SACW | 8 May 03

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   | 8 May,  2003

Action Alert : In Defence of the Indian Historian Romila Thapar
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html

[ INTERRUPTION NOTICE: Please note, there will be no SACW dispatches 
for the 9th and 10th of May ]

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

#1. Bangladesh-India: The life and world of nowhere people  (Ranabir Samadda=
r)
#2. Jamali Responds To Vajpayee: Now walk the talk! (Praful Bidwai)
#3. The scars of nationalism (Rukmini Callimachi)
#4. Court frees Briton who was forced to marry (Jan McGirk)
#5. Bombay's Hateful Shiv Sena steps up campaign against Mumbai migrants
#6. Two articles On the politics of hate in India:
- Faith healers wanted  by Swami Agnivesh & Valson Thampu
- Falling for it, hook, trishul and sinker - Editorial
#7. USA: Human Rights in India - Moving Forward : A Panel Discussion 
at Harvard School of Public Health (May 9)


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

#1.

Hindustan Times (India), May 8, 2003

DOWNWARDLY MOBILE
by Ranabir Samaddar

The story is as bizarre as it is symptomatic of the problem the two 
countries are grappling with. A solution to the problem means coming 
up with an impossible combination - Bangladesh acknowledging the 
phenomenon of hundreds and thousands of people eager to leave the 
country, and India stopping illegal immigration.

India remaining a humanitarian State, and India fencing the border 
with Bangladesh. Immigrants filling in forms to come legally to work, 
stay or pass through, and India and Bangladesh seeking friendly 
relations with each other. India adopting a non-communal attitude to 
the issue, and India acknowledging that its citizens too 'migrate' in 
the same way, facing the same dangers. And Bangladesh and India 
accepting the responsibility of the welfare of its citizens.

Both countries wish the problem to vanish, both wink at each other, 
both suffer the nightmare of moving millions of peasantry, both adopt 
a communal gaze and discriminate in their attitude to these people, 
and both pray that these 'nowhere people' somehow vanish, giving the 
political class of the two countries relief.

To the relief of the two States, the 213 people stranded in the no 
man's land between Bangladesh and India at Satgachi in Cooch Behar 
vanished mysteriously on February 6. They had been there for a week, 
India saying they were illegal immigrants and should be pushed back 
and/or not allowed entry. Bangla-desh refused to accept that they 
were its citizens, demanding proof and refusing to 'take them back'.

So there they were, huddled together in the severe cold in the open 
for six days and nights, with guns of the two forces facing each 
other. And then on the morning of February 6, the BSF found that the 
group of 213 had disappeared. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. The 
Indian external affairs minister surreally commented: "Snake charmers 
cannot spoil our relations. We can get over these problems if 
Bangladesh acknowledges the fact and decides to talk."

Expectedly, newspaper headlines on the 'snake charmers' have 
disappeared. Problems of greater urgency now occupy media attention: 
forthcoming assembly elections,  post-war situation in Iraq, 
corruption in high places, India-Pakistan relations, etc. Meanwhile, 
labourers, persecuted Hindus, women, men and women in search of their 
'El Dorado' continue their movement across the subcontinent. On the 
historical pattern of migration, we now have an added factor: that of 
communal politics predicating the movements of populations.

A few years ago, when I was travelling along the border from north to 
south West Bengal, I saw and wrote about how border villages were 
becoming homogeneous in terms of the religious identity of its 
inhabitants. Hindu villages on our side, Muslim villages on theirs. 
And as the BSF data will show, these border villages have become what 
the colonial administrator, M.C. MacAlpin, had called exactly a 
century ago, the 'broken villages' - villages with mixed populations 
now 'breaking up' along religious lines.

These villages are now being encouraged to become patriotic, take up 
lathis, tangis, spears, swords and guns to strengthen the border, and 
'resist the illegal intruders'. In the past few years, north Bengal 
has witnessed repeated border clashes in which populations on both 
sides have taken part. With the scenario becoming 'communalised', 
some Muslim-only district villages are also surfacing.

In this 'reappearance' of a 'Partition mentality', cartographic, 
communal and political lines are being replicated continuously 
creating new visible and invisible frontiers. The feature of these 
'nouvelle frontiers' is that they are being produced internally. They 
are not vertical lines separating two spaces, but concentric circles 
continuously dividing and then locating these to rejoin them in the 
universe of the nation. Law, citizenship, rights, obligation, 
morality and habitation are all caught in this universe of concentric 
circles.

In this situation, only 'snake charmers' can survive. They have no 
truly defined religious identity and have become nomadic, combining 
subcontinental mobility with local lives. And statecraft must lose in 
the face of the ingenuity of the immigrant population who must in 
response become people who can suddenly 'vanish'. If one remembers 
the fate of immigration detection measures - such as the 
controversial Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunals) Act - in 
Assam, we cannot be surprised.

I had argued some years back that we need to make a shift from a 
national security-centric framework to a human rights sensitive 
framework in understanding the issue of population movement in our 
region. An ex-governor of West Bengal and retired high-level home 
ministry official commented: "These are well-meaning intellectuals 
whose advices the immigrants can do without." I am sure that 
immigrants very sensibly do not wait for our advice. They do what 
they are best at - 'slip in and out and survive'. The point is: will 
the governments listen to our suggestions? Here, briefly, are some of 
the suggestions:

** Introduction of a liberal visa regime
** A work permit system for the entire zone which is to be regarded 
as a common labour market
** Introduction and encouragement of border trade
** A democratic management of the border
** Allowing panchayats, kisan sabhas, trade unions in informal 
labour, local human rights groups and women's groups in border areas 
a significant role in the running of borders
** A regional convention or a SAARC protocol on rights of immigrants 
and asylum seekers.

