SACW | 4 Dec. 2003 [ Nehru /Taslima Nasrin book ban / Riyad Wadia / Paul Brass]

Thu Dec 4 01:51:04 CST 2003

SOUTH ASIA CITIZENS WIRE   |  4 December,  2003

From the South Asia Citizens Web:  www.sacw.net

[This issue of the Wire is dedicated to the 
memory of Riyad Vinci Wadia, who died on the 30th 
of November 2003; Riyad was one of India's 
pioneering film makers who made the film 'BomGay' 
and 'Fearless: The Hunterwali Story'.  He had 
been one of the early supporters and well wishers 
of the work by SACW. ]

_______

[1] Nehru and Modern India:
- Legacy of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (Ram Puniyani)
- Nehru: The Invention of India by Shashi Tharoor
- The Man Who Made India by Aravind Adiga
- A Discovery of Nehru (Sagarika Ghose)
[2] India = Cow + Kamasutra	 (Satya Sagar)
[3] India: Marxists As Fideists [on W. Bengal 
government ban on Taslima Nasrin's book 
](I.K.Shukla)
[4] India: Response to Ashutosh Varshney (Paul R. Brass)
[5] India: Adi Anadi: The Excavation of Feminine 
Memory, Jagori's calendar for the year 2004
[6] Sambandh - 2003 Inter Collegiate Competitions 
On Indo -Pak Relations (Hyderbad India)
[7] Remembering Riyad Vinci Wadia

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

[1]

(From Milligazette -1 to 15 Dec. 2003)

Rose in the Bouquet

Legacy of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

Ram Puniyani

The fourteenth November from last few years has become
a low profile, practically ignored event in the life
of the Nation. Decades ago this was an occasion to pay
tribute to the values and visions of builder of Modern
India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Most of his basic
polices, in all the arenas of society have practically
been reversed and a word by mouth campaign is going on
against him. Of all the people in the Hate List of the
current ideologues of the politics of communalism and
blind subservience to American Imperialism, he
undeniably is in the topmost slot, gradually being
forced out from the concepts of policy making and
public memory.

His critics are on both the sides of divide, right and
left. A section of progressives and human right
activists blame him for the ills dodging the country
because of his educational policies and the pattern of
industrialization. The Hindu Right wing on the other,
accuses him of bringing in the alien western values
like secularism in this land! While it is nobody's
case that what he did stands above criticism and
opposition, it is surely to be granted that he did
take the country in proper direction, the direction of
industrialization, educational spread and non
alignment. Surely within these paradigms some of his
policies do require a criticism from the angel of the
adivasi and dalit sections of society. If one is to
overall see the context in which he inherited a
society ridden with feudal system and values, a state
just emerging from colonial grip, he was nothing short
a visionary of high order who executed the polices
which in due course put the country on the path of
progress and peace. This contrast becomes very clear
when one compares our country with the countries which
became independent around that time, especially in the
subcontinent, barring of course the case of China,
where things may be better or worse one does not know
for sure, as it being a totalitarian state what is
projected is again controlled by the state.

Why is Nehru the object of ridicule by the currently
dominant ideology and politics. It was Nehru who
regarded the education and industrialization as the
base of the policy and progress. Apart from the
recommendation of the Bombay plan by the emerging
industrialists of the time who requested for state
intervention to provide the base for their own growth,
Nehru could see the dire need of centralized planning
in most colonial countries whose resources were sucked
out by the colonial powers. Knowing well that heavy
investments are out of question by the private capital
at that time he did come up with the concept of public
sectors and centralized planning. Whatever be the
evaluation of these sectors now, the speed with, which
they are being dumped in to the laps of private
capital on the grounds that they are inefficient, does
not give a fair picture of their role in country's
progress. It is these sectors which provided the
needed structure of the modern state. It is these
policies, which especially brought to the fore the
weaker sections of society, dalits and women included,
in to the social sphere. Interestingly he regarded
educational institutions and industries as temples of
modern India. This stands in stark contrast to the
politics of currently dominant ideology for which
temples are the industries for electoral battles.

In the times when the our PM and the foreign ministers
feel honored that Mr. George Bush gave them a out of
the turn audience, it is difficult to visualize the
times when Nehru could withstand the pressure of
imperialist powers by leading the non aligned
movement, by negotiating the space between two
superpowers for the growth and development of the
country. But that very concept is close to being
buried when the batch of honor of our Government
leaders is, how much they can bow and bend in front of
the might of Uncle Sam. It is another matter that
Uncle Sam, when the crunch comes, prefers to use the
old reliable client state of Pakistan for its
refueling base rather than the new base being offered
by our worthies in the BJP led NDA.

The major reason for which he is denigrated by the
Hindu right is his uncompromising stance on the issue
of secularism. Time and again he realized that he is
leading a secular state, but the society is riddled
with communal mind set. The propaganda of Muslim
League on one hand and of Hindu Mahasabha and RSS on
the other had sown the seeds of communal thinking in
large sections of society. Partition riots and Gandhi
murder came as the result of this venom spread by
communal organizations. His opposition to the
President Rajendra Prasads’ taking part in Somnath
temple inauguration, his regarding the religious
matters as the private matters of individual was quiet
in tune with what father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi
thought, despite the present projections that they had
differences on these issues. For him democracy was not
possible without secularism. And secularism meant
multiple things, keeping state away from the
influence of clerics, separation of education from
religion and giving equal opportunities to all
irrespective of their religion erc.

For him communalism was not a
superficial ideology but a reaction of the feudal
thinking and mindset, which has no place in a modern
democratic state. While he did recognize the
possibilities of communalism in any religion he also
emphasized the it is only majority communalism which
paves the way for fascism.

