SACW | 11 May 03
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex@mnet.fr
Sun, 11 May 2003 02:21:30 +0100
South Asia Citizens Wire | 11 May, 2003
Action Alert : In Defence of the Indian Historian Romila Thapar
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex/Alerts/IDRT300403.html
---------------
#1. Pakistan: Eqbal Ahmad Distinguished Lectures 2003 by Tariq Ali
(14 May, 15 May, 17 May)
#2. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh :
- Singing the Nation: fictions and myths of India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, and their anthems (Nasreen Rehman)
- In search of Shonar Bangla: Who can speak for the nation, and under
what circumstances? (Dina M Siddiqi)
#3. India Pakistan Peace Moves: Op-Ed's and Reports :
- Move Towards Peace, Carefully (Shafqat Mahmood)
-Truth, realism and Kashmir (MP Bhandara)
- Gingerly Hector, Gingerly (Bharat Bhushan)
- Can we pull it off this time? (Ayaz Amir)
- Indo-Pak dialogue: the correct perspective - (Edit., The Daily Times)
- Talks about Pak-India talks (Abbas Rashid)
- Rigour, Not Flamboyance (Raja Menon)
- Pak. team 'overwhelmed' by reception
- Pakistan - India Forum to help promote Indo-Pak cultural activities
#4. Women peace bus heads to Bangladesh
#5. [Tamil] Tigers in the Alps (Ramachandra Guha)
#6. Now let us all hate the Ahmedis (Khaled Ahmed)
#7. India / USA: 'McCarthy, where are you?' (Praful Bidwai)
#8. Protective Discrimination and Crisis of Citizenship in North-East
India (Sanjib Baruah)
#9. India: Harsh treatment for defenders of democracy, peace and secularism
(Aruna Roy, Bela Bhatia, Jean Dreze, Nikhil Dey & Prashant Bhushan)
#10. India: From Trishul To Rifles: Time To Bell This Hindutva Cat !
(Batuk Vora)
#11. India: Edits. on The need to reign in Hindutva's Shook Troops of Hate
#12. India: Shiv Sainiks held for attack on Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
#13. South Africa: Keep religious fundamentalism out of the education
system (Nirmala Nair)
#14.Call for submissions - Film South Asia 2003: Festival of South
Asian Documentaries in Kathmandu.
#15. South Asian Network Town Hall Meeting (May 17, Calabasas, CA)
#16. India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch (IPARMW) # 118
| 11 May 2003
--------------
#1.
You are cordially invited to the Eqbal Ahmad Distinguished Lectures 2003
by:
TARIQ ALI
Noted activist, journalist and novelist.
Schedule of Lectures:
Lahore: Wednesday, 14th May 2003, 3:30 pm at Shalimar Hall, Pearl
Continental Hotel, "Infinite War And The American Empire".
Islamabad: Thursday, 15th May 2003, 4:00 pm at National Library
Auditorium, "The Future Of South Asia After The Iraq War".
Karachi: Saturday, 17th May 2003, 5:30 pm at Hotel Regent Plaza,
Shahrah-e-Faisal, "United States and Europe - A Breaking Partnership".
-------------------------------------------------
Sponsored by the Eqbal Ahmad Foundation in association with the Daily
Times and Badalti Duniya.
Punctuality essential. Refreshments will be served after the lecture.
Please bring a printout of this email invitation. Thank you.
RSVP: Najam Sethi [The Daily Times ]
Hidayat Husain [ Badalti Duniya, monthly ]
Pervez Hoodbhoy [ Eqbal Ahmad Foundation ]
_____
#2.
Himal, May 2003
PERSPECTIVE
Singing the nation: The institutional uses of the fictions and myths
of India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh, and their anthems
reviewed by Nasreen Rehman
http://www.himalmag.com/2003/may/perspective.htm
o o o
Himal, May 2003
PERSPECTIVE
In search of shonar Bangla
reviewed by Dina M Siddiqi
http://www.himalmag.com/2003/may/perspective_2.htm
______
#3.
The News International, May 9 2003
MOVE TOWARDS PEACE, CAREFULLY
BY SHAFQAT MAHMOOD
India and Pakistan are moving gingerly and tentatively towards each
other, which is good. There is no need for extra ordinary hype. We
must curb this sub continental tendency to be bitter enemies or best
of friends. There is plenty of ground in between. Many disputes in
our villages and towns are solved with an insistence on the parties
to embrace. Embrace is the ultimate expression of closeness, of
forgiveness, of bygones being bygones. It works some of the time or
most of the time because we are an emotional people.
We expect our countries to behave in the same manner. That is
neither wise nor practical. Atmospherics, which is another word for
smiles and embraces, work only up to a point between nations. It is
hard bargaining on issues of national interest that determines
success or failure. That is why summits should be a culmination of
slow sustained diplomacy not its beginning.
