SACW | 28 Oct. 2003

[Harsh Kapoor]

SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE   |  28 October,  2003

Announcements:
a)  The South Asia Citizens Web web site 
continues to be down, users are invited to use 
Google cache till further notice.  'South Asia 
Counter Information Project' a back-up, archive 
area and sister site of SACW can be accessed at: 
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sacw/
b) All  SACW and associated list members in India 
wanting to consult web sites being blocked at 
groups.yahoo.com   may try to bypass the 'ban' 
via:
http://www.proxify.com
http://www.multiproxy.org/multiproxy.htm  [a more detailed list is given below]

+++++

[1] Pakistan: Focus on renewed debate over faith-based laws
[2] Letter from Lahore: Reaction to violence bill 
mirrors social schism (Kamila Hyat)
[3] The Land of Rising Sons. . .: Patriarchy in India Takes the Cake:
- Daughters of the East (edit Times of India)
-'India should have 35 million more women'  (Gargi Parsai)
- "Alarming decline in female sex ratio"  (Agency Report)
- Adverse Child Sex Ratio In India  (N Chandra Mohan)
- Resources for reading
[4] India: Unsafe in the City: Create Gender-friendly Spaces (Pratiksha Baxi)
[5] Book Review: 'Gender and Caste' by Rajeswari Sunder Rajan (Soma Basu)
[6] [Tribute to Edward Said] Deconstruction of a Western Myth (Radha Kumar)
[7] Deep Turmoil Among [Muslim] Thinkers (Batuk Vora)
[8]UK: Whose country is it anyway? (Nitin Sawhney)
[9] Upcoming seminar : "Reading Gandhi: The 
Question of the Neighbor" (Oct 30, Chicago)


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

[1]

irinnews.org
27 October 2003

PAKISTAN: Focus on renewed debate over faith-based laws

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

©  IRIN

If Nazia Bashir loses her case, she could face 
the death penalty under Pakistan's Hudood laws

KARACHI, 27 Oct 2003 (IRIN) - Since October 2002, 
18-year-old Nazia Bashir has been fighting a rape 
case that could, if she loses, lead to her being 
charged with adultery and sentenced to 100 lashes 
or death by stoning under Pakistan's Hudud 
(singular: hadd), or Islamic criminal code, laws.
Nazia taught the Koran to girls at a madrasah in 
the southern port city of Karachi co-owned by 
Maulvi Nazir, whom she has accused of raping her. 
"His son said that his mother wanted to see me," 
she told IRIN from behind a black veil, only her 
eyes visible behind wire-framed spectacles. "She 
had never called me before, but I went. She and 
her sister-in-law gave me a drink that made me 
unconscious. Maulvi Nazir then took me somewhere 
else, and for four days he looted my honour. On 
12 October, he made me sign a marriage contract 
as a condition to be freed."
"He said that now [as a non-virgin] I'm no use to 
anyone else, so my family would have to marry me 
to him," she added. "But I have read the Koran, I 
know that using force doesn't make the marriage 
valid."
"At first, her family was distraught," Khalida 
Ahmad, a socio-legal officer at the War Against 
Rape, an NGO which helps rape victims, told IRIN 
in Karachi. "Her father brought poison to kill 
them all, but an uncle rallied them, and they got 
the case registered."
Now the family is pursuing the case despite 
intimidating phonecalls and threats that include 
their house being fired upon.
HUDUD LAWS INSPIRE FEAR
But Khalida finds these threats less worrying 
than the threat posed by the law itself - the 
Hudud laws, under which rape cases are 
registered, and under which a rape victim who is 
unable prove her case risks being accused of 
adultery. These laws make consensual sex outside 
marriage a cognizable offence, while marital rape 
and raping a child-bride are no longer offences.
Last year, a district court in the North West 
Frontier Province (NWFP), which borders 
Afghanistan, convicted Za'faran Bibi, a pregnant 
young woman, for adultery after she complained of 
rape, and sentenced her to death by stoning. An 
intense campaign by women's groups led to an 
international outcry. In August 2002, the Federal 
Islamic Court acquitted her, ruling that 
pregnancy was no proof of adultery - as in the 
internationally known case of Amina Lawal in 
Nigeria more recently.
The Hudud Ordinances were promulgated in 1979 by 
the then military dictator, Gen Ziaul Haq, as 
part of his "Islamisation programme". In addition 
to adultery and fornication (Zina) offences, they 
deal with offences related to theft, alcohol and 
drug consumption, and false accusations in court 
(Qazf). Their fifth component is the Whipping 
Ordinance, which prescribes hadd punishments such 
as up to 100 lashes or stoning to death.
STEEP INCREASE IN WOMEN PRISONERS
In 1979, there were only 70 women in prisons 
country-wide. After the promulgation of the Hudud 
laws, that figure shot upwards, reaching 6,000 by 
1988, mostly under the Zina Ordinance. Since the 
end of Ziaul Haq's era in 1988, the number of 
Zina cases has dropped: the Human Rights 
Commission of Pakistan estimates that in 2002 
there were 2,200 women prisoners in Pakistan.
The imprisoned women were usually "the poorest of 
the poor", Nasir Aslam Zahid, a former supreme 
court judge and one-time chairwoman of the 
National Commission on the Status of Women 
(NCSW), which recommended a repeal of the Hudud 
laws in its 1997 report, told IRIN in Karachi.

The 1997 report notes that prior to the 
introduction of Hudud, adultery was not a 
criminal offence, but a personal matter. Only 
directly affected persons - a wife or husband - 
could register cases, but only against men, as a 
protection for women in a male-dominated, feudal 
society where women are rarely in control of 
their lives; the offence was punishable with a 
relatively minor fine and/or imprisonment, and 
the state could not be a party.
"These laws are mostly used for revenge," Parveen 
Parvaiz, a Karachi-based lawyer, told IRIN. 
"Mostly, it's parents registering cases against 
daughters who marry against their wishes, and men 
trying to get back at ex-wives who remarry."