As a firm believer of rationalism, he did feel that
the communalism will get wiped away with the growth of
industries and education. This thinking, which he
shared with the progressive elements of society had a
deeper flaw. Can an ideology which has its own
autonomous existence, in addition to its rooting in
the social interests of certain classes,
get wiped out on its own? In hindsight one can see
that it was a serious flaw not only of Nehru but most
of the progressives of that time, unfortunately some
of them believe so even today. And so the extra
emphasis needed to weed out this poisonous seed were
not undertaken to the extent at which they were
needed. He did go on to form National Integration
Council in the wake of the first post independence
riots of Jabalpur in 1963. But symbolically this
council has been frozen since the current BJP led NDA
is ruling the country.

One recalls that he did insist upon the UP govt. to
remove the Ram Lalla idols kept surreptitiously by
some Hindutva elements in 1949. But the rot was deeper
in the society and the authorities that be did not
heed to his request. And as they say the rest is
History, whose ill effects are being felt by the
nation today as well. In a way Pandit Nehru and Dr.
Ambedkar were ideal foil to each other. It was on
Pandit Nehru's request that Dr. Ambedkar went on to
draft Hindu Code bill with the aim of giving justice
to the Hindu women. The idea was to begin with the largest community,
which can then be projected as the role model. It was the intense
opposition to this code bill which put spokes in the wheel of social
reforms and later on Shah Bano case took the question
of gender justice on the communal terrain.

Decades after the death of the builder of modern
India, the situation is dismal. All that he stood for
in the social and political sphere is being reversed
at a rapid pace. While he opposed the state
dignitaries visiting holy places in official capacity,
now that has become order of the day. While he was
proudly upholding the case of secularism, now the
concept is under severe abuse and the term pseudo
secular is the most hurting political abuse. While he
was for anti-Imperialist policies today the Nation is
vying for a place in the shadows of US imperialism.
While he wanted social reforms and gender justice
those issues have been communalized to the core. While
he was for the vision of a society where all can live
with dignity and honor, the minorities are feeling
intimidated and the poor are getting poorer and
marginalized. While he stood for rationalism, the
country is honoring karmakands and astrology by
introducing these in university education. While one
should not spare Nehru's mistakes and weaknesses,
there is need to bring back democracy and secularism
and their accompanying paraphernalia as the core
values of our society. Is anybody listening?

o o o

See Also:

Nehru: The Invention of India,
by Shashi Tharoor
www.shashitharoor.com/books/nehru

The Man Who Made India
by Aravind Adiga
www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501031208-552153,00.html

A Discovery of Nehru
Modern India first came to life in his mind, says Sagarika Ghose
www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=35189

_____

[2]

ZNet
December 02, 2003

India = Cow + Kamasutra
by Satya Sagar

India= Cow + Kamasutra. That in general is the 
equation that defines this vast, ancient and 
populous South Asian country even today for many 
people in the West.

I can hear the howls of protest coming in. Sure, 
there are a few ex-hippies who would throw some 
pot into the picture and some serious scholars 
who have in depth knowledge of the place but on 
an average, the image of India in most Western 
societies is one still steeped in the Oriental 
stereotype.

And how could it be otherwise, given the balance 
of power between India and the West over the past 
few centuries, heavily skewed in favor of the 
latter.  Frankly, I don't get upset when I 
confront Western stereotypes since the evils of 
four centuries of colonialism cannot be undone in 
a mere fifty years.

But I had reason to be disappointed recently, 
when on a trip to Latin America, I found the 
average citizen there imbued with the same level 
of ignorance of my part of the globe. What! An 
Orientalist fellow-slave?

I mean, I expected people from within the 
developing world, faced with broadly similar 
problems and all at the bottom of the global 
pecking order to take a little more interest and 
learn about each other.  After all, if we suffer 
together we must also share together, whatever 
little we possess.

Noble sentiment, blah, blah, blah-but listen to 
what I got at every street corner of this pretty 
little South American town I was in: "Porque de 
la India no come baccho ? Why don't they eat cows 
in India? And is it true many Indians are 
well-versed with the details of the Kamasutra ?"

  Man, if there is any example of how screwed up 
the so-called global information superhighway is 
in our world it has to be this complete lack of 
communication between Asia and Latin America.

Asked in Spanish and answered in English the 
answers would typically run into a few hours of 
conversation.  My responses to the Cow question:

A) Many Indians are so poor that they don't even 
get to eat grass, leave alone a full cow.
B) It is only a small minority of upper caste 
Hindus in India who don't eat cows for 
religious/cultural reasons and it is their right 
not to do so.  However, these fellows also 
control the levers of power and want their 
personal beliefs imposed on the rest of the 
country, so they have skewed policies against all 
others getting access to any decent quality beef.
C) The rest of India, made up of variety of 
castes, communities and religious groups would 
happily eat the cow provided it was available, 
cooked properly with the right spices and not 
imported from Britain (many Indians are poor, but 
they are not stupid).

And about the Kamasutra:

Even if most Indians read this ancient manual of 
sex everyday- what on Earth would they do with 
all that extra information?   The sexual mores 
and practices (or their absence) of most Indians 
(and South Asians in general) have been shaped 
historically by three of the most patriarchal and 
sexually super-conservative groups known to 
humankind- the pretentiously ascetic Bramhins, 
the elitist Mughals and the tight-assed Victorian 
British.  And that cultural combination, let me 
tell you, is enough to instantly evaporate any 
idea of love on contact with your consciousness!

--- and so on. But at some stage I tired of 
sticking to facts and tried to duck the dreaded 
'Cow and Kamasutra' questions. One facile answer 
I came up with was         'Indian cows run so 
fast that it is very difficult to catch them'. 
And to one Argentinian friend who insisted on 
bringing up the subject of the cow I said ' in 
India cows live under water and are difficult to 
fish'. 

