SACW | 4 Oct. 2003

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  |  4 October,  2003

[1] Sri Lanka:
- Assess peace process in totality (A media 
release of National Peace Council of Sri Lanka)
- The Menzingen Determination and The Supreme 
Court: A Critique (Asanga Welikala)*
[2]  Edward Said: A Friend of The World (Cam Diary)
[3] Gandhi, the Philosopher (Akeel Bilgrami)*
[4] India: The Riot Economy: The Ganj Basoda case 
(The Bhopal Group on Communalism)
[5] India: Highlight positive images, urge  'Muslims for Secular Democracy'
[6] India: Crackdown on civil liberties activists 
in the offing? ( W.Chandrakanth)
[8.] Internet Censorship in India:
A letter to India's Ministers in-charge of 
Information Tech., and Communications and 
broadcasting

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

[1.]

The Sunday Observer [ Sri Lanka] 28 September 2003	 

Assess peace process in totality

A media release of National Peace Council of Sri Lanka

At the post-Tokyo donor meeting in Colombo 
earlier this month, members of the donor 
community stated that the disbursement of 
economic assistance would be contingent on the 
satisfactory progress of the peace process.

With the suspension of peace talks entering its 
sixth month, the National Peace Council believes 
that it is important to draw a distinction 
between the peace process, which includes the 
entire society, and the peace talks, which 
consist of only the Government and LTTE. Despite 
the suspension of peace talks in April of this 
year, we note that the peace process has not been 
weakened in the intervening period as was feared, 
but on the contrary has become further 
strengthened.

In the past five months, there has been a great 
deal of constructive and positive work that has 
been done, that has changed the minds of the 
people, preparing them for mutual accommodation 
in the interests of a just and negotiated peace. 
Among these is the principled decision on the 
part of President Chandrika Kumaratunga to 
publicly reject a political alliance that would 
have seriously compromised the peace process.

We take this opportunity to urge the Government 
and main Opposition party to act on the basis 
that the common positions they share on the peace 
process are much more important than their 
differences.

Another positive indicator about the strength of 
the peace process is the finalisation by the LTTE 
of its proposals regarding an interim 
administration following extensive discussions 
between internationally based experts and the 
LTTE's locally based members.

These proposals, and the way in which the 
Government responds to them, could lead to a 
resumption of peace talks. It could also lead to 
the further consolidation of the peace process 
especially if adequate attention is given to the 
aspirations of the people. We call on the 
Government to make a principled response to the 
LTTE's proposals.

The National Peace Council, however, continues to 
be disturbed by the assassinations of political 
opponents of the LTTE and recruitment of children 
taking place by the LTTE. These are grave and 
serious human rights violations, especially 
assassinations that cannot ever be reversed. Such 
actions, even though limited to specific segments 
of the population, continue to undermine 
confidence in the sustainability of the peace 
process.

We call on the LTTE to abide fully by human 
rights norms in the conduct of their affairs.

Finally, when assessing the situation in the 
country we urge the international community to 
assess the peace process in its entirety rather 
than only aspects of it. It is important to bear 
in mind that the peace process is more than peace 
talks between the Government and LTTE.

We are concerned that the conditions of life in 
the north-east, especially in the Wanni region, 
are much behind those in other parts of the 
country. Roads, irrigation facilities, health, 
educational systems and other infrastructure 
continue in a state of disrepair or in very poor 
conditions. The well-being of the people of Sri 
Lanka, north and south, should not be put on hold 
until peace talks commence so long as the overall 
peace process is strong and the vast majority of 
people are committed to it.


o o o

[Sri Lanka:
A critical review on the recent Supreme Court 
determination on the freedom of religion and 
conscience]

THE MENZINGEN DETERMINATION AND THE SUPREME COURT:
A LIBERAL CRITIQUE

ASANGA WELIKALA

The Supreme Court delivered a determination in 
August this year on a challenge to a Private 
Member's Bill which sought to incorporate an 
order of nuns of the Roman Catholic Church. The 
Supreme Court has in recent years dealt with two 
very similar cases wherein Bills for the 
incorporation of two Christian bodies were held 
to be unconstitutional. This bench followed those 
rulings in substance while also invoking for the 
first time since this Constitution was 
promulgated in 1978, the foremost place of 
Buddhism guaranteed by Article 9.