WOMEN'S COUNCIL RECOMMENDS REPEAL
Now, another government-formed NCSW has 
recommended that these laws be repealed, thus 
reviving this debate. The recommendation was met 
with vehement opposition by religious parties. 
Veiled women demonstrated against it, and the 
NWFP provincial assembly, which is dominated by 
the religious groups that swept into power in the 
provincial legislature on the strength of anti-US 
sentiments following the US-led campaign in late 
2001 to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan, passed a 
unanimous resolution condemning the 
recommendation as part of a "conspiracy against 
Islam".
But there was also support for it: women's groups 
in Karachi and the capital, Islamabad, staged 
noisy counter-protests defending the 
recommendation.
Pakistan's higher courts have always overturned 
Hadd sentences on appeal, and most women accused 
of Zina are eventually acquitted - as many as 95 
per cent, according to a former chief justice of 
the Federal Islamic Court, Mohammad Afzal Zullah. 
But acquittal does not compensate for years of 
imprisonment, humiliation and social ostracism, 
activists note.
Hudud supporters cite the high acquittal rate as 
proof that the problem lies not in the law, but 
in its implementation. "At least those thousands 
of women are only in prison," Dr Farida Ahmad, 
president of the Jamiat-e Ulema-ye Islam (JUI) 
women's wing and a member of the National 
Assembly, told IRIN. As a member of the committee 
that recommended the repeal of the Hudud 
Ordinance, she cast one of the two dissenting 
votes.
"After all, women haven't been punished under 
these laws, thanks to the strict evidence 
requirements," she stressed.
Conviction under Hadd can take place on voluntary 
confession of the accused - or the eyewitness 
testimony of four adult Muslim men of good 
character. The evidence of women and religious 
minorities is excluded by default, although they 
can be punished under these laws.
In Zina cases, the four Muslim men of good 
character must be eyewitness to the act of 
penetration - a condition so impossible to fulfil 
that many interpret it as a safeguard against 
false accusations of promiscuity, since the 
punishment for false accusation (Qazf) in Hadd 
cases, is 100 lashes. So far, there had been no 
Qazf convictions, the NCSW chairwoman, former 
Supreme Court Judge Majida Rizvi, told IRIN in 
Karachi.

In the 1980s, at least some women convicted under 
Zina suffered the pain and humiliation of the 
whip - 15 stripes each under Ta'zir 
(discretionary punishment as opposed to the 
compulsory Hadd punishment) which is part of the 
Hudud Ordinances.
NEED FOR REFORM
"If a law is not being implemented properly, 
that's an administrative matter," Shaiq Usmani, a 
retired Sindh high court judge, told IRIN in 
Karachi. "But this law itself is wrong, it can 
never bring about any justice - so it can't be an 
Islamic law, because Islam is about justice."
"It is a flawed legislation that can't be fixed, 
its drafting is flawed, its motive is flawed," 
Majida Rizvi asserted. "It was brought in 
undemocratically, as an ordinance. If the present 
government really wants to bring in laws based on 
Islam, then the proposed laws should be 
circulated and debated publicly and in 
parliament, and it should ensure that they are in 
conformity with the injunctions of Islam, which 
the Hudud laws are not."
The government has yet to make public the most 
recent NCSW report, which the religious lobby is 
unlikely to accept quietly. With vocal women's 
rights groups determined to continue fighting for 
repeal, the controversy is likely to rage on for 
some time yet.


_____

[2]

Gulf News
October 27, 2003

Letter from Lahore: Reaction to violence bill mirrors social schism
By Kamila Hyat

While the presence of nearly 70 women in the 
Punjab Assembly has done little to elevate the 
level of debate, it does seem to have forced a 
greater measure of decorum within the house.

The language so often used in the past, the 
ribald remarks that seem to lie at the core of 
Punjabi humour and the open trade of abuse 
appears to have been at least curtailed, if not 
ended.

There also appears to be a greater will to 
legislate on issues of significance to the 
public, and the latest evidence of this came in 
the form of a somewhat surprisingly progressive 
draft bill on the prevention of domestic 
violence, put forward by a woman member of the 
Treasury. What was disappointing however is the 
swift, strong criticism that the proposed law has 
been met with.

Duality

Not only the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), but 
even the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) reacted by 
angrily criticisng the government for proposing 
such a bill.

While, within 15 minutes, as the text of the law 
was circulated, better sense appeared to take 
root among PPP parliamentarians, as women members 
of the party pointed out that it should not be 
blindly opposed, the attacks appearing in the 
press suggest the kind of social schisms, the 
peculiar duality that exists in society.

Even though cases of abuse of women and children 
make news each day, the Press appears to have 
decided that the new bill to curb this is somehow 
un-Islamic.

With a few brave exceptions, even the normally 
more liberal English-language press has come out 
in open criticism of the proposed draft. Figures 
show at least 5,000 women were burnt alive in the 
Lahore area alone by their husbands or in-laws 
over the past five years. Electrocution is 
surfacing as a new manner in which to torture and 
kill women while up to 80 per cent of children in 
the country reportedly suffer physical abuse.

Despite this, laws to curb this are still regarded as largely unacceptable.

Government intervention, particularly against 
male, is seen as a sacrilege of sorts.

The presence of views so hostile to the new law 
suggests how deeply split society is. On the one 
hand, forces of modernisation mean that on 
Lahore's catwalks present clothes that closely 
emulate designers in the West, new theatre 
productions take their inspiration from 
screenplays such as Moulin Rouge and cable TV 
means that the latest Hollywood entertainment is 
available in thousands of homes.

And yet, at the same time, people refuse to 
recognize a need to address deeply entrenched 
problems in society - holding out inaccurate 
examples of ill-disciplined teenagers in the West 
or immorality in European society, as the basis 
on which to defend their views.

Wide gap

It is clear then that a great deal still needs to 
be done to make politicians, and journalists, 
more aware of the realities of society and to 
bridge the gap between tradition and modernity 
which seems to be growing wider by the day.

While on the one hand, western-inspired clothes 
are more commonly seen on Lahore's streets and at 
dance parties than at any time since the 1970s - 
the period before the Islamisation drive of the 
late General Ziaul Haq - on the other hand 
mindsets appear to be becoming increasingly 
narrow.

