution that the group was concerned that this confrontation is 
being exploited to deprive the people of their rights to democratic 
governance and civil liberties.

Several Indian representatives also participated in the conference 
despite curbs on traveling between the two countries. "We call upon 
the governments of India and Pakistan to resume negotiations to 
resolve all differences and disagreements peacefully and 
democratically," the resolution said.

It also demanded an end to the arms race, re-establishment of 
diplomatic missions at normal strength, reopening of road, rail and 
air travel routes and removal of recently imposed curbs on grant of 
visas.

The call for an end to hostilities between the nuclear rivals by 
peace activists is being seen as a significant step in the wake of 
soaring tensions between the two countries.

Tapan Bose, an Indian film producer and leading peace activist, said 
it relations between India and Pakistan were bad when the group 
started its activities in 1993.

"Since then we have come a long way. Now we can openly discuss and 
challenge the state positions on Kashmir and the army," he said. "We 
are those patriots, who are paid for their patriotism."

Kanwar Khalid Younus, a lawmaker, belonging to the Muttahida Qaumi 
Movement, said that peoples of the two countries share many things, 
including the language.

"Peace should be given a chance and the people should be allowed to 
come close to each other," he said.

Also the Forum condemned what it called imperialist war being waged 
by the United States and Britain. "This is an illegal war being 
conducted by these two states in violation of all established norms 
of international law and the charter of the United Nations." 
	 	 


_____


#2.

The News On Sunday | The News International (Pakistan)
March 30, 2003

Understanding violence

In a recent lecture in Lahore, Ayesha Jalal highlighted that a 
discourse attempting to understand the fateful events of 1947 in 
communitarian terms justified them in the name of community and 
religion, ignoring the role of the individual perpetrators

By Muhammad Badar Alam

Partition violence is what historian Ayesha Jalal has written and 
talked a lot about. Her point of view on the loot, plunder, rape, 
murder and arson committed around the tragic division of the 
subcontinent into two separate states in 1947 may not appear novel to 
many, though.

Especially those interested in Urdu literature can count a number of 
writers who have exposed the insanity and the frenzy that accompanied 
the partition violence. Saadat Hasan Manto, obviously, led all others 
writing on the subject by a wide margin, not because of his outright 
condemnation of what happened during those fateful days but because 
of his attempt to understand it in humanitarian rather than 
communitarian terms.

Ayesha Jalal also knows where the credit is due. "Poets and writers 
have raised their voices against what happened during the partition," 
she tells a largely young audience at Lahore University of Management 
Sciences on March 25, 2003, "but historians and other social 
scientists haven't".

Concluding her hour-long lecture titled Partition Violence: Gender 
and Religion, Community and State, she says: "It is to the credit of 
poets like (Amrita) Pritam and storytellers like Manto that 
individual pain at the moment of partition is not lost sight of in 
the recounting of a human tragedy attributed solely to religion".

What historians, especially the Indians, have failed to do is 
"pinpoint the pain of violence and dislocation experienced by both 
individuals and communities during the holocaust of 1947". This, 
Ayesha Jalal says, is because they "commit the fallacy of not 
reconstructing the 'community' in their accounts of partition 
violence".

Referring to three writers -- Veena Das, Gyanendra Pandey and Natalie 
Zemon Davis -- she says: "Barbarity attributed to entire communities 
effaces the role of individuals, giving greater legitimacy to the 
social violence that accompanied the partition of the Punjab than is 
warranted by the evidence." Moreover, "in emphasising the role of the 
individual as victim, historians and anthropologists have given 
insufficient attention to individuals as perpetrators".

Discounting the idea that the perpetrators of 1947 violence were 
religiously motivated, she notes that "it is worth considering why so 
many members of a community chose not to participate in violence 
against religiously demarcated rivals, often going against the grain 
of a supposed consensus, by protecting the victim".

Advancing the notion of 'banded individuals' as the perpetrators of 
what has generally been described as collective violence, she says 
the nature of most pitched battles then fought mainly along religious 
lines was "localised and personalised". Though the victims were 
entire religious communities, she says, "the terror was unleashed by 
individuals motivated by self-interest". To prove her point she not 
only reads out from a couple of Manto short stories and an Amrita 
Pritam poem but also narrates incidents where individuals taking part 
in the violence were motivated either by personal retribution or by 
the desire to make hay while the sun shone.