These aren't radical suggestions. They do not call for abolition of 
borders. They call for a little more humanism, a little more 
kindness, hospitality, and an awareness of the need for policy 
innovations that can bypass the path of confrontation, militarisation 
of borders and communalisation of the citizenry.

Conventions on migrant workers, frontier workers, convention on the 
rights of the child, convention against all forms of discrimination 
against women, against racism, International Labour Organisation 
conventions - all these are landmarks in the journey of justice.

Immigration is an issue that signals new forms of racism everywhere, 
and in today's post-September 11 world with the spectre of terrorism 
over all places, drawbridges are being pulled everywhere - in the 
west, and in the east. And yet, governments will not win in its 
objective of tackling immigration. Simply because, today's immigrants 
are not the prodigal children who want to return. They have appeared 
nearly 60 years after the days of Sadat Hasan Manto's Toba Tek Singh, 
who, if we remember, lay in the middle of a stretch of land which had 
no name.

Today's 'nowhere people' are survivors. They upset the neat 
boundaries of States and remind us of the unaddressed issues of 
justice and responsibility. Hence, by their very survival, they scare 
the political class. Hence the shrieks and the outcries of an 
impending doom. Will the political class of South Asia for once see 
beyond their noses?

(The writer is the author of The Marginal Nation, a study on 
trans-border migration)

_____



#2.


Rediff.com (India), May 6, 2003
http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/may/06praful.htm

Jamali Responds To Vajpayee: Now walk the talk!

By Praful Bidwai

It is not often that an event lasting just 10 minutes holds the 
potential to undo at least some of the damage inflicted by nations 
upon each other over 18 long months. Pakistan Prime Minister Mir 
Zafrullah Khan Jamali's April 28 telephone call to Mr Atal Behari 
Vajpayee is a worthy candidate for that category. It reciprocates Mr 
Vajpayee's overture made from Kashmir on April 18 and sets the ball 
rolling for an India-Pakistan thaw. Cautious optimism is growing as 
both governments make probing moves. In the absence of a tactless 
action like raising of the Kashmir issue in the UN Security Council 
by Pakistan, or a major terrorist attack in Kashmir, the process 
seems set to move forward, although not without hitches.

By all indications, Pakistan's leaders have made a decision to pursue 
Mr Vajpayee's offer in a positive spirit. General Pervez Musharraf's 
comment that it is "a good offer", to be taken seriously, is a strong 
sign. Even more welcome is his reported post-April 18 remark to a 
group of senior Pakistani editors that if India-Pakistan talks were 
to begin, the "victory would be neither mine nor Prime Minister 
Vajpayee's. It would be the victory of negotiation and dialogue." 
Since then, Mr Jamali has said Pakistan would walk "the extra mile" 
in re- starting a dialogue. The Pakistan government has reportedly 
prepared the blueprint of a framework for a dialogue process, 
including confidence-building measures.

Even on the issue of the greatest concern to India, the 
"cross-border" activities of jehadi outfits, Pakistan's Interior 
Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat has sent out positive signals. Presiding 
over a high-level inter-provincial law-and-order conference on April 
28, he said the law of the land would be strictly enforced and no one 
would be allowed to use Pakistan's soil for hostile activities 
against another country. This reiterates the gist of Gen Musharraf's 
January 12, 2002 address, which India welcomed. He also specifically 
said that the Anti-Terrorism Act would be applied to banned jehadi 
groups who "have resumed activities under new names". This clearly 
referred to outfits like Lashkar-e-Jhanghvi, Al-Badr and Hizbul 
Mujaheedin. Mr Jamali told Mr Vajpayee too: "Terrorism in all forms 
should be condemned". This suggests, according to an Indian Express 
briefing from Islamabad, that "the system" or Establishment in 
Pakistan has decided to pick up the threads of dialogue.

It is imperative that both New Delhi and Islamabad seize the moment. 
The time couldn't be more propitious. Mr Vajpayee's talks offer has 
generally, if cautiously, been welcomed in India, and not just by 
political parties. Even the RSS hasn't opposed it. Its only strong 
critics are maverick Hindutva extremists like Mr Ashok Singhal, for 
whom even the hawkish Mr L.K. Advani has become a "traitor" (to the 
communal cause). The general consensus is that Mr Vajpayee's 
well-timed offer of talks to Pakistan might signal the welcome end of 
a long and sterile phase of official rigidity and India's own version 
of "coercive diplomacy".

It is irrelevant to ask if Mr Vajpayee's talk gambit will succeed, 
because it's now being made from a position of strength, unlike 
before Lahore or Agra. Political-strategic balances haven't changed 
radically since 2001. Regardless of motivations, Mr Vajpayee's April 
18 speech advocates a live-and-let-live policy vis-=E0-vis an 
embittered neighbour, with whom we have to co-exist, given geography. 
Reconciliation with Pakistan, and rebuilding trust so that our mutual 
relations improve, are preconditions for the security and prosperity 
of both countries. They are necessary to combat the scourges of 
national chauvinism, militarism and, above all, communalism, which 
aggravate soluble problems and jeopardise peaceful coexistence.

Assuming that Mr Vajpayee's offer was made with serious deliberation, 
it could only have been the result of a mix of factors: gentle 
external goading in the changed post-Iraq situation, anticipation of 
greater (and more overt) international, especially US, pressure for 
talks with Pakistan, coupled with a desire to end a long, sterile 
phase of damaged relations. Mr Vajpayee may also have other motives: 
to assert himself within the BJP and the NDA (where challenges to his 
leadership have weakened), and attempt a new initiative before the 
coming state Assembly elections make things difficult. Reviving 
SAARC, which has been moribund because of India's refusal to attend 
its summit last year, may also have played a part. Mr Vajpayee must 
now get his own party to back his overture with some enthusiasm.

