SACW | 1 Nov. 2003
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Sat Nov 1 04:18:23 CST 2003
SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE | 1 November, 2003
[Please note, the new redesigned South Asia
Citizens Web web site is now definitively located
at http://www.sacw.net/
The earlier URL for the South Asia Citizens Web
web site <www.mnet.fr/aiindex> is no longer
valid; Google cache may be used to trace pages
held at the old location. ]
_______
[1] Pakistan-India: Press Release (Pakistan Peace Coalition)
[2] UK: Amartya Sen criticizes faith schools (James Doherty)
[3] Exhibit in the US: Composing Indian History,
One Carefully Framed View at a Time (Holland
Cotter)
[4] India: Sign on online appeal to Mr. Atal
Bihari Vajpayee to stop harassment of Dr. Mallika
Sarabhai
[5] India Ayodhya Hen Starts Laying Eggs (Ram Puniyani)
[6] India: "Whenever communal violence occurs, it
is the women who have to bear the brunt of it,
but why?" (Amrita Pritam)
[7] India: On the Saraswati Heritage Project (Shrubha Mukherjee)
[8] Pakistani Activist and Parliamentarian To
Release Indian Singer's Music Album (3rd Nov,
Bombay)
[9] India: Misspelt violence (Shanta Gokhale)
[10] USA: Upcoming Public Discussion: Asha
Amirali on Okara Land Rights Movement in Punjab,
Pakistan (Nov.4, Washington)
--------------
[1]
Pakistan Peace Coalition
PRESS RELEASE
October 30, 2003, Karachi
The proposals announced by the Government of
India for normalizing relations with Pakistan and
Pakistan government's response, though a very
welcome development, leave much to be desired.
The Indian proposals are more comprehensive and
if implemented, will go a long way to facilitate
and expand people-to-people contact and
interaction on a large scale between the two
countries, though it would have been much better
if the Indian Government had not ruled out
dialogue with Pakistan for the time being. On the
other hand, Pakistani response, while accepting
the majority of Indian proposals, not only
postpones two important ones namely the reopening
of land route between Khokhropar and Munabao and
the introduction of a ferry service between
Karachi and Mumbai but also includes what sounds
like a negative element, that of offering help to
the rape victims from Indian Kashmir.
It is high time that the governments of Pakistan
and India put an end to their 56 years-long
propaganda game of one-upmanship against each
other, which have cost the two peoples dearly in
terms of their welfare and progress in all
fields. It is time that their decisions and
utterances reflected the long-denied wishes and
aspirations of the more than one billion people
of the subcontinent for friendly good-neighbourly
relations and for creating an atmosphere of
durable peace and stability.
PPC urges upon the governments of Pakistan and
India to immediately begin implementing the steps
already announced, without any reservations, and
resume meaningful dialogue with sincerity and a
commitment to the people of the two countries.
KARAMAT ALI & B.M. KUTTY
Members of National Committee Pakistan Peace Coalition [PPC]
_____
[2]
The Scotsman
Wed 29 Oct 2003
Nobel winner attacks faith schools
JAMES DOHERTY
A NOBEL prize-winner, who is credited with
helping to transform education in the developing
world, has criticised the Scottish Executive's
stance on denominational schools, claiming
single-faith establishments damage educational
attainment.
Amartya Sen, an economist from India, made his
comments yesterday in a keynote speech to the
Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers in
Edinburgh. In his address to ministers from 52
Commonwealth states, Mr Sen criticised the
support given by Tony Blair, the Prime Minister,
and Jack McConnell, the First Minister, to faith
schools.
He told the ministers: "I personally believe that
even the UK government makes a mistake in
expanding, rather than reducing, faith-based
schools, adding, for example, Muslim schools,
Hindu schools and Sikh schools to pre-existing
Christian ones."
Mr Sen further stressed "the importance of
non-sectarian and non-parochial curricula that
expand, rather than reduce, the reach of reason",
claiming that faith schools reduced individuality
and threatened attainment levels.
A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland
defended the status quo, saying: "All parents
have the right to have their children educated
according to their own beliefs. Many
non-Christian families choose a Catholic
education owing to its adherence to a moral code."
In May 2001, Mr McConnell described Catholic
schools as offering "a positive choice and a
solid record of achievement to parents and
pupils".
A spokeswoman for the Executive said yesterday:
"We believe that denominational schools provide
an important strand in parental choice in
education and make a positive contribution to
raising achievement and attainment.
"We value this and would expect to see them continue," the spokeswoman added.
_____
[3]
The New York Times
October 31, 2003
Composing Indian History, One Carefully Framed View at a Time
by HOLLAND COTTER
NEW HAVEN - Life happens, but history is made, as
in invented, cooked up. You blend together
events, people and places, stir in ideology, and
presto, you have a docudrama version of reality.
