SACW | 4 June, 2003

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   | 4 June,  2003

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

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

#1. Pakistan's Sharia law criticised
#2. IMF Conditionalioties and Leftists (S Akbar Zaidi)
#3. Bangladesh: Revoke "Shoot-at-Sight" (Human Rights Watch)
#4. Arundhati Roy Gives A Disillusioned Left What It Wants (Subuhi Jiwani)
#5. No Justice Nanavati, What You Say Is Not Correct (Asghar Ali Engineer)
#6. In a dingy apartment, quiet anger simmers in the last of the 
Gandhi plotters
#7. A troubling empire (Edward Luce)
#8. Invitation to Film Screening: The children we sacrifice Directed 
by Grace Poore (7 June Bangalore)
#9. May/June issue of the-south-asian

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

#1.

BBC, 3 June, 2003

Pakistan's Sharia law criticised

Human rights groups have condemned moves by legislators in Pakistan's 
North-West Frontier Province to introduce Islamic law.
On Monday, the provincial assembly passed a bill introducing Sharia 
law in the region, which borders Afghanistan.
It is the first time the strict code, based upon the teachings of the 
Koran, has been in force in Pakistan in the country's history.
The bill gives Sharia precedence over secular provincial law and 
stipulates that every Muslim will be bound by it.
It proposes restricting the rights of women, and calls for education 
and financial systems to be brought into line with the teachings of 
the Koran.
Critics fear a re-run of the Taleban, the Islamic hardliners who 
ruled neighbouring Afghanistan and drove women and girls out of jobs 
and schools, back into their homes.
The head of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Afrasiab 
Khattak, says the move is pushing Pakistani society towards religious 
totalitarianism.
He accused the pro-Islamist coalition that runs North-West Frontier 
Province of trying to impose a system similar to that of the Taleban 
in Afghanistan.
Perviz Rafiq, a senior official of the All Pakistan Minorities 
Alliance, says he fears the new law would be used to persecute 
minorities.
"Religion should not interfere with the political affairs of the 
country," he told the Associated Press.

Supporters of the move, however, say all they are trying to do is to 
curb obscenity and protect human decency.
Details of the law are vague but it sets the tone for the type of 
rule the province's people can expect.
Opposition parties tried to water down some of the bill's provisions, 
including those concerning women's rights, but withdrew amendments in 
the face of overwhelming odds.
The bill still needs the signature of the provincial governor to 
become law. Analysts say that is a formality.
The planned creation of a Department of Vice and Virtue has prompted 
concern among some people who recall pictures of the Taleban vice 
squads dispensing summary justice in Afghanistan.

Hardliners have been cracking down on activities they consider 
un-Islamic since they swept to power in the province last October.
Several cinemas have been closed down, and musicians have complained 
of harassment.
The BBC's Paul Anderson in Islamabad says radicals in an alliance of 
Islamic parties are already using their ideals of Islamic purity and 
justice as bargaining chips in negotiations with the government to 
end a constitutional crisis.
Many people in North-West Frontier Province have close ideological 
ties to the Taleban.
Pakistan's federal law enforcers have little jurisdiction over the 
area, which is more strictly conservative than other parts of the 
country.

______


#2.

Dawn, June 2, 2003.

IMF Conditionalioties and Leftists
by S Akbar Zaidi

Dr Ishrat Hussain, the Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan, is reported
by your correspondent in the DAWN of May 28, 2003, to have said at a
seminar in Islamabad a day earlier, that the critics of the IFIs'
(International Financial Institutions') conditionalities are 'leftists'. I
am delighted to announce that I have been against the policies of the IFIs
and their conditionalities for nearly two decades, from the time when
Ishrat Hussain was in their employ, and am pleased and flattered to be
called a 'leftist', a term by his definition which would now include many
thousands of Pakistanis and millions of people world-wide who are against
the disastrous anti-people policies of these very IFIs. If the
anti-globalisation, anti-capital rallies held from as far afield as Seattle
and Milan, to Bangkok and Melbourne, are any indication, we leftists are
fairly popular.

One can understand why employees of the IFIs defend their institutions, for
they need to keep their jobs; but ministers and central bank officials of
independent and sovereign nations, no longer in the pay of the IFIs, ought
to be a little more circumspect. One would have thought that while they
were devising policies at the World Bank or the IMF to be implemented in
some poor African or Asian country, they would have seen the results and
consequences of their remedies first hand. With their hands soiled, one
would have thought that when they returned home to offer their unique
services to their home countries, they would have learnt their lessons well
and would have tried to distance themselves from many a sordid past.

Economics Nobel prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz, author of Globalisation and
Its Discontents, who worked at the World Bank as its Chief Economist and
returned to academia, is a rare exception, a man with integrity and
honesty, is a 'leftist' by Ishrat Hussain's definition, for he too has
written this extraordinary book critiquing conditionality.

But what is it about the conditionality of the IFIs which makes us leftists
see red? The IMF and the World Bank, the principal international financial
institutions, give loans to countries so that these countries can put this
money to use and move from a low economic and social development status and
improve the condition and welfare of their people. Conditionality is the
set of preconditions which these institutions enforce upon these countries
prior to the IFIs advancing the loans.