The topmost priority for India and Pakistan as far as mutual 
relations go is to break the self-imposed policy logjam in which they 
both find themselves. Both have pursued a de facto policy of 
compellence in recent years, especially since the December 2001 
attack on Parliament House. India sought to bend Pakistan to its will 
by mobilising 700,000 troops at the border and demanding Islamabad 
hand over 20 terrorists on the "wanted" list. (Later, it modified the 
demand to verifiable, permanent end to "cross-border" infiltration.)

Pakistan too has used coercion to try to bring India to the 
negotiating table on Kashmir. It responded to India's troop build-up 
by deploying 300,000 soldiers at the border. Both ratcheted up their 
war machines to dangerous levels and at least twice came close to the 
brink of actual combat--with a disturbing, acknowledged, potential 
for escalation to the nuclear level. Both fully used their leverage 
with the US to pressure each other.

However, coercion didn't work. This was only to be expected. 
Compellence is even more difficult to achieve than deterrence. 
Deterrence is about preventing your adversary from doing what you 
don't want him to do--by threatening him with "unacceptable damage". 
Compellence is about forcing your adversary to do what you want him 
to do. Deterrence can, theoretically, work between two equal or 
unequal adversaries provided they can both assuredly inflict 
unconscionable damage upon each other. It doesn't matter much if one 
of them has 3,000 nuclear missiles, and the other "only" 800. Both 
can wipe out each other. (At smaller force levels too, a "deterrence 
equation" can hold provided rivals share an understanding of what's 
"unacceptable damage".) In practice, deterrence, as this Column has 
often argued, is fraught, unstable, degenerative, and prone to 
failure.

Compellence is even worse. It assumes a significant asymmetry or 
disproportion between rivals. You can't force your adversary to act 
in a certain way unless you have overwhelming superiority over him. 
In the India-Pakistan case, the degree of asymmetry essential to 
compellence doesn't obtain. An overall conventional superiority of 
1:5-to-1 or less, and a nuclear-level disproportion of, say, 3-to-1 
is no good here. Nor is advantage/strength in some forces or sectors, 
coupled with weakness in others.

Thus, even within the traditional (and flawed) "realist" framework, 
it was always foolhardy of India and Pakistan to resort to 
compellence--when they don't even have stable mutual deterrence. The 
dangers of raising their military standoff to its highest pitch to 
achieve compellence are even greater because of the systemic, 
strategic nature of India-Pakistan hostility, complicated by 
competing notions of nationhood, territorial disputes, mutual 
distrust and domestic factors related to religion and communalism.

So the present turn towards abandoning coercion-centred approaches 
and giving diplomacy a chance is a long-overdue correction. The gains 
from this change, however tentative, must not be dissipated. This can 
only happen if the Jamali-Vajpayee conversation is followed up with 
some hard-to-reverse steps, both unilateral and bilateral. As of now, 
five small steps have been identified or proposed for discussion: 
economic cooperation, cultural exchanges, people-to-people contacts, 
resumption of flights, and restoration of sporting links. These are 
worthy and important, but may fall short of the critical minimum 
needed for a breakthrough and successful dialogue. This minimum 
derives from the very logic of a return to non-coercive diplomacy.

What's needed is full restoration of the communications links--road, 
rail and air--, and the diplomatic relations severed or severely 
downgraded in December 2001. Apart from being dysfunctional, the 
continued disruption of these links is causing enormous hardship to 
the two peoples without giving either government any advantage. 
There's no reason why India should not unilaterally announce the 
restoration of all such relations as a prelude to a structured 
dialogue on the whole gamut of issues, including Kashmir, end to 
support to militancy, economic relations, Siachen, and other matters. 
The two missions must be upgraded and new High Commissioners 
appointed. This may sound maximalist, but it isn't. After all, the 
rupturing of links was a reaction to the Parliament House attack 
followed by the conscious escalation of military rivalry. The 
de-escalation of that rivalry last October and its end now entail 
restoration and more.

Here lies the real test of the principle of bilateralism which India 
strongly advocates. If India and Pakistan don't resolutely pursue the 
path of reconciliation and dialogue, they are liable to invite 
external intervention. The coming visit by US Deputy Secretary of 
State Richard Armitage and the G-8 summit in June coincide with a 
hardening of US positions under neo-conservative influence after the 
Iraq war. This could create new pressures on and challenges to 
bilateralism. New Delhi and Islamabad must show a resolve to walk the 
talk--before domestic compulsions and global uncertainties complicate 
matters.-end-


_____


#3.

[ The below article from The Daily Herald has provoked a heap of 
protest letters from the Hindu far right circuit. The rest of us need 
to write in to support the article, so please take a moment and write 
a Letter of appreciation to the Editor: at: 
<editorial@dailyherald.com>, <fencepost@dailyherald.com>]

o o o

The Daily Herald (Chicago, USA)
7 May 2003
http://www.dailyherald.com/special/passagefromindia/hindu.asp

THE SCARS OF NATIONALISM
Suburban Hindu nationalists say their shakhas promote pride, but in 
India similar groups are linked to atrocities

Story by Rukmini Callimachi
Photos by M. Scott Mahaskey

A stunned Shajahan Sheikh, 18, listens as her mother asks "Who will 
take her now?" referring to the scars she wears across her face after 
she was burned during the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad.AHMEDABAD, Gujarat 
- In his last hour, witnesses say, Ahsan Jafri knew he would not 
leave his house alive and so he delivered himself to the mob.