Agra failed partly for this reason. Not enough homework had been
done. We went into it thinking that Indians are tired and ready to
give in on Kashmir. They thought we were on the brink of an economic
meltdown and were desperate for peace. Both parties made wrong moves
because their assumptions were wrong. The summit was doomed to
failure.
This time we are moving slowly and we should. There is no need to
press for a summit until the issues have been discussed and the
parameters of acceptability for each side defined. We should know
very clearly what the Indians are prepared to give and what they are
not. They should also know our bottom line position. Creativity would
lie in fashioning something within the domain of mutual satisfaction.
[...]
The oft repeated position, that line of control is long and cannot be
adequately policed, will not wash anymore. We have to be genuine and
sincere in ensuring that infiltration stops. We must not only say it
but do it. This means annoying our hardliners but this is a risk for
peace that our leadership has to take. If Vajpayee is willing to pay
a price with his fundamentalists, we should be ready to pay with ours.
Peace is never an easy objective. There always are lobbies and
stakeholders of war or more appropriately of non peace. They thrive
on it and it provides them their bread and butter. They may even be
sincere and subscribe genuinely to an ideology that seeks decimation
or annihilation of another people or another race. Such people are
mad and it is the business of a civilized state to counter them or
preferably defang and finish them.
There is no shortage of such people in India and Pakistan. If our
States start to listen to them or give in to their agenda, we are
sowing the seeds of our destruction. The word destruction here is not
just a figure of speech, it means actual physical obliteration. The
definition of madness is self destructive behavior. These people are
mad because they not only want to destroy the other, they want to
destroy themselves. Civilized or rational States treat them as an
enemy.
We, India and Pakistan, should not listen to our enemies. They do not
mean us well. It is in our mutual interest to seek peace. We need the
space to concentrate on our real problems. Like a sick band of
brothers, we are right next to each other in the World's Human
Development Index. Out of a total of 190 countries, we are 148 and
149.
Words like Human Development become a jargon after some time and
start to hide the gory reality of existence. Our low position on the
index really means that we are poor and undernourished, have no
adequate housing or medical care or clean drinking water or proper
plumbing or sanitation. It also means that we are largely uneducated,
our children die young, our life spans are low and we live in filth
and disease and hunger. This is our true reality. 146 countries in
the world are ahead of us.
We take pride in our atomic weapons thinking that this places us in
some special category in the comity of nations. We should be ashamed
of ourselves that while we have spent so much on building weapons and
fighting each other, our people have languished in poverty and
ignorance and filth. Our real worth is our disgraceful position in
the human development index not partnership in some ephemeral nuclear
club.
Let us now start seriously considering peace as a desired outcome.
Both the countries have fragile economies, with Pakistan's being more
frail, and we need the space to build and mover forward. If we cannot
solve all our problems, it should not matter. If Kashmir remains
unsolved for another fifty years, we should have the maturity to move
on.
Let us do what is doable and leave the rest. Time has an amazing
propensity to solve things. What appears urgent and immediate today
may not be so dazzling twenty years from now. We must give up the
path of conflict and seeks the path of peace. One billion people in
South Asia are waiting for this paradigm shift.
{ Full Text at:
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/may2003-daily/09-05-2003/oped/o1.htm }
o o o
[ Other Op-Ed's and Reports on India Pakistan Peace Moves ]
Truth, realism and Kashmir by MP Bhandara (Hi Pakistan, 7 May 2003)
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=3Den24877&F_catID=3D&f_type=
=3Dsource
o o o
Gingerly Hector, Gingerly - Twenty-Twenty / Bharat Bhushan (The
Telegraph, May 08, 2003)
http://www.telegraphindia.com/archives/archive.html
o o o
Can we pull it off this time? by Ayaz Amir (Dawn, May 9, 2003)
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/ayaz/ayaz.htm
o o o
Indo-Pak dialogue: the correct perspective - Edit. , The Daily Times
(May 10, 2003)
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=3Dstory_10-5-2003_pg3_1
o o o
Talks about Pak-India talks by Abbas Rashid (The Daily Times, Edit. |
May 10, 2003)
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=3Dstory_10-5-2003_pg3_2
o o o
Rigour, Not Flamboyance - RAJA MENON (Outlook Magazine | May 19, 2003)
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=3D20030519&fname=3Dindopak&sid=
=3D3
o o o
Pak. team 'overwhelmed' by reception (The Hindu, May 11, 2003)
http://www.hinduonnet.com/stories/2003051105940800.htm
o o o
The Daily Times, May 10, 2003
=46orum to help promote Indo-Pak cultural activities
Staff Report
LAHORE: The Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy
(PIPFPD) has planned to promote peace related public and cultural
activities between the two countries.
At a meeting presided over by Co-Chairman (Pakistan chapter of the
forum) IA Rehman on Friday, the forum decided to hold public forums,
seminars, discussions and cultural activities in order to increase
people-to-people between the two countries.