The challenge of bridging this gap, of changing 
prevailing public opinion, is a huge one - but it 
is clear it must be undertaken if any real 
difference in society’s ability to protect its 
most vulnerable members is to be seen over the 
next few years and laws such as the one proposed 
in the Punjab Assembly this week are to be 
accepted more readily.

- Kamila Hyat is with the Human Rights Commission 
of Pakistan and former editor, The News

____


[3]   [THE LAND OF RISING SONS. . .: SEXIST INDIA TAKES THE CAKE ]

o o o

The Times of India
OCTOBER 28, 2003
EDITORIAL

Daughters of the East

The saga of India's missing girls famously placed 
by Amartya Sen at 35 million gets curiouser and 
curiouser.

While declining child sex ratios (the number of 
girls to 1,000 boys) have been a matter for 
concern for our demo-graphers for a while, the 
gory details are only now slowly emerging. A new 
report —Missing...Mapping the Adverse Child Sex 
Ratio in India" suggests a discomfiting 
connection between urban prosperity and gender 
prejudice. In other words, we may need to look 
beyond ignorance and illiteracy, the usual 
bugbears, to understand the alarming increase in 
female child mortality. The lowest CSRs are 
recorded in Punjab and Haryana, which by any 
yardstick would count among the better-off 
states. In parts of Haryana, the ratio was 770 to 
1,000. It is a similar story of shame in the 
Capital, easily India's richest and most 
cosmopolitan urban megalopolis. More incredibly, 
the most girlchild-unfriendly district here turns 
out to be upmarket south-west Delhi , with its 
plush villas, mega-malls, politically correct 
schools and residents who think, buy and live by 
global standards. Predictably, the southern 
states do better in terms of CSR, though, even 
they seem gradually to be emulating their 
northern counterparts.

But the real surprise is a region which has 
traditio- nally been a blind spot for most of us 
the north-east. Statistics for the region show 
CSRs that are far above the national average. 
Ironic, considering the attention of demographers 
as well as the media has been focused on the 
usual suspects Punjab , Haryana and the BIMARU 
states. So, why is the north-east relatively more 
gender sensitive? Clearly, there are historic 
reasons for greater value and respect being 
placed on women in this once predominantly tribal 
region, which scores higher than the national 
average on literacy, general health and even per 
capita income. But, equally, one cannot escape 
the suspicion that it is the north-east's near 
isolation that has kept it relatively safe from 
the increasingly regressive influences of the 
mainstream influences that are rapidly spreading 
southward as can be seen from the declining CSR 
trends in Kerala, once hailed as a shining 
example of female empowerment. While it is 
somewhat mystifying that so far no one has 
studied the north-east model to better understand 
its demographics, it is a fair bet that the 
alienated people of the region will for once be 
thankful that they have been left alone.


o o o

The Hindu
Oct 22, 2003

'India should have 35 million more women'
By Gargi Parsai

New Delhi Oct. 21. With a deficit of 35 million 
women reported in the 2001 census compared to the 
three million in 1901, India cannot afford to 
wait till the next census in 2011 to determine 
whether the growing practice of female foeticide 
had waned and the girl-child mortality rate had 
gone up. On an average, there should have been 35 
million more women in the country had the 
standard sex ratio of 945 women to 1,000 men been 
maintained over the years.

To strengthen the monitoring of female foeticide 
and girl-child survival, the Registrar-General of 
India (RGI), J.K. Banthia, has asked all the 
Chief Registrars of Births and Deaths to closely 
monitor the sex ratio at birth every month. As an 
example, 10-crore birth certificates would be 
issued across the country on November 14, 
Children's Day.

The sex ratio in the age group of 0 to 6 has 
decreased at a much faster pace than the overall 
sex ratio of the country after 1981. From 945 in 
1991, the child sex ratio has declined to 927 in 
2001. Sex ratio is defined as the number of 
females per 1,000 males in the population. It is 
an indicator of the decline in the number of 
girls as compared to boys. The child sex ratio is 
an indicator of the status of the girl-child in 
the society.

According to Mr. Banthia, who has formulated a 
brochure `Missing' on Mapping the Adverse Child 
Sex Ratio in India: "The imbalance that has set 
in at an early age group is difficult to be 
removed and would remain to haunt the population 
for a long time to come".

Analysis of the census data shows that those 
parts of the country where technology for sex 
selection is slow in reaching have a much better 
child sex ratio than the areas which are affluent 
and technologically advanced.

The top 10 districts with healthy child sex 
ratios are South in Sikkim (1,036 girls to 1,000 
boys), Upper Siang in Arunachal Pradesh (1,018), 
Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir (1,017), Bastarand 
Dantewada in Chhattisgarh (1,014), East Kameng in 
Arunachal Pradesh (1,011), Kupwara in Jammu and 
Kashmir (1,010), Senapati in Manipur (1,007), 
Mokukchung in Nagaland (1,004) and Badgam in 
Jammu and Kashmir (1,003).

On the lowest rung of the child sex ratio are the 
Fatehagarh Sahib (754), Patiala (770), Gurdaspur 
(775), Kapurthala (775), Bhatinda (779), Mansa 
(779) and Amritsar (783) districts in Punjab. The 
other districts reporting low ratios are 
Kurukshetra (770), Sonipat (783) and Ambala (784) 
in Haryana. Ahmedabad reports a ratio of 814 and 
South-West Delhi of 845. While the national 
average has improved to 927 in the latest survey, 
the State average of child sex ratio is 878 in 
Gujarat, 865 in Delhi, 909 in Rajasthan, 917 in 
Maharashtra, 939 in Tamil Nadu and 897 in 
Himachal Pradesh.


o o o

The Hindu, October 26, 2003

"Alarming decline in female sex ratio"

New Delhi, Oct. 26. (PTI): Prosperity and 
education, it appears, give rise to strong son 
preference of many families in many states in 
India leading to female foeticide, as is evident 
in the decline in their numbers per 1000 boys, 
according to an officially sponsored report.