And she nearly believed me, for I soon discovered 
(to my utter horror) that many on this continent 
had such an exotic notion of India/Asia that they 
were willing to believe any tale I conjured up. 
Even 'Indian cows live under water' kind of stuff!

To be fair to my Latin American friends- the cow 
in particular does continue to occupy a prominent 
place in modern Indian life. The Indian National 
Congress, which misruled India for over four 
decades after independence from British misrule 
for example cunningly used the cow as its 
election symbol.  Members of India's 
much-oppressed 'lower' caste dalits routinely get 
lynched by upper-caste mobs on mere suspicion of 
having killed a cow for its skin or meat. And in 
recent years the Hindu fundamentalists have made 
banning cow slaughter a hot election campaign 
theme.  In other words even the dead cow, is 
still a live issue in India.

But all that is beside the point. Obviously both 
the cow and the Kamasutra are objects of 
curiosity in Latin America because there is 
little else they get to know about a nation where 
one sixth of the planet's population lives. The 
lack of information and knowledge is mutual 
though, with most Indians/Asians clueless about 
Latin American history, culture and society 
beyond the stereotype 'football', 'carnival' and 
'tequila'.

So what really prevents an average Latin American 
or an Asian from picking up a book or watching a 
documentary and learning about each other's 
continents? Why are they not speaking to each 
other more frequently, visiting each other's 
villages and towns? Why are such large parts of 
humanity still so starkly ignorant of each 
other's existence in this age of constantly 
instant information?

At first glance the information gap can be easily 
put down as due to linguistic barriers.  Latin 
America speaks Spanish, Portuguese, Quechua etc., 
and Asia speaks English, Hindi, Chinese, Thai, 
Malay and so on. 

Distance is also another obvious barrier because 
Asia and Latin America are virtually on opposite 
sides of the globe. Traveling from Thailand to 
Ecuador for example takes a whopping 38 hours, 
including 25 hours of flying time.

Airline routes however give us a clue as to some 
of the real reasons for the lack of communication 
between the two continents. If one looks at the 
map of the world according to Star Alliance for 
example, the globe is essentially a network of 
airline pathways held together by just a few 
hubs- London, Paris, Tokyo, Los Angeles.  

To get to Latin America from most parts of Asia 
one has to fly through one of these former or new 
centres of corporate globalisation, many of which 
were also the capitals of the old colonial world. 
The airline routes of our times are mostly a 
mirror image of the old naval routes of colonial 
pillage and plunder.

Information too, unfortunately, has a bad habit 
of flowing exclusively from one part of the Third 
World to the other along these very same, 
well-worn routes.  So it is in our world today 
that for Asian citizens there is absolutely no 
way of getting to know Latin America (and vice 
versa) except through established, guided paths 
that provide the translations and interpretation 
of each others societies, politics and culture. 
In other words if my Latin American friends ask 
typically Orientalist questions such as the ones 
about the 'cow and the Kamasutra' that is because 
they really have no other choice- all their 
information comes through typically Orientalist 
sources.

And it is not just Asia and Latin America that 
are completely disconnected. This is even more so 
the case with Africa which remains the Dark 
Continent to many of us simply because all light 
emerging from it is mutated or muted by the 
colonial routers its passes through.

Come to think of it, forget continents as far 
apart as Asia, Africa and Latin America, the lack 
of information and understanding of each other 
among Asian countries themselves is appalling. 
Most educated Indians know more about what Prince 
Charles is having for dinner than basic facts 
about entire thriving societies just a few hours 
flight from their borders. 

One uncle of mine back in India, an engineer by 
profession, once asked me to tell him what was 
the difference between Bangkok and Thailand- I 
kid you not! His counterparts in Thailand, in 
turn, know only two things about India- that the 
Buddha was born there 2500 years ago and that a 
nuclear bomb was tested in 1998. The myriad 
centuries in between the Buddha and the Bomb are 
a gaping hole in their consciousness, which in 
the meanwhile is filled with intimate knowledge 
of Cherie Blair's Nth baby and the Terminator's 
sex life. (No, I am not insinuating anything here)

The deeper reasons for this lack of communication 
between the developing countries are essentially 
linked to the way European colonialism operated 
historically. The colonialists  carved out the 
globe into tightly controlled fiefdoms in a 
manner that precluded all possibilities of the 
subject people interacting freely among 
themselves.

For the colonial powers keeping their subject 
populations ignorant of each other was a way of 
preventing the emergence of a united opposition 
to their rule across societies, cultures and 
continents. Not just that. The subject people 
were repeatedly pitted against each other, an 
essential modus operandi of colonialism.

So the British colonialists, for example, used 
Indian troops against the Arabs, Indian traders 
to sell opium to China, Indian administrators to 
rule Burma and even today use Gurkhas from Nepal 
(on discriminatory pay scales) against anybody 
they want. (The information gap I talk about is 
so great that unfortunately I can't give you 
similar examples of how the French and the Dutch 
were using their subjects against each other--- 
but I am sure they did the same!!)

All this, though unpardonable, is still 
understandable within the context of what 
colonialism was all about. Of course, they did 
what they had to keep themselves in power, right? 
But why should this state of affairs be allowed 
to persist in our world at the beginning of the 
twenty first century and that too in the middle 
of something that has been dubbed the Age of 
Information?

(It is true that the world's only superpower is 
trying to drag all of us, kicking and screaming, 
back to colonial times via it's War on Terror. 
But hey, that geezer who took the turkey to his 
troops in Baghdad a week ago does not realize 
that the goose of old style colonialism was 
cooked long ago! It is highly unlikely that bird 
will fly ever again!)   