The meeting also approved that informal delegations of
parliamentarians from the two countries would be given a warm
reception.
The meeting also discussed various aspects to promote the objective
of the PIPFPD as a pressure group in the society. The members of the
forum stressed the need to widen the range of the forum and invite
college and university students to participate in its activities.
It was also decided that the PIPFPD would print handbills, pamphlets
and open letters highlighting the need for peace in the region. Mr
Rehman said the PIPFPD was the only a pressure group working for
peace in subcontinent.
_____
#4.
The Hindustan Times, May 10, 2003
Women peace bus heads to Bangladesh
Press Trust of India
Kolkata, May 10
Close on the heels of the arrival of a Pakistani parliamentary
delegation on goodwill mission, a 40-member all-women team of Indian
writers, intellectuals and activists would undertake a peace bus
journey to Bangladesh on May 14 with an aim to check 'worsening
Indo-Bangladesh relations'.
A non-government move, organised by prominent New Delhi-based NGOs
Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia (WIPSA) and SANGAT, the
Peace Bus would leave for Dhaka for a week-long solidarity tour.
With leading women like Mohini Giri, Rashme Sehgal, Syeda Hameed,
Bharti Ray, Kamla Bhasin on board, the peace trip would be
co-organised by NGOs like Sanhita, Sanlaap, Swayam, Gana Unnayan
Parshad and Dhaka-based 'Aine O Salish Kendra'.
"The Peace Bus will take peace activists from all over the country to
Bangladesh and facilitate dialogue between activists and writers of
the two countries," Kakali Bhattacharjee of organisers 'Swayam' said.
The follow-up plan, she said, was to organise another peace bus from
Bangladesh to India on a later date.
"A citizen's dialogue has historically proven more effective in
resolving grassroot cross-border problems rather than political
dialogues and so we have a lot of hope pinned on this initiative,"
Bhattacharjee said.
[ see also: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/may/10bangla.htm ]
_____
#5.
Himal, May 2003
[Tamil] Tigers in the Alps
by Ramachandra Guha
http://www.himalmag.com/2003/may/essay.htm
_____
#6.
The Daily Times, May 9, 2003
Now let us all hate the Ahmedis
Khaled Ahmed's Urdu Press Review
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=3Dstory_9-5-2003_pg3_5
_____
#7.
=46rontline, May 10 -23, 2003
Praful Bidwai: 'McCarthy, where are you?'
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2010/stories/20030523004911500.htm
_____
#8.
Economic and Political Weekly (Bombay) April 26, 2003
Commentary
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=3D2003&leaf=3D04&filename=3D5737=
&filetype=3Dhtml
Protective Discrimination and Crisis of Citizenship in North-East India
North-east India is a region where the politics of protective
discrimination for scheduled tribes today raises some of the most
difficult issues of justice, fairness and costs on system legitimacy.
The time may have come to consider ways of breaking away from the
ethnic discourse of the existing protective discrimination regime
that, in effect, involves the state forever categorising groups of
people in ethnic terms and making descendants of immigrants into
perpetual outsiders.
Sanjib Baruah
Most people may agree with the notion that historically disadvantaged
groups deserve some form of protective discrimination or
affirmative action. However, in concrete situations adjudicating
between the competing claims of supposedly advantaged and
disadvantaged groups on grounds of justice and fairness is difficult.
=46urthermore, in terms of system legitimacy there are costs of
tinkering with the principle of equality before the law. How would
one know that the costs are worth the gains made in terms of
achieving some measure of compensatory justice? W Kymlicka and W
Norman describe the tough standards that intellectual arguments for
protective discrimination must meet. "Critics of minority rights can
no longer claim", they write, "that minority rights inherently
conflict with citizenship ideals." At the same time "defenders of
minority rights can no longer claim that concerns about civility and
civic identity are simply illegitimate attempts to silence or dismiss
troublesome minorities" [Kymlicka and Norman 2000: 41]. North-east
India is a region where the politics of protective discrimination for
scheduled tribes (STs) today raises some of the most difficult issues
of justice, fairness and costs on system legitimacy.
The violence against adivasi Santhals in Kokrajhar district of Assam
in the last couple of years that led to the displacement of large
numbers of them is a case in point. The Santhals were victims of Bodo
extremists, who are committed to the cause of a Bodo homeland. The
fact that the demographic picture in the area today is complex and
that non-Bodos have a substantial presence explains the
tensions between Bodos and Santhals and other non-Bodo communities.
The Santhals are descendants of tea workers brought to Assam as
indentured workers - many of them more than a century ago. Their
displaced forefathers provided the muscle for the tea industry that
marked the arrival of global capitalism in Assam in the 19th century.
That such a group could be displaced for the second time in the
course of another historically disadvantaged group's demand for
greater autonomy - no matter how tragic the story of their
immiserisation - brings home the absurdity of the prevailing way of
defining who is historically advantaged and disadvantaged in
north-east India today.