The truth is in the mix somewhere.
Art, in its role as visual history, naturally
shares this formula, most obviously in history
painting, commemorative sculpture, religious and
political architecture. They are all out to sell
a point of view, and the more inventively or
insistently they do so, the readier we are to
overlook the manipulation or buy the message.
Few art forms are as magnetic as photography.
None can record more faithfully or dissemble more
convincingly. This paradox is the impetus behind
two finely chiseled exhibitions at the Yale
Center for British Art, "Traces of India:
Photography, Architecture and the Politics of
Representation," and the smaller, complementary
"Company Culture."
Both are visual essays, think pieces. If you are
allergic to such things, can't bear to read wall
labels, or are firm in a belief that art speaks
for itself, you might not consider the larger
show to be an art exhibition at all. But if
you're comfortable with an expository format and
have the time and energy to engage with - which
doesn't necessarily mean agree with - the show's
arguments, there is a lot for you here, not least
dozens of extraordinary images.
The story the two shows share begins with a
historical coincidence: the invention of
photography and the consolidation of British rule
in India in the first half of the 19th century.
The monopolistic merchant corporation called the
East India Company, under the auspices of the
British government, had been on the subcontinent
for 200 years. The company initially came to buy
spices and silks, but soon took over the shop.
Britain supplied troops to protect its interests,
and India was paternalistically embraced as part
of the fabric of a greater Britain.
As part of this proprietorial arrangement (and as
a way to make it popular at home), British
artists were enlisted to capture the subcontinent
in images. And their role is examined in "Company
Culture," a smart introductory show gleaned from
the Yale Center's collection and organized by
Morna O'Neill, a doctoral candidate in Yale's art
history department.
Among the first arrivals in the late 18th century
were William Hodges and the uncle-nephew team of
Thomas and William Daniell, and they came with
conflicted agendas. Although their job was
documentary, even quasi-scientific, they were
landscape painters steeped in the Romantic
tradition. Not surprisingly, they filtered their
new and overpoweringly exotic subject through a
Romantic lens, softening and domesticating it.
They also brought to it a distinct gloss with a
built-in contradiction, depicting India as a
classically timeless culture but one in sad
decline.
Timelessness - the notion that the best ancient
Indian art and architecture corresponded to a
Keatsian ideal of imperishable beauty - suited
British needs: it confirmed that India was indeed
worthy of acquisition. The concept of decline had
uses, too, justifying a protective stewardship
and turning India into a vast museum filled with
relics of better days.
India's architectural monuments, at once sublime
and picturesquely crumbling away, offered
evidence for both bolsters of the imperial ideal.
And photography, with its vaunted objectivity,
was well suited to conveying them. This is where
"Traces of India," organized by Maria Antonella
Pelizzari, a former associate curator in the
photographs collection at the Canadian Center for
Architecture in Montreal, picks up the historical
thread.
The medium, with its reputation as a mechanical
recording device, unprejudiced, all-seeing, held
instant appeal for the era's equivalent of art
historians, intent on collecting, archiving and
codifying India's elite ancient culture.
Pioneering archaeologists of South Asia like
Alexander Cunningham, James Fergusson and James
Burgess were enterprising and in many ways
admirable men, who came to their task from
unlikely backgrounds. Fergusson, for example, was
an indigo planter who picked up archaeology out
of sheer curiosity, and went on to uncover some
of the greatest Indian Buddhist monuments. He was
an enthusiastic proponent of photography as a
scientific instrument, and back in England he
researched portions of his highly influential
books from photographs alone, often of sites he
had never seen.
One section of the show is made up almost
entirely of early pictures of archaeological
sites, and they are thrilling. Sculptures now
long since housed in museums seem to be sprouting
straight from the earth; details of their carving
come through with electrifying clarity. The
photographers themselves - among them Linnaeus
Tripe and later Felice Beato, Samuel Bourne and
John Murray - worked with prodigious diligence.
Tripe recorded, in a series of 21 pictures,
joined end to end in a scroll, an inscription
running around the entire base of an important
Hindu temple in South India. His undertaking,
technologically awesome given the primitive
equipment he was working with, seems to have been
entirely self-assigned. It is also thanks to him
that we have pictures - a few are in the show -
of sculptural reliefs from the Buddhist stupa of
Amaravati. He took them in 1858; a year later a
group of these fabulous objects were sent to
London, where, left outdoors on a wharf for a
year, some of them were half-obliterated by the
English weather and Victorian air pollution.
Apart from the Amaravati material, though, most
Indian monumental art and architecture reached
England in the form of photographic reproduction.