The only problem with this thesis is the fact that the communities as 
a whole did not protest the violence even if they did not take part 
in it. Ayesha Jalal has an explanation. "The communitarian fog 
hovering over the partition violence dissipates the moment one 
considers how the arming of the sections of the populace can 
dramatically alter the balance of power between individuals and 
communities." She follows it up with a detailed mention of the 
proliferation of paramilitary organisations in British India during 
and after the World War II and how the British rulers legitimised 
their creation and existence.

Another significant aspect of her discourse about the partition 
violence is the atrocities committed against women. Agreeing to the 
fact that the women suffered the most during the 1947 riots, she 
refuses to buy the argument that they were made to suffer because the 
perpetrators of violence wanted to soil the 'honour' of the rival 
community. "In the political economy of Punjab in 1940s, women were 
taken more as property than being the living beings with a will and 
volition of their own," she says. "And during the riots, they were 
treated no differently." This, she says, is reflected in the number 
of women recovered from the rioters which is far smaller than the 
actual reality of the partition suggests. "To explain this anomaly we 
need to take into account the number of women who were simply taken 
away and who were never recovered. Many of them were forced to 
convert and now they may be living as grandmothers in the households 
of their abductors. Had honour been the only issue, they would have 
been raped and let go. The fact that they were taken away for good 
means they were more material objects than being the symbols of 
communitarian honour."

By putting the blame for the violence of 'banded individuals,' Ayesha 
Jalal wants to highlight that a discourse attempting to understand 
the fateful events of 1947 in communitarian terms justifies them in 
the name of community and religion. "The problem has arisen because 
most Indian historians and social scientists try to analyse the 
history of the partition in the context of present day India where 
secular moorings have lost ground to communal frenzy and religious 
pogroms like the one carried out by the Gujarat state government 
recently."

Ayesha Jalal says this trend is not fallacious for academic reasons 
alone. "Ignoring the role of the individual in the partition 
violence, in fact glossing over it by emphasizing the roles played by 
the communities and religion, leaves little room for social critique 
of the 1947 events."

But this 'social critique' is what both Indian and Pakistani 
societies need the most in order to understand and subsequently 
overcome the communal and sectarian violence people here have been 
subjected to during the recent times. Ayesha Jalal thinks historians 
and social scientists are required to shed the baggage of their 
"retrospectively constructed nationalisms" before they are able to 
analyse the partition riots undisturbed by their personal, and in 
most part disturbing, experiences of the present.


_____


#3.

=46rontline
29 - April 11, 2003

REVIEW ARTICLE
Irish lessons for Kashmir

A.G. NOORANI

NO Irishman should read Irish history, an old saw went, but every 
Englishman should. So, one might add, should Indians and Pakistanis. 
Steeped in Irish history, B.R. Ambedkar drew on it extensively in his 
classic Pakistan or the Partition of India (1946). Had its lessons 
been heeded, the Partition of India might have been averted. If 
heeded now, it can help all the parties to the Kashmir dispute - 
India, Pakistan and the people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, in 
all its regions and communities - to veer away from the strife that 
has consumed them since the subcontinent became independent.
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2007/stories/20030411000507400.htm

_____


#4.

Milli Gazette,
1-15 April 2003, p.25.