Why should there be greater flow of information 
between Latin America and Asia? There are a 
zillion reasons why increased information flows 
are good in themselves but here are the ones that 
interest me the most: a) Latin America offers 
some of the most frightening lessons in what 
colonialism can do to an entire continent b) It 
also offers some of the most inspiring examples 
of what resistance is possible to such oppression 
and c) The possibility of forces across 
continents joining hands to resist their common 
global oppressors remains the most exciting idea 
of our times.

(On a more personal note I see the past 500 years 
of white, European settler domination of Latin 
America as the basis for understanding the 
3000-year history of the Indian subcontinent. 
Essentially the caste system of India is the end 
product of a similar process, over a longer 
period of time, of 
invading/migrant/settler/fairer-skinned 
populations from outside taking over the 
land/resources of indigenous people and imposing 
their own culture on the entire nation)

And why should Asia and Africa communicate more 
with each other? Because a) Africa is the mother 
of all civilization and if you don't know what 
your mom was all about you should jump into the 
most shark-infested portions of the Indian ocean, 
pronto! b) The rape of Africa over the centuries 
by the so-called 'civilized' world is a shame on 
all of humanity, including those who collaborated 
or watched it happen without doing anything and 
c) It is a shameful history that Asia can both 
learn from and do something to redress by joining 
hands with African citizens fighting to restore 
their continent's lost peace, prosperity and 
dignity.

Simply put, since exploitation today is global, 
the pathways to resistance too have to be global. 
And since the sources of our troubles are also 
common- namely colonialism/capitalism- what 
better way forward than to unite the oppressed of 
the world across cultures and continents in our 
common struggle.

A word of caution is due here. It has never been 
easy to unite the oppressed. As the history of 
slavery and colonialism, across the globe and 
over the centuries reveals, oppression by itself 
can bring revolts galore but no real revolutions. 
There are many reasons for this:

a) Not all are oppressed to the same degree and 
so the levels of motivation to change the world 
order are naturally different.
b) Some sections of the oppressed genuinely 
believe that they can actually claw or crawl 
their way into the ranks of the oppressors and 
therefore have no qualms about doing so on the 
backs of their fellow-slaves.
c) There is no effective mechanism or conscious 
attempt to forge a unity of the oppressed on a 
global scale. 
d) The oppressed need a clear vision of a better 
world that is morally, politically, economically 
and ecologically superior to the one that allows 
slavery/colonialism/exploitation of any kind.

While we sort all that out, what I suggest needs 
to be done urgently is the closing of the 
information gap between social and resistance 
movements of Asia, Africa and the Americas (the 3 
A's). This will be a small but very necessary 
step forward towards forging the long-term unity 
of the underprivileged of our world. 

Que crees, hermano ? Kya khayaal hei, bhaijaan ?

Satya Sivaraman is a journalist based in 
Thailand. He can be reached at sagarnama at yahoo.com

_____

[3]

Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2003 06:07:42 +0000

MARXISTS AS  FIDEISTS
I.K.Shukla

The ban by West Bengal government on Taslima 
Nasrin's Dwikhandita, the third volume of her 
autobiography collectively titled Amar Meye Bela 
(My Girlhood), establishes the Writers’ Building 
brand of Marxism squalidly into the "mainstream" 
politics of diversion and decadence. It ensures 
longevity for the status quo of stagnation, more 
fashionably and deviously known as stability. It 
also stamps CPI-M as a hardcore bourgeois 
formation and advances its bid for respectable 
kinship with other predatory parties like BJP and 
Congress, etc.

This is quite a consummation after a quarter 
century of holding onto power in West Bengal. The 
equation that administration (state) equals 
expropriation and exploitation via obfuscation 
and repression thus becomes highlighted and 
entrenched, of course for the benefit of the 
traditional princes (politicos) and prelates 
(mullahs and purohits). The political mafia in 
India could not have asked for anything better. 
West Bengal can thus flaunt its membership in the 
all-India club of arrivistes.

When Lenin called parliament the pig sty (of 
social democracy) he had perhaps not envisioned 
that it would be peopled absolutely by 
parliamentarians who deem only oink  oink to be 
the acme of human speech and social 
consciousness. The West Bengal government, 
justifying the ban, has parroted the tattered and 
trite slogan of the fanatics and obscurantists. 
Ostensibly: preserving communal amity. How much 
communal amity flooded the land after Rajiv 
Gandhi's cave-in in the Shah Bano case, or 
following the ban on Satanic Verses, to quote 
just two cases, would be difficult to compute in 
the wake of unceasing genocide against minorities 
in a phased but planned series, and in the larger 
atmospherics poisoned by saffron terrorism 
sponsored and promoted by the state.

A putrid but pointed part of this communal 
fascism is the lethal support it is assured by 
the Empire. Thus cleansed, it is nothing scary, 
since it is "cultural nationalism", the West 
paying its dues to the museum brand of 
multiculturalism by its so-called 
non-interference. It leaves the West free to 
wage, among its unending wars, the new one of 
infinite duration, on "terrorism".

Banning a book exaggerates its importance. 
Literary tastes and artistic expressions cannot 
be left to the "virtue squad" of the ignorant and 
the arrogant. It treats readers as either 
children or morons who have to be protected from 
the subversive message of the artistic product. 
Whether the book/film/play/song is of highbrow or 
middle- or low- is for the reader to decide. He 
needs no nanny, no Taliban as guardians of 
morals. Such censorship can only lead to people 
being kept mired in prejudice and ignorance. Such 
censorship is the ugly progeny and criminal 
continuation of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. 
It is not only the Saffronazis who seek their 
mentors and models in blood and fire of a bygone 
era. The CPI-M won't lag behind.