The freedom of religion as an aspect of political 
liberty and the role of the State therein is a 
vexed problem in even the most tolerant of 
societies. The ramifications of the acts of a 
Supreme Court in relation to such an emotive 
issue in a multi-religious and fragmented society 
like ours then, have a signal importance. In a 
constitutional democracy, the judicial organ of 
the State can by its actions dissipate tensions 
in a way other organs subject to electoral 
politics and pressures cannot. Or it can 
exacerbate those tensions in a way that 
fundamentally weakens the credibility of the 
institutions - the multicultural legitimacy - of 
the State.

[ * The full text of the above article (27 k) is 
available to all interested; Should you require a 
copy, send a request with the title to: 
<aiindex at mnet.fr>   ]

______


[2.]

The Daily Times, October,1, 2003
CAM DIARY: OCTOBER 1, 2003

EDWARD SAID: A FRIEND OF THE WORLD

Earlier this year, in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq,
Professor Edward W Said, the literary critic and Palestinian
activist, wrote, "It has finally become intolerable to
listen to or look at news. I've told myself over and over
again that one ought to leaf through the daily papers and
turn on the TV for the national news every evening, just to
find out what 'the country' is thinking and planning, but
patience and masochism have their limits".

Most of us can identify with such sentiments. News, these
days, is bad. It's sad. Why bother, one thinks. Damn the TV,
kick the radio, and chuck the newspaper in the bin. However,
one also knows that defeatism, ignoring the world around us
cannot be the way forward. There is something within us all
that tells us to stand up, to speak out against tyranny and
injustice, and to aid the weak and oppressed.

Being a Palestinian, Edward Said was acutely aware of this.
So he wrote and spoke courageously instead of taking the
easy way out and giving up. More crucially he did this to
the end. And that is the saddest news: his death last week.
The world has lost a towering intellectual, the Palestinians
and Arabs their most eloquent spokesman.

Last autumn Edward Said was in Cambridge as a Visiting
Fellow. He gave a series of lectures on 'Humanism and
Knowledge' as well as one on Palestine, which I covered in
this column, (Cam Dairy: Said the Palestinian, Daily Times,
November 20, 2002). When a person is gone, all that remains
is memories, or any autobiographical and biographical
records of his. In this regard, I am pleased that I made the
effort to record Said's lecture for this paper.

I wrote, "Professor Edward W Said of Columbia University,
New York, entered the hall and the chattering audience
hushed. He was wearing a brown jacket over neat grey
trousers and sporting a dark blue tie over a light blue
shirt. Said, now grey-haired and looking pale and ill had
grown a beard. He wore glasses over his sunken cheeks. When
speaking, his hands dance and revolve to make a point.

"The renowned author of the classic book 'Orientalism' and
other works such as 'Covering Islam', 'The End of the Peace
Process: Oslo and After' and 'Out of Place: A Memoir' had
been invited to speak on 'Palestine in the Middle East
Crisis' by The Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
and the Cambridge University Palestine Society. He spoke for
an hour on the past, present and future of Palestine."

Despite his ill health, Said was immaculately dressed and
spoke and answered questions to shame the healthiest. Even
his opponents have acknowledged: "Said was diagnosed with
leukaemia in 1991, and was often ill in his later years. It
did nothing to diminish his radicalism".

So, to use a tired old cliché, instead of throwing in the
towel, Said stood up and fought till life itself overpowered
him. His bitterest opponents were often the ones to give up
and flee.

In my unpublished notes on the Cambridge lecture I
noted, "When Said talked about there being no military
solution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, that Butcher
Sharon's brutal policies had failed, that suicide bombings
were desperate acts of hopelessness forced upon extremists
by the Israelis etc, two guys with Jewish skull caps could
stomach it no more and walked out of the hall. Cambridge
University students walking out — what an intolerant bunch!"

Said was a fearless critic of those within and without. Last
June he wrote, "We have never faced a worse or, at the same
time, a more seminal moment. The Arab order is in total
disarray; the US administration is effectively controlled by
the Christian right and the Israeli lobby, and our society
has been nearly wrecked by poor leadership and the insanity
of thinking that suicide bombing will lead directly to an
Islamic Palestinian state".

I find Said's tributes to his Pakistani friend Eqbal Ahmad
(1933-1999) equally applicable to himself. They had much in
common. Said called Eqbal Ahmad "one of the most brilliant
and unusual political thinkers and activists". So, indeed,
was Said. Said thought Ahmad "was that rare thing, an
intellectual unintimidated by power or authority, a
sophisticated man who remained simply true to his ideals and
his insight till his last breath". So, indeed, was Said.