And images like Beato's immaculately composed
views of the Taj Mahal, and Murray's radiant
three-part panoramic shot of the Moti Masjid, or
Pearl Mosque, in the Agra Fort, inspired a vogue
for Indian tourism, yet another form of invoking
proprietary privilege.
Also with the aid of photographs, Britain
concocted at-home adaptations of Indian design.
Architectural forms - particularly those
associated with the Mughals, Britain's imperial
predecessors in South Asia - turned up in public
buildings like the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and
in festive spectacles like the Great Exhibition
in London in 1851. In India itself, meanwhile,
the British were designing government buildings
in so-called Anglo-Indian style, with each new
example duly recorded by the camera for
international viewing.
But by midcentury, long-simmering anti-British
sentiment in India exploded in a popular revolt
that the British referred to as the Mutiny of
1857. Many soldiers and civilians, British and
Indian, died in the conflict, and overnight the
political climate in India changed. A retributive
British government grew more controlling, and
architectural photography found a new role as
part of a propaganda campaign to promote images
of British valor and Indian treachery.
Places where Britons had been killed were
converted into shrines, their sanctity
perpetuated and broadcast in pictures. In an
infamous example of staged history, British
military might was extolled in a photograph by
Beato of the ruins of the Sikandar Bagh Palace in
Lucknow, where 2,000 rebel Indian soldiers had
been killed. Beato arrived on the scene a year
after the battle. But to recreate its flavor, he
had the remains of the rebels disinterred and
scattered around the courtyard for the shoot.
From that point on, the British Raj itself went
into decline and ended, to assume a dramatized
life in photographs, memoirs and "Masterpiece
Theater." And an independent India took charge of
its own history, past and present, sometimes
delineating it in part through ideologically
charged representations of architecture.
The Taj Mahal sustained its Romantic allure:
Indian movie stars and rock groups continue to
pose in front of it. The Red Fort in Delhi, once
a Mughal stronghold, became a symbol of the new
nation, as illustrated in a school textbook
picture from the 1970's in which Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru addresses a crowd from the
fort's ramparts while resistance heroes from
earlier eras hover protectively in the sky.
Although many elements in this image are
photographically derived, they are joined
together as a painting in which naturalistic
scale is off kilter and visionary events are
treated naturalistically. In post-Independence
India the role of documentary photography changed
somewhat, at least officially. As the historian
Partha Chatterjee notes in the indispensable
catalog to "Traces of India," Indians preferred
to present historical events and cultural symbols
in terms associated with sacred art rather than
with the "profane realism of photography."
Increasingly, he suggests, under colonialism
Indians came to view the Western concept of
reality - based on rationality and exemplified in
a linear impulse to organize, categorize, collect
and record - as morally problematic and
intellectually delusional. Whatever its
philosophical underpinnings, however, the
politics of representation embedded in
architecture and photography, and examined in
these illuminating shows, is still operative in
India today.
The 1992 destruction of a mosque in Ayodhya,
built on the supposed site of an ancient Hindu
shrine, ignited religious violence that still
burns. And three generations of post-Independence
Indian photographers - men and women, a mere
handful of them known in the West - continue to
record, interpret and invent an Indian history,
that supremely charged epic that Fergusson
described as "written in decay," and that
Rabindranath Tagore, with exquisite theatrical
flair, declared resistant to "the cyclonic fury
of contradictions and the gravitational pull of
the dust."
[PHOTO SOURCE:] Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal
[CAPTION:] A paper negative of the Pearl Mosque
in Agra Fort by John Murray, circa 1860.
"Traces of India: Photography, Architecture, and
the Politics of Representation" and "Company
Culture" remain at the Yale Center for British
Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, Conn.,
(203)432-2800, through Jan. 11.
______
[4]
Dear friends,
I am forwarding to you an appeal to Mr. Atal Bihari
Vajpayee to stop harassment of Dr. Mallika Sarabhai.
To see the text of the appeal and sign it you have to
click the link (URL) given below:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/260152273
If simple clicking it does not take you to the
petition window, you may have to highlight the link,
and copy-paste it in the browser's Address box at the
top. The click should take you to the appeal window.
Simply click on 'continue' button, and fill in the
optional boxes labeled 'organization' and 'Any
comments?' Finally, click on the 'submit' button and
bingo, you would be done. You would be able check your
own signature along with othersí by clicking on
'review signatures' link.