More prosperous areas like Kurukshetra and South 
West District of Delhi are among the lowest 
scorers in terms of number of girls per 1000 
boys, the report says, warning the resulting 
imbalance as a consequence to these "missing 
girls" can destroy the social and human fabric.

India has seen a decline in child sex ratio - the 
number of girls per 1000 boys in the 0-6 age 
group - over the years. The ratio fell to 927 
girls per 1000 boys in 2001 from 945 per 1000 in 
1991, according to the report 'Missing ... 
Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio'.

The report has been compiled by the Ministry of 
Health and Family Welfare, Office of the 
Registrar General and Census Commissioner and 
United Nations Population Fund.

The child sex ratio was 976 in 1961, 964 in 1971 
and 962 in 1981, the report says, adding a stage 
may soon come when it would become extremely 
difficult, if not impossible, to make up for the 
missing girls.

Well-off states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, 
Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Harayan have 
recorded a more than 50 point decline in the 
child sex ratio over the past 10 years, it says.

o o o

Financial Express
October 27, 2003
OP-ED

Adverse Child Sex Ratio In India
N CHANDRA MOHAN
  Besides righteous indignation, there is not much 
enlightenment that one gets from the public 
debate on how to address the problem of the 
missing girl child in India. At a recent function 
in Delhi to launch a booklet on Mapping The 
Adverse Child Sex Ratio In India, there was a 
shocked silence when the Census Commissioner 
Jayant Banthia made his presentation. But beyond 
enforcing the laws, there is no clarity on what 
to do regarding this problem.

Naturally, slightly fewer females are born as 
compared to males. The sex ratio at birth thus is 
usually between 940-950 girls per 1,000 boys in 
the 0-6 years age group. In sharp contrast, the 
decennial Censuses indicate a much 
larger-than-usual shortfall in female births, 
which is worsening over time in the country: The 
child sex ratio has fallen from 976 in 1961 to 
964 in 1971 and 962 in 1981. Since then, the 
ratio dropped sharply to 945 in 1991 and further 
to 927 girls per 1,000 boys in 2001.

As against a natural deficiency of 50 girls for 
every 1,000 boys in every birth cohort, the 
number of missing girls was as high as 73 per 
1,000 boys at an all-India level in 2001. 
Regionwise, the problem of missing girls is the 
worst in the vanguard agrarian regions of Punjab 
and Haryana.

In Punjab, the deficiency is as high as 246 per 
1,000 boys in Fatehgarh Sahib. Over the 1990s, 
this deficit dangerously worsened in 10 out of 
its 17 districts to an average of more than 200 
girls per 1,000 boys.

Clearly, the practice of determining the sex of 
the unborn child and eliminating it if the foetus 
is found to be female is behind the adverse child 
sex ratio. Neglect of the girl child resulting in 
higher mortality between 0-6 years of age is 
another.

The widespread preference for sons is held 
responsible for this pernicious trend. Sushma 
Swaraj, Union health and parliamentary affairs 
minister, told this newspaper that the hurdle to 
even population control "is society's preference 
for a son".

This preference is characteristic of agrarian 
economies, especially those which evolved from 
slash and burn to settled cultivation with 
ploughs. As Esther Boserup in her academic work 
has shown, plough cultivation demanded 
musculature and, as a corollary, farmers sought 
male heirs to work the family farms. But why 
should this preference for sons persist in 
regions which have now progressed to mechanised 
capitalist agriculture? Why is this problem more 
acute in urban than rural India?

To tackle such deep-seated social attitudes, the 
authorities are making the registration of births 
and deaths compulsory and monitoring these 
numbers. The Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques 
Amendment Act 2002 is also being tightened up to 
ensure a more vigilant implementation in regions 
where the child sex ratio is adverse. But will 
enforcement of laws be enough to address this 
developmental challenge?

o o o

[RESOURCES:]

a)
Enduring Conundrum : India's Sex Ratio : Essays in Honour of Asok Mitra
Edited by Vina Mazumdar and N. Krishnaji.
Delhi, Centre for Women's Development Studies, 2002, ISBN 81-86962-37-9.

Abstract:
Fondly remembering him as 'Census Mitra', this 
book pays tribute to the scholarship and 
extraordinary gender concerns of Asok Mitra, who 
expertise in the census analysis often went 
beyond the confines of demography to directly 
caution the state on the deteriorating decline of 
the female sex ratio in India.  It traces the 
events that inspired and guided the social 
scientists of his time and radically changed the 
pattern of demographic research to give it a 
shift from mere data analysis to one of social 
concern.

The book contains five different articles 
analyzing the diverse trends that underline the 
enduring conundrum of sex ratio in the country. 
The contributors are acknowledged experts on the 
subject of their concern and some of them have 
been associated with Asok Mitra in his seminal 
contribution to women's studies and in his search 
of policies for gender equity.  Seen the 
immediate background of the 2001 Census, the book 
acquires special significance as it draws upon 
the grim lessons of the 1861 Census; Mitra's 
critical analysis of the same compelled the 
government to review census data in the light of 
the diverse inputs it offered for developmental 
policies.

Apart from  paying tribute to Asok Mitra, it is 
also the intent of the book to advocate that the 
theme of sex ratio presents a sensitive indicator 
which can break through unilinear theories of the 
changing status of women or the state of society 
with its existing dominant paradigms of 
development or globalisation.

About the Editors

Vina Mazumdar is a social scientist and pioneer 
in women's studies.  Founder Director of the 
Centre for Women's Development Studies (CWDS), 
New Delhi, she is currently Chairperson of CWDS. 
She was Member Secretary of the Committee on the 
Status of Women in India, which produced the 
path-breaking report Towards Equality.  She 
served as Member of the Planning Commission's 
Working Group on Employment of Women (1977-78) of 
which Prof. Asok Mitra was the Chairman.

N. Krishnaji is a social scientist of great 
repute, especially for his work on poverty and 
pauperization in agriculture.  He has been one of 
the fist non-demographers to make use of the sex 
ratio in his critical analysis on the economic 
transformation and its impact on social change.