Said even dedicated one of his most important works,
"Culture and Imperialism" (1993), to Eqbal Ahmad. In this
book Said writes, "Real problems of democracy, development,
and destiny, are attested to by the state persecution of
intellectuals who carry on their thought and practice
publicly and courageously — Eqbal Ahmad and Faiz Ahmad Faiz
in Pakistan... — major thinkers and artists whose sufferings
have not blunted the intransigence of their thought, or
inhibited the severity of their punishment".

Said has also written that "Eqbal's special blend of
intellectual brilliance and courage... accurate analysis,
and consistently humane and warm presence make of him, to
paraphrase from Kipling's Kim, a friend of the whole world".
Edward Said, too, was 'a friend of the whole world'.

I will conclude with Said's words written shortly before his
death: "The recent deaths of my two main intellectual,
political and personal mentors, Eqbal Ahmad and Ibrahim
Abu-Lughod, has brought sadness and loss, as well as
resignation and a certain stubborn will to go on". The news
may not all be good, but the will to go on, stubbornly even,
has to be there.

Edward Wadie Smith, a Christian Palestinian, born on
November 1, 1935 in West Jerusalem, died on September 25,
2003 in New York. Further information can be found at
http://www.edwardsaid.org.
--
Sir Cam,
Cambridge, England

______


[3]


The Economic and Political Weekly
September 27, 2003
Special Article

Gandhi, the Philosopher

Gandhi's thought and his ideas about specific 
political strategies in specific contexts flowed 
from ideas that were very remote from politics; 
instead they flowed from and were integrated to 
the most abstract epistemological and 
methodological commitments. The quality of his 
thought has sometimes been lost because of the 
other images Gandhi evolves - a shrewd politician 
and a deeply spiritual figure. Gandhi's view of 
moral sense, his denial of the assumed connection 
between moral sense and moral judgment, is of 
considerable philosophical interest and in his 
writings, take on a fascinating theoretical 
consolidation. In Gandhi's highly 'integrating' 
suggestion, as this paper suggests, there is no 
true non-violence until criticism is removed from 
the scope of moral; the ideal of non-violence is 
thus part of a moral position in which moral 
principles, which lead us to criticise others, 
are eschewed.

Akeel Bilgrami

[ * The full text of the above article (50k) is 
available to all interested. Should you require a 
copy drop a note to <aindex at mnet.fr>  ]


______


[4]

URL: http://communalism.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_communalism_archive.html
South Asia Citizen's Web Special
October 4, 2003

THE RIOT ECONOMY:
The Ganj Basoda case

by The Bhopal Group on Communalism

On the 14th of January, 2003 "riots erupted" in 
Ganj Basoda, a small town of Madhya Pradesh -the 
first tremors of a post Gujarat Hindutva. The 
incident was swiftly attributed to the slaughter 
of a cow. This article following the incident and 
its surroundings inverts this modality to argue 
that the alleged 'cow-slaughter', far from being 
a reason of the riots could only have been a 
necessary appendage of the economy of the riot 
itself.

"The incident happened at around nine in the 
morning.  Near 11:30 the shops were on fire. 
Within an hour, 132 out of the 144 muslim-owned 
shops in the town had been gutted and burnt down. 
Soon the ash settled and the administration took 
charge  "
Janpad panchayat president, Ganj Basoda

"According to the police, the trouble began on 
Tuesday morning when the word spread across the 
town that a cow was being slaughtered in the 
house of a rickshaw puller, identified as  Salim, 
33, a resident of Choori mohalla. As the word 
spread across the town, an angry mob gathered in 
the area and went on the rampage, indulging in 
arson and stone peltingŠŠŠ. Though the accused 
managed to escape, two carcass and 12 hides were 
reportedly recovered from his houseŠ. Police 
later arrested the accusedŠŠŠ..The accused was 
involved in such activities in the past also and 
a similar incident was reported in 1999, a senior 
state police official said"
			Hindustan Times, Wednesday, January 15, 2003

"It was an assemblage of about five hundred 
people, who divided into smaller groups of 70-80. 
Each group responsible for a location and 
consisting largely of people from that particular 
locality." An observer

Ganj Basoda, the town that witnessed the 'riots' 
-a classification, we shall challenge in this 
article-  on the 14th of january in which almost 
all the muslim owned shops were selectively 
gutted and put on fire is a small town of about 
eighty thousand people of whom a very small 
fraction (about 5-6 percent) are muslims. The 
town is apparently not one of those afflicted 
sites, where communal violence erupts habitually, 
echoing the faintest, distant howls; like a 
mourning in which continence itself may bear 
violent overtones, a mourning for which a 
violence had to be self-inflicted.