Already, houses all around his bungalow were in flames.

Jafri, this city's 74-year-old Muslim statesman, had provided refuge 
inside his two-story residence to more than 150 of his Muslim 
neighbors. When the Hindu mob turned violent, the Muslims had taken 
cover inside, thinking no harm would come to a retired member of the 
Indian parliament - even if he was a Muslim.

It was Feb. 28, 2002, a day after Muslims armed with stones and 
kerosene set four train cars on fire in Godhra, trapping the 
passengers inside. Fifty-eight Hindus were burned alive, including 
more than a dozen children. Dozens of others were horribly scarred.

The train was carrying hundreds of Hindu activists returning from a 
pilgrimage to the city of Ayodhya, where in 1992, hard-line Hindus 
tore down a 475-year-old Muslim mosque, claiming it stood on the 
birthplace of the god Ram.

As relief workers gingerly untangled the limbs of the charred bodies 
on that February day, Hindu mobs erupted in a frenzy of vengeance.

Now, reportedly 10,000 circled Jafri's home, chanting his name. When 
repeated calls to the police brought no help, some who survived said, 
Jafri decided to sacrifice himself in the hope others would be spared.

He walked onto his doorstep. The mob demanded he say "Jai Shri Ram," 
or "Victory to Lord Ram," one of the gods in the Hindu pantheon.

When he refused, they cut off his hands.

Tanveer Jafri, son of former Indian Parliament member Ahsan Jafri, 
walks through his former home. Indian Security Forces are using the 
house as a dormitory.Survivors said the attackers wore saffron 
bandanas, the signature orange color of Hindu nationalism, which 
holds that because most Indians are Hindu, India should be a Hindu 
nation. They carried tridents, the three-pronged weapon of Shiva, the 
god of destruction.

The mob asked Jafri again to honor their god. Again he refused, and 
they cut off his legs.

When he declined a third time, the mob cut him down his middle and 
dragged his body into the street.

There, they set him on fire on a road 10 miles from the ashram where 
half a century ago, Mohandas K. Gandhi perfected his doctrine of 
non-violence.

After killing Jafri, the mob set fire to his house. At least 40 Muslims died=
=2E

Ahsan Jafri has become the icon of the three-day rampage in which at 
least 2,000 Muslims were killed while another 100,000 became 
homeless, according to the U.S. State Department's 2002 human rights 
report on India. About 20,000 Muslim businesses were destroyed, said 
India's Concerned Citizen's Tribunal.

Unlike the Godhra murders, which a Human Rights Watch investigation 
said appeared to be spontaneous violence, there was evidence the 
three-day attack on Muslims was premeditated, the report said. That 
opinion was echoed by India's National Human Rights Commission and 
the Concerned Citizen's Tribunal, the latter a commission of mostly 
retired Indian judges.

Mobs, organized into "militia-like units," fanned out across the 
state, carrying printouts identifying addresses of Muslim homes and 
businesses, researchers said.

Moreover, Smita Narula, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch and a 
Hindu, believes the violence against Muslims was masterminded by a 
family of Hindu nationalist organizations, including the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad, which all fall under the umbrella of the Rashtriya 
Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. The National Human Rights Commission 
concurs.

International outrage over the Gujarat violence was swift. In the 
United States, a federal agency commissioned by Congress recommended 
India be placed on the list of Countries of Particular Concern.

Meanwhile, scholars and non-nationalist Hindus in the United States 
increasingly are concerned about the proliferation of RSS branches in 
this country, known here as the HSS, called shakhas. In 1991, there 
were just three shakhas in the United States; now, there are more 
than 50, according to the HSS web site.

There is no evidence that connects the nationalist movement in the 
United States with the violence in Gujarat. But scholars, many of 
them Hindu, say local nationalists help support an atmosphere of hate 
- both ideologically and financially - in the mother country.

Two local shakhas meet weekly in Schaumburg and Wheeling while a 
third Chicago-area one is being formed, organizers say.

The Hindu Students Council, the HSS student wing, holds meetings at 
Northwestern University and the Illinois Institute of Technology. 
Their foremost symbol is the saffron flag, posted at every meeting.

Before the Ahmedabad mob dispersed, it planted a saffron flag in the 
courtyard of Gulbarg Society, the subdivision that Ahsan Jafri had 
built as a refuge for Muslims everywhere.

Suburban saffron

"Just seeing it fills you with joy," said Vasant Pandav, 59, 
president of the Chicago-area HSS, referring to the orange-hued flag 
that has just been posted on a portable stand inside the Schaumburg 
Park District Community Center.

It's early on a Sunday morning, and 19 members of the local HSS, the 
Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, are playing a traditional game called 
kabbadi, which resembles team tag.

The flag is orange, Pandav said, because that is the color of the sun 
at dawn. It is a symbol of Hinduism meant to dispel ignorance, just 
as the morning sun dispels the darkness of night.

Members like Shridhar Damle reject the idea that they promote an 
atmosphere of hate. Damle, of Villa Park, is a member of the local 
HSS and co-author of an authoritative account of the organization, 
"The Brotherhood in Saffron."

"Our function is to organize Hindu society in America," Damle said. 
"We do not have time or energy to think about other things.

"Our motto is 'The whole universe is one family,' so there is no room 
for hating each other."

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the "National Volunteer Corps," was 
founded in India in 1925, two decades before India won independence 
from Britain. India is a secular state, but the RSS holds that 
Hindus, 81 percent of India's 1 billion population, are the rightful 
heirs of the subcontinent.