Centre for Women's Development Studies
25, Bhai Vir Singh Marg (Gole Market), New Delhi- 110 001, India.
Ph.: 23345530, 23365541, 23366930  Fax:91-11-23346044
E.mail: cwds at vsnl.com   /   cwds at cwds.org


b)

The Economic and Political Weekly, October 11 , 2003
"Sex Ratios and 'Prosperity Effect': What Do NSSO Data Reveal?"
--Siddhanta S, Nandy D, Agnihotri S B
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2003&leaf=10&filename=6372&filetype=pdf


____


[4.]

The Times of India, October 28, 2003
EDITORIAL

LEADER ARTICLE
Unsafe in the City: Create Gender-friendly Spaces
PRATIKSHA BAXI
[ TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2003 12:01:40 AM ]
The recent incidents of rape in Delhi have once 
again sparked off the debate on law reform.

While serious law reform is needed, we also need 
to focus on the fact that insufficient attention 
is paid to the prevention of rape by planners, 
administrators and law enforcement agencies.

Why is it that they do not address the prevention 
of rape as a serious issue while preparing and 
executing the blueprints of the constantly 
changing landscape of cities? Instead of moving 
into more effective mechanisms of legal 
enforcement and gender-sensitive planning, each 
reported incident of rape is reduced to a 
cautionary tale for women. The message is loud 
and clear: Cities are unsafe for women and women 
need to take precautions.

Each time a slum is demolished and large numbers 
of people relocated, the issue of the safety of 
women and girls is neither seriously debated nor 
considered. When a mall, subway or a multiplex 
cinema is built, the idea that the urban 
environment should facilitate rather than impede 
the safety of women is not given any attention.

Why is it that the prevention of rape and sexual 
violence is only about telling women to learn the 
skills of self-defence, use cellphones, avoid 
going out in the dark or calling for increased 
police presence? While the planning of the city 
by itself will not stop all such incidents of 
violence, surely planners who take deterrence 
seriously could contribute significantly in 
creating women-friendly urban environments?

By treating rape as an isolated instance, it 
becomes possible to pin the blame on aberrant 
male sexuality and ignore rape as a systemic and 
political form of violence against all women. It 
allows planners to ignore the fact that public 
spaces are gendered, and the city is divided into 
sexualised zones that are seen as per- missible 
spaces.

In other words, where there are no effective 
techniques of surveillance in place or where the 
urban landscape hinders the means to resist 
violent attacks, the conditions for rape to occur 
are created. The physical and material attention 
to the planning of urban spaces is not friendly 
to women in very basic ways. The Delhi University 
campus, for instance, is one such sexualised 
zone, which is marked by state licence to rape or 
harass women. There is total or near total 
absence of traffic regulation or surveillance by 
the police, and inaction when a complaint is 
lodged.

If there are no preventive measures set up in 
parking lots and other such public spaces, it 
adds to the conditions of criminality. If there 
is no traffic regulation, it allows men to stalk 
women in cars and abduct them. The Delhi 
administration does not treat the university 
campus as a gendered space, to which the 
prevention of rape and sexual harassment ought to 
be central.

Travelling through Delhi on foot, by public 
transport or personal vehicles has always been 
fraught with sexual danger. Today, cars symbolise 
the material culture of rape, telling us that the 
perpetrator is usually middle or upper class; or 
that he has enough capital to escape the law, 
proving false the idea that the working class man 
is the average criminal. For women, the moving 
terrain of rape is a terrifying image that makes 
the capacity to survive each day in the city even 
more difficult to negotiate.


Each time a rape hits the headlines, politicians 
raise a hue and cry about how the media produces 
rapacious behaviour in men. It seems that apart 
from censorship there is no other way of thinking 
on the material culture of rape. Is it not 
important to examine the kind of consumer goods 
â¤" cars, for instance â¤" that become new 
weapons for middle and upper class men to use 
against women of all classes? And the fact that 
women who use cars to access the city without the 
so-called protection of men continue to be at 
risk?

The market does not sell the prevention of rape 
even to those women who could afford to purchase 
objects that aid self-defence such as sprays that 
can momentarily blind. The harassment and fear of 
violence that women face while driving alone in 
the city has not entered the services provided by 
cellphone companies.

We may well ask why it is that cars do not sell 
alarms or sirens that can set off in the instance 
of a rape attack on lines similar to that of 
anti-theft devices? Why is it that car 
manufacturing companies do not care to counter 
the image of cars as part of the emerging 
phenomenon of car-jacking and rape?

Even in the growing market for research, the 
prevention of rape is not an issue. One looks in 
vain for in-depth research studies on the nature 
of sexual violence and the city. The few studies 
that do exist have not been taken seriously.

In addition, the government, urban planners, and 
theorists should think of how to build 
women-friendly urban environments as a small but 
critical step towards addressing the prevention 
of sexual violence against women in public 
spaces. We need to encourage women to use public 
spaces without fear rather than laying down 
restrictions on their movements.

( The author is a lecturer at the Delhi School of 
Economics. This article is exclusive to TOI from 
Women's Feature Service. )

____

[5]

The Hindu
Tuesday, Oct 28, 2003
Book Review


Rethinking caste and gender

GENDER AND CASTE: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan - 
General Editor, Anupama Rao - Editor; Kali for 
Women Publication, K-92, Hauz Khas Enclave, New 
Delhi-110016. Rs. 325.

THE CONCERN of the "Kali for Women" over 
contentious, emotional, social, economical, 
complex issues of women in India is like a 
praiseworthy crusader's challenge. Its benign 
interest in Indian feminism powers the minds of 
thinkers, writers, activists, research scholars 
and teachers to straddle issues in search of new 
possibilities.

The latest series by Kali takes an overview of 
writings available on contemporary Indian 
feminism and seeks to build an archive for 
posterity. The first volume on "Gender and Caste" 
contains essays aimed at provoking an exciting 
debate on a missing link in the feminist movement 
- ignoring the caste issue and remaining 
"incomplete and inexclusive". The book's triumph 
lies in the scale of its views on the 
relationship between gender and caste and the 
politics of indifference.The compilation is a 
scholarly production that will help to serve and 
further academic knowledge about caste-marked 
female subjects.