The consequences of being soft on fundamentalists 
and firebrands of communal cannibals have been 
dire for the nation. Shankar Singh Vaghela had 
tried it in Gujarat to match or offset Modi, the 
Crime Minister. The result was disastrous for the 
Congress. Not that Congress had in its long 
history ever missed contributing its consistent 
mite to the cleavage of communalism, pretending 
all the while that it stood or secularism. Vote 
bank politics makes monsters of them all. Vasant 
Sathes (ex-RSS man) are not part of a reliquary. 
The tradition of fostering and fanning 
communalism is alive and well in the grand old 
party.

Autobiography in the subcontinent has a jejune 
corpus, and that by women even rarer. Biographies 
in our literary culture tend mostly to be 
hagiography. Autobios are expected to be the 
same. For hot stuff, we look to the West in both 
genres. That is why memoirs, which are akin to 
these, are still few and far between in our 
regional literatures. Inhibitions of state 
censorship aid and abet violent vandalism of the 
virtue police. And the anticipated repression 
bucks the creative enterprise. This, 
additionally, perpetuates artistic stasis, and 
attests the stereotype of the backward and 
medievally congealed non-Whites who are 
demonstratively averse both to modernity and 
freedoms taken for granted in the arts in the 
West.

Any historical event, book included, is open to 
critique. It cannot be expected uncritically to 
command universal and perpetual adulation. If 
Taslima has quoted chapter and verse pieces 
impinging on women's dignity and injunctions on 
their bondage in religious scriptures, it would 
not do to cover it all up in the name of false 
"amity". Religion historically has been inimical 
to knowledge and ethics. She is not the original 
discoverer of this fact. It has destroyed 
millions, it has fostered violence and 
intolerance, it has enslaved man, and divided 
humanity. This history of religion cannot be 
wished away. No mythopoeia can purge it of its 
cruel and criminal tendencies past and present.

Two points before I conclude. 1. Her excitement 
and effusive craving for India as limned on pp 
123,124, and 127 in Utal Hawa, the second volume 
of her autobiography, is breathtaking. One bears 
quoting: "The other side of the mountain is 
Bharat. Clouds from Bangladesh are floating 
towards Bharat. Birds from that side are flying 
to this. I asked my elder brother, if I cross the 
mountain and go to that side. He said, no, you 
cannot. That is another country. Across the 
mountain sleeps another country, Bharat. I feel I 
hear the heartbeats of Bharat, hear the breathing 
of Bharat. Bharat so close, I feel like saying to 
it something in its ears. Why did you divide? 
Are you "Other" for us? (p.123). Her love for 
Kolkata comes up brimming (pp 93-99, 
Dwikhandita). She rightly feels let down by her 
favorite city. Pertinently in this context, 
Bangladesh's slide into an Islamic republic, 
anguishes her no end (p.84, Dwikhandita).

And, she is unhappy to see yesteryear's traitors, 
the Razakars, now stalking the land as ministers 
in independent Bangladesh.  Does she know that 
their kin, the saffron Razakars, India's cowards 
and avowed traitors and collaborators, are 
lording it over in India?

The ban by Kolkata is sad and shocking beyond 
words. Not only she but millions are aghast at 
the Marxists of W.Bengal government having joined 
the gang of Razakars of green and saffron 
varieties in demonizing her.
2Dec.03

_____

[4]

Response to Ashutosh Varshney

By Paul R. Brass

Ashutosh Varshney has written a hostile and 
unprofessional review of my new book on The 
Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in 
Contemporary India, originally published by 
University of Washington Press in February 2003 
and issued by Oxford University Press-India in 
September-October of this year.  The review, 
published in the10 November issue of India Today, 
is so inaccurate and dishonest that it is 
difficult for me to know where to begin to rebut 
it. Varshney does not even take the trouble to 
summarize the book, but merely picks out and 
misrepresents at random aspects of my arguments.

Varshney begins by insinuating that I have spent 
40 years of my life studying one city, Aligarh, 
and suggests that I have produced nothing of 
value from my labors.  While it would be unseemly 
of me to write about my own professional 
accomplishments in my work on India, I believe it 
is well enough known among scholars, journalists, 
and politically knowledgeable people in India 
that I have written widely on many aspects of the 
politics of India over these years, and some may 
know that I have published some 14 books on those 
subjects as well as rather numerous articles.  My 
works have ranged from detailed studies at the 
local level to works that cover politics in all 
India, including my text on The Politics of India 
Since Independence, the second edition of which 
is still available.  I have personally carried 
out field work, during approximately 25 visits to 
India, in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, 
Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, and Assam. I have 
also interviewed many politicians from all other 
parts of India during my visits to Delhi.

It is true, however, that I have labored hard and 
long, including for a good part of the six years 
between 1997 and 2003 in Seattle, poring over my 
interviews, documents, and other data collected 
over four decades in Aligarh, to ensure that I 
minimize the possibility of mistake on so serious 
a matter as Hindu-Muslim violence.  Nor, indeed, 
despite Varshney's sneering remarks, has he been 
able to point to a single error.