The conditionality enforced on countries as diverse as Rwanda and the
Philippines are broadly similar, regardless of particular specificity and
local conditions. In fact, this has been one of the main criticisms of IFI
conditionality, the assumption that one size fits all. These
conditionalities are usually too uniform in nature and are implemented
universally and globally, across countries. Without taking due cognisance
of particular histories, institutions, structures, these programmes and
their conditionalities lack any semblance of contextuality.

Almost always the fiscal deficit is considered to be the mother of all
evils, and the most significant and real cause of the distortions and
problems that exist in the economy. Whether it is high inflation, low
growth, a high current account deficit, lower private sector investment,
crowding out, all are attributed to a high, 'unsustainable' fiscal deficit.
Hence, a cut in the fiscal deficit is probably the most important
conditionality imposed, regardless of the nature and quality of government
spending. Countries are expected to impose a consumption oriented general
sales or value added tax, to cut government expenditure in order to reduce
the fiscal deficit, to privatise, to remove subsidies which, in most
underdeveloped countries are on food items, and essential inputs like
fertilisers and utilities.

IFI conditionalities include the removal of nontariff barriers, replacing
them with tariffs, tariffs which are supposed to be lowered substantially
across time, so that cross-border 'distortions' are removed by getting
'prices right' and local industry can compete effectively with foreign
goods =96 the so-called level playing field.

The core logic of imposing these conditionalities is to make countries more
market friendly largely for foreign capital, to promote private sector
initiatives and interests, and to open up the economy to foreign goods and
competition from abroad as the process of globalisation proceeds. The
conditionalities and the programmes that they precede are
pro-globalisation, pro-capital, but as country after country has shown, the
consequences of enforcing these conditionalities have had anti-people,
anti-welfare and deleterious effects.

While numerous examples can be found world-wide, the case of Pakistan since
the late 1980s when these conditionalities were imposed, shows how it has
suffered on account of these conditionalities and the subsequent loans.
Except for those who have worked for the IFIs or are government spokesmen,
not a single Pakistani economist has stated that these IFIs and especially
their conditionalities, have in anyway helped the country. All have written
about growing poverty, increasing income and social inequality, large scale
unemployment, industrial meltdown, growing debt, and the deterioration of
social services due to cuts in development expenditure, all resulting in
the worsening of the social and human condition which has also resulted in
our fall on UNDP's Human Development Index.

It has only been these 'leftists' who have made their voices heard,
although often to no avail, since our ministries and central banks are run
by those who enthusiastically support conditionalities by their former
employers. Yet, more and more people globally are becoming leftists -- many
of whom have suffered the consequences of these conditionalities first-hand
-- as there is a growing anti-globalisation world social movement, which
talks about social welfare, asset redistribution, peace, and social and
human justice and rights, all leading towards the true meaning of
development and progress. It is times like these, when I count my blessings
and say: Thank God I am a Leftist!

______


#3.

Bangladesh: Revoke "Shoot-at-Sight"

(New York, June 4, 2003)-The Bangladesh government must revoke
authority granted to the police to "shoot-at-sight" as part of its
anti-crime campaign, Human Rights Watch said today.

Last week, the government announced that it would deploy paramilitary
forces to combat a deadly crime wave of the past several months. Dhaka
police chief Ashraful Huda told reporters that police have been
directed to "shoot-at-sight" in self-defense or to protect the
security of others.

"Using the term `shoot-at-sight' is the wrong message for senior
government officials to give to police officers, because it will
inevitably be abused," said Brad Adams, executive director of the Asia
Division of Human Rights Watch. "A crime wave does not justify law
enforcement that does not observe basic standards of due process."

Human Rights Watch urged the government to ensure that its anti-crime
activities are carried out in strict compliance with the United
Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law
Enforcement Officials. Where the lawful use of force and firearms is
unavoidable, law enforcement officials must exercise restraint and act
in proportion to the seriousness of the offense and the legitimate
objective to be achieved.  The U.N. Basic Principles further provide
that the intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made "when
strictly unavoidable in order to protect life."

Human Rights Watch also expressed concern about the proposal to form a
Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) as part of the government's new anti-
crime initiative. The RAB will include members of the armed forces,
the police, and members of the Bangladesh Rifles and Ansars, both
paramilitary groups.

During meetings held in April and May, the Bangladesh cabinet objected
to the RAB proposals, fearing that the excessive authority of the new
force may lead to widespread abuse of power. The Cabinet Committee on
Law and Order, however, recommended the formation of the RAB in view
of the law and order crisis in the country.

In October 2002, the Bangladesh government launched Operation
Clean Heart, an army-led anti-crime initiative that led to
thousands of detentions. The government credited the operation
with reducing robberies, muggings, and extortions by criminal
gangs. In January 2003, the troops were withdrawn following
reports that over forty people had died in police custody. While
authorities attributed many of the deaths to heart failure,
relatives of the deceased claim they were tortured.