"The trouble began on Tuesday morning when the 
word spread around that a cow was being 
slaughtered in the house of a rickshaw puller, 
Salim " [1]. What does the word 'trouble' allude 
to here? What is the expanse of 'events' that it 
circumscribes? Is it a uniform sequence of events 
to be put into a single box, engendered by a 
single event- the first disturbance of a peace; 
the first disturbance on a still surface. Let us 
broach the subject further. This 'disturbing' 
event, the alleged 'genesis' of the trouble was: 
A cow had been killed. To use a hackneyed phrase 
-which however on that account, should only be 
more seriously taken, leave alone, trivialised- 
'this hurt the sensibilities of the majority 
community'. The rest, was the revenge of 'the 
hurt'.

All empirical evidence, as we will argue in this 
article, suggests that this alleged sparking 
point -the slaughter of a cow- could only have 
been a fictional point created as a lump to which 
reason is made to fall back upon - the sinful, 
illegitimate, matricidal lump. But how could 
reason rest there. This lump will need to be 
broken into minute parts, the 'event' into its 
component 'events'. Where exactly did the ruckus 
begin? Did somebody see a cow being slaughtered? 
Or did somebody see a cow being taken inside a 
house, where the lone purpose could have been to 
slaughter it? How did the news travel; who were 
the harbingers? None of these and many such 
questions, the just demands of a logical 
coherence, were followed. Logic, once it reached 
(leaping over obstacles) to a comfortable end - 
the Event- was stubbed. These aspersions of 
fiction on the Event are however not meant to 
make a positivistic statement claiming an 
umbrella inculpability for Salim and his family. 
This is only to say that there is little evidence 
to support the particular charge against Salim's 
family of having slaughtered a cow on that 
particular moment, the trigger to the 'riots'-The 
Event. In fact, as the imbricated facts and 
interests are gradually unfolded, one 
effortlessly shifts to the point, where one can 
see it strip into an astute plot carefully timed 
and placed. That however does not mean that this 
plot excluded every element of spontaneity. Far 
from it, it harvested -a harvest perhaps provided 
for in its modality- deeply sown seeds of hatred, 
a structurally misdirected organicity; an 
organicity which is more akin to a malignant 
tumour than to a growth of life.

Salim's family of three included his wife and an 
adolescent daughter. They lived in a rented 
house, a small kutcha  house with a polythene 
sheet for a roof with the landlords' double 
storey building providing the backdrop. Salim: a 
rickshaw-puller (what economy for a person's 
description!); his wife: a housewife and by many 
accounts, an industrious woman who used to trade 
in animal flesh, bringing it from Sagar and 
Sironj towns which house licensed butcher houses; 
his daughter: a girl-child entering that age (of 
marriage) when parents in many parts of the 
country anxiously start scrambling for the 
tiniest bits of resources. In this poor family's 
struggle for a living, the petty trade in animal 
flesh was an important aspect.

Animal flesh is an expensive commodity, often 
beyond the means of the working classes. Among 
the different types of animal flesh, beef - meat 
of the buffalo and cow family- for the simple 
demand-supply equation costs only a fraction of 
the cost of meat and poultry. While beef, as most 
who have eaten it say, has no particular palatal 
advantage -except may be the advantage of 
difference, no mean advantage- it is no gross 
disadvantage either. This skew, largely a 
creation of the partial ban on beef in the state, 
carves a niche in the market for beef. 
Surprisingly, contrary to expectations where a 
ban should have hopped up prices, beef rates 
remained more or less stable -a clear indicator 
that the prices were being determined not by 
discerning palates but the hungry needs of the 
masses, from whom there was little to gain by 
bargain; the risk element could not be converted 
into money, for there was just no surplus to 
appropriate; a cornered dealer can do nothing but 
squirm. It was this market that Salim's wife, 
eager for avenues to augment the family income, 
was battling in. Commuting to Sagar every few 
days by a local train, surreptitiously carrying 
flesh in it, regularly bribing the railway police 
personnel and the ticket checker, secretly 
bringing it home and selling it from there -no 
mean labour for a small amount of money. And for 
all this labour, Salim remained a rickshaw 
puller, pulling people twice his body weight; his 
house, the rented shanty it was. This destitute 
family, breaking its back in the struggle for 
life was however not even to be spared to live 
its lot; after all, it had hurt 'sensibilities', 
venomous sensibilities which like flying snakes 
in waiting, would hover from all around to bite 
it.