In terms of global political economy, the nineteenth century migrants
who came to work in the tea plantations of Assam were part of the
same migration that took Indian indentured labour to various parts of
the British Empire. Events like the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas of the
past January was about celebrating the descendants of those migrants
- some of whom even rose to become heads of governments in countries
like Fiji and Guyana and Mauritius. On the other hand, the
descendants of precisely the same migration flow who signed up with a
different 19th century indentured labour contractor and thus remained
within the borders of independent India find themselves in the
refugee camps of Kokrajhar. To add insult to injury in order to save
the public face of the government of India, they are hidden from the
view of refugee advocacy organisations.
=46acing up to the Limits of the Sixth Schedule
The demand for a Bodo homeland is inspired by the apparent success of
a few other scheduled tribes of the region who had enjoyed the
statutory protection of the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution. The
Sixth Schedule provides for autonomous districts and autonomous
regions within districts for specified scheduled tribes. Later when
some of those districts became full-fledged states the instruments of
protective discrimination were made available at the state level. As
a result the legislative assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and
Nagaland today have all but one seat reserved for STs. In Meghalaya
55 of the 60 seats are reserved for STs. This, of course, creates a
de facto regime of two-tiered citizenship. Apart from non-tribals not
being able to contest elections, the principle of one-person,
one-vote, one-value has to be undermined as well in order to achieve
such a weighted system of representation. Generally, the norm about
ensuring the equality of the relative weight of each vote in a
democracy requires that in electoral systems with single-member
constituencies, the electorates in all districts be roughly of the
same size. But this cannot be done if the legislative assemblies
are to have such a weighted system of representation.
As if the regime of two-tiered citizenship in areas where STs are a
clear majority was not bad enough, in recent decades Indian
policy-makers displaying a remarkable lack of historical memory have
gone along with the demand for extending elements of the Sixth
Schedule to areas where the demographic picture is far more mixed.
The agreement on a Bodoland Territorial Council is an example of
that. The Sixth Schedule, it is worth recalling, was intended to
apply only to those scheduled tribes that were considered to be
relatively concentrated in the 'excluded' and 'partially excluded'
areas of the colonial era. The subcommittee of the Indian
Constituent Assembly in charge of what was then called the 'Tribal
Areas of Assam' (the Bordoloi subcommittee) did not consider the
situation of STs such as Bodos, Misings and Tiwas who were not
considered indigenous to the 'excluded' and 'partially excluded'
areas. Their needs were the responsibility of a separate
subcommittee, which was in charge of minority rights. Indeed a Bodo
politician, Rupnath Brahma, was a member of that committee.
The Sixth Schedule can be traced back to colonial efforts to create
protected enclaves for 'aborigines' where they can be allowed to
pursue their 'customary practices' including kinship and clan-based
rules of land allocation. Extending a set of rules meant for isolated
aboriginal groups to new groups in the profoundly transformed
conditions of the twentyfirst century cannot but produce a crisis of
citizenship that is eloquently represented by the adivasis in the
refugee camps of Kokrajhar. After all, even in colonial times some of
the potential problems, especially the dangers to non-tribal
people living in those areas, were anticipated in the debates about
these measures. Thus G S Ghurye, one of the best-known critics of
colonial-era tribal policies, wrote that in its "eagerness to do
something for the tribals", the British parliament when it voted on
the Government of India Act of 1935, barely considered the condition
of
the non-tribals in whose midst the protected aborigines live and on
whom they depend to some extent for their livelihood. That these
non-tribals, too, have rights, that their good will and cooperation,
next only to the conscious and deliberate internal organisation of
the tribals themselves, are the most essential factors for the
present welfare and future development of the so-called aborigines,
failed to receive adequate consideration [Ghurye 1980: 111].
The irony is that if attempts were made in the colonial era and by
the Indian Constitution-makers to make some distinctions between
tribals living in different levels of isolation from non-tribal
communities, in post-colonial India the Sixth Schedule is being
extended to far less isolated tribal groups, and that too after the
economic and demographic changes of more than half a century of
independence.
Political Economy at Odds with the Sixth Schedule
What is sure to make the citizenship crisis in north-east India worse
in coming years is that the population trend in all the tribal areas
of the region is for STs as a proportion of the total population to
decline. Apart from the successive generations of non-tribals
inhabitants who have lived there, the economic transformation of the
post-colonial era has attracted many new non-tribal immigrants. Yet
since the protective discrimination regime restricts what non-tribals
can legally do, numerous informal arrangements have emerged in the
ownership and control of agricultural land and in business practices.
Non-tribal immigrants and their descendants have become integrated
into the economies of the region in substantial, but often quite
informal ways.