In February, Bangladesh's President Iajuddin Ahmed signed a
controversial bill granting troops immunity from civilian court
prosecution for custodial deaths and other abuses connected to
the operation. Soldiers can still be tried under military law.

Human Rights Watch called on the government of Bangladesh to
revoke civilian court immunity for military personnel and
investigate and prosecute all allegations of deaths in custody
and torture.

"After the serious abuses of the Clean Heart campaign, we are
very concerned about the lack of accountability for police and
army abuses," said Adams. "Any new anti-crime campaign must
contain internal checks against abuses and a system for holding
officials accountable."

To read more on human rights in Bangladesh, please see:
http://www.hrw.org/asia/bangladesh.php

______


#4.

World War 3 Report #88
June 2, 2003
http://www.ww3report.com/jiwani.html

ARUNDHATI ROY GIVES A DISILLUSIONED LEFT WHAT IT WANTS
by Subuhi Jiwani

The recent review in the Village Voice of Arundhati
Roy's new book War Talk (South End Press, Boston,
2003) concluded with the following reflection: "Most
essayists are content to make you think; Roy wants to
make you believe." Living up to these words, on May
13, Roy intoxicated New York's disillusioned Left at
Riverside Church with satire, drama and metaphor.

Roy opened with a disclaimer. An Indian citizen, she
was not there to unequivocally criticize the US
government and then go home to forget the "venality,
brutality and hypocrisy imprinted on the leaden soul
of every nation." Her resistance to flag-waving and
other such displays of patriotism recalls her
rejection of nationality itself in "The End of
Imagination," an essay in her 2001 collection Power
Politics (South End Press, 2001): "I hereby declare
myself an independent, mobile republic." Yet, while
claiming independence from the state and global
superpowers, Roy also victimized herself before the
Riverside audience as "a subject of the American
Empire" and--referring to India--"a slave nation." Roy
touched but briefly on her own native India--"that
feudal society"--keeping her focus on American civil
society, speaking to those most near the "Imperial
Palace and the Emperor's chambers."

Empire, Roy contends, finds it unnecessary to buttress
its arguments with fact, and simply delivers a
pre-packaged simulacra of democracy through war and
extermination. "Empire is on the move, and Democracy
is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered to
your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price
for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this
new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy--bring to
a boil, add oil, then bomb."

And the blueprint on which the reconstruction of Iraq
is configured is that of the new anti-terrorist state
in the US. With Patriot Act II looming, Roy says that
"for the ordinary American, the price of 'New
Democracy' in other countries is the death of real
democracy at home." In Royspeak: "Democracy is the
=46ree World's whore, willing to dress up, dress down,
willing to satisfy a whole range of taste, available
to be used and abused at will."

Roy takes an ironic view of Iraq's history, noting
that CIA support for "regime change" in Baghdad in
1963 led to the Ba'ath Party's rise to power, and
ultimately to Saddam's seizure of total power in 1979.
All the while, the US turned a blind eye to massacres
conducted by Ba'athists and Saddam's regime, often
financing him in these endeavors. "The point is," Roy
stated, "if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit
the most elaborate, openly declared assassination
attempt in history--the opening move of Operation
Shock and Awe--then surely those who supported him
ought at least to be tried for war crimes."

Roy, who has become something of a pop icon for the
American Left, claims to be no academic, no expert. In
fact, she has spent many words resisting the efforts
of experts to undermine her work. But the question
inevitably arises: Is she positioning herself as the
expert, despite her protestations? She uses mostly
mainstream media as her sources, and even in her
written work on Iraq and US foreign policy she rarely
quotes other thinkers, or even the testimonies of
everyday Iraqis, international activists or human
rights groups. Is she challenging the reader to think
by presenting new facts and perspectives? Or is she
restating what we already know and think, using
recycled arguments?

Or do Roy's critics point out the gaps and inductive
leaps in her arguments out of envy? This accusation
was raised by Reeta Sinha in the Jan. 16, 2002 edition
of India's progressive Outlook magazine, responding to
Roy's defenders. "To be critical of her essays or to
question the basis of Ms. Roy's positions on political
issues is, apparently, to commit the ultimate sin.
We're jealous, petty, ignorant or chauvinistic, no
matter how legitimate the questions posed to her are.
It is natural-those truly interested will question the
source, verify the information presented, so that they
may draw their own conclusions, form their own
opinions. Ms. Roy seems to agree since, in her essay,
['Should We Leave it to the Experts?'] she eloquently
states that writers, like other citizens, are
demanding public explanations. Is Ms. Roy exempt from
providing answers, then? Are only certain questions
permitted of her? It seems so. When asked what
qualifies her to speak authoritatively on the myriad
of causes she has taken up, her reply is another
question: Why can't a writer protest...?"