In India, young men meet daily in the early hours before dawn for 
shakha. They salute the saffron flag. They partake in games, drills 
and discussions.

On this Sunday in Schaumburg, families are nearing the end of a 
1_-hour session. They gather in a half-moon on the floor.

"For all of history, Hindus have been kicked around and bullied," 
Pandav said, opening the discussion. "We need to unite so no one can 
beat us around. What are the latest examples of this?"

The group mentions Maxim, the men's magazine that ridiculed Gandhi in 
a recent cartoon. It sparked an online campaign, forcing the editors 
to apologize. There's also the Seattle manufacturer who made a line 
of toilet seats embellished with Kali, the Hindu goddess of 
destruction.

"Should we take this kind of insult lying down? No!" said Pandav. "A 
thousand protest e-mails were sent. This is what we can do if there 
is unity."

Pandav, who immigrated to Illinois in 1965 and lives in Downers 
Grove, says the suburban shakhas promote Hindu unity and pride in 
their heritage. Most of the attendees say they joined to reconnect 
with the homeland they miss.

Sarifa Ajmeri, 35, recalls the night in which Hindu rioters passed by 
her window."English is the language of instruction in India. I grew 
up reading the Hardy Boys," said Saurabh Jang, 29, a former member of 
the Schaumburg shakha who came to Hoffman Estates in 1996. "I always 
felt that I didn't have a firm enough grounding in my own culture."

Second-generation members like Ami Soni, 16, who was born in 
Libertyville, see it as a kind of Hindu Sunday school.

"There's a lot of things I didn't know, like why does Ganesh have a 
trunk? Or why does Hanuman have the face of a monkey?" the Mundelein 
High School junior said.

Hinduism, the world's third largest religion with 900 million 
practitioners, is a polytheistic faith with several thousand gods. It 
has no single sacred text, nor does it prescribe a single moral way 
of life. "Just as all rivers lead to the sea, eventually all paths 
lead to God" is a common Hindu saying that implies it is among the 
world's most tolerant religions.

But scholars in the United States say the Hindu nationalist groups, 
however benign they may seem, support bigotry.

"Americans should be concerned. Any religious organization that 
promotes what could be construed as bigotry is undesirable in this 
country," said Sumit Ganguly, a professor at the University of Texas 
and a Hindu. "They seem benign, but they're not. They extol Hindu 
virtues in a way which denigrates other faiths."

Supporters of Hindu nationalism in the Chicago area are only a 
fraction of the nearly 125,000 Indian immigrants living here. 
According to Pandav, the greater Chicago HSS chapter has 50 active 
members and 3,000 supporters.

Many Hindu immigrants are suspicious of nationalist groups, said 
Padma Rangaswamy of Clarendon Hills, author of "Namaste America." One 
local temple declined to host a VHP function, she said.

"Most of the established religious institutions here want to separate 
themselves from extremist elements," she said. "The majority of 
Indians here don't even know they hold shakhas."

Chicago-based scholar Lise McKean, author of "Divine Enterprise, 
Gurus and the Hindu Nationalist Movement," said she fears the Hindu 
nationalists in this country "are creating another generation led to 
think that being Hindu somehow means that you're against Muslims."

Rangaswamy said, however, there is growing concern within the Indian 
community about the rise of a Muslim-backed insurgency in Kashmir, 
where a reported 34,000 people have been killed since 1989.

The recent spurt in shakhas goes hand-in-hand with the beginning of 
this conflict and the post-1990 wave of immigrants who came here to 
work in the tech industry, she said.

"If things simmer down at home," she said, "these kinds of 
organizations would not have a breeding ground here."

Pandav said the real issue is the general victimization of Hindus, 
like the 58 Hindus killed in Godhra.

The retaliatory attack against Muslims, Pandav said, was a reaction 
to years of pent-up pain. He denies it was organized or that the RSS 
played a role.

Damle, meanwhile, said it is possible some fringe nationalists may 
have been involved, but said that should not reflect on the Hindu 
nationalist movement.

"If you're a member of a church, and you kill someone, does that mean 
that the whole church should be blamed?" Damle said.

"Both what happened in Godhra and what happened in Ahmedabad is to be 
condemned, it was a 'mobocracy,'" he added. "But when somebody tries 
to attack me or my society, then it's my right to defend myself."

At the Schaumburg shakha, there is another component besides games 
and talk. As the group discussion wraps up, one member calls, 
"Takhsat!" - Sanskrit for "Attention!"

Immediately, the 19 men and women form a single-file line in front of 
the saffron flag.

They stand alert, military-like. Their hands are clenched at their 
sides. On cue, they pivot. One by one, they march forward and salute 
the flag, hands raised to their hearts.

No photography is allowed.

A Hindu land

On Jan. 30, 1948, Mohandas K. Gandhi was killed in New Delhi with 
three pistol shots to the chest.

Gandhi had enraged Hindu nationalists by reluctantly supporting the 
creation of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, which was carved out of 
India in 1947.

His killer, Nathuram Godse, was a former member of the RSS. As India 
grieved for Gandhi, the government banned the RSS for 18 months. 
Hindu nationalism instantly became a pariah movement.

Scholars say the dangers of the movement were evident long before 
1948. The RSS was founded with the explicit aim of creating a Hindu 
rashtra, or Hindu nation, McKean said.

"The ideology of the RSS is fascist. It explicitly modeled itself 
after Mussolini and Hitler. There's plenty of scholarship to back 
that up," McKean said. "So when one uses the term, it's not some kind 
of name-calling."