There has also been a significant shift in land control from clans to
individual ownership. "It is no longer surprising", writes
sociologist M N Karna of the North Eastern Hill University, "to come
across a Naga or a Garo owning a thousand acres of land. Nowhere in
these areas would customary practices have permitted such a
concentration of land, but new linkages have brought with them
hitherto unknown phenomena like absentee landlordism, realisation of
rent from land, sharecropping, land mortgage, landlessness and so on"
[Karna 1990: 36]. The other side of this privatisation of clan-held
lands is the emergence of a poorer group of people eking out a living
by working as agricultural workers or sharecroppers or by whatever
other means possible. Most of them are local tribals, who despite the
protection given to them as members of STs, lack the social and
political resources to benefit from privatisation of clan-lands or to
be able to hold on to lands allocated to them. But occupying these
economic niches are also a large number of non-tribals. The process
of transition from shifting to settled cultivation has been far too
complex for the dichotomy between tribals and non-tribals to neatly
coincide with the notion that the former are always exploited by the
latter. Questions of social justice in north-east India have become
significantly more complex today than what the current regime of
protective discrimination was originally designed to accomplish.
The strains on the regime as a result of demographic change are
apparent. Indeed in order to contain the potential political fall-out
of demographic change, the government of India, through
constitutional amendments, has frozen the balance of seats reserved
for STs in the state assemblies. Apart from the changing demographic
balance, the trend in economic policies further points to the need
for some form of loosening, if not outright dismantling of that
regime in future. Thus Gulshan Sachdeva has argued that the 'rigid
barriers' that exist in the region are in conflict with efforts to
integrate these economies with the dynamic world economy [Sachdeva
2000: 162]. Elsewhere he has argued for fundamental policy changes in
land and labour policies of the region in order to attract private
capital. While the tribal population constitutes only about a fourth
of the population of the region, he points out, about two-thirds of
its land is "owned, controlled or managed by tribes, clans or village
communities". Under such conditions, he writes, "it is almost
impossible to transfer this land to non-tribals and outsiders".
Changes in the land tenure system, according to him, are essential so
that land can be made "available to investors for industry,
plantation, horticulture, etc, either on lease or on ownership in a
transparent manner". Except for Assam's Brahmaputra valley and
Tripura, the northeast is a labour scarce region and institutions
like the Inner Line - which can be seen as an added layer of
protective discrimination that exists in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram
and Nagaland - restrict labour movement. The region, Sachdeva
believes, has to be open to outside labour, though given the
sensitive nature of the issue, he adds, "some control mechanism could
be worked out" [Sachdeva 1999].
Alternatives for the Future
Despite all the talk of the twentyfirst century and linking
north-east India to the dynamic economies of south-east Asia, India's
policy community seems strangely unprepared for the future. It is
true that steps have been taken to freeze the balance between tribal
and non-tribal members in the state assemblies of the region. But
this can do little more than make the citizenship crisis worse since
the system of a de facto two-tiered citizenship would be even more
out of synch with the political economy of the future.
What is the way out? It may appear that the only alternative is a
regime of undifferentiated nationwide citizenship and the elimination
of all forms of protective discrimination, notably the Inner Line and
the restrictions on the ownership of land and business by
non-tribals. If the primary goal is seen as the incorporation of the
ethnic outsider - at least beyond the first generation - and bring
the citizenship regime in line with the actually existing political
economy of the region, other policy alternatives may be available.
The time has come to consider ways of breaking away from the ethnic
discourse of the existing protective discrimination regime that, in
effect, involves the state forever categorising groups of people in
ethnic terms and making descendants of immigrants into perpetual
outsiders. A leading candidate for an alternative policy
discourse would be the notion of dual citizenship, not unknown in
federal systems, i e, citizenship both of India and of one of the
states of north-east India. It would replace the ethnic principle
with a civic principle and give the right to define the rules of
inclusion and exclusion to territorially defined political
communities. At the same time such a regime of dual citizenship would
only be a variation on the theme of the actual restrictions that
exist on the ground as a result of the accumulated legacy of the
instruments of protective discrimination of the past.
References
Ghurye, G S (1980) [1959]: The Scheduled Tribes of India, Transaction
Books, New Brunswick.
Karna, M N (1990): 'The Agrarian Scene', Seminar, New Delhi, No 366,
=46ebruary, pp 30-38.
Kymlicka, W, and W Norman (2000): 'Introduction' in Kymlicka and
Norman, eds, Citizenship in Diverse Societies, Oxford University
Press, Oxford.
Sachdeva, Gulshan (1999): 'Rejuvenating the North-eastern Economy',
Oriental Times, Guest Column 1 (34-35), January 22-February 6.
http://www.nenanews.com/OT%20Jan22-Feb6,99/GuestC.htm
- (2000): Economy of the North-East: Policy, Present Conditions and
=46uture Possibilities, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
______
#9.