Thanks you,
Regards,
Satinath Choudhary
____
[5]
(Milligazette Nov. 1, 2003)
Ayodhya Hen Starts Laying Eggs
Ram Puniyani
Nation breathed the sigh of relief as the proposed
Ramdarshan and Ram Sankalp Sabha of VHP-Sangh Parivar
ended in a whimper (17th October). The menacing
postures of the leadership of VHP sent a shiver down
the spine of peace loving countrymen. We witnessed
with horror the VHP ëheroí Dr. Praveen bhai Togadia
threatening the communal violence in case kar sevaks,
nay Ram sevaks and Ram Bhaktas, are stopped on their
way to the ëdevotionalí journey. We witnessed with
horror that despite the threat of communal violence
Dr. Togadia was not put behind the bars, which is
routinely done to any one threatening social peace.
But of course all the criminals are not equal as
regularly demonstrated by the progenitor of Ram temple
movement, the current home minister, the Sangh
proclaimed reincarnation of Sardar Patel, Mr. Lal
Krishna Advani.
The whole episode was very revealing. Various aspects
of the current dynamics came to surface. How are the
timings of such darshans, sankalps calculated? In one
of the talk shows when a top VHP functionary
(B.P.Singhal) was questioned as to how such overt
manifestations of Rambhakti take place just before
proposed elections, he aggressively retorted that if
ëweí benefit on electoral ground from a particular
tactic why we should not use it. So the last curtain
in the Rambhakti is being unveiled from the proponents
of temple itself. Temple agitation is not a religious
movement, it is a political movement. The basics have
been made clear for us by the horses themselves and
for this we do not need the interpretations of ëpseudo
secularistsí any longer. So as and when elections are
announced one can visualize the meter of Rambhakti
breaking the upper barriers and surge of this
ëdevotionalí issue reaching its acme.
As a run up to the event, the VHP demanded that no
restrictions should be put on the Ram Bhktas, to
Ayodhya, the war zone of electoral battle. Not many
will recall that Ayoddhya as such means a zone free
from wars. But since 92-93 Ayodhya has been converted
into a place where initially the mosque was razed to
ground and the Muslims families were butchered and the
biggest insult was hurled on the principles of Lord
Ram whose regime is supposed to be having an
atmosphere in which, the subjects were free from
physical and mental agony. Currently as UP is being
ruled by Mulayam Singh Yadav, who earlier has handled
this type of agitation and restricted its dangerous
portents, there was already a fear in the minds of
Sangh leadership that he may repeat same performance.
So quick came the advice from the PM and DPM that VHP
should be trusted for its peaceful agitation. This was
the same time that Dr. Togadia was wielding his
trishuls and showing its sharpest piercing edges to
the fearful minorities and Nation as a whole. Mr.
Advani and Mr. Vajapayee both ran to the rescue of
their co-parivar members by advising Mulayam that VHP
is trustworthy, essentially in the Orwellian sense.
The terms are being given new meanings,
notwithstanding the memories of Babri demolition when
similar promises were made in front of National
integration council by the then BJP Govt. of UP. VHP
and its affiliates have blood on their hand and right
from Babri demolition to Pastor Stains burning to
Gujarat riots the role of VHP hate campaign and the
association of its members in organizing these events
is obvious to all. It is more obvious to
Advani-Vajpayee duo and thatís perhaps why they
currently are providing all sorts of umbrellas to
their associates.
At every stage of the agitation the turn out was much
below the expected number and some times one feels
that the Ram Temple issue is following the law of
diminishing returns. Even VHP-RSS is not sure so they
have to keep trying and assessing the political worth
of such issues. Itís probably for this that such
agitations are being supplemented by Gujarat type of
anti-Minority pogroms to keep the electoral appeal at
the winning level. Any way, mercifully Mulayamís
strategy paid and the event, which had the potential
of creating a serious disturbance, ended as a damp
squib. The Bharat bandh call given by Mr. Singhal is
an index of the frustration at the failure of this
campaign.
In the whole melee raised by VHP, one important point
got missed out. What do the people of Ayodhya think of
the whole issue? In a different forum in which the
Mahants of Ayodhya, like Mahant Bhavnath and
Madhavacharya who met as a group, Ayodhya ki Awaz,
appealed that they want peace and harmony in Ayodhya
and are opposed to Ram temple agitation. They also
called the bluff of Mr. Ashok Singhal that the Ram
Darshan has been planned in consultation with Mahants.
They pointed out that no decision could be reached at
the meeting and later Mr. Singhal announced, on his
own that the Sants have taken such a decision. In a
sense the VHP is an imposition on the Hindu society,
not its representative body in any sense of the word.