Having found no inaccuracies, Varshney seeks to 
undermine my arguments  in a personally insulting 
way.  He claims that I have simply "recycled" my 
"old arguments" from two books of mine that are 
well-known in India and elsewhere, Theft of an 
Idol and Riots and Pogroms.  Varshney himself 
wrote an extremely laudatory review of the latter 
book (for the Journal of Asian Studies, published 
in February, 1999), in which he expressed his 
"admiration for the superb contribution by Brass" 
and praised "the great merit and compelling 
brilliance of his reasoning" (p. 133). In the 
same review, he made laudatory comments on Theft 
of an Idol.  Evidently, something has changed in 
Varshney's attitudes, on which I will comment 
below, but it has nothing to do with the quality 
of my work or its arguments. It cannot be so 
since Varshney has also made considerable 
(mis)use in his own writings of my central 
argument that the best explanation for the 
persistence of riots in sites where they appear 
to be endemic-such as Aligarh, many other cities 
and towns in India, and many other places around 
the world at different times, including the 
twentieth century U.S. and nineteenth century 
Russia-is the existence of what I have labelled 
Institutionalized Riot Systems.  Varshney has 
completely misread my description of such systems 
in his own work, as well as in the India Today 
review, imagining that all that is meant by the 
concept is that politicians and criminals 
protected by them, "especially the Hindu 
nationalists," are involved in riots and "keep 
the communal pot boiling."  He again strikes a 
derisory note by calling his misunderstanding  of 
my construct "a boiling-pot theory."  This is 
quite a travesty of my conception, which is that 
Institutionalized Riot Systems are composed of 
networks of specialists who play varied and 
multifarious roles in the instigation and 
perpetuation of communal animosities, in the 
enactment of riots, and in the interpretation of 
riots after they occur.

The metaphor I have used is, as far as I know, 
quite different from anything anyone else has 
used in the study of collective violence, namely, 
the conceptualization of riot production as 
comparable to that of a grisly theatrical drama, 
in which there are three phases: 
preparation/rehearsal, performance/enactment, and 
interpretation/explanation.  This is not a 
trivial one-off comment on riots, a "boiling-pot 
theory," but an elaborate analogy of a type that 
should be familiar to anthropologists and others 
who know the work of the great anthropologist, 
Victor Turner, particularly his Dramas, Fields, 
and Metaphors.

In his own work on peaceful cities and towns in 
India, Varshney  copies my argument by inversion 
as it were, claiming that they have 
"institutionalized peace systems." However,  his 
use of both terms, mine and his inversion of it, 
lacks logic, precision, and a basis in worthwhile 
empirical data.  But, not content to invert my 
argument, he has been reported in the India 
International Center Diary (Janauary-February 
1999) to have presented, at a talk at the Centre, 
my original argument (incorrectly as usual) as if 
it were his own invention.  Perhaps the Centre 
journal has misunderstood him, but no 
contradiction of his use of my concept as his own 
has yet appeared.

At one point in the review, he makes a tortuous 
move from his misreading of my argument to a 
statement that it is "historically inaccurate" 
because "Hindu nationalists were not prominent in 
Aligarh before 1967."  Here he is trying to 
insinuate that I am misleadingly emphasizing the 
important role played by what he calls "Hindu 
nationalists" in producing riots in Aligarh.  He 
then cites various electoral statistics to say 
that this cannot be accurate because "the Hindu 
nationalists were not prominent in Aligarh before 
1967."  These electoral statistics are quite 
beside the point here.  The plain facts are that, 
though many communal riots in Aligarh and 
elsewhere in India have involved persons and 
parties not part of the Sangh parivar, militant 
Hindus have played a central role in every single 
large-scale riot in Aligarh at least since 1961, 
however electorally strong or weak they were, and 
my book demonstrates it very clearly.

Varshney here is acting out his own role in the 
communal discourse in India, namely, that of the 
BJP/RSS apologist who, though he is not himself a 
member of the Sangh parivar, chooses to ignore 
their undeniably central role in rehearsing, 
enacting, and interpreting communal riots after 
the fact.  His statement that he agrees with 
me-in his words not mine-"that Hindu nationalism 
is a dangerous project and if it succeeds it will 
destroy India" is nothing but a pious, throw-away 
line for a person whose work virtually frees the 
BJP and the RSS from responsibility for the 
production of riots.  For example, in his own 
book, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life, the index 
contains only three references to the RSS and the 
VHP, of which only one includes a very brief 
description of these organizations, from which 
one learns that their "activities Š include 
running ideological camps for the youth, schools 
and dispensaries for the tribals and scheduled 
castes, and organizations for women."  We learn 
that their activists also do "relief work"at 
times of heavy floods. The Bajrang Dal, the 
principal organization for violence in the Sangh 
parivar,  receives no mention at all.

Varshney's review also mixes together 
incomprehensibly some questions and answers that 
are unrelated to each other, as if they 
undermined my arguments when they have nothing to 
do with them.  He asks, "Why was the Congress 
government, in its days of nearly uncontested 
hegemony, unable to prevent riots?"  He then 
answers sarcastically: "Presumably, the DMs and 
the SPs who, according to Brass, had been 
instrumental in Aligarh's intermittent stretches 
of peace, were not so compromised at that time." 
This is all totally misleading.  Most governments 
in India, including those of the Congress and the 
BJP, for that matter, have been able to prevent, 
contain, and control riots when they chose to do 
so.  Nor have I said that Aligarh has had 
"intermittent stretches of peace."  Rather, there 
have been intermittent periods when large-scale 
riots did not occur, during which the riot 
network was only partially inactivated, but kept 
in readiness.

But then, somehow, Varshney has a different 
answer to his questions, totally irrelevant to 
them, but important to understanding the 
malicious character of his review.  He says: 
"Commenting on the Aligarh of the 1950s, Nehru 
was forced to call attention to the rebirth of 
Muslim communalism at the AMU.  ŠBrass neglects 
the role of Muslim communalism in the city." This 
is dishonest, mendacious, and motivated.  In 
fact, I have not neglected the role of Muslim 
communalism in the city.  I have also drawn 
attention to the contribution of elements in the 
Muslim community, including politicians, 
University personnel, and AMU students in 
maintaining communal attitudes and in 
participation in riots as well. However, there is 
simply no doubt in my mind, amply demonstrated in 
my work, that the BJP/RSS has been far more 
deeply implicated-perhaps because it is far 
better organized than the Muslim network-most 
especially during the decade of the 1980s up to, 
and including especially, the great Aligarh riots 
of 1990-91.  Varshney is here simply avoiding my 
main conceptual arguments concerning the process 
of riot production, throwing up a false statement 
against me and pitting me against Nehru himself 
in the process.  Moreover, Varshney is here doing 
what the BJP/RSS people do: blaming the AMU, 
which has rarely been at the physical center of 
Hindu-Muslim violence, though it has often been 
targeted by militant Hindus and has been 
generally used as a justification for violence 
against Muslims.