The Hindu, May 10, 2003
Harsh treatment
By Aruna Roy, Bela Bhatia, Jean Dreze, Nikhil Dey & Prashant Bhushan
Indian democracy today is the site of two contrary tendencies. One is
a healthy trend towards higher standards of transparency and
accountability in public life. A culture of public vigilance has
begun to develop, and the civic credentials of political leaders are
coming under closer public scrutiny.
However, there is also a counter-trend of suppression and subversion
of the people's right to information and related civil liberties. To
illustrate, political leaders have craftily resisted a creative
attempt to make it mandatory for them to disclose their criminal
antecedents and economic assets. The state has tightened its grip on
NGOs, academic bodies, and other independent institutions. And
repressive legislation such as the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA)
has been freely used to defuse political opposition and stifle public
criticism.
A routine method of ideological control is to hunt and harass the
leading voices of dissent. Instead of addressing the concerns raised
by the dissenters, the spotlight is turned on whatever fault can be
found in their public activities or even personal lives. This
witch-hunt serves the dual purpose of diverting attention from the
real issues, and eliminating the source of the nuisance. For
instance, immediately after the Tehelka expose, Tarun Tejpal and his
associates became the target of relentless persecution by
investigative agencies. Similarly, Arundhati Roy's gentle criticism
of the Supreme Court's lack of sensitivity towards the
underprivileged swiftly landed her in prison. More recently, Sandeep
Pandey's tireless work against communalism, and for amity between
communities in Ayodhya and elsewhere, made him a target of state
harassment. Ironically, he was booked under section 153A of the
Indian Penal Code, which should have been used against those who were
inciting communal passions.
Intimidation tactics have also been intensively used against those
who have exposed the complicity of the state with the instigators of
last year's massacres in Gujarat. This applies first and foremost in
Gujarat itself, where Hindutva outfits have aggressively usurped the
use of all public spaces, suppressed constitutional rights of free
expression, and hounded those who work for communal harmony. The long
arm of these outfits, however, extends well beyond the borders of the
State.
Among recent targets of the ideological police is Harsh Mander, who
stirred the conscience of the nation last year with his early report
on the Gujarat massacres. Ever since he dared to step out of line in
this matter, Mr. Mander has been troubled by state authorities,
Hindutva organisations, and their supporters. Many attempts have been
made to tarnish his reputation and thereby discredit his testimonies
on Gujarat. In addition, he has been the target of a relentless
e-mail campaign. Among other allegations, Mr. Mander has been accused
of distorting the facts, of acting on behalf of foreign interests,
and of seeking publicity or other personal advantage in his incisive
reports and subsequent quitting of the IAS.
These charges are bound to sound patently absurd to anyone familiar
with Mr. Mander, his life and his values. Mr. Mander is a person of
exceptional selflessness and integrity, who strictly followed his
conscience in this matter, as he had done throughout his eventful
career as an IAS officer. This career often led him to confront
powerful individuals and institutions as he stood unflinchingly on
the side of the underprivileged. The system responded by transferring
him 20 times in 18 years. Mr. Mander was always ready to move,
knowing that subordinating one's conscience to the demands of power
was the first step towards collaboration with authoritarianism. It is
the same conviction that led him to speak out on Gujarat.
In short, the real aim of these grave insinuations is not just to
discredit Mr. Mander as a person, but also to undermine the
principles of equity, justice, humaneness and secularism that he has
championed. The same applies to further calumnies that were
subsequently aimed at individuals and organisations that stand in
solidarity with Mr. Mander and uphold similar values.
Ironically, the suppression of dissent has often been done in the
name of the right to information. Under the cover of scrutinising
particular individuals and organisations in the public interest, the
voices of dissent have been submitted to facetious and intrusive
interrogations. For instance, the direct and indirect links of the
target organisations with foreign institutions have been scrutinised
to absurd limits, in a vain attempt to expose some "foreign hand"
behind their activities.
We, members of the National Campaign for the People's Right to
Information, stand in solidarity with all the victims of these
propaganda activities. We also call for united action to resist the
growth of anti-democratic tendencies in Indian politics and society.
____
#10.
[ 8 May 2003]
'Campaign to Save Democracy'
=46ROM TRISHUL TO RIFLES: Time To Bell This Hindutva Cat !
By Batuk Vora
- Convinced that every other tack has failed, the Sangh Parivar has
returned to its basic strategy of changing the pattern of political
polarization in its favour through a pernicious weaponisation
programme- now it is rifle training from Trishul Diksha ' even at the
risk of losing power ultimately at the Centre.
If Trishul Diksha (distributing the tridents) came handy to their
hate minority campaign in the states ripe for elections, firearms
training, a step higher, is becoming their revived programme in
Gujarat, which has become its hate & kill lab. They had already tried
this in Uttar Pradesh before but not in such an intense manner.