It has been milking the electoral cow of Ayodhya for
its parent organization RSS and its electoral brother
the BJP. At surface they keep threatening each other
but it is a make believe boxing as all the wings of
Sangh Parivar are following the complimentary aspects
of the politics which they think will lead to the
formation of Hindu Rashtra. It is more than clear that
apart from the Muslims, the average person of Ayodhya
is the biggest victim in the divisive politics being
played by VHP. The life at Ayodhya has changed for
worse since the Sangh Parivar has discovered that its
chariot, rath, for power can go through the temple in
Ayodhya. Today Hindus of Ayodhya and nearby places are
as much a victim of the Hindu Rashtra politics as the
minorities are. Every time the VHP launches agitation,
the life in Ayodhya gets disrupted and the business
comes down. The local sants have special reason to be
annoyed as they have been used to seeing the amity of
Muslims and Hindus, and this is always a casualty in
the programs undertaken by the Hindutva politics.
So where does the solution to the Ayodhya dispute lie?
Shankracharya of Kanchi Kampitham has reiterated his
appeal that Muslims should hand over the Babri site to
VHP. Will that solve the problem? If we go to the
roots it is clear that Ayodhya is not a religious or
devotional issue. One remembers poet saint Tulsidas
who when banished from the Ram Temple for the sin of
writing Ramayan in Lokbhasha (avadhi), violating the
law of Brahmins that they should only be using
Devbhasha, Sanskrit, went on to write in his
autobiography, Vinay Chritavali, that he lives in a
mosque. The real devotion and spitrituality does not
require a physical structure. This is a constructed
political issue, which has been raising the emotional
tempest and mobilizing the gullible sections of
society, who are used as a cannon fodder for BJP-VHP
politics. The suggestion that Muslim bodies should
surrender the place to buy peace, while noble (and one
sided) in its intention is not likely to solve the
problem as VHP in reality is not for temple. Its prime
aim is to keep using the issues, which can arouse the
emotions of section of Hindus to make them feel that
VHP-BJP stands for the interests of Hindus. Even if
the offer of Ram temple site is made to VHP, within a
day they will jump to Kashi and Mathura and than a
long list of 2000 odd temples are waiting in the
queue. The issues like Bhoj Shala, Baba Budan Giria,
as odd church in Keral are mere symptoms of the
political psychology, which wants to keep digging the
harmonious roots of the society to keep baking the
bread of its political ambitions.
One is not sure how long they can use the temple issue
to mobilize the people as the failure of expected
response to the present campaign clearly demonstrates.
In that case the threats of Togadias to start the
riots is the other armamentarium in the hands of
champions of Saffron agenda. The solution, though
complex has to be sought at the political level. The
retrograde political gambits of Sangh parivar have to
be defeated at political and social level. The social
consciousness, which has been doctored against the
minorities, against secularism, against composite
nationalism and plural ethos has to be fought against.
The political canvass has to be brought back to the
real problems of the society, those of bread butter
and shelter, to make sure that the emotion based
campaigns, hate based ideology and politics with
anti-democratic agenda of Sangh Parivar is defeated in
a comprehensive way. How can secular forces stand up
to defeat this politics is a million lives question!
____
[6]
Metro Plus Delhi | The Hindu
Thursday, Oct 30, 2003
The dancing skeletons
" I have seen many such women. Whenever communal
violence occurs, it is the women who have to bear
the brunt of it, but why?"
"Aj aakhan Waris Shah nu,
Tu kabra wichon bol...
Te aj kitabe ish da koi agla warkha phol...
Waris Shah nu kehan... "
(Today, I say to Waris Shah,
To rise and speak from your grave
Today I beseech him to open another page in the Book of Love
Once a daughter of Punjab wept and you wrote volumes
Today a hundred thousand daughters weep
O Waris Shah, rise and look at your Punjab... )
WOUNDED in mind and displaced physically from her
homeland Lahore in the greatest communal division
of greater India, an anguished Amrita Pritam
penned these famous lines in her mother tongue
Punjabi soon after the ordeal. Her extreme
resentment against the distorted social
assemblage where common people, primarily women,
had to suffer horrors in the name of religion,
transferred in poetic form towards one of the
greatest Sufi saints of Punjab, Waris Shah, the
grand old poet of Punjabi romantics.
Jabbed by unfulfilled love, the 17th Century poet
rolled out volume after volume of verses
commemorating the tears of his ladylove. And,
Amrita in 1947, wondered how he would have
reacted to the infinite tales of loss of honour
and home of both Hindu and Muslim women of Punjab
at the time of Partition, most of whom never
returned to their families.
But, 56 years after she wrote those stanzas in
protest, a frail, ailing and aged Amrita still
complains: "We have not progressed. We are still
there, trapped in that mindset."
Recalling those horrid memories of Partition yet
again, a week after the release of Chandraprakash
Dwivedi's film, "Pinjar" based on her second
novel by the same name, she sounds defeated: "One
thing that my writing has failed to do is change
the human mind. What is it that turns a man into
a beast, I failed to answer. I feel that where
values end, obscenity begins."