While Salim's wife used to trade in animal flesh 
and also beef, there is little evidence to 
suggest that she traded in cow-beef and none 
which points towards their 'slaughtering of 
cows'. Besides, even if for a moment we were to 
disregard this dearth of evidence, a backward 
logical movement from the embellished, smooth 
structure of the larger events (which are blamed 
to have been engendered by the cow slaughter, The 
Event) that followed, proves that The Event -or 
rather its fiction- fits in too well, comfortably 
and organically with this structure to have been 
exterior to it -and the structure too well laid 
out to be precariously built on this tenuous 
foundation. It could only have been this 
structure's creation, its own necessary 
appendage. We need to discerningly follow and 
disentangle these events, which left entwined are 
fiddles for the dominants.

"The incident happened at around nine in the 
morning.  Near 11:30 the shops were on fire. 
Within an hour, 132 out of the 144 muslim-owned 
shops in the town had been gutted and burnt 
down". There are no hiccups between the first and 
the second sentence, for those two and half 
hours. This is the interregnum when the Event 
(whatever be its form) is transformed into a 
riot: stone pelting, plundering and finally, 
burning of shops -the culmination, the final 
vengeance, complete annihilation of the symbol in 
the shop- after which the revenge, the thirst 
quenched, it settles down. This is the period of 
the spreading of the word, the swarming of 
people, the incitement of passions, the formation 
of the frenzy. This period of transformation is 
the main culprit for which the tenuous beginning 
(the Event) is a poor alibi. That beginning could 
only have been the necessary elongation of this 
interregnum, the initiation of the elements of 
the interregnum -a holy  initiation.

This interregnum is the breathing space that 
ideas shocked with the first brush of reality 
need, to gather their appurtenances, reorganise 
their senses, to cast one last look to see that 
everything is settled for the launch. As the 
events to follow it would tell, it was during 
this interregnum that the Basoda 'riots' were 
infused with the rational core that determined 
their fine method -an exacting strategy, precise 
targets and a limit.

"Within an hour, 132 out of the 144 muslim-owned 
shops in the town had been gutted and burnt 
down". Ganj Basoda has a fairly spread market, in 
which there is little to distinguish shops on the 
basis of their ownership. There is no spatial or 
functional segregation -no concentration of 
muslim shops. But for some convenient cases, it 
is difficult to make appellate distinctions 
-identifications of shops are more often than not 
secular. How then does it become possible to 
segregate every single of these scattered 
muslim-owned shops -they constitute no more than 
5-6% of the total number of shops- plunder them 
and set them to fire, all within an hour or a 
little more. Let us not forget that this is as 
precise an exercise as any, an error of less than 
ten percent, that too not human, but solely due 
to the swigs of fire. The few muslim shops that 
remained, by most accounts belong to members of 
one or the other factions of the right -the BJP, 
the RSS, the Bajrang dal, the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad.

What informed this method? Were they catalogues 
that had been astutely prepared, discerningly 
studied, mnemonically memorised. Probably, yes. 
But that would still be insufficient and not 
unfold itself as full-proof as the real act 
suggests. It needed the aid of a method, organic 
and structurally located; harnessing a raw and 
alive information.

"It was an assemblage of about five hundred 
people, who divided into smaller groups of 70-80. 
Each group responsible for a location and 
consisting largely of people from that particular 
locality." The division of the mass on 
neighbourhood lines, clusters of local people 
carrying  minute details -If the shop was rented 
by a muslim, only the ware had to be destroyed; 
if it belonged to a muslim, the shop was to be 
put to flame- also perfect foil to settle old 
scores, vengeance that may have long forgotten 
its roots. Spreading over the town, these groups 
break into identified shops, plunder and set 
fire. Within a period of about an hour, the 
project- benefiting from the economy of 
decentralisation- is completed. These groups 
never move to the residential areas or indulge in 
further damage. The commotion ends at its very 
peak, when it has tasted 'victory', a surrender 
of the adversary. Would a rabid crowd be 
satisfied with a symbolic end -burnt shops? Would 
it not push itself straight into the adversary's 
den -the residential areas- to lay the enemy 
prostrate physically, in the 'real' sense? Would 
it not at least, cross the limit somewhere, for a 
moment, may be?