According to a news item in Times of India (April 30), VHP has put
'special emphasis on arms training this year in view of threats to
the life of several VHP and Bajrang Dal activists.' Vadodara, Patan
and Rajkot will be three centres where 1,200 VHP activists will be
imparted training in the use of firearms, along with Judo, Karate and
Yoga. A careful scrutiny is taking place to select volunteers from
many applicants for joining such a camp. Pravin Togadia will
inaugurate such a training camp at Patan on May 17.
Another aspect of this programme this year involves women members of
Parivar's Durga Vahini. Their camps will be held at Nadiad, Surat and
Bhavnagar. Women traners are being briefed in Ahmedabad at present.
VHP spokes person clamed that so far 7,000 women were given such a
training in firearms. Airguns are used for such training.
Ostensibly, they proclaim a fear of reprisals against their own mass
murder spree post-Godhara last year, particularly following the
assassination of Haren Pandya, former BJP home minister here. But
this may be only a ruse, as they claim rifle training as their
routine programme. They have been organising such a 'rifle training'
to Gujarat's vulnerable youth since quite a time, according to
Natubhai Thakker, editor of Vishwa Hindu Samachar monthly. He said
this was meant to inspire 'self-confidence' among Hindus. An 80-year
old retired Dy.S.P. Vasant Narayan Apte is imparting this rifle
training.
It is learnt they follow the same pattern like that of Trishul
Diksha. Hate speeches, provocative literature and indoctrination
combine to change the normal mind into a hate-machine. Minority
Commission's admonition to VHP leaders last week at New Delhi to stop
hate propaganda and anti-minority stance during such Diksha may not
apply to rifle training in Gujarat. There is no minority commission
or human rights commission in Gujarat.
Such a training goes on brazenly in violation of sections 153, 153(A)
and 505 (of IPC). Gujarat police has remained a mute spectator of
such functions going on in the nooks and corners of Gujarat. Reports
appearing in most newspapers during the carnage indicated that
trishuls were freely carried and used to kill and hurt minority
community families last year by the well organized crimes.
Commenting on such violence-prone activities, Prof. Devvrit Pathak,
veteran political science scholar, said: 'Gujarat is yet to see more
violence. I have no doubt about it. They have nothing to govern after
winning elections. They have just to dupe and make money. '
VHP argued before the Minority Commission that trishul was a Hindu
religious symbol just as Kirpan and sword were those of Sikhs. But
Hindus never carried trishul with them in history. It was never used
to announce one's faith. No trishul could be found in any Hindu
household in that sense.
Day in and day out, people of Gujarat view the local Doordarshan TV
channel news projecting the ruling BJP's drive to identify their
administration with Hindu religious preaching and all kinds of
celebrations. Gujarat chief minister organized a Gujarat Day gala
function at the cost of crores at Vadodara on May 1st. Modi declared
at this function that they were already preparing to celebrate
Navratri (nine nights of goddesses) on an unprecedented scale, when
foreign corporations would be invited to declare their new
investments! What such investments had to do with Navratri festival
is not explained. But everything is being done, or undone, in the
name of some occasion connected with religion. Doordarshan is made
into a ready tool for this barrage of propaganda.
Roads leading to temples are being renovated, just the chief minister
attended such a function last week at Bahucharaji goddess temple in
North Gujarat. One estimate puts the number of temples, mutts, stones
and statues of gods and goddesses (at some places there are stone
gods names as dogs, snakes and cows), big ancient religious abodes,
etc. at around 23 lakhs in Gujarat. One count revealed the number of
religious holidays to as many as 173 in whole year. Hindu fanatics
take full advantage of these so called holy days to mix their
Hindutva message with celebration of the day.
An assortment of religious entrepreneurs have joined the Sangh
Parivar's political counterparts. A brisk business has come up in
entire state keeping the people, particularly middle class women,
under a spell of superstition, reviving ancient holy days and nights.
No building is built without taking into account the laws of
Vastushastra. No marriage is held without referring to holy moments.
There is going to be a gap of one and a half year before any new
marriage is fixed from now on due to 'wrong' planetary movement.
Many temples have taken to advertising the sponsors who pay for
pictures or statues or parts of the building, reminding one of sports
pavilions! They aggressively compete with one another to get a share
of the customers, as if the religious market economy has replaced
traditional consumer goods industry.
Narendra Modi does not leave even one occasion alone to demonstrate
his 'Hindutva' on any foundation or inauguration of new construction,
even if it is some tube well somewhere or a canal, in any corner of
the state by combining some 'holy ceremony' with such an occasion '
it could be hom, havan or conglomeration of some sadhus and BJP
politicians lying flat upside down before their holy feet. All this
is leading to more bigotry and zealotry.
Ground reality is, however, changing its colour faster. Thousands of
citizens in Surendranagar town have been agitating for drinking
water. A veteran social worker from Jamnagar told this writer that
'we saw one murder in rural area of Jamnagar district last week
during a scuffle for water and you will see no less than 500 murders
in Saurashtra alone in this dry season for water'' People living on
the outskirts of Surat were shown drinking the drainage water the
other day on Star TV. Supply of drinking water is going to be a real
challenge to the Sangh Parivar, more than anything else this hot
summer.