She is "pleased that a talented man like Dwivedi"
has done the screenplay for her novel. "I wrote
the narrative in 1970. Most of the characters,
especially that of a mad, pregnant woman, are
real." The story chronicles through the tale of
Puro, a victim of circumstances during the
turbulent times of Partition of India, the
shifting of relationships between nations,
communities and individuals. She says, in some
portrayals, she injected her own experiences of
Partition and also bits and pieces of what she
used to hear at a Government official's office at
the Constitution Club in New Delhi those days.
"Our entire family fled. We were living in Gomti
Bazaar area in Lahore. We suddenly became without
a nation. Nothing we called ours was ours,"
recalls the Jnanpith awardee, her wrinkled face
twitching a trifle. Dwivedi, she adds, took her
permission to make the film but nothing beyond.
In fact, the film, instead of spanning 13 years
like the novel, stretches only between 1946 and
1948. Also, Dwivedi added a new character in the
story, that of Puro's brother.
"I do not know about that. I have not seen the
film yet. I long to see it, but I do not know
when it will be possible," says a weather-beaten
Amrita, lying on her bed at her Hauz Khas
residence.
Referring to women victims of Partition, she
says, " I have seen many such women. Whenever
communal violence occurs, it is the women who
have to bear the brunt of it, but why?"
During her eight years in Parliament as a
nominated member in recognition of her immense
contribution to Punjabi literature, Amrita says,
she tried to raise this question in the House
too. "I once asked former Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi, who creates communal violence, and she
said, only politicians. A common man is not
interested in killing people. He wants to go home
early after work to play with his children....
She had a point," recollects the Padma Shree
recipient, her age-beaten face reflecting obvious
pain.
So, what was she trying to say through "Pinjar?"
"I tried to look at the victimisation of women,
even if in the name of religion. At times, it
becomes too horrific for me to relive those
memories of '47," says the longtime editor of
Nagmani magazine who counts many Pakistani
columnists among her friends yet never returned
to visit Pakistan.
But what about picturisation of violence that
might ignite a sense of finger pointing at each
rather than a liberation from it?
"Well, my aim was to echo what I saw and its
significance, and not to judge who started it.
But, how you look at it depends on individual
mindsets," says the writer of "Rashidi Tikat"
before expressing the wish "to rest a while,"
thus closing her tired eyes, the eyes which
stood, witnessed to her words. One leaves her
bedside hoping that the peace of her quiet room
separates her from the present-day life infused
with increasing retribution evident in even
simple, day-to-day occurrences. For, she had seen
enough!
____
[7]
Deccan Herald
October 26, 2003
Stirring things up
The Saraswati Heritage Project envisages tourism
hubs along the 'mythical riverbed' from Haryana
to Gujarat
Union Tourism and Culture Minister Jagmohan's
announcement of the Rs 5-cr Saraswati Heritage
Project aiming at developing the Saraswati river
belt as a cultural-tourist hub has opened a can
of worms. While a section of archaeologists are
crying out hoarse against the the "waste" of
public money in carrying forward a "Hindutva"
agenda, detractors are ready with historical
evidence to show that the existence of Saraswati
is acknowledged even by international experts
having no truck with the Sangh Parivar.
The project envisages the development of 15
circles or centres like Kapal Mochan and Kaithal
in Haryana, Baror and Juni Kuran in Rajasthan,
and Narayan Sarovar in Gujarat. These centres
will be developed along the 800-km belt,
stretching from Adi Badri in Haryana, which is
the source of the river according to
Archaeological Survey of India, to Dholavira in
Gujarat.
According to noted archaeologist Suraj Bhan,
whose thesis was on the existence of the
Saraswati river, the theory that the river was
perennial originating from the mountains and
flowing to the sea and that the river dried up in
the post-Rig Vedic period resulting in the end of
the Harappan Civilisation around c.1800-1900 BC
is nothing more than a myth.
Saraswati, which literally means a river of
lakes, and deified as a goddess, is mentioned for
the first time in the Rig Veda, a ritual text
dated between 1500 and 1000 BC. In the Tenth
Mandala of the Rig Veda, Saraswati is described
as a river flowing between the Yamuna and the
Sutlej.
In later Vedic literature, the Mahabharata and
the Puranas, the Saraswati is said to have
originated at Plaksha prasravana under the
Sivalik belt and disappeared at Vinasana near
Sirsa in Haryana. By the time of the Puranas the
Saraswati became insignificant and a number of
small streams in Prayag, Pushkar, Abu, northern
Gujarat, Gir forest in Saurashtra and Prabhasa
near Somnath on Arabian coast were called
Saraswati, he said.
More recently some geologists have tried to look
for the upper course of the Vedic Saraswati in
the Tons river of the Garhwal region in the
Himalayas.