This divided mass instead stops abruptly after 
the commercial areas, without a single leap 
towards the residential areas, nor towards any 
other object. Its consummate economy -precisely 
marked shops looted and burnt to order, a finely 
defined finitude, an absolute lack of 
transgression- never betrays the lack of a 
central rational control. There is no 'mass' 
here, no traces of disorder, no madness -no 
'riots'. This was a project that had met its 
objective and its objective successfully 
completed, it vanished living behind haunting 
traces. We however do not mean that this project 
was devoid of all organic appendages, a glossy 
ball that collected no dust. Far from it, it 
gained profusely from these organic wastes. But 
its core, the movement defining element remained 
till the end, in the anterior, the programmed 
instrumental rationality which it inherited from 
the moment of conception. To understand the 
conceptual constitution of this project, we need 
to cast a glance at the surroundings, from where 
the seed was cast, or at least from where it got 
the orders to finally erupt out of its shell -the 
portentous shadows of which the teratogen's 
actual birth was only a concretisation, a cold 
condensation.

If Salim's family traded in beef (of any kind) 
there was nothing extra about the 14th of 
January. If it had exceeded legal limits, the 
excess continued from years before and the VHP, 
Bajrang Dal etc. -by all accounts, the executors 
of the project- with their extensive ruffian 
network could not have been oblivious of it. 
Salim's landlord (Soni) as also the household 
opposite of the street (Yadav) are both active 
VHP and Bajrang Dal activists (respectively). It 
is worth noting here that two years back, the 
muslim community had disallowed Salim, a rented 
house in their locality for his alleged 
indulgence in beef-like trade. For whatever legal 
transgression Salim may be exposed to blame, he 
can not be tried for making that moment, the 
moment of the Event (or rather, the fiction of 
the Event) possible. And what dubious logical 
leap is made to account for the transformation of 
this fiction into a violent display in which the 
property of a particular community is selectively 
put to fire, the hard-earned savings of a 
lifetime's labour reduced to ash, a people 
converted into illegitimates in their own land 
-the religious identity of the fictitious 
transgressor!

It was not Salim's excess that marked the 14th of 
January. The project -or its timing- was a 
necessary congealing of the surroundings, the 
filling of a void, the exuberant overbrimming of 
the void; a reckoning to be finally counted, to 
be at last rewarded. A sign of the surroundings 
that hovered about the project, anterior to its 
actualization, can be found in the events that 
followed the project. The hoverings themselves 
came into overt lustrous forms -public 
declarations, speeches with much fanfare, 
statements of intent- culminating in threats of 
carry-over to the elections, the final front. It 
is at this end, this constantly alluded final 
point that this economy finally bares the 
aetiology of its projects, of the project. It is 
the economy of the front i.e., the 
election-market, which insinuates itself, back 
and forth, in all its projects.

We would do well to take a view of some 
'significant' moments that surround the events in 
Godhra. In February 2002, the Godhra carnage 
takes place which, irrespective of its cause, is 
efficaciously used by the BJP regime in Gujarat 
to allow a violent deluge against the muslim 
community. A delirium is created. A delirium 
strong enough to wipe away the formations of 
political rancour against the BJP, which had been 
steadily building up for more than a year, and 
tenacious enough to yield a bumper harvest, nine 
months later. The  consummate economy of the 
frenzy could not but vehemently push the case for 
its own repetition -even if a 'riot' had to be 
manufactured.

Following the Gujarat results, members of the BJP 
and the VHP openly assumed menacing tones, 
threatening repeats over the country: Hindutva 
had finally come of age; the instrument had 
passed the acid test, it waited eagerly for 
another prey -writhing against the tether to jump 
on the next passersby. It could not have laid low 
long. Madhya Pradesh seemed to be the most 
convenient and potentially rewarding spot to give 
it its bite of flesh. In late December itself, 
Uma Bharati -Madhya Pradesh's potential Narendra 
Modi - was handed over the reins and Narendra 
Modi -the beast himself-, the stewardship. By 
early January, she had started camping in Bhopal, 
travelling into the hinterland and building the 
'tempo' of the party cadres. Not to be left 
behind, an upbeat VHP, asserted itself in the 
form of a rally in Bhopal chaperoned by its 
version of Narendra (Milosevic) Modi, Praveen 
Togadia. And there were many more marches of the 
exuberant 'victors of Gujarat', uninitiated into 
restrain.