Pissed Off With Cows

Mukul Dube

All mammals - humans, cows, leopards, rats, pigs, whales, kangaroos, 
koala bears, marmosets - have fundamentally the same kind of 
digestive system. Ingested material is broken down by acids and 
enzymes into components which can be absorbed into and circulated by 
the blood. There are anatomical and physiological differences between 
herbivorous species and carnivorous ones such that both are able to 
digest their different diets, but the principle is the same. Indeed, 
the general principle can be extended also to birds and fishes and 
amphibians, and possibly to insects and worms too: it is just that 
the commonalities among mammals are greater.
     Some part of the material ingested is digested and absorbed by 
the body to be used for different purposes. What cannot be used by 
the body is thrown away as waste, which takes the form of faeces or 
urine, though probably sweat and its salts can also be included. 
Strictly speaking, the water in urine and sweat is not waste but a 
carrier for various dissolved solids, and sweat has the additional 
function of maintaining a desirable body temperature.
     Human dung and cow's dung are both, in biological terms, waste. 
Specifically, both are shit. However, one is considered dirty - and, 
for much of India's people, highly polluting - while the other is 
thought clean and pure and so on, even to point of being considered 
edible.
     Human urine and cow's urine are both, in biological terms, waste. 
Specifically, both are piss. Here the parallel with shit ends or, 
more accurately, splits. It is not only in India that human urine is 
drunk by humans: the auto-urine therapy made famous by a former Prime 
Minister of ours is also part of certain other systems of alternative 
medicine. But India is one of the few places in the world where cow's 
urine is thought fit for human consumption (I am not considering here 
the hormones extracted from it by the pharmaceutical industry).
     I recall that at school forty and more years ago, my class-mates 
and I were made to write essays on the cow. We wrote how cattle gave 
milk and how they provided the muscle for agricultural and other 
operations. We wrote of the uses of their hides, their horns, their 
hoofs. No doubt owing to an insufficiency of Hindutva, however, we 
did not wax eloquent on the purity of their excreta.
     It should be remembered that India is by no means alone in using 
cattle as draught animals and as milch animals. Except in deserts of 
both the hot and the cold kinds, all over the globe cattle play 
precisely the same roles and have precisely the same economic value 
as they do in India. India - specifically, Hinduism - is unique in 
according to cattle a semi-divine and ritually important place. Here 
the economic value of cattle has nothing to do with their veneration.
     That the odour of cowdung is relatively mild and can be tolerated 
does not make it in any way a good substance as compared with, for 
example, dog's turds. To a great degree these things are culturally 
defined. We use cowdung as fuel and for plastering our floors and 
walls. We smell it from early childhood and for that reason do not 
find it offensive. There are many cultures in the world who would not 
dream of using it thus, for they treat it just like any other shit. 
It is over three decades since I studied anthropology, but I dare say 
there exist communities in our world who shampoo their hair with 
monkey shit. That is something I would not do - nor, I suspect, would 
most of my readers - but it is not wrong in any moral sense.
     It is strange that the water buffalo, which gives us milk like 
the cow does and whose males are used for the same purpose as are 
bullocks, does not have maternal status. It would be fair, I think, 
to call it at the very least a mausi.
     Human beings are an omnivorous species. In biological terms, we 
are closer to canines than we are to bovines: that is, the cow is a 
much more distant relation of ours than is the bitch. For this reason 
it might make more sense for us to call bitches our mothers, drink 
their milk, plaster our walls with their droppings, and drink their 
urine as medicine. This would be no more illogical than the present 
scheme of things.
     There is also a definite gender bias in operation, of which the 
very words "cowdung" and "bullshit" are representative. We venerate 
the cow but treat the bull with scant respect. Considering that the 
poor fellow comes from the same genetic pool as the females with whom 
he mates, should not his semen be consumed as medicine? Who knows, if 
the stuff should turn out to have aphrodisiac properties, we could 
conquer the New Millennium by marketing it as Vedic Viagra.
     It happens that I went to the same school as Digvijay Singh, the 
Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh. He was my senior by two or perhaps 
three years. He was the squash champion and beat me regularly, though 
it is a fondly held illusion that he had to work to win. I remember 
him as well mannered, sartorially elegant, and not at all a bully - 
which last endeared him to the younger boys. He was a decent enough 
role model. So much to establish that I have nothing against the man 
personally.
     Digvijay Singh is today the head of a large province. That M.P. 
is run by the Congress makes him an anti-ruling party figure of 
prominence. His public statements must be seen against this backdrop.
     If, in the privacy of his home, Digvijay Singh chooses to worship 
termites and drink the sweat of bandicoots, I can have no objection: 
that is, I could not care less. But when in his role of Chief 
Minister and opposition leader he makes a public statement that the 
slaughter of cows should be banned throughout India and that he 
personally values cow's urine, he is well outside his own home.
     No Chief Minister has any business to declare what is good for 
provinces other than his own. By doing that, he meddles in their 
affairs and challenges their right to decide their own policies. He 
interferes with my right to eat what I wish to eat, and to me that is 
a pretty serious matter.
     Second, when the country is ruled by obscurantist forces which 
claim to be Hindu, any attempt by an opposition figure to portray 
himself as more Hindu than them is suspect. When such an attempt is 
made by a leader of a party which claims to be secular, it is a great 
deal worse than merely mendacious.
     Clearly the man wants to retain the constituency he holds as a 
"secular" leader and at the same time to win back the decidedly 
un-secular voters who have been lured away by the Hindutva 
band-wagon. By mincing his words, he hopes to attract a group which 
is fundamentally opposed to the one he is pledged to lead and defend.
     I see in this a gaoler who with one hand fetters a captive and 
with the other, pretends to offer to the poor wretch the wide expanse 
of blue sky.
     Many secular and Muslim people and organisations have benefited 
from the munificence of Digvijay Singh's secular persona. But in his 
pronouncements relating to bovines, I see only a shabby cheat playing 
a filthy game. Doing some good does not license a person to do bad 
things as well. This is not a matter of summing positive and negative 
values to arrive at a balance of zero.
     The worst of it is the level to which our political debate has 
fallen. Shri Vajpayee's diet is of no interest to me. His love of 
prawns and kachauris, if ever it is written about, should go on the 
cookery and society pages. To treat his diet as something more 
important even than personal honesty is the ultimate absurdity.
     It happens that I have always been partial to gulab jamuns, but 
I'm damned if I shall vote for a political party or an individual 
whose ideology is based solely on that luscious sweet. I make 
passably decent kababs now and then, but there is no way I am going 
to launch an All India Kabab Party - no, not even to oppose the Akhil 
Bharatiya Arhar Dal Dal which these jokers are surely about to float.
     I am, however, seriously considering setting up a country-wide 
chain of something akin to beer bars, cosy comfortable places which 
will serve chilled gomutra in earthenware goblets. Millionaire status 
is guaranteed.