Varshney is here also showing his ignorance of 
the political geography of Aligarh, though he has 
a chapter on Aligarh in his own book. I have 
emphasized, in my book, the very sharp separation 
between Muslims and Muslim politics at the AMU 
and Muslims and Muslim politics in the old city. 
There have been some forms of border-crossing, as 
it were, but, historically, riots have been 
produced in the old city where there is a 
juxtaposition of Hindu and Muslim mohallas, not 
at the AMU.  In contrast, in 1990-91, the 
militant Hindu riot system extended its range 
dramatically across the boundary of the Grand 
Trunk road and the railway line and all around 
the outskirts of the city in a pattern that has 
been revealed by me and others elsewhere, in 
Kanpur (by me), in Bombay by many other scholars, 
in Gujarat by most commentators, and so forth.

The second argument Varshey criticizes, headlined 
in the India Today review as "Aligarh is not 
India," concerns the generalizability of my 
arguments.  He quotes me correctly as follows: 
"The findings herein can be generalized to other 
parts of India and other times and places in the 
world."  (This quotation comes from the Preface, 
however, not from the heart of the book where the 
arguments are presented in full.)  He then 
asserts falsely that I have ignored places in 
India where riots have not occurred.  My book 
indeed centers on Aligarh, though my work on 
riots has extended throughout north India and the 
Punjab in interviews, and throughout the rest of 
the country in my reading of both primary and 
secondary sources.  My argument here is not that 
Aligarh stands for or represents all of India, 
which is nonsense, but that the pattern that I 
have described for Aligarh applies to other 
cities and towns in India that I know well from 
my own personal research.  Moreover, I have 
presented my argument as a social science 
hypothesis for other scholars to test in other 
places in other parts of the world.  Far from 
being an old argument recycled, my argument needs 
testing elsewhere.  Such testing would not prove 
or disprove what I have described and discovered 
in Aligarh.  But, insofar as its generalizability 
is concerned, this is an important question that 
begs for further research.  For, if I am right, 
then most research on, and explanations for, 
riots, pogroms, massacres, and some genocides as 
well, have been not only wrong, not only false, 
but misleading and contributory to the 
perpetuation of systems of violence.

  Now, let me answer specificallyVarshney's 
question.  Anyone, however, who cares to read my 
book can find the argument laid out carefully 
there in 476 pages. "Given Š variations [from 
place to place in India in riot incidence], how 
can Aligarh's experience be generalised to Uttar 
Pradesh, let alone the rest of India?"  The 
answer is simple: By testing my hypotheses. 
First, by the method of 
confirmation/disconfirmation, that is, by 
examining sites of endemic rioting to see if 
institutionalized riot systems can or cannot be 
discovered.  Second, by examining the 
relationship between party/electoral competition 
and the incidence of riots in those sites. 
Third, by examining the consequences of different 
state policies toward communal riots, my argument 
being that where the policy of a state government 
is decisively opposed to communal riots and makes 
its opposition clear, and where interparty and/or 
intraparty divisions do not compromise its 
clarity, riots will be either prevented or 
contained rapidly.  The recent work of my young 
colleague, Steven Wilkinson, confirms several of 
my arguments.  Wilkinson has also previously 
questioned parts of my argument, but in an 
honest, forthright manner, concentrating on the 
issues at stake. Our discussions have, I think, 
influenced each other's work.   Moreover, in 
discussions with him, I believe our mutual work 
is coming close to a coherent explanation of riot 
production, though we may still disagree on some 
aspects of the process.  Such, however, is not 
the case with Varshney's work on civic 
engagement, which is a derivative argument from 
the American social science literature that has 
very little to do with India.  It is a false and 
artificial transplant, which I have criticized in 
my book and need not repeat here.

As for the alleged contradictions in my criticism 
of newspaper reporting on riots in India while 
also making use of such reports, his 
disparagement is also totally misleading.  My 
accounts of riots are based heavily upon my own 
interviews and other primary sources.  Where that 
has been lacking or inadequate, I have used 
newspaper reports in a careful and critical 
manner, pointing out  where they appear reliable, 
where not, where biased.  I have also criticized 
sharply Varshney's uncritical use of newspaper 
accounts of the precipitants and alleged causes 
of riots.  Moreover, I have noted that his highly 
touted dataset, based solely on Times of India 
reporting, is inherently flawed.  Furthermore, 
errors were introduced in coding this flawed 
data.  An huge error was introduced, for example, 
into the Aligarh data, to which I alerted him 
through Wilkinson, which Varshney then corrected 
in his World Politics article with no 
acknowledgment to me.  In short, his own data on 
Aligarh, on which he claims to have done 
research, was false.