____
#11. [Op- Eds. on The Dangerous doings of Hindutva's Shook Troops of Hate ]
The Hindu, May 08, 2003 | Editorials
Be firm
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2003/05/08/stories/2003050800151000.htm
o o o
The Telegraph, May 10, 2003 | Editorial
Used Out of Turn
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1030510/asp/opinion/story_1953490.asp
o o o
Hindustan Times, May 10, 2003 | Editorial
Not the usual rifle club
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/printedition/100503/detEDI03.shtml
_____
#12.
The Times of India, May 10
Shiv Sainiks held for attack on Vishnu Bhagwat
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=3D45=
902358
____
#13.
Cape Times (South Africa)
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=3D273&fArticleId=3D143071
Keep religious fundamentalism out of the education system
May 9, 2003
Bringing religion into the arena of formal school education is
paramount to signing away the power of education and that of the
institutions imparting education, making them sites of religious
fundamentalism and narrow world views.
We are witnessing, across the globe, the rise of religious
fundamentalism and its ravages on the innocent, minorities, women and
children, not to mention countries, as they become victims of these
powerful forces.
What is worse is that young children become puppets in the hands of
these powerful forces, which interpret religion according to their
narrow factionalist interests.
These young learners are the keepers of our future, caretakers of our humani=
ty.
Can we really afford our future generations to be moulded to suit the
narrow interest groups operating across the mainstream religions?
Is the outcry against the education minister's correct decision to
stop religious education in schools not coming from a small group of
fundamentalists?
Can South Africa afford to have a small interest group hijacking such
a critical issue and imposing their will on others, as though they
represent all South Africans?
It is a pity that the Western Cape education MEC has bought into this
fundamentalist discourse.
As a Hindu Indian living in South Africa, I have been ashamed of the
ongoing atrocities committed on the minorities in India by the Hindu
fundamentalists in the name of Hinduism, a religion built on the
principles of pacifism and tolerance.
The Hindu fundamentalist forces in India have been spreading like
wildfire - especially in provinces that did not pay attention to the
education sector. In the state of Kerala, which has been in the
forefront of education for many centuries, the Hindu fundamentalists
are still struggling to make inroads.
South Africa has been fortunate not to experience outbreaks of
violent communalism or religious fundamentalism. It has been with
great pride that I have been watching the progressive developments in
the South African education sector.
Riddled as it is with many problems, the education sector is one
beacon of hope that South Africa cannot afford to lose.
The education sector is the architect, designing future citizens,
producing proud South Africans, irrespective of racial or religious
difference.
Please do not jeopardise this incredibly important outcome by
bringing in religious fundamentalist ideology.
Nirmala Nair
Trovato
_____
#14.
Request for submissions for the Film South Asia 2003: Festival of
South Asian Documentaries in Kathmandu. Film South Asia is a
competitive biennial festival of documentary films on South Asian
subjects, broadly construed, that provides a quality platform to
exhibit new works and to promote a sense of community among
independent filmmakers. It is dedicated to nurturing a defined South
Asian culture of quality documentary production and viewer-ship.
=46ilm South Asia is organized by Himal Association, a not-for-profit
institution dedicated to spreading knowledge and information in Nepal
and South Asia, in cooperation with Himal South Asian magazine.
=46or more information and to download entry forms contact:
www.himalassociation.org/fsa or www.himalmag.com/fsa
Deadline for submissions June 30, 2003.
=46estival in Kathmandu
September 25-28, 2003.
_____
#15.
South Asian Network TOWN HALL MEETING
Saturday May 17th, 2003 | 11:30am to 1pm
South Asian Network will be hosting a TOWNHALL MEETING for the South Asian
Community to discuss the following:
=A7 LEGAL ISSUES
=A7 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
=A7 HATE CRIMES
=A7 ANTI-DISCRIMINATION
=A7 FAMILY SUPPORT SERVICES
=A7 HEALTH CARE ACCESS
- AND OTHER AREAS OF CRITICAL CONCERN TO THE COMMUNITY
This Event Will Be Located At:
Hindu Temple Society of Southern California
1600 Las Virgenes Canyon Road
Calabasas, CA, 91302
Please contact the South Asian Network office for more information at:
Shiu S. Chand
Community Advocate
South Asian Network
18000 Pioneer Blvd., Suite 101
Artesia, CA 90701
Ph (562) 403 0488 Fax(562) 403 0487
www.southasiannetwork.org
_____
#16.
India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch (IPARMW) # 118
11 May 2003
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/129
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
SACW is an informal, independent & non-profit citizens wire service run by
South Asia Citizens Web (www.mnet.fr/aiindex).
The complete SACW archive is available at: http://sacw.insaf.net
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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