o o o

[See Also]
The Japan Times
Saturday, March 29, 2003 

Bovine absurdity is taking India by storm
By B. GAUTAM
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20030329a3.htm


_____


#5.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/310303/detIDE01.shtml
The Hindiustan Times, March 31, 2003
	 
Excavating Hindutva
Gautam Bhatia

  In the court-ordered excavations at Ayodhya, the Archaeological 
Survey of India team, comprising senior archaeologists of the VHP, 
BJP and the Bajrang Dal, has excavated to a depth of three feet four 
inches, and has already hit upon the remains of some ancient culture 
carbondated to the late 20th century.

Among the finds are several items, including a copy of the Ramayan, a 
couple of saffron robes, several trishuls, and the Admissions 
Register of the Ayodhya General Hospital which clearly records Lord 
Ram's birth on page 83: Name: Ram, Sex: Male, Occupation: Lord, Time 
of birth: 2-11-22 (Caesarean).

If a group of villagers were to stage a dharna outside the 
Rashtrapati Bhavan, claiming that the Lutyens building was built on 
the site of their ancestral village on Raisina Hill, would the high 
court help them to demolish the president's house and establish their 
rights to the site? The decision of the high court to excavate at 
Ayodhya to establish the existence of a Hindu temple similarly sets a 
dangerous precedent. What would an excavation achieve, if anything at 
all? Are the bricks used in the foundation of Hindu temples distinct 
from those in the base of mosques? If so, then should the 30,000 
other religious sites listed by the VHP also be dug up, many of which 
are collaborative efforts of Hindu and Muslim craftsmen? And what if 
below the temple archaeologists find the remains of a Catholic 
church? Should the Vatican then take possession of the site?

To cite another example from history. In the 17th century, when Rome 
experienced a dramatic increase in population, the shortage of 
housing compelled the needy to seek shelter in the ancient Roman 
theatre of Marcellus. The building's vaults and arched galleries that 
once accommodated Roman audiences at gruesome gladiator fights were 
adjusted for houses. Gradually, small houses began to appear on its 
rusticated fa=E7ade, and before long the ancient arena of blood, guts 
and gore had been transformed into a minor - though unusual - housing 
complex. The transformation of the building's use reflected something 
of the changing tide of history.

Because the altered architecture was viewed as a true reflection of 
its time, it merely strengthened the Italian sense of continuity with 
the past - a past that was in many ways barbaric, but undeniably 
their own.