The material from a large mass of writings, 
spanning decades, has been carefully culled out 
from journals and books, pamphlets and 
manifestoes, speeches and official documents, 
according to the editor of the series. This 
better-late-than-never book is a unique resource 
access piecing together the contradictions and 
dilemmas of caste politics and underlining the 
need for an awareness about the invisible caste 
inequality in the mainstream Indian feminism.

The essays reflect how the Indian feminists have 
been taken to task for their non-representative 
nature of the Dalit Bahujans and how the struggle 
for equality, rights and recognition and the 
political empowerment of Dalit and lower caste 
women poses a strong challenge to Indian feminism.

The volume looks at the emergence of autonomous 
organisations signalling the reconstitution of 
feminism futures for a more divergent 
representation. It poses anew the question of 
understanding the complex history of castes as a 
form of identification and as a structure of 
disenfranchisement and exploitation.

The selection of the two-dozen essays was done in 
the context of the renewed national debate 
triggered off by the 1989 Mandal decision. The 
tendency is generally to deal caste issues only 
through studies of women and labour, or 
sociological studies of women from diverse caste 
communities or studies of kinship and research on 
poverty. Whereas the debates require a different 
argument - like, how feminism should respond to 
the gendered manifestations of caste by orienting 
towards social transformation and how gender 
relations should be re-examined as fundamental to 
broader ideologies of caste.

For convenience, the essays are categorised under 
different themes like land and labour, violence 
and sexuality, voice and literature, the history 
and anthropology of rising Dalit women's movement 
in India. All themes, while examining how Dalit 
Bahujan feminists have challenged reigning 
paradigms and analysing the overlapping 
structures of caste patriarchy and gender 
regulation, however, tug at a basic premise - 
that of caste regulation, particularly the 
ideology of untouchability.

Whether the essay tries to understand Dalit 
women's vulnerability in their three-tier 
subjugation - as a woman, as a Dalit woman and as 
a Dalit woman performing stigmatised labour, or 
an essay on Dalit women as targets of upper caste 
violence - the cry for liberation from sexual 
violation is uniform. The essays make the Dalit 
women visible as a community of suffering and 
their recent attempts to resist all pernicious 
effects. They trace their emergence as a 
recognisable political collectivity and make out 
a case to allow caste and gender to follow same 
trajectories.

By underlining crucial factors in the ideology of 
widowhood or analysing the development of a 
Gandhian agenda of caste reform or discussing 
Ambedkar's claim for separate political interests 
rather than religious inclusion of Dalits into 
the Hindu community, the book makes interesting 
reading. It aptly compares the Dalit mobilisation 
triggered off by caste exploitation with the 
nationalist investment in the new woman 
characterised by upper caste freedom.

The lack of access to land and property, the 
humiliation of being stripped and paraded, the 
evidence of perpetuation of untouchability in 
modern India are accounted as a powerful reminder 
of the futile struggle for rights guaranteed by 
the Constitution. Stressing on renewed feminist 
politics, realignment of political futures, 
modified norms of civility and fairness - the 
book pushes for a rethink on the relationship 
between two powerful ideologies, the caste and 
the gender.

The structure of the book may initially appear 
incongruous but reading it is a satisfying reward 
as it provides a chronicle, a maze of incidents, 
an archive of facts and puts together all that we 
know and all that we ought to know.


SOMA BASU


____


[6]

The Times of India, September 27, 2003

Deconstruction of a Western Myth
RADHA KUMAR

Despite frequent incapacitation by his disease, a 
particularly corrosive leukaemia, Edward Said's 
past years were hugely productive, in writing, 
speech and action.

Towards the end especially, Said's voice had an 
authority born of incessant, merciless testing by 
the agonisingly slender yet frequently raised 
hopes of the Palestinians, the people of his 
birth and of his heart.

Said's best known book is Orientalism, a critique 
of the subjugation of the Arabs to the West's 
vision of themselves; a vision coloured by empire 
and its citizens, who, even when they opposed 
empire, saw native victims as exotic and not 
quite human.

Endlessly reprinted since it was published 25 
years ago, and translated into dozens of 
different languages, Orientalism might well be 
the most famous work of literary criticism to 
date. Certainly, the points Said made in it 
remain as valid today as they were 25 years ago.

Orientalism put literary criticism on the 
political map to a degree and in areas (West and 
South Asia, Africa, South America) hitherto 
unheard of. The book and most of the works that 
followed it, especially Culture and Imperialism, 
were deeply influenced by the Polish imigri 
novelist, Joseph Conrad, on whom Said wrote his 
doctoral dissertation. Conrad, said Said, left 
him with a profound impression of the darkness at 
the heart of imperialism. Chillingly, Conrad's 
ferocious onslaught on imperialism in the Congo 
in Heart of Darkness, published more than 60 
years ago, became essential reading for policy 
analysts when the Rwanda genocide took place 10 
years ago.

The bulk of Said's writings are, however, on the 
Palestinian struggle for nationhood, and they 
range from political overview, as in the Question 
of Palestine, to his auto- biography Out of 
Place, and a voluminous body of OpEds, 
review-length articles, interviews and speeches. 
Because he was such a moving writer, and as 
moving a speaker, it is his work on the 
Palestinian identity and loss that we know most. 
This is a pity because it overshadows his 
penetrating analyses of the successes and 
failures of the Palestinian movement which were 
enriched by his combination of activist 
engagement with academic rigour.

Said has been both praised and vilified as an 
unsparing critic of the Oslo accords of 1993 and 
the peace process they laid out, ironically for 
the same quality of purism. To his supporters, 
Said saw the hollow core of Oslo's reluctance to 
factor in the unequal balance of capacities and 
powers at a time when everyone else hailed the 
accords as a breakthrough in a long stalemated 
occupation. To his detractors, Said was a 
political nihilist who opposed the only chance of 
Palestinian statehood.