I raise my hand. I am jealous. Roy is charismatic with
her humanist approach and impeccable language. She can
give a lecture at Riverside Church without even
presenting a title beforehand. As we were leaving the
pews of Riverside, my friend said, "Arundhati says
things I have already thought of before." But Roy
legitimizes our ideas. She has the charismatic
indignation, and the moral authority of the villagers
and farmers of India's Narmada Valley who want her to
represent their voice. Yet at Riverside she had
nothing to say about the struggle against hydro
development in Narmada Valley and its uprooting of the
region's adivasis, or tribal peoples, and dalits,
traditionally known as "untouchables." We know what
the sanctions did in Iraq because of Voices in the
Wilderness, not Arundhati Roy--but the evocative Roy
has become the icon of anti-war opposition.

We want to throw ourselves in the streets on days like
=46ebruary 15 and read Arundhati Roy on the way to the
march. We want to be moved--not necessarily informed.
"When it comes to Empire, facts don't matter," Roy
said at Riverside. But do facts matter to Roy--or to
us? When the metaphors have been swept aside, the
drama pulled back and satire repealed, what stands
before us? Do the long quotes from administration
officials and anecdotes about the actions of the
"coalition of the bullied and bought" in Roy's work
equip us as anti-war protesters to seriously
counteract the "outright lies" of the corporate media?
The responsibility to inform ourselves is ours--but
also to question those who impel us to take to the
streets in protest. Roy says we should refuse to take
the missiles from the warehouses to the docks, resist
going to victory parades for "illegal wars." And what
when we are told we have no argument? Must our
indignation at the self-proclaimed superiority of the
new global superpower be our only retort?

###

Subuhi Jiwani is a freelance writer and regular
contributor to WW3 REPORT whose work has also appeared
on Z-Net, and in Samar magazin

_____


#5.

(Secular Perspective 01-15 June 2003)

No Justice Nanavati, What You Say Is Not Correct

Asghar Ali Engineer

Justice G.T. Nanavati who has been investigating Godhra incident and 
the Gujarat riot that followed recently said that he has so far found 
no evidence that the state machinery and police were involved in 
Gujarat communal violence. Justice Nanavati has given this statement 
to the press and also spoke to a T.V. channel on these lines. He was 
quoted by a news agency as saying, "Evidence recorded so far did not 
indicate any serious lapse on the part of the police or 
administration in controlling the communal clashes. When there was 
outcry against his statement he gave a clarification on phone to 
Indian Express that "I had said that so far no serious allegation had 
come on record against police and the administration during the 
district level hearings." He further explained that  "This does not 
include the hearings conducted with regard to Godhra incident and 
affidavits which have been filed before the Commission."

  The Commission was appointed on March 6, 2001 and the Commission has 
received so far over 3000 affidavits from riot victims. According to 
news paper reports Nanavati said that some of these affidavits 
included allegations against a few police officers from some 
districts."

Such a statement from the inquiring judge at an unfinished stage is 
quite improper. It can give wrong impression and the accused can even 
treat it as a 'clean chit' in their favour. The legal community of 
Gujarat was also of the opinion that this was improper on the part of 
Justice Nanavati. Former chief justice of the Gujarat High Court B.J. 
Diwan maintained,  Nanavati should not have made the statement.

  As a retired judge of the Supreme Court Justice Nanavati should know 
better that before completing an inquiry and without thorough inquiry 
no such comments could be made. It can vitiate even further findings, 
as victims may not come forward to record their evidence. The victims 
are already under tremendous pressure not to name anyone and if head 
of the Commission gives such statement it may further put them under 
pressure.

  The case of Best Bakery in Baroda is quite illustrative in this 
regard. The main eye- witness has gone back on her earlier statement 
obviously under intense pressure and threats. According to The Indian 
Express (dated 20th May, 2005) "Till last Saturday every body knew 
Zahira Sheikh as the key witness in the Best Bakery case. It was 
Vadodra's most gruesome incident in last year's communal violence. 
Twelve people were burnt alive. Zahira, an eye witness, had cried, 
had made loud representations and demanded justice on several 
occasions. Including when the then national Human Rights Commission 
Chairman Justice J.S.Verma and Chief Election Commissioner 
J.M.Lyngdoh came visiting."

  After turning hostile Zahira has disappeared. She and her family 
refuse to have interaction with those around them. Even her elder 
sister refused to divulge where her sister is and also refuse to give 
her own name. Zahira was seen with BJP MLA Madhu Shrivastav in the 
court premises and this led to several eyebrows being raised. One can 
well understand what was cooking and how witnesses are being 
pressured, lured or threatened to weaken the cases against the 
accused in burning, looting and murdering cases. In such atmosphere 
of fear and threat justice Nanavati's kind of statement can further 
discourage key witnesses from appearing before the commission.

  It is not unknown in ordinary murder cases how criminals exercise 
intense pressure on eye- witnesses not to give witness. In this case 
the whole might of state is involved and how they can threaten and 
pressurise is not beyond imagination. Not that witnesses can not be 
found for involvement of police and state machinery in Gujarat 
carnage but people in many cases are unwilling to talk for fear of 
consequences.