Today's 21st century Italian attends Sunday mass in the 16th century 
Renaissance church that was built on the remains of a 12th century 
medieval building, which, in turn, sits on the foundations of a 2nd 
century pagan basilica. It is a history of archaeological layers and 
is still visible in the Church of San Clemente in Rome. Despite the 
layers of divergent strains and forms of worship, none among the 
present day Romans has protested at the unusual hybrid of 
foundations, and called for a selective pruning of history. Instead, 
strengthened by many generations of builders, with vastly differing 
religious and political beliefs, there is genuine pride in 
achievements that have contributed to the melting pot of 
architectural ideas that is Rome.

Like Italy, our own architecture is the happy hotpot of a history of 
invasions. If the British had not colonised India, the bungalow may 
never have been discovered, and we would have been the poorer for it. 
Had the Muslim invasions stopped at Afghanistan, the great tradition 
of monumental architecture would have eluded us; and, of course, if 
the Aryans hadn't conquered in the first place, we may never have 
known the temple form in its varied mutations.

With such a varied history, architecture in India can hardly be used 
to lay legitimate legal claim to chauvinistic allegiances and 
religious identities. Emperors like Akbar and Humayun in the north, 
or the Vijayanagar kings in the south, invariably engaged with local 
artisans and buildings traditions for their own purposes, even using 
stylistic and structural imitation from across religious bounds.

And Indian craftsmen - whether Hindu or Muslim - absorbed skills from 
each other in ways that it was often difficult to tell their work 
apart. Hindu craftsmen worked on Akbar's citadel at Fatehpur Sikri. 
Similarly, Islamic details of construction were widely used on Hindu 
temples, and vice versa. Architecture merely formed another addition 
to the ongoing tradition of shared ideas at the time. To attribute 
sectarian intent to them would be a misreading of history.

Where do we go from here? Should those buildings that clearly 
demonstrate this hybrid of Hindu-Muslim design be identified as new 
targets for demolition? If Ahmedabad is to change its name to 
Karnavati, what about the Muslims who still live there? Should they 
be given Hindu identities as well?

Whatever we do, history will remain unchanged. The removal of King 
George from underneath his umbrella at India Gate did little to wipe 
out the memory of Empire; and it is again unlikely that had the 
structure been replaced by an oversized statue of the Mahatma - as 
was once envisaged - it would revive Gandhian idealism.

The xenophobic zeal with which Hitler built his monuments to 
commemorate Nazi ideology is not entirely different from our own, 
that promotes a strange brand of patriotism, by removing colonial 
statuary, promoting some religious structures at the cost of others, 
institutionalising the flag, changing street and city names, and so 
inciting calculated destruction of history.

In creating room for further polarisation between two communities, 
the five-judge constitution bench has reacted irresponsibly. Given 
that the Ayodhya issue has already done enough damage to the state of 
Hindu-Muslim relations, the court's judgment should have been a 
healing touch directed to a quick solution. Passing the 
responsibility of collecting evidence to archaeology - an uncertain 
science given to hypothesis and conjecture - the results of the order 
are likely to do little more than provide more fuel for partisan 
politics. Certainly, the political motivations behind the excavations 
will be revealed in due time. For, whatever the nature of the 
evidence, even the most observant of archaeologists will be hard 
pressed to assign a specific building type to a set of broken stones.

Moreover, the system of justice was set up under the Constitution of 
India at the time the country became a republic 53 years ago. Any 
action by the court on matters that predate their own birth would 
fall outside their jurisdiction. If that be the case, then the final 
decision on the Ayodhya issue rests within the annals of mythology.

(The writer is an architect based in Delhi)

_____


#6.

The Hindu, Apr 01, 2003  | Editorials
Maintaining communal harmony
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2003040100401000.htm

The Times of India, March 31, 2003
Ayodhya: SC rejects Centre's plea
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=3D41=
947504

_____


#7.

The following petition to the President and the Governor of UP can be 
signed at 
<http://www.petitiononline.com/sandeep/petition.html>http://www.petitiononli=
ne.com/sandeep/petition.html

Drop Charges Against Sandeep Pandey and Fellow Activists

On March 16 of this year, Magsaysay Award winner Dr. Sandeep Pandey 
and fellow activists Badal Achari, Rangesh Achari and Gaurav Tiwari 
were arrested by the administration in Ayodhya for breach of peace. 
At the time they were arrested, following the example of Gandhi, they 
were fasting to protest in a non-violent manner the politicisation of 
the Ayodhya Ram Mandir issue. They were also on a symbolic fast 
against the impending invasion of Iraq by the United States and the 
new economic policies of India which are causing a lot of harm to the 
already poor sections of India. They had barely begun their fast in 
the morning when they got arrested in the evening.