After nearly half a century on the fringe, RSS fortunes changed 
dramatically in the late 1980s when the Congress Party, which had 
governed India since independence, fell into disarray amid charges of 
corruption. In 1998, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which many contend 
is the RSS's political arm, won the general election.

"What was once a fringe movement became politically mainstream," said 
Ashutosh Varshney, director of the Center for South Asian Studies at 
the University of Michigan and a Hindu.

Inauguration of Narendra Modi, chief minister of Gujarat. It was the 
largest inauguration ceremony for any chief minister in 
Indian history.A year later, India tested nuclear weapons in a show 
of military might against Pakistan. Elementary school textbooks began 
to reflect a history that portrayed Muslims as aggressors, Varshney 
said.

The State Department says that since the BJP's rise to power, some 
government bureaucrats began to enforce laws selectively to the 
detriment of religious minorities. The "Hinduization" of education 
and the revision of history books included hate propaganda against 
Muslims and Christians.

But the BJP never had a secure grip. In Gujarat in the months 
preceding last year's violence, the BJP was losing ground, Varshney 
said.

"Riots, when they can be blamed on Muslims, help the Hindu 
nationalist parties," said Varshney. The districts hardest hit by 
anti-Muslim violence last February voted overwhelmingly for the BJP, 
he said.

Narendra Modi, the BJP-backed chief minister of Gujarat, was easily 
re-elected. In December, more than 120,000 people dressed in saffron 
crowded into the Ahmedabad stadium to bless Modi's inauguration. One 
young man held up a sign: "Narendra Modi =3D Chief Minister =3D Prime 
Minister =3D Hindu Rashtra."

=46unding hate

Indian academics in the United States have voiced concerns about 
money raised here and sent to support Hindu nationalist activities in 
India.

The India Development and Relief Fund, based in Maryland, says it 
serves economically disadvantaged people in India. It raised more 
than $10 million since its inception in 1989, according to the 
Campaign to Stop Funding Hate, a group of Indian academics and 
activists in the U.S. The campaign says 82 percent of the money went 
to projects managed by groups that are explicitly part of the RSS 
family.

The RSS has undertaken thousands of development projects, medical 
clinics, orphanages and schools in India.

"But they're not exactly the Salvation Army," said Stephen P. Cohen 
of the Brookings Institute. He argues the majority of the relief work 
comes with an ideological price tag.

The "Foreign Exchange of Hate," a report written by the Campaign to 
Stop Funding Hate, claims the money went to RSS-affiliated charities 
that helped create the ideological environment that allowed the 
Gujarat violence to occur.

After the report was released in November, 320 academics in the U.S. 
who specialize in South Asian studies independently circulated a 
petition supporting the conclusions.

Motorola software engineer and former shakha member Jang, for 
instance, designates a portion of his $29.58 a month IDRF 
contribution to Ekal Vidyalayal, the "One Teacher Schools."

"Sure, they run educational institutions that teach arithmetic and 
reading," said Shalini Gera of the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate and 
herself a Hindu. "But these schools, under the cover of relief work, 
are also teaching that Muslims and Christians are foreigners. It 
teaches them to hate."

Children in a youth shakha march in a local gymnasium.Jang argues 
that Hindu schools merely counter what Christian missionaries already 
have been doing in India's tribal districts. "Christian missionaries 
never give something for nothing," he said, remembering the day 
Jehovah's Witnesses showed up at his mother's doorstep.

In 1999, the State Department documented a wave of apparently 
organized attacks against Christians in the tribal belt of Gujarat, 
including forced conversions to Hinduism. A report released this 
March said Hindu nationalists in 2002 "began an ideological campaign 
to limit access to Christian institutions and discourage or, in some 
cases, prohibit conversions to Christianity."

Until recently, employees at Sun Microsystems, Oracle and CISCO could 
donate to IDRF through payroll deductions matched by company 
donations. Oracle and Cisco halted matching contributions following 
the release of the "Foreign Exchange of Hate" report. Sun 
Microsystems is investigating, but has kept the charity on its 
payrolls.

The Illinois chapter of the IDRF is run out of the Bloomington home 
of Shrinarayan Chandak. He said the IDRF "rejects violence of any 
kind" and described the foreign exchange report as "totally false" 
and "Hindu bashing."

Jang is disturbed by the allegations and says they are false.

"If I thought that the IDRF had anything to do with the riots, I 
would not give to them," he said. "If I thought the RSS had anything 
to do with it, I would stop being a member."

Suicide squad

On the outskirts of Bombay, in the district of Thane, is the 
Hindusthani Suicide Squad training ground.

"There is nothing secret about what we are doing," said Col. 
Jayantrao Chitale, the founder of the camp that opened last fall. "A 
thousand years ago, we fought with sticks and stones. Then we fought 
with tanks. Now the new war is terrorism, and we plan to fight 
terrorism with terrorism."

His target is not Gujarat's Muslims. It is Pakistan.

=46or decades, Hindu nationalism has been fueled by Pakistan's 
aggression in Kashmir and acts of terrorism within India, such as the 
attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 and on New Delhi's 
Red Fort in December 2000.

So far, Chitale said, 40 young men have signed the "suicide bond" 
that binds them to give their life for Mother India.

The camp once was closed by the Maharashtra state government. It was 
quietly allowed to reopen. Chitale said he is informing every member 
of the Lok Sabha, India's parliament, that he intends to train the 
suicide squad and keep it ready. It will only be deployed, he said, 
with government approval.

"Gandhi was a very weak person," said Chitale, "and Indian people are 
like cattle. You drive them and they will be driven. We need to send 
the message to Pakistan that if you blow off one bus, we'll blow off 
five."