Then there is the charge concerning my so-called 
"intellectual schizophrenia."  I suffer from no 
such ailment.  I laid bare my own reasoning 
concerning riot production in India in this book 
and in my other recent works on India, and 
expressed my profound doubts about the enterprise 
of causal reasoning and analysis as it is 
conducted in contemporary social science.  In his 
comments on my previous book, Theft of an Idol, 
Varshney wrote as follows: "Whether or not one 
can agree with Brass about causality, the great 
merit and compelling brilliance of his reasoning 
lies in showing so effectively why the battle 
over meanings matters, why such battles are as 
much about knowledge as about power and 
resources.  In doing so, Brass, in this essay [in 
Riots and Pogroms] as well as in his recent book 
Theft of an Idol, forces us to re-evaluate the 
easy certitudes of mainstream social science, if 
not abandon social science altogether." 
 Evidently, Varshney has changed his mind about 
my reasoning.

As for my use of "correlation coefficients," 
which he says implicates my work in "mainstream 
social science," this is hardly an advanced 
social science method of causal analysis.  It is 
one of the simplest numerical methods available 
for establishing associations between variables, 
from which causal analyses may or may not 
legitimately be inferred.  I have always tended 
to use such elementary statistical techniques 
mainly to demonstrate such relationships and 
suggest the direction of a causal chain where it 
seems reasonable to say so, but I have mostly 
used such techniques as supplements to my own 
type of processual analysis.  I have been 
described by friendlier colleagues as a "closet 
positivist."  I accept such a friendly statement. 
But intellectual doubts about the relative merits 
and utilities of positivist/empiricist vs. other 
types of social science, historical, and 
anthropological research hardly constitute 
"intellectual schizophrenia."

The most degrading half-sentence in Varshney's 
review is his reference to my dedication of the 
book to Myron Weiner, implying that my work is 
not consistent with Weiner's and that the 
dedication, therefore, is misplaced.  I have 
noted there and elsewhere my debts to Myron, my 
respect and affection for him, as well as my 
divergence from his approach.  I worked with 
Varshney on a festschrift for Myron, held at 
Notre Dame in 1999.  It is from that failed 
collaboration with Varshney that a personal 
hostility has embittered and has terminated our 
relationship.  I had ultimately to withdraw from 
editorial collaboration with Varshney on the 
publication of the conference papers because of 
his ugly misuse of the occasion to aggrandize 
himself, advance his own career, prevent other 
worthy former students of Myron from attending or 
presenting papers at the conference while 
ingratiating himself with senior colleagues whom 
he had previously antagonized, badgering Myron 
during the last days of his life into allowing 
him to invite to the conference a person whom 
Myron strongly disliked, and ultimately 
disregarding scholarly standards in his attempt 
to publish the papers from that conference.  The 
volume has not yet been produced.

November 30, 2003

Paul R. Brass
Professor Emeritus of Political Science
and South Asian Studies
University of Washington, Seattle
E-mail:   brass at u.washington.edu

_____

[5]

ADI-ANADI
THE EXCAVATION OF FEMININE MEMORY
CALENDAR 2004

Adi Anadi: The Excavation of Feminine Memory, 
Jagori's calendar for the year 2004 is an 
exploration of images of female energy in Indian 
iconography of the past.

We bring you a spectacular, seven-page, bilingual 
(Hindi/English) wall calendar - size 14" x 19" - 
in colour. It contains rare photographs and 
information on female iconography from Orissa, 
Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, and Gwalior by 
anthropologist Giti Thadani. These pictures 
unravel the existence of the centrality of female 
energy in our iconography and the subsequent 
erosion of independent, sexual, feminine power 
over time.

The calendar is priced at $5/ only.

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Jagori is a documentation & resource center on women-related issues.

_____

[6]

Invitation/For Information

SAMBANDH - 2003
INTER COLLEGIATE COMPETITIONS
ON INDO -PAK RELATIONS

Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and 
Democracy (PIPFPD) in collaboration in with COVA 
is organizing Inter Collegiate Competitions for 
Intermediate, Degree and Post Graduate students 
on the theme of Indo - Pakistan relations on 3rd 
and 4th December 2003 at Urdu Arts College, 
Hyderguda, Hyderabad.

Elocution, Quiz, Poster and Slogan writing and 
Skits would feature during the event.  Elocutions 
and Skits are being conducted in English, Telugu 
and Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu mixed) while quiz 
is being conducted only in English.

Prof. Rattan Lal Hangloo,  HoD History - 
University of Hyderabad will speak on 
Understanding Kashmir Conflict during the 
inaugural session on 3rd December 2003 at 10:00 
a.m.. Dr. Radhey Shyam Shukla, Editor, Swatantra 
Vartha, and Dr. Wahab Kaiser, Vice-Chancellor, 
Maulana Azad National Urdu University are the 
Chief Guests during the Prize Distribution 
Ceremony scheduled on 4th December 2003 at 3:30 
p.m. All the events including Inaugural and the 
Prize Distribution Ceremony will be held at Urdu 
Arts College, Hyderguda, Hyderabad.

PIPFPD requests your gracious presence.

With regards,

Mazher Hussain
Secretary
PIPFPD

2nd December 2003

ENGAGEMENT COLUMN

3rd December 2003

PIPFPD-COVA:	Intercollegiate Competitions- 
Prof. Rattan Lal Hangloo, HoD History - 
University of Hyderabad-will speak on
Understanding Kashmir Conflict.-10:00 a.m.-Urdu
Arts College, Hyderguda, Hyderabad.

ENGAGEMENT COLUMN

4th December 2003

PIPFPD-COVA:	Prize Distribution Ceremony- Dr. Radhey Shyam Shukla, Editor,
                                     Swatantra 
Vartha, and Dr. Wahab Kaiser, Vice-Chancellor,
                                     Maulana Azad 
National Urdu University are the Chief Guests. -
                             3:30 p.m.-Urdu Arts  College, Hyderguda, Hyderabad.

____

[7]  REMEMBERING  Riyad Vinci Wadia

[BOMgAY a film by Riyad Vinci Wadia page on SACW
http://sacw.insaf.net/i_aii/bomgay.html