Viewed in context, however, Said's bleak 
criticism of Oslo drew on his first hand 
knowledge that the Israelis had been willing to 
grant far more than they did at Oslo during the 
late 1970s (he had himself carried Israeli 
proposals for a settlement to Yasser Arafat in 
1978). He believed that the two communities might 
be able to reach a more feasible, as well as a 
more just, settlement once again if they could 
engage in direct bilateral negotiations. This 
argument runs completely counter to the received 
wisdom on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that 
the Israelis and Palestinians will never reach a 
settlement unless third, fourth and fifth parties 
play honest broker.

Alas, I came across this argument only recently 
and so can no longer ask Said to elaborate, as I 
had hoped to. The label of purism also obscured 
what is, to my mind, Said's greatest personal 
contribution to Israelis and Palestinians â¤" his 
efforts to keep the human spirit alive through 
years of debilitating violence. From the music 
schools that he once ran with the conductor 
Daniel Bahrenboim, to his current work with 
Palestinian groups to establish a new secular and 
democratic Palestinian political party, Said's 
endeavours were to buoy individual humanism 
against faceless hatred.

The new Palestinian party that Said was working 
with has been largely ignored both in the West 
and in India, but it might well turn out to be, 
if allowed to flower, the one key catalyst for 
change. Led by a Palestinian doctor, Mustafa 
Barghouti, who organised the West Bank's first 
community health service, the Palestinian 
National Initiative is a coalition of civil 
society groups and Palestinian legislators that 
have been pushing Arafat's government for 
internal democratisation. According to Said, the 
Initiative is supported by 55 per cent of the 
Palestinians, but its members are routinely 
harassed by the Israeli security services. 
Barghouti himself has been in and out of prison 
and has a slew of charges against him. Helping 
moderates to isolate hardliners in a situation of 
escalating conflict is one of the hardest things 
to do.

Said devoted the best part of his life to this 
end, and had to live under the cloud of death 
threats for trying to do so. Sadly, Said's first 
and last visit to India was in 1997, though he 
was deeply interested in India's history of 
non-violent resistance to occupation. The last 
time that we met, he turned to his wife and said, 
''Mariam, we must travel more in India.'' He may 
not be able to do so, but there are many of his 
colleagues that seek to draw on what experience 
India has to offer.

(The author is a adjunct senior fellow at the 
Council on Foreign Relations, New York)


____


[7]

[Octobr 28 2003]

Deep Turmoil Among [Muslim] Thinkers

by Batuk Vora

Ahmedabad: More and more moderate and sensible 
Islamic scholars are making their space among 
larger Muslim community amidst many a die-hard 
conservatives.

"Reform or Perish" is a new slogan rendered by 
the reformers or moderates. This actually is 
becoming a global  phenomenon, with retiring 
Malayesian Prime Minister Mohathir Mohammed 
calling upon all the Muslims to go back to their 
original roots - to knowledge and peaceful 
co-existence, as ordained in his 'Fifth Column' 
write-up in Hong Kong based weekly Far Eastern 
Economic Review.

Voicing his extreme concern over the prevalence 
of absurd understanding or ignorance among large 
number of his community members about the tenets 
of Quran, which had laid down a word 'Eelam' to 
be followed and 'go to even China to learn new 
knowledge'’ Dr J.S.Bandukwala, professor of 
physics at M.S.University at Vadodara and a 
victim of as many as three attacks on his life 
during the carnage, expressed his anguish 
recently in a speech delivered at Ahmedabad.

Founder of a new rationalist organization called 
SPRAT and one who is tirelessly working for the 
reforms in the Muslim society,  I.S.Jowher, 
former faculty consultant at IIM and a banker by 
profession, organized a recent seminar on reforms 
that was attended by a large number of Muslims 
and scholars at Ahmedabad.

	"Both Muslim extremist ruler-politicians 
and Hindutva hardliners betray their own 
religions. Neither Islamic jihad was going to 
last, nor the Hindu extremists. These are all a 
temporary phenomena. Ultimately what will stand 
out and remain unblemished will be original 
Islamic message of peace and respect to all 
religions and Hindu ethos of tolerance and true 
humane principles. Common man has not abandoned 
true religion" asserted Maulana Wahiduddin Khan 
here in a special question-answer session with 
this writer some time back at Ahmedabad.

Dr. Bandukwala became a target of Hindu 
extremists during the carnage on March 1st 2002, 
his house was attacked but he found warm support 
from his Hindu neighbourers. During the second 
similar attack, he escaped from the house but his 
young daughter could not make it and faced the 
crowd and saved herself in utter frustration, but 
his automobile was burnt down, his household 
belongings and property was destroyed.

Later on she migrated to U.S. after marrying a 
Hindu boy. One of the reasons of such attacks, he 
surmised, was perhaps his long association with 
communal harmony. He had condemned V. S. 
Savarkar’s two nation theory and told a gathering 
just few hours before Godhra massacre that "India 
had only two ways to go ahead: one that of 
Gandhiji and the other of Savarkar". Obviously, 
"Hindu fanatics could not take it".

Bandulwala reminds his listeners that 
conservatives kneel to Allah all the time without 
keeping in mind the Prophet’s own message of 
knowledge. Conservatives became angry at him when 
at one time, after Salman Rushie episode and 
Bandulwala’s words about Rushdie, Muslims issued 
a Fatwa and condemned him as non-muslim. At other 
time, he joined a fast in defence of Dalit 
people. He now implores his community people: 
"Oh, my brothers and sisters, remember that last 
800 years of Islam have perverted this noble 
religion and conservatives have cut down very 
thread of knowledge and education.

Muslims started arriving to India from 11th 
century onward, from Bukhara, Afghanistan, Iran, 
Turkey and Yemen. They spread their religion as a 
religious duty. Nobody made Muslims out of Hindus 
by sword.

New Delhi based Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, well 
known Islamic scholar in entire Asia, told during 
one of his visits to Ahmedabad, that "I have 
investigated far and wide through thousands of 
books in libraries but never foiund any support 
to this theory that Hindus were converted to 
Islam through sword".