The FIR states that they were arrested because a poster they had 
created urging people for a peaceful resolution to the Ram Mandir 
issue was inflammatory. The poster in fact had a quote from the poet 
Lakshmi Shankar Vajpayee and said "Dear God, please don't accept the 
temple that is built on foundations of the dead and has blood-stained 
walls". After a few days in custody, on March 20 Sandeep and his 
fellow activists were released on bail. They are currently pending 
charges against them for treason and inciting communal violence.

As a part of the Desh Bachao Desh Banao yatra ("Save the Nation, 
Build the Nation"), Sandeep and other highly respected social 
activists have travelled the length and breadth of India to call 
attention to issues such as the unprecedented communalisation of the 
country's ethos and the erosion of the rule of law that have had a 
profoundly harmful fallout on the already hard lives of the poor and 
dispossessed of India. Sandeep has in the past worked pro-actively 
for peace between the common people of India and Pakistan. As one of 
the leaders of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM) he 
has served as a voice for the many people's struggles in our country 
while himself continuing to participate in several struggles at the 
grass roots, with the dalit communities in Reoti, Bhainsaha, Lalpur, 
Natpurwa and other places. In recognition of his work with the 
oppressed and downtrodden of India, Sandeep was awarded the Ramon 
Magsaysay award last year.

In arresting Sandeep on the farcical charge of 'breach of peace', the 
U.P administration has applied twisted logic, since it was indeed for 
the cause of peace that he and his fellow activists were striving. 
When demagogues are allowed to freely prowl our country preaching 
hatred and violence, it would be a travesty for the dissenting voice 
of sanity of people like Sandeep to be suppressed. In a world beset 
with war, deprivation, and senseless acts of cruelty and terror, it 
would be tragic if the world's largest democracy were to arrest one 
of her citizens for urging a peaceful resolution of our problems.

We, the undersigned, call on you to reject the charges filed against 
Sandeep Pandey, Badal Achari, Rangesh Achari and Gaurav Tiwari. We 
call on you to protect the liberty of Indians employing peaceful 
means to protest the venomous incitements to violence by several so 
called leaders. Indians can justifiably be proud of the progress we 
have made since independence as a society and polity. Arresting 
Sandeep Pandey and his fellow peace activists would be a truly 
shameful backward step for India.

Sincerely,

To add your signature, please visit 
<http://www.petitiononline.com/sandeep/petition.html>http://www.petitiononli=
ne.com/sandeep/petition.html

_____


#8.

ZNet Commentary
March 29, 2003
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2003-03/26deshpande.cfm

A Fascist Stares at Gandhi
By Sudhanva  Deshpande

It is payback time.

As I write these lines, a portrait of the father of Indian fascism, 
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), is being unveiled in the 
central hall of the Indian parliament. Going by reports, the portrait 
will be placed across the hall from a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi. 
Decades after their deaths, the two men will face each other in 
symbolic, though silent, confrontation.

It could be argued that given that the Prime Minister of the country 
has been affiliated to the RSS for something like 50 years, this was 
only to be expected. Well, perhaps. Yet the event is full of ironies, 
and the optimist in me wonders if his followers have not, after all, 
done Savarkar disservice.

They don't mean to, of course. Savarkar, the author of the term 
'Hindutva', is an icon for Hindu right-wingers. More to the point, he 
is the one and only figure they can cite from their pantheon who had 
anything to do with the Indian freedom struggle. Indeed, he was given 
life term and sent off to that most dreaded of colonial prisons, the 
Cellular Jail on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. In those 
days, you had to be extraordinarily dangerous to the colonial regime 
to be sent to the Andaman Cellular Jail.