  Justice Nanavati should know as an experienced Supreme Court judge 
how things work in India. He should have also known the over all 
situation in Gujarat before rushing to the press making such 
statement. Much has appeared in media as to what happened in Gujarat 
after Godhra incident. Not one but several retired high court and 
Supreme Court judges had visited Gujarat and had known first hand 
about the happenings there. An expert panel of judges from Supreme 
Court and high courts headed by Justice V.R.Krishna Iyer has even 
prepared a comprehensive report entitled Crime against Humanity 
detailing involvement of police and state machinery and the ruling 
party.

  Justice J.S. Verma, the Chairman, National Human Rights Commission, 
himself had passed severe strictures against the State machinery and 
the way it handled communal violence in Gujarat. Besides these 
eminent judges hundreds of eminent citizens and concerned people had 
visited and prepared reports of Gujarat carnage and complicity of 
state machinery.  The former direct general of police, Maharashtra 
and Governor of   Punjab, Julio Ribeiro had strongly castigated the 
Gujarat police and its role in controlling communal violence.

  Mr. Ribeiro in an interview to the Times of India dated 10/9/2002 
had said, in a reply to a question "What in your opinion was the 
reason for the failure of the Police in Gujarat" had said, "The top 
brass must take the blame. I did not sense a whiff of leadership from 
top police officers. Senior officers have been reduced to mute 
spectators as they have little control over the force. Generally, 
senior police officers discipline errant subordinates by transferring 
them to insignificant wings. But in Gujarat, officers from the 
subordinate ranks manipulate all the transfers and postings at the 
police station level, which is the cutting edge of the force." This 
speaks volumes about the role of police in Gujarat and is quite 
damning for top police leadership.

  He also commented in the same interview that many people told him 
that the police were recording absolutely incorrect FIRs. "I 
(Ribeiro) met a respectable Hindu gentleman who said that the police 
did not take down the names of the rioters he had seen and wrote that 
it was a group of unidentified people. If people who have seen their 
mothers and sisters raped and burnt before their eyes have no hope of 
getting justice, they will all turn into terrorists and why are we 
talking about ISI and Pakistan when we are doing their job for them 
by creating terrorists?"

  This damning evidence of police inaction and involvement in Gujarat 
carnage should have been taken notice of by the honourable judge 
before he made his pre-mature comments in the public.

  Even if it is true that Justice Nanavati had not received complaints 
about police behaviour during hearings in the districts other than 
Ahmedabad and Baroda, it was improper for him to comment on the role 
of police and administration in a hurry. It is overall situation, 
which matters, not piecemeal evidence. An 'investigator' much more a 
judicial officer of highest rank, has to keep overall situation in 
mind before commenting. It is also not true that there are no 
complaints against police in the areas covered so far by Justice 
Nanavati Commission i.e. Panchmahal district and other districts 
except Ahmedabad and Vadodra where worst incidents took place.

  There are serious complaints, particularly against police in 
Panchmahal and other districts also. I have myself visited these 
areas and heard heart-rending stories from victims themselves and 
their bitter complaints against police inaction or complicity. In the 
Eral village of Panchmahal district a woman called Madina told 
inconsolably how they hid in the nearby fields for two three days and 
then tried to escape from there but were caught by the mob and her 
daughter and niece Shabana and Suhana were raped and killed and 
police was no where to be seen. They made desperate calls to the 
police to rescue them. In fact her entire statement is on camera with 
us.

  There is another heart-rending story from Randhikpur village in 
Dohad district. A woman called Bilqis aged 19 and her family sensed 
danger and phoned police and got usual reply they can do nothing 
about it. The family kept on hiding here and there and at last was 
caught by the mob on 2nd March. Bilqis - three month pregnant was 
raped by three men and taken to be dead, regained her consciousness 
after sometime and survived. However, 14 members of her family were 
massacred and her 3 year- old child was among them.

  She asked police to record her statement but police, after 
dilly-dallying recorded wrong statement and took her thumb 
impression. She was suspicious and when collector visited her refugee 
camp she drew his attention. Collector repremanded police and asked 
them to record proper FIR and file case on the basis of second FIR. 
However, meanwhile the Collector was transferred (as all good, 
conscientious officers were transferred by Narnedra Modi) and police 
filed the case on the basis of first FIR and destroyed the case. This 
too is on record on camera with us.

  How then justice Nanavati drew his conclusion? The Asian Age also 
has produced in its edition of 22nd May 2003 has reproduced under the 
caption "What's Nanavati talking about? Here is proof." in original 
Gujarati an affidavit filed before the Commission about the police 
complicity and inaction when the mob cut off two hands of a Muslim 
woman. Such an attitude on the part of inquiry commission can vitiate 
the whole inquiry and discourage people from appearing before it.

  The head or members of inquiry commission should not make any public 
comment before the inquiry is finally over. It is unfortunate that 
Justice Nanavati chose to speak pre-mature on the subject of his 
inquiry thus lowering the dignity of the commission and making people 
loose confidence in his impartial nature of inquiry.


Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
9B, Himalaya Apts., 1st Floor,
6th Road, TPS III, Opp. Dena Bank,
Santacruz (E), Mumbai - 400 055,
E-mail : <mailto:csss@vsnl.com>csss@vsnl.com
Website-  <http://www.csss-isla.com>www.csss-isla.com

_____


#6.

http://famulus.msnbc.com/FamulusIntl/ap06-02-105351.asp?reg=3DASIA

In a dingy apartment, quiet anger simmers in the last of the Gandhi plotters
ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUNE, India, June 2 - In a dingy two-room apartment, where cardboard 
boxes spill over with a lifetime of angry writings, an elderly man 
keeps watch over the memory of his long-dead brother - and the story 
of the murder that thrust them into worldwide attention more than 50 
years ago.
     ''I want to explain how I was connected to this Gandhi 
assassination,'' Gopal Godse says, beginning his story.
        His voice is calm, sunken gray-green eyes fixed on his 
listener. But his words convey the cold, unrepentant fury that drove 
a tiny band of conspirators to plot the killing of Mohandas Gandhi, 
the pacifist who led India to independence, fought for equality in a 
nation sharply divided by caste and became one of the most revered 
men in modern history.
        ''We did not want this man to live,'' said Godse, a thin, 
bookish man who spent 16 years in prison for his role in Gandhi's 
1948 murder. ''We did not want this man to die a natural death, even 
if 10 lives were to be lost for that purpose.''
        ''He was a very cruel person for the Hindus,'' said Godse, a 
fervent Hindu whose brother led the plot.
        In Godse's upside-down world, Gandhi's calls for nonviolence 
were part of a plot to allow Hindus to be slaughtered by Muslims. His 
urging for peace with overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan was seen as a 
betrayal of Hinduism, which Godse believes should rule over much of 
South Asia.
        At 83, Godse is the last of the conspirators alive. Frail and 
largely forgotten, he and his wife live an isolated life with little 
money and few visitors. He survives off the royalties of his books: 
obscure, cheaply printed works on Gandhi and the life and eventual 
execution of his brother Nathuram.
        But Godse has lived long enough to see his beliefs move from 
the fringes of Hindu militancy into the Indian mainstream - albeit in 
a milder version.
        Today India is governed by a coalition led by the Bharatiya 
Janata Party, known as the BJP, a Hindu party whose roots lie in a 
militant Hindu nationalist movement, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 
or RSS.
        Both Godse and his brother belonged to the RSS, which was 
influenced by German fascists of the 1930s. The RSS, which now 
distances itself from the Godses, has hundreds of thousands, possibly 
millions, of followers, including Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee 
and other top officials.
        Godse, however, despises the current government, which India's 
secularists see as hard-line while he considers it too moderate. But 
his beliefs are common among the government's more militant 
supporters.
        In a nation of more than a billion people - some 840 million 
of them Hindus - Godse and like-minded Indians see Hindus as deeply 
oppressed.
        It may seem incongruous that an overwhelming majority would 
see itself as threatened, but it's a commonly heard fear among 
believers in Hindutva, or ''Hindu-ness,'' the doctrine that India 
should be governed by Hindu beliefs.
        Self-defense training with bamboo staffs, swords and rifles is 
common among hard-line Hindutva believers, and Hindu suicide squads 
have vowed to defend their motherland.
        The doctrine reaches from military training grounds to 
classrooms. Government textbooks distributed since the rise of the 
BJP government have been criticized for omitting mention of Gandhi's 
assassination, discussing Nazism without mentioning its racist 
ideology and saying a Hindu swami ''established the superiority of 
Indian thought and culture over the Western mind.''
        Such matters have sparked criticism from India's secular 
intelligentsia, to whom Godse is an extreme example of the dangers of 
the militant movement.
        The killing of Gandhi ''was actually an assault on secularism 
by the Hindu right, and what Gopal Godse is doing is continuing that 
assault,'' said Kamal Mitra Chenoy, an international-studies 
professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a prominent 
liberal crusader.
        ''For someone to be proud of his role in murdering the father 
of the nation is an insult to the entire nation,'' Chenoy said.
        Godse sees things far differently.
        ''If you do not protect your culture, your sovereignty is 
lost, your self-rule is lost,'' he said. ''That is what you must 
realize.''
        Godse's tiny apartment, where light filters in through laundry 
strung in front of the windows, is a monument to the assassination 
plot. In the office-living room, there is a larger-than-life 
photograph of a smiling Nathuram Godse adorned with a cheap plastic 
garland. There are fading pictures of the five convicted plotters, 
the frames warped with age, and a richly engraved silver urn for 
Nathuram's ashes.
        Despite his virulent hatred of Muslims and his lurking 
suspicions of nearly everyone else, Godse is polite and soft-spoken. 
He makes small talk about the traffic, and asks if it was difficult 
to find his apartment, which is hidden in a tangle of streets in a 
working-class neighborhood of Pune, the southern city where he was 
born.
        While the years occasionally slip about in his stories, his 
mind is clear. His belching - long, loud burps that he completely 
ignores - comes as regular, if strange, interruptions.
        Godse doesn't want pity. He only wants people to believe that 
the man they revere as a modern saint, a man most refer to as 
mahatma, or ''great soul,'' was a fraud.
        ''If the people knew the reasons (for the assassination), 
Gandhi would be exposed,'' he said.
        Godse's life has been shaped by the belief that India is 
inherently Hindu and should be governed by its principles. He lives 
in a haze of relentless conspiracies, a high caste Hindu who sees 
Hindus as victims of Muslim plotting. This is not bigotry, but 
self-preservation, he insists.
        Godse believes Gandhi turned his back on the Hindus, allowing 
British India to be divided in 1947 into today's states of India and 
Pakistan. He insists Muslims want to convert, or kill, all 
nonbelievers, and says peace between the two religions is impossible.
        ''When they say we have good relations with Muslims, it's all 
humbug, it's all bogus,'' he said, his voice momentarily angry. ''You 
can't expect the Muslim to give up his religion.''
        The final insult came when Gandhi, a Hindu himself, launched a 
hunger strike seeking to pressure India's government into paying 
money it owed Pakistan.
        The conspirators were ideologues, not trained terrorists, and 
their plotting was often amateurish. Gopal Godse was a clerk in a 
military store, his brother a newspaper editor. A few told outsiders 
of the plot.
        Yet they succeeded on Jan. 30, 1948. That evening, Gandhi, a 
weak 78-year-old, was walking toward the prayer ground in the garden 
of a New Delhi home when Nathuram Godse stepped in front of him and 
fired three shots.
        Gandhi died within moments.
        Nathuram was tackled by bystanders and arrested. The other 
conspirators, including Gopal, who had returned to Pune after an 
earlier failed attempt to kill Gandhi, were arrested within days.
        Nathuram and one other conspirator were hanged in 1949. The 
rest were sentenced to prison terms.
        Nearly 40 years after his 1965 release, Godse's beliefs remain 
unchanged. He talks of the horrors of India's 1947 partition, in 
which 1 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were killed, as if it 
happened a few weeks ago. While many people say all those religions 
share blame in the sectarian bloodshed, Godse argues Hindus acted 
only in self-defense.
        Now, he awaits the day when India's Muslims convert to Hinduism.
        He speaks almost gleefully about religious riots last year in 
the western state of Gujarat that killed about 1,000 people, most of 
them Muslims. ''If (Muslims) get the reaction like they did in 
Gujarat, they will get to know that Muslims are not supreme,'' he 
said.
        But he knows the Hindu paradise he wants - an India freed of 
Muslims, and again in control of Pakistan's territory - will not come 
in his lifetime.
        ''It may be 100 years, it may be 200 years, it will eventually 
happen,'' he said.