V.K.M. Puri and B.S.Verma of the Geological
Survey of India have studied the morphology and
hydrology of Markanda (a tributary of Ghaggar) on
Bata and the Tons (a tributary of Yamuna) in this
region. Their hypothesis is that the Tons, a
perennial river fed by the Bandar Poonch glacier
of the central Himalayas in Garhwal region, once
flowed westward through the Bata and Markanda
valleys in the shivaliks. It descended into the
Haryana plains at Adbadri to flow through the now
dry bed of Saraswati along Kapalmochan, Bilaspur,
Mustafabad, Bhagwanpura, Pipli, Kurukshetra,
Pehova etc. in Haryana.
They argue that the metamorphic and quartzite
stones deposited in T0 and T1 terraces in the
Bata and Markanda Valleys at a height of 600
metres, were brought by Tons from its catchment
area. It flowed through the Vedic Saraswati
before 2450 B.C. when the Tons and the Yamuna
shifted to the east. The Yamuna shifted to its
present course around 1800-1900 B.C. The Sutlej
too shifted to its present course about this time
and joined the Beas. These hydrological changes
resulted in the drying up of the Vedic Saraswati
around 1800 BC.
"The question is how can you find the river now
and why should such a huge amount be spent on
something which does not exist?" Describing the
project as a "waste of public money", historian
D. N. Jha said the whopping amount of Rs 5 crore
can be utilised better to provide drinking water
in villages.
"The hullabaloo about Saraswati river should be
considered in the context of the recent trend of
communalisation of history. How can the Sangh
Parivar accept the fact that most of the Harappan
sites are in Pakistan? This project is an attempt
to push back at least some of the important Indus
Valley sites to this side of the border," he said.
Even two very important Vedic texts, including
the Brahmana, specifically mentioned that the
Saraswati was lost in the desert around 1100 BC.
"So what's the point in searching for it in
Haryana or Gujarat?" he asked. "It is a pity that
the Sangh Parivar leaders are not even ready to
give credence to the Vedic texts," Jha said.
[...].
Shrubha Mukherjee
in Delhi
____
[8]
PAK ACTIVIST AND PARLIAMENTARIAN TO RELEASE INDIAN SINGER'S MUSIC ALBUM
Noted Pakistani activist, editor, and
parliamentarian Sherry Rehman will formally
release a music album dedicated to Indo-Pak
amity, sung and composed by renowned Indian
singer and composer from Jammu & Kashmir Seema
Anil Sehgal, on 3 November 2003, at Mumbai. The
release shall be followed by a live peace concert
by Seema Anil Sehgal.
"Sitaron Se Aage Jahan Aur Bhi Hain" is world's
first music album on the poetry of Allama Iqbal,
the greatest Urdu poet of 20th century. Iqbal, an
Indian poet, enjoys the status of a national poet
of Pakistan.
Hailed as the Peace Singer of India, Seema Anil
Sehgal has been singing her especially devised
peace concerts to bring the estranged nations
India & Pakistan and estranged communities Hindus
& Muslims closer through her music.
It may be recalled that Seema earlier sang
SARHAD, the music album dedicated to Indo-Pak
amity. Prime Minister Vajpayee presented the
album to his erstwhile Pakistani counterpart, as
a national gift, during the historic Lahore
Summit.
Seema plans to travel to different parts of the
world with her peace concerts. Those interested
to host her peace concerts may contact her at
<monk at vsnl.com>
'Tum Aao
Gulshan-e-Lahore
Se Chaman-bardoshŠ'
To bring estranged neighbours India & Pakistan
and estranged communities Hindus & Muslims closer
Peace Singer of India
Seema Anil Sehgal
Sings poems of love & peace as
Ms Sherry Rehman
Member: National Assembly of Pakistan
Releases world's first ever music album of
Allama Iqbal
Greatest Urdu poet of 20th century
Sitaron Se Aage
Jahan Aur Bhi Hain
Sung & composed by
Seema Anil Sehgal
You are requested to grace the occasion
Monday, 3 November 2003, 7 p.m.
National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai
Monk Music
Manik Shahani Art Foundation
Pakistan-India Peoples' Forum for Peace & Democracy
____
[9]
Mid Day
October 28, 2003
Misspelt violence
By: Shanta Gokhale
It just so happened that I was reading the Diwali
special issue of the MAVA (Men Against Violence
and Abuse) magazine 'Purush-Spandana' when the
blasts started on our street. Strings of
firecrackers had been carefully laid along both
sides of the street, with atom bombs placed at
regular intervals.
As the crackers blasted their way down the
street, the traffic at both ends halted and
animals ran for cover. In the crazy, stabbing
light they spat out, the faces of those who had
lit them were intermittently revealed. Some
looked ghoulish. Others, cold and expressionless.