This is how it happened. In December 1909, the District Magistrate of 
Nasik, M.T. Jackson, was shot dead in a theatre while watching a 
play. It was believed that Savarkar was behind the assassination. 
Savarkar was then in Paris, but gave himself up to the police in 
London. Subsequently, on 8 July 1910, Savarkar escaped through the 
porthole of the ship aboard which he was being transported to India. 
Though he was captured immediately, the daring escape fired the 
imagination of patriotic Indians. Back in India, Savarkar was 
sentenced to life on two separate counts and sent off to the 
Andamans. Since that time, an aura of romance surrounds Savarkar.

Savarkar wrote the first history of the Revolt of 1857, the largest 
anti-colonial upsurge in the nineteenth century. In this book, 
published in Marathi in 1908, he highlighted the shared struggles and 
sacrifices of Hindus and Muslims. Later however, in 1937, Savarkar 
argued that Hindus and Muslims constituted separate 'nations' who 
could not live together. This was the notorious two-nation theory, 
popularly attributed to Jinnah and the Muslim League, which formed 
the basis for the demand for Partition. The Muslim League, however, 
raised this demand only in 1940. Savarkar, then, advocated the theory 
a full three years before the Muslim League.

In any case, the basis for this theory was laid in Savarkar's 1923 
book, 'Hindutva', which argued that only they could be considered 
truly Indian who had their 'fatherland' as well as 'holy land' in 
India. This ruled out Indian Muslims, Christians and Jews who had 
their holy lands in Arabia or Palestine. But this doctrine meant that 
other non-Hindus like Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs could be considered 
Indians, since their holy lands lay in India. This became the basis 
for the claim, routinely made by the Hindu Right ever since, that 
Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism are all in fact 'branches' of Hinduism.

'Hindutva' is the original text of Indian fascism - the ideological 
rationale for Hindu majoritarianism is drawn from it. All ideologues 
of the Hindu Right, from 'Guruji' M.S. Golwalkar (the second RSS 
supremo) to the present BJP stongman L.K. Advani, have based their 
rhetoric on it. Also, the term itself, 'Hindutva', was coined by 
Savarkar in this book. There is no previous reference to this term in 
any text, ancient or modern.

Now is payback time. For the past few years, the Hindu Right has been 
trying to install Savarkar as a nationalist hero. First, in May 2002, 
the airport at Andaman was named after him. Now, the installation of 
the portrait in Parliament.

There are two reasons why this move has been opposed.

One, it is now well-known that Savarkar applied for, and was granted, 
clemency after he wrote abject letters to the colonial masters 
begging for mercy. And he did this not once, but repeatedly. He was 
incarcerated in the Andamans in July 1911. His first mercy petition 
(the text of which is no longer available) dates from that year. He 
refers to it in a subsequent petition, in November 1913.

Here, he pledges that his 'conversion is conscientious, so I hope my 
future conduct would be. By keeping me in jail nothing can be got in 
comparison to what would be otherwise. The Mighty alone can afford to 
be merciful and therefore where else can the prodigal son return but 
to the parental doors of the Government.'

Savarkar was moved from the Andamans, first to Ratnagiri, and then to 
Pune. Here, in 1924, he signed a mercy petition promising that 'he 
will not engage publicly or privately in any manner of political 
activities without the consent of Government for a period of five 
years such restrictions being renewable at the discretion of 
Government at the expiry of the said term.' He also acknowledged that 
'I had a fair trial and just sentence. I heartily abhor methods of 
violence resorted to in days gone by, and I feel myself duty bound to 
uphold Law and the constitution to the best of my powers . . . .'

The fourth famous mercy petition came in 1950, after India's 
Independence. Savarkar was detained by the police under the 
Preventive Detention Act. He wrote to the Bombay State Government on 
April 26, 1950 pleading for his release from prison. Savarkar urged 
that he should be released under the condition that he would not take 
part in current politics for any period Government might lay down.

In other words, Savarkar repeatedly apologized for his political 
beliefs and actions, and promised, again and again, to not take part 
in political agitation.

His own defence was that these were tactical moves, that he was no 
believer in satyagraha, that he did not see why he should waste his 
life in prison when he could be much more effective outside the 
prison. But consider this. Isn't it remarkable that among all leaders 
of the Freedom Struggle, including Communists, who were no great 
believers in satyagraha either, it is only Savarkar who tendered such 
abject apologies?