=A9 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not 
be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

_____


#7.

=46inancial Times, May 30 2003
Arts & Weekend / Books

A troubling empire
By Edward Luce


The Mughal Throne: The Saga of India's Great Emperors B Abraham Eraly
Weidenfeld =A320, 544 pages

One of the most striking aspects of modern India is that almost all 
its major cities were founded either by Islamic or European 
imperialists. Nationalists of various stripes are acutely sensitive 
to this and have renamed Bombay as Mumbai, Madras as Chennai and 
Calcutta as Kolkata. Even so, no amount of nominal revisionism can 
alter the fact that many of India's most visible monuments were 
bequeathed by imperial invaders. Of these, perhaps the grandest 
architectural legacy is that of the Mughal dynasty.

A group of Hindu youth activists recently graffitied the Taj Mahal, 
the most impressive of Mughal buildings, and there have been many 
such disturbing incidents. Abraham Eraly is one of the many who are 
deeply concerned that historical revisionism shows no signs of 
abating in India. From this, he correctly concludes that India's 
identity as a nation state is still in the process of being settled.

"In every other major civilisation the past has died so that the 
future could be born," he writes. "But India seems to be killing the 
future so that the past can live on." The central Hindu nationalist 
thesis is this: India flowered under a golden age of Hindu 
civilisation that was systematically destroyed, first by the various 
Islamic invasions between the 11th and 17th centuries, and then by 
the British colonial period that lasted until 1947. Finally, after 
more than 50 years of independence, India has a Hindu nationalist 
government that can correct the distortions of history. Or, if you 
take Eraly's view, a standpoint which is "snared in self-delusions, 
fighting quixotic battles with the spectres of the past".

The project is far from academic. If India's Islamic heritage is 
deemed alien to the country's true civilisation, then the security of 
the country's 140 million Muslims - and of a nation-state that was 
founded on the basis of religious pluralism - are profoundly 
threatened.

It is thus with high expectations that one turns to Eraly's account 
of the Mughal era. Founded in 1528 by an obscure Turko-Mongol line 
that had been virtually ejected from its central Asian fiefdom, the 
Mughals gradually evolved into the grandest and most formalistic of 
India's Islamic dynasties. This process - whereby the nomadic 
rusticity of Babur, the first Mughal ruler, was converted within half 
a century into the Indo-Persian high culture of his grandson, Akbar, 
is a critical phase in the history of what the Mughals called 
"Hindustan". The stagnation that culminated another half century 
later in the destructive Islamic purism of Aurangzeb, who ruled for 
50 years, is equally critical.