Togadia on the 11th of January declared in a 
press conference in Bhopal [2.], "Not only Madhya 
Pradesh but also other states would be painted in 
saffron colours by the time the next assembly 
elections are held here". There are no interludes 
in this exposition. The particular is precisely 
located in the general, it is the later from 
which it derives its substantiality. The period 
is defined by the 'given' -project end. The 
instrument is clear by its colour and the act 
clear in the continuity of its expanse -paint. 
This statement however reflects a position that 
has moved far ahead of its vacillating 
countenance a decade back. The 'Saffron' had 
dropped from being a supposedly ideological 
position to its real place in the squalor of the 
election-market. It is this squalor, which 
determines its forms and its moments of assertion.

It of course requires no digging to locate the 
roots of the discourse on cow slaughter -or the 
event of cow slaughter- in the election ground. 
And as cows are everywhere, temples are 
everywhere too -scattered ready-to-harvest 
sacrednesses. Be it the Ayodhya site or the 
recent case of Bhojshala in Dhar, the archaeology 
of 'Hindu religious sites' is well synchronised 
with the movement of the election machine. So are 
other aspects of the BJP (and its allies') 
propaganda: Swadeshi, Islamic terrorism, Muslim 
population burst, Pakistan bashing etc.

But these phenomenon are obvious enough not to 
warrant a reiteration. The relation that the BJP 
has helped congeal between genocide and electoral 
fortunes in a liberal democratic setup, the 
possibility of a (necessary) relation between 
gross violence and a democratic sham, is finally 
on a vulgar display. This forthrightness is 
obviously a result of the substantial power and 
resources edifice that it has structurally 
established for itself, specially in the last 
decade or so. While symbols like temple, cow etc. 
have undoubtedly played an important role in its 
rise, it was only a matter of time before the 
organisation outgrew these symbols. It obviously 
still progresses stepping on symbols, but then 
with the growth and establishment of the 
organisation, the scarcity of symbols ceases to 
be a limiting factor.  There it is important that 
the resistance movement too move beyond a 
'symbolic' to a real contest; from a contestation 
of symbols to a battle of organisation; from 
tolerating a democratic chimera to a movement for 
substantive democracy.

In the cow, temple etc. were traces that the 
sangh parivar fed, cultivated and harvested. The 
selection was a shrewd one not only in terms of 
the potential of their appeal but also in the 
inherent proclivities of the tendencies so 
galvanised. In such a situation, the congress 
strategy of attempting to appropriate the BJP's 
symbols, and therefore of feeding the same 
tendencies is characteristic of its vulgar 
opportunism. While the possibility of this 
providing a temporary strut to the congress 
cannot be theoretically dismissed, it is more 
probable that in the sloughs of the last vestiges 
of liberalism -once its very raison d'etre- may 
finally be the appearance of its own 
disintegration. Cows and temples, the BJP's steps 
of ascendance may well be the steps that the 
congress uses to descend.


Endnotes:

1. Extract from HT, quoted above
2. Press Trust of India, 11th January, 2003


______


[5.]

The Indian Express, October 04, 2003

Highlight positive images, urges new Muslim body
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
MUMBAI, OCTOBER 3: To prove you're secular, you 
have to form a Muslim organisation. Perhaps 
that's the paradoxical need of the hour,'' said 
lyricist Javed Akhtar. He was speaking at the 
first meeting of the Muslims for Secular 
Democracy (MSD), a newly-formed national body at 
the Indian Merchants Chamber, Churchgate on 
Thursday.

Activist Javed Anand, columnist Hasan Kamal are 
some of the MSD's core team of nearly 25 people 
that includes journalists, businessmen and other 
intellectuals.
Resolutions adopted

* Stop communal violence
* Rule of law above all
* An open debate on the Uniform Civil Code
''Our aim is to challenge reactionary forces that 
spread misinformation about the minority 
community,'' thundered Hasan Kamal condemning the 
role of ''so-called maulvis and Imams''.