Diwali is undoubtedly a violent festival. And so
are our times. Even Mahatma Gandhi's memory has
been violated by us. On October 2, his 134th
birth anniversary, the Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting, Government of India paid him a
Machiavellian tribute.
Combing through the Mahatma's writings the
Ministry came up with that one quote which,
hacked out of its context, would transform him
from an apostle of peace into its exact opposite.
The quote was blazoned across the country in
every newspaper.
What is encouraged by politics and endorsed by
religion, automatically finds expression in
social relationships as well. In such an
environment, it was to be expected that the
"well-dressed, English speaking" rapists of the
Swiss diplomat in the Siri Fort parking lot,
would treat her to a lecture on Indian culture
after they had done the deed. Violence defines
Indian culture today.
It would seem then, that Men Against Violence and
Abuse are fighting a losing battle. This doesn't
mean of course that they and others like them
should not soldier on. But it does mean that they
must be doubly careful about whose views they are
supporting.
In my opinion, they have allowed a Trojan Horse into their Diwali special.
The larger part of the issue is devoted to
stories and articles written by men who value
gender freedom and equality. There is also a long
interview with Dr Jabbar Patel, (unaccountably
left out of the table of contents), in which he
discusses the women characters in his plays and
films, and their relationships with men.
Then there is the cover story. Titled "Today's
Man-Caught in a Trap", it comprises eight essays
by men who write of the ways in which men are
entrapped by social conditioning and pressures.
One of the essays, for example, is about Section
377 and how it defeats any attempt gay men might
make to live a life of unharassed dignity.
In the midst of these explorations is a strange
piece of writing by the popular poet and
activist, Arun Mhatre. It begins as an objective
investigation into the view our society takes of
the husband-wife relationship, and of
extra-marital friendships between men and women.
However, halfway through, it veers into a long
complaint against his wife and their life
together! Suddenly the wife is exposed to readers
who are total strangers to her; people who are
never likely to know her side of the story. To my
mind, Mhatre's essay does violence to his wife's
dignity and right to privacy.
So what exactly are his grievances? Here they are. And don't laugh!
1. Before we got married, my wife and I were two
of a kind. We used to sit around at Nariman Point
as "time-pass", drive all over Mumbai on a
scooter and spent days chatting and laughing
together. Once we were married, I plunged into
activism and she became an office-going housewife
(sic).
2. My wife is away from me for at least eight
hours a day. When she returns from the office, my
mother ropes her in to do housework. I have grown
in depth. She has locked herself within the four
protective walls of the house.
3. This is like divorce. Have I misunderstood
Mhatre totally or has MAVA let a rabid champion
of male-female inequality into its house? I
sincerely hope the innumerable women readers and
sympathisers of "Purush-Spandana" will forgive
the editorial board for not looking carefully
enough before opening the door.
____
[10]
DC COLLECTIVE FOR SOUTH ASIANS (DCCSA)
Invites you to a talk by
Ms. ASHA AMIRALI
on
OKARA LAND RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN:
A NON-VIOLENT, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE FOR
HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
DATE: Tuesday, November 4th
TIME: 7 PM
VENUE: 1201 Physics Building, 1st Floor, University of Maryland, College Park
Supported by Pakistan Association of Greater Washington Metropolitan Area
The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.
Learn about the inspiring struggle of over a
million tenant farmers in Pakistan who, for a few
years, have been in a stand off with a heavily
armed military for ownership rights. The farmers
have been promised land-ownership rights numerous
times starting with the British regime in 1906,
and most recently by President Musharraf. Having
cultivated the land for over a century, the
tenants are now threatened with its loss. Under
the slogan "malki ya maut" - ownership or death,
they have organized themselves and have mounted a
courageous resistance in the face of bullying,
and even torture and abuse by the military.
Ms. Asha Amirali is an activist with the People's
Rights Movement of Pakistan (PRM), a
confederation of people's movements across the
country. She has been closely involved with the
tenants movement in Punjab as an organizer and
media liaison.
DC Collective for South Asians (DCCSA) is a volunteer, non-profit
network of individuals actively engaged in a
broad range of social/political/economic/cultural
issues concerning the South Asian region, and the
South Asian community in the metro Washington DC
area, and beyond.
For more info, contact Sofia Checa at <dccollective at rediffmail.com>
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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 (http://www.sacw.net/).
The complete SACW archive is available at:
http://bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
[The earlier URL for SACW web site
<www.mnet.fr/aiindex>, is now longer operational,
you can search google cache for materials on the
old location]
South Asia Counter Information Project a sister
initiative provides a partial back -up and
archive for SACW. http://perso.wanadoo.fr/sacw/
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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