In what way was the sub-continent changed by two centuries of Mughal 
rule? Unfortunately many of the significant questions are barely 
asked, let alone addressed, and the effect of the Mughals on India's 
heterodox millions is dispatched in two very inadequate pages in the 
epilogue.

Instead, Eraly treats us to what another partisan school of history 
would describe as an "Orientalist" narrative of the kings and 
concubines of Mughaldom. For those seeking thrills in the emperor's 
harem or horror in the fratricidal and parricidal battles of 
succession, such material is abundant. There are endless accounts of 
battlefield victories and defeats with the attendant elephant charges 
and last-minute changes of loyalty. Eunuchs and dancing girls 
conspire and carouse throughout.

It is always fun to glimpse history's grandest personalities though 
the keyhole of their bedchambers or the crack in the canvas of their 
battlefield headquarters. But it is not serious history, although 
Eraly's well-argued preface gives the impression that it will be.

Certainly the book avoids making concessions to the retrospective 
nation-builders who dominate many of India's history faculties, in 
which a disturbingly large number of academics - both from the 
Marxist left and the Hindu nationalist right - place the objectives 
of scholarship a poor second to their immediate political objectives. 
Unfortunately, though, Eraly does little to advertise the merits of 
detached scholarship.

It would be a tragedy if in today's India the more extreme Hindu 
nationalists were allowed - as is their professed aim - to raze some 
of the hundreds of mosques the Mughals built on the sites of Hindu 
temples they destroyed.

Many of those sites also contain traces of earlier Hindu temples and 
Buddhist structures that were levelled by Hindu dynasties. Romila 
Thapar's masterful recent book, Early India, ends before the Islamic 
era, but it makes it plain that the destruction of temples - a highly 
combustible issue in today's India - was also the normal thing for 
incoming Hindu dynasties to do: temples that were patronised by 
outgoing royal lineages had to be destroyed because they were symbols 
of dynastic legitimacy. Well before Islam appears in India, Hindu 
dynasties had erased almost all the Buddhist and Jainist temples of 
earlier dynasties.

Surely political legitimacy in India has outgrown such acts? In an 
era when history remains potentially lethal, historians have a duty 
to place history in its proper context.

Edward Luce is the FT's South Asia correspondent


_____


#8.

In India, one out of every ten children is being sexually abused at 
any given point of time.

Every 155th minute a child below 16 years is raped.
Every 13th hour, a child below 10 years is raped.

- Working group of Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1998
----------------------------------------------------------------------------=
----

The silence that shrouds the issue of child sexual abuse is 
deafening. Feelings of guilt, shame, self blame abounds in a society, 
which afraid of social disgarce, refuses to acknowledge the 
seriousness of the crime.

Pedestrian pictures

invites you to a screening of

The children we sacrifice

Directed by Grace Poore, SHaKTI productions

61 mins/colour/vhs/2000

on 7 june 2002, Saturday

at 5:30 p.m., Feroze's Estate Agency

on Cunningham Road, Bangalore

Shot in India, Sri Lanka, Canada and the US, The Children We 
Sacrifice is a 61-minute video documentary that explores the 
universal crime of incestuous sexual abuse through the prism of South 
Asian experience. Through stories by women abused from as young as 
two, the 61-minute video looks at the social and cultural resistance 
to dealing with incest and how it affects South Asian women on two 
continents. Throughout the documentary, images of childhood are 
juxtaposed against the ironies of home as source of refuge and 
violation, family as source of comfort and betrayal. This is no 
sensationalist treatment of the women who share their stories of 
abuse but a celebration of their struggle and resilience. It is a 
moving validation of those who confront different levels of silences 
around a deeply camouflaged issue.

"The Children We Sacrifice" won the 2000 Rosebud Award and the 2001 
Creating A Voice Award. It featured in the International Women's Film 
=46estival in Korea, United Nations Women's Film Festival in New York 
City.

Grace Poore is a South Asian feminist lesbian writer and video 
activist who produces and uses video to advocate for an end to 
violence against women and girls.

Anita Ratnam from Samvada, an organization which provides couselling 
to college age survivors of CSA as well as training to peer 
counsellor groups in schools and colleges about CSA prevention, will 
lead the discussion.


for more information contact - 5670 2232 / 318 12 691 / 98450 66 747 
<mailto:pedepics@yahoo.com>pedepics@yahoo.com


______


#9.

The May/June issue of the-south-asian has been published (URL
www.the-south-asian.com). Some of the articles in this issue are: The
=46lourishing Fake Art Industry of India; K L Saigal - a Musical Century;Pic=
o
Iyer - a global village on 'two legs'; Sarla Thakral - India's 1stlady pilot
;Pakistan's Broadband Telecomm;Book Reviews of'Tehri Lakeer' by
IsmatChughtai, and 'Romance of Mango' by Kusum Budhwar; Letter from
Pakistan; the oldest 'ittar' shop; The Real Hindutva vs Sangh 'Hindutva' by
Valson Thampu;The Plague of our Times.

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

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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