More damagingly, he stuck to the undertakings he gave - there is 
little record to show that once out of the prison, he launched into 
political activity. On the contrary, as in 1925 when he was hauled up 
by the government for an article in the paper 'Mahratta', he was at 
pains to show the government that he was opposed to swaraj 
(independence).

Two, Savarkar was one of the co-accused in the Mahatma Gandhi 
assassination case. In the end, he escaped conviction on a legal 
technicality. But there is little doubt that he was involved in the 
conspiracy. This is what Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, Union Home 
Minister (and an outstanding criminal lawyer of his time), had to say 
to Prime Minister Nehru: 'It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu 
Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that (hatched) the conspiracy and 
saw it through.' This from Patel, one of the darlings of the RSS-BJP.

Today, Savarkar stares at Gandhi across the Indian parliament. The 
Hindu Right is desperately trying to dethrone Gandhi from his 
position as the preeminent leader of the Indian people in their 
struggle against colonialism, and to prop up his murderer instead.

History couldn't have been crueler to Gandhi.

In a recent email, a friend made the point that 'this invidious 
comparison not only debases Gandhi, it also becomes an attempt 
(already partially successful, one would have to say) to change 
historical perceptions by reducing the horror of his assassination. 
It is no longer the cold blooded killing of a decent old man in his 
70s, who had done as much if not more than most to contribute towards 
the freedom of all Indians.

That he did more than his murderers is saying very little, simply 
because they did nothing. But with this equalization move, it now 
becomes a debate between "equals" in which one party had to be 
exterminated for the good of the country. The simple equation of 
Savarkar and Gandhi manages to alter historical perspective in this 
radical manner, turning collaborators into nationalist heroes. Talk 
of turning black into white!'

Yet, at the end of the day, I cannot help but think that perhaps his 
acolytes are doing Savarkar a disservice after all. I did my masters 
in modern Indian history. Those days, when the Hindu Right was still 
a more or less peripheral force in Indian politics, we knew very 
little about Savarkar. We thought he had once been a brave 
nationalist revolutionary who turned senile in his old age, turned 
against Gandhi, and was an ideological mentor to his murderers. But 
none of us actually spent any time investigating the truth about him.

His recent promotion by the Hindu Right has meant that a lot of very 
fine historical research has been devoted to bringing to light the 
facts about the life and times of Savarkar. And I dare say that the 
light that shines on his portrait today is a rather harsh one, that 
reveals the man in all his hideousness. That can't be such a bad 
thing after all.

Sudhanva Deshpande works as editor in LeftWord Books, New Delhi, 
India. He is also an actor and director with Jana Natya Manch, best 
known for its street theatre. He can be reached at 
deshsud@rediffmail.com.

______


#9.

The Hindu  (India) / Magazine  Section
Sunday, Mar 30, 2003

This passion is a six
SHASHI THAROOR

LAST Sunday, while India was losing the World Cup final to Australia 
through a heartbreaking combination of ineptitude and ill-luck, the 
New York Times treated its readers to an essay by an American travel 
writer on his experience of being a "cricket heathen" in India. After 
mildly amusing descriptions of his discovery of the sport and the 
passions it stirred in the Indian soul, the author, Michael Y. Park, 
concluded with an anecdote: "Even when I tried to escape civilisation 
deep into the Great Indian (Thar) Desert in the northwest, near the 
border with Pakistan, cricket dominated conversation. I was on a 
three-day camel trek, and my camel driver ... played only camel polo 
and had never seen a professional cricket match because he'd never 
watched television. But ... this man who had never been more than 20 
miles from the fairy-tale fort of Jaisalmer and who had never heard 
of nuclear bombs or Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous State, 
rattled off statistics about the national team and details of the 
players' private lives. He even worked in a few disparaging remarks 
about the Pakistani team. (He) noted my atonishment. `You have to 
understand,' (he) said, spitting out a gob of betel nut and saddling 
up his camel. `Indians are crazy about this cricket.'"
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/stories/2003033000020300.htm

o o o

Outlook (India)
March 31, 2003

=46ROM THE HEART
Not Just Cricket
"What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" So asked CLR 
James in 1963. Yet again, in this World Cup, cricket became the 
theater to enact a complex moral position vis-a-vis nationalism.
MIR ALI RAZA
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=3D20030331&fname=3Dmir&sid=3D1


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