Coming home

"There were bodies in every single room," said Tanveer Jafri, 40, 
Ahsan Jafri's eldest son and the first family member to get to the 
house after the massacre.

"Ahsan Jafri's son, Zuber, holds out the last photograph of his 
father.The first floor of Ahsan Jafri's house, with its bare cement 
and exposed wires, now is a dormitory for India's Central Reserve 
Police Force. Police were sent here last December to "protect 
minorities," 10 months after the riots.

The 2002 State Department report said that during the Gujarat riots, 
the police reportedly told frantic Muslim callers, "We don't have 
orders to save you."

"When we called for them, they wouldn't come," Tanveer Jafri said. 
"Now that we don't need them, they are here."

The second floor of Jafri's house withstood the burning. More than 70 
women and children, including Jafri's wife, huddled there in terror, 
waiting for it to end even as the walls became so hot that posters 
began to warp.

A dozen crumpled Indian flags are buried in the rubble here, under a 
heavy coat of soot. The flags are relics from Ahsan Jafri's days as a 
leader of Gujarat's Congress Party.

Tanveer Jafri bent down to inspect a flag that, by a dark 
coincidence, had crumpled into a shape like the outline of the 
subcontinent.

One year later, no one has been convicted in connection with the 
deaths of the Muslims in Gujarat, said Human Rights Watch's Smita 
Narula. Tanveer Jafri collected 22 signed affidavits from the 
survivors of Gulbarg Society, naming specific attackers. All are out 
on bail, Jafri said.

After taking testimony from survivors of the massacre, including 
Ahsan Jafri's daughter Nishrin Hussain, the U.S. Commission on 
International Religious Freedom recommended India be placed on the 
list of Countries of Particular Concern. The Bush administration 
responded this spring with "no."

"The commission was deeply disappointed," Commission Chair Felice D. 
Gaer said. "There is credible evidence that orders were given to 
police not to interfere. Muslim homes were singled out for death and 
destruction."

But the violence also gave birth to activism, including the Campaign 
to Stop Funding Hate. In the Chicago suburbs, a group of Muslim and 
Hindu residents began meeting at the Darien Public Library, forming 
the Coalition for a Secular and Democratic India.

A tattered Indian flag lies on the third floor of Ahsan 
Jafri's home.The Indian Muslim Council also was formed. In March, it 
sponsored Nishrin Hussain, Jafri's daughter, to speak to the Islamic 
=46oundation of Villa Park on the anniversary of the riots.

She spoke to a packed hall, many of them members of the Gujarati 
Muslim community. About 2,000 Gujarati Muslims live in the Chicago 
area, said Akhtar Sadiq, president of the Gujarati Muslim Association 
of America, headquartered in Downers Grove.

In Villa Park, the crowd surrounding Hussain supported her as she 
struggled at the podium, clasping a poem written by her father. It 
compares India to a beautiful woman whose hair was trimmed by a Hindu 
saint, whose form was called out by Guru Nanak, the founder of 
Sikhism, and whose vibrant garments were painted by Buddha and an 
Islamic poet.

Hussain broke down and couldn't read the final line.

"This is my land," says the English translation. "This is my land. 
This is my land."

Shridhar Damle's house is just three minutes from the Islamic 
=46oundation. On a side table in his living room is a tiny saffron flag 
- a 2-inch version of the one ceremoniously installed each week in 
Schaumburg, in 50 shakhas nationwide and in 25,000 shakhas around the 
globe.

It is the pilot light of a movement.

"Everywhere you went in Gujarat, there were saffron flags," said 
Smita Narula. "You were literally tripping over them."

=46or Damle, it stands for Hindu pride.

=46or Hussain, it might be the last color her father saw.

_____


#4.

The Independent (UK)
7 May 2003

Court frees Briton who was forced to marry
By Jan McGirk in Islamabad

A British woman tricked into a forced marriage in Pakistan and held 
incommunicado for six months amid threats and violence has been freed 
by a court after intervention from British diplomats.

Neelum Aziz, 20, from Luton, was in hiding in Islamabad last night 
awaiting a flight to Britain, where she is expected to be taken to a 
safe house. Through an intermediary, she said she was still too 
traumatised to discuss her ordeal.

Ms Aziz was freed after telling the court that she had been duped 
into going to Pakistan by her father and his brothers on what she 
believed was a trip to discover her ethnic roots. Instead, she was 
threatened, beaten, had her passport taken and was forced into 
marriage with her cousin, Saeed Saleem.

But while being held in the remote Kashmiri village of Kurti, she was 
able to smuggle a letter to the British High Commission in Pakistan, 
which helped her file a court case against her husband and her 
uncles. By law, the family was required to bring Ms Aziz to a 
courtroom in Kotli.

On the witness stand, Ms Aziz told Chief Justice Syed Manzoor Hussain 
Gillani how she had arrived from Luton last November with her father, 
only to be coerced into wedding a stranger. "I was threatened, beaten 
and forced by my father to marry Saeed against my will," she 
testified.

"I tried four times to go out of Pakistan. They took away my passport 
and other belongings and kept me under detention," she added. She 
said her in-laws instructed her to lie on the stand and pretend she 
was content. "If I am sent back with them, I fear they will kill me," 
she said.

On Friday, the court ruled in Ms Aziz's favour. The judge declared: 
"If a woman is forced to marry, or feels insecure and threatened to 
live at the place of the husband's choice, it amounts to illegal 
custody and detention."