The organisation also announced its declaration 
that criticises the hate propaganda and communal 
polarisation by the Sangh Parivar, among other 
teething issues.

The MSD committee plans to meet twice a month for 
discussions on religious intolerance, something 
that they believe needs redressal at the 
grassroots.

S.M.A. Kazmi, an Allahabad advocate, attributed 
the insecurities of Muslims to the ''constant 
demonisation'' of the community. ''Give a Muslim 
boy the tabla and he's Zakir Hussain, a pen and 
he's Javed Akhtar. Why aren't these positive 
images not highlighted?'' Kazmi asked.

Diplomatically tackling a volley of queries, the 
panelists unanimously declared that ''secularism 
and democracy are the first and last conditions 
for every Muslim's survival'', when asked about 
the thought behind the name MSD. Javed Anand 
added that combating Muslim communalism, too, is 
an urgent need of the hour.


______


[6]

The Hindu, Oct 04, 2003

Crackdown on civil liberties activists in the offing?
By W.Chandrakanth

HYDERABAD OCT. 3. In the wake of the bomb attack 
on the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, N. 
Chandrababu Naidu, comes the indication that 
police are poised for a crackdown on civil 
liberties activists and sympathisers of the ultra 
left parties. Several activists have gone 
underground fearing police reprisals.

Their fears are not unfounded, as the State 
police have been staging encounters at will. 
While the police frequently release the 
statistics on naxalite violence, they avoid 
mentioning the victims of their own violence. The 
Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), 
which is keeping track of the police killings, 
has listed more than 4,000 deaths, 2,000 of them 
in the last eight years alone. Attacks on human 
rights activists have of late become common as a 
reprisal for naxalite attacks.

The revolutionary poet and singer, Gaddar, says 
that "threats over telephone are regular 
nowadays. Any kidnap of any constable or any 
killing, I am the first one to be targeted. 
Police forget that state violence breeds 
counter-violence yielding no solution".

Targeting the rights activists could have begun 
much earlier, but the practice has become part of 
policing from 1985.

Activist K. Balagopal says: "the APCLC leader, 
Ramanatham, was killed on September 2, 1985 in 
retaliation for the killing of Inspector Yadagiri 
Reddy at Kazipet Railway Station by the PW. Again 
when a DSP, Butchi Reddy, was killed in 1987, the 
APCLC Karimnagar district president, Jampa Laxma 
Reddy, had to "pay with his life".

There are few takers for the police argument that 
they had no hand in any of these retributive 
killings.

The process of a dialogue between the Government 
and the PW last year got derailed by encounters 
during the negotiations. While the naxalites 
announced a cessation of hostilities, police 
killed PW leaders such as Padma alias Nelakonda 
Rajitha. "No civilised society will endorse such 
killings," says Dr. Balagopal.

The president of the People's Union of Civil 
Liberties, K.G. Kannabiran, says that "state 
violence, along with the extremist violence, has 
attained unprecedented proportions. One should 
not shun finding a democratic solution to the 
crisis. Retributive violence should not replace 
orderly investigation for nabbing the culprits 
responsible for the bomb blast".


_____


[7.]

Internet Censorship in India:
[ A letter to India's Ministers incharge of 
Information Tech., and  Communications and 
broadcasting]

Date: Wed, 01 Oct 2003 12:36:04 +0530
From: Searchlight Production
Subject: protest against yahoo groups closure
To: ashourie at nic.in, ravis at sancharnet.in

Dear Mr. Arun Shourie and Mr. Ravi Shankar,
Freedom of speech is intrinsic to the growth of a community. If people's
voices and opinions are throttled a cess pool forms over intellect. And
the only thing that cess pools breed is disease. You, dear sirs, are
encouraging the breeding of disease by deliberate policing of the
internet. A vast majority of this country is intelligent and mature
enough to be able to decide the right from wrong and the good from bad.
Do not throttle the intelligent. You will be left with a country of
dummies where growth of any kind will have no place.

Does the government have any dark secrets they would like to hide from
the people? It is said that those with black in their hearts see the
same in the eyes of others. Do not prove this statement true.Lift the
ban on Yahoo Groups!

Veena Bakshi



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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South 
Asia Citizens Web (www.mnet.fr/aiindex). [Please 
note the SACW web site has gone down, you will 
have to for the time being search google cache 
for materials]
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.

--