During his last visit here, he specifically said 
to this writer in reply to a question that  "both 
Muslim extremist ruler-politicians and Hindutva 
hardliners betray their own religions. Neither 
Islamic jihad was going to last, nor the Hindu 
extremists. These are all a temporary phenomena. 
Ultimately what will stand out and remain 
unblemished will be original Islamic message of 
peace and respect to all religions and Hindu 
ethos of tolerance and true humane principles. 
Common man has not abandoned true religion". He 
went further in a recent public meeting by saying 
that Muslims had not cared for a thousand years 
to condemn Mohammed Gazni who looted Somnath 
temple five-six times. No surprise, his comments 
found good publicity in RSS media every where.
Caravan, a movement run by I.S.Jowher for 
communal harmony and reforms, set its goals to 
establish librarties and reading rooms in Muslim 
areas, basic literacy through schools and videos, 
educational and vocational workshops, etc. Five 
Caravan centers are already functioning in 
Gujarat.

Jowher reminds people that it is true out of 240 
POTA detenues in Gujarat post-carnage, one is 
Sikh and all the rest are Muslims. It is no 
longer a case of justice delayed but justice 
denied outright and communal vindictiveness in 
different form. The killers of 2000 Muslims are 
most likely to go scot-free. The deep frustration 
and distrust against administration is sowing 
deep roots of terrorism, according to many Muslim 
businessmen here, who recently observed a 100 
percent Bandh against police astrocities and 
wrongful detentions statewide.
THE END



____


[8]

The Observer
October 26, 2003

Whose country is it anyway?

Musician Nitin Sawhney says that we should 
abandon our obsession with the issue of 
nationality

So there we have it: a Prime Minister who attacks 
a Muslim country with no provocation or apparent 
justification, a Home Secretary who believes 
there should be a 'test for Britishness', 17 BNP 
councillors and a racist police force. Does 
anyone mind if I don't pay my tax this year?

What particularly concerned me about last 
Tuesday's BBC broadcast of The Secret Policeman 
was that it exposed a continuing trend, rather 
than isolated incidents of racism among new 
police recruits. Take PC Rob Pulling's statement, 
'A dog born in a barn is still a dog; a Paki born 
in Britain is still a fucking Paki', and compare 
it with a Bernard Manning 'joke' - 'They actually 
think they're English because they're born here. 
That means if a dog's born in a stable, it's a 
horse.' A striking fact is that the latter is a 
quote from Manning at a charity dinner attended 
by some 300 policemen (only one of whom was not 
white) in 1995. His audience clapped and cheered 
him on.

Since then, of course, we've had the Macpherson 
report. However, it is difficult to imagine that 
such worthy attempts to weed out institutional 
racism can compete with a culture where laughable 
tests for Britishness and unprovoked attacks on 
defenceless countries perpetuate the myth that 
immigrants and asylum seekers pose a threat to 
the wider population. I read in a recent Observer 
Magazine that 39 per cent of teenagers believe 
the single biggest political issue is the 
regulation and control of asylum seekers. With 
such alarming statistics, it hardly helps for 
David Blunkett casually to dismiss last Tuesday's 
broadcast as a 'covert stunt' where he should be 
suggesting new ways to combat racism in the 
police.

One example of such racism in last Tuesday's 
documentary showed one recruit, PC Andy Hall of 
the Greater Manchester Police, proposing: 'We 
should have armed guards like on that Calais 
fucking crossing ... with guns, and any cunt 
tries to get over, fucking shoot them.' Such 
strong views are an obvious extension of a 
culture where asylum seekers have become the 
latest scapegoats for racists everywhere.

One issue I found particularly disturbing in The 
Secret Policeman was the targeting of Asians by 
the police: 'To be honest, I don't mind blacks, 
proper blacks. It's just Pakis, they claim 
everything.'

'I class them as one thing and that's it, Pakis.'

'I'll admit it, I'm a racist bastard. still a fucking Paki'

It is quite shocking to see how racists are even 
prepared to create hierarchies of prejudice for 
different cultures, particularly within the 
police force. I believe that the roots of such 
ignorance are far deeper and wider than The 
Secret Policeman might suggest. Instead of 
treating the symptom by screening for anti-Asian 
police, we should examine the cause. The clear 
absence of sufficient Asian role models in 
mainstream sport, music and fashion is a sad 
reflection of a Britain segregated by fear, 
resentment and ignorance throughout society. It 
is also a direct consequence of the linguistic, 
religious and cultural barriers that have made 
integration such an arduous struggle for British 
Asians. Addressing issues of multicultural 
education and media support could soften this 
struggle.

There have been tenuous steps in that direction. 
The school curriculum for many subjects has been 
transformed to embrace cultural diversity. 
Television icons such as Sanjeev Bhaskar and 
Meera Syal have paved the way for an influx of 
Asian celebrities, and sports personalities such 
as Nasser Hussain have opened doors for those who 
wish to pursue a pluralistic vision of Britain.

However, I believe that ultimately racism can 
only be challenged by abandoning the emphasis 
that governments and the media place on the issue 
of one's nationality. To be honest, I have never 
really understood the concept of national pride. 
After all, no one has ever achieved their 
nationality. The geographical landmass on which 
we happen to have been born is simply a product 
of chance. So why should we make our nationality 
synonymous with our identity? In an enlightened 
world, surely it is time to see people as people 
and not products of various countries. Such 
attitudes only lead to war and racial ignorance. 
Surely, when the world is becoming increasingly 
volatile, it is time to focus on human rights and 
not national territorialism.

In response to those featured in last Tuesday's 
documentary, I would like to quote Article 7 of 
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: 'All 
are equal before the law and are entitled without 
discrimination to equal protection of the law.' I 
look forward to the day when that view is shared 
by the law itself.


____


[9]

University of Chicago
The South Asia Seminar cordially invites you to 
attend a talk by Ajay Skaria, Professor of 
History, University of Minnesota:

"Reading Gandhi: The Question of the Neighbor"
Thursday, October 30, 4:30 pm
Foster 103 (South Asia Commons)
For questions and comments please contact 
Sharmistha Gooptu at <sgooptu at uchicago.edu>



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

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