Earlier this year, another reluctant Anglo-Pakistani bride, Balqis 
Akhtar, was shot dead in Gujar Khan, her father's ancestral village 
in Punjab province, after she rejected an arranged marriage. Claiming 
that Ms Akhtar had brought shame on the family when she spurned the 
Pakistani groom to whom she had been promised, her father confessed 
to her murder.

Like many Pakistani immigrant entrepreneurs, her father had earned a 
comparable fortune in Britain but was unwilling to see his daughters 
adapt to Western morals. He had insisted that she marry an 
unsophisticated boy from home, and open opportunities for him by 
providing him with a British passport.

There are at least 600,000 Kashmiri immigrants living in the UK, many 
as exiles from the violence in the disputed Himalayan foothills 
claimed by both India and Pakistan.

Government concern is mounting over the number of forced marriages of 
both woman and men, estimated by British Asians to be about 1,000 a 
year. Since October 2000, the Foreign Office has run a unit to help 
extricate and repatriate unwilling brides. To avoid accusations of 
government interference, the women must initiate contact with 
authorities before help is forthcoming. About 450 cases have been 
dealt with, mostly from Pakistan, and a total of 80 British citizens 
repatriated.

Last year, the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, raised hackles by 
pressing British Asians to pick their own partners in the UK rather 
than agree to arranged marriages.
	 

_____


#5.

Gulf News (Dubai), May 06, 2003

Sena steps up campaign against Mumbai migrants
Mumbai |From Pamela Raghunath

=46rom the days of targeting South Indians for taking up job 
opportunities meant for Mahara-shtrians in Mumbai during the 1960s, 
the Shiv Sena's ire is now directed at people from Bihar, Uttar 
Pradesh and Bangladesh.

The anger and annoyance of the Sena is the result of the continuous 
influx of migrants from these states who are now posing a problem of 
being a severe burden on Mumbai's limited facilities for which others 
pay taxes and also for making the city into an undignified huge dirty 
slum.

Sena chief Bal Thackeray's son Uddhav and nephew Raj have both taken 
up the campaign of getting rid of these 'unwanted guests' and are 
already charting out a plan to legally evict encroachers on public 
land.

The latest Sena slogan is "Mee Mumbaikar" or I am a Mumbaikar sending 
out a message that all Marathi-speaking and other residents who love 
the metropolis have a right to live here but the emphasis is that the 
influx must stop.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) that is dominated by 
Sena corporators will be used to implement its rules more rigorously 
to demolish illegal structures and evict encroachers on 
government-owned land, said Raj at a BMC meeting today that was 
attended by senior civic and police officials.

"The new migrants are even encroaching where mangroves abound, thus 
causing environmental degradation," he said.

Raj has taken around 500 photographs of these illegal encroachments, 
especially of Bangladeshis, around Mumbai in the last few days, says 
Shishir Shinde, Sena legislator, and these include along areas along 
Bombay Port Trust, Sewri and Antop Hill adjacent to the depots of oil 
companies thus posing a danger to national security.

"We can identify Bangladeshis since they cannot speak Hindi, not even 
Urdu," says Shinde.

As for jobs held by 'outsiders', the message is to ensure that these 
gradually go to the 'sons of the soil' and include self-employed 
occupation like driving taxis, autorickshaws, running shops and 
reservation for locals in companies.

According to Raj Thackeray, "Our Constitution allows free movement of 
citizens. But it also says that you cannot go and become a nuisance 
for the original people staying there. These people don't pay 
electricity bills, water tax or rent and stay free. Why should the 
rest of us tax payers bear the brunt?"

Will the Sena's concern to protect Maharashtrians and make Mumbai a 
modern, clean city on par with other global cities work?

=46or the Congress which is the main constituent in the state's 
coalition government, "This is a just a political stunt of the Sena 
whenever elections approach and there is nothing serious about it," 
says Kripashankar Singh, minister of state for home (rural), who is 
from U.P.

"If they are so concerned about the influx of Bangladeshis, why did 
they not stop them when they were in power.

"If they really want to do something for Mumbai they should be more 
open hearted and get more funds for the city's infrastrucutral 
development like the way our former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh 
did by asking the central government to provide Rs10 billion for the 
city."

Another Congress leader, Nirmala Samant Prahavalkar, a lawyer who 
heads the State Women's Commission, feels "that whatever the Sena's 
stand may be, everyone who comes to Mumbai is equal and can avail of 
the job opportunities. This is a city of the survival of the fittest.

"As a Maharashtrian, I believe all regional cultures and language 
should be preserved with pride but that doesn't mean one can throw 
out outsiders."		 	 

_____


#6.

The Hindustan Times, May 7, 2003  
=46aith healers wanted  by Swami Agnivesh & Valson Thampu
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/070503/detIDE01.shtml

o o o

The Hindustan Times, May 7, 2003  
=46alling for it, hook, trishul and sinker - Editorial
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/070503/detEDI02.shtml

_____


#7.

HUMAN RIGHTS IN INDIA - MOVING FORWARD
A PANEL DISCUSSION

with

HARSH MANDER, Director of Action Aid=97India and former member of the Indian
Administrative Service
SMITA NARULA, Senior Researcher, Human Rights Watch and 1999 recipient of th=
e
Human Rights Award from the Dalit Liberation Education Trust in India
BALAKRISHNAN RAJAGOPAL, Director, MIT Program on Human Rights and Justice an=
d
=46ord International Assistant Professor of Law and Development

Opening comments from Stephen P. Marks, Director of the FXB Center and
=46ran=E7ois-Xavier Bagnoud Professor of Health and Human Rights


May 9th, 2003
3:00 to 5:00 PM
Room G2, Kresge Building
Harvard School of Public Health
651 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
USA



_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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