SACW | 24 March 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  24 March,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[This issue of the SACW is dedicated to the 
memory of V.M. Tarkunde, one of India's foremost 
defenders of Human rights and a leading figure of 
the Radical humanists movement. V.M Tarkunde died 
on the March 22, 2004, in New Delhi.]

[1] Bangladesh: On right to freedom of religion 
and the plight of Ahmadiyas (Ridwanul Hoque)
[2] India: 'Gods for Sale' - Religion on the Retail (Satya Sagar)
[3] India: Freedom of Expression Under Attack
- Terror By Law (Dilip Chitre)
- Drowning Dissent (Dilip Chitre)
[4] India: Historians rue attack on freedom of expression (Vaishnavi C. Sekhar)
[5] India: A request for support by secular activists
[6] UK / India: Voices against communal terror 
and for cultural freedom in India (London, April 
1)


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

[1]

The Daily Star [ Bangladesh]
March 21, 2004

On right to freedom of religion and the plight of Ahmadiyas

Ridwanul Hoque

The recent governmental action banning 
publications of the Ahmediyas (or Ahmadis) must 
have shaken the conscience of those who believe 
in democracy, peace and justice. The action has 
sparked off huge debates and justifiably severe 
criticisms. A legal challenge of the government's 
order has already reached the court of justice. 
This short article purports to explore some legal 
aspects of the governmental action with reference 
to Pakistani situation where the same issue has 
caused a lot of problems..

Ahmadiyas, sometimes called Quadianis, claim 
themselves as Hanafi Muslims but do not believe 
in the finality of Islam's Prophet - Mohammad 
(SM). Resultantly, they have been facing 
rivalries and oppositions across the world, 
although Pakistan is the only state to have 
declared the Ahmadis as non-Muslims. In 
Bangladesh and India, there is no legislation 
that goes to the extent of declaring Ahmadiyas 
non-Muslims or even limiting their activities. 
Nor is there any law that defines who is or not a 
Muslim. In India, the issue of Ahmadis came into 
forefront in the seventies. On one occasion, the 
court very pragmatically held that the Ahmadis 
are Muslims [Shibauddin Koya AIR (1971) Ker. 206].

In Pakistan, Ahmadis have been declared as 
nonMuslims and their freedom of religion 
curtailed by a whole series of ordinances, acts 
and even constitutional amendments. This was 
concomitant with the process of Islamisation of 
Pakistani legal system orchestrated largely by 
General Zia-ul Haq. Following a constitutional 
definition of 'Muslims' in 1974 that indirectly 
excluded the Ahmadis, a law-suit was brought 
seeking injunction to prevent Ahmadis from 
observing Islamic practices. But the court 
declined to act and Ahmadis were allowed to 
maintain mosques and to call for azans. Things 
changed gradually. Besides being declared as 
non-Muslims, activities of Ahmadis were made an 
offence by an Ordinance of 1984. Notably, within 
the process of Islamisation of Pakistani legal 
system, Shariah Courts were created to review 
compatibility of any law with the 'Injunctions of 
Islam'. On the other hand, there were 
Constitutionally guaranteed fundamental human 
rights (e.g., freedom of religion, protection of 
minorities etc) which also created a basis of 
judicial review. The Ahmadis went to the Shariat 
Court to unsuccessfully challenge the authencity 
of the 1984 Ordinance. The challenge was aborted 
as the court held that the Ordinance was not 
un-Islamic. (Mujibur Rahman, PLD 1985 FSC 8). On 
another occasion, the court held that Muslims and 
Ahmadis are two separate and distinct entities 
(Khurshid Ahmad, PLD 1992 SC 522). These 
judgments left the Ahmadis effectively insecure 
and observance of their religious activities 
still remained a criminal offence. Having lost 
the legal battle of sustaining their religious 
rights, the community went to the Supreme Court 
to challenge the 1984 Ordinance on the ground of 
constitutionality. (Zaheer-ud-din, 1993 SCMR 
1718). Not surprisingly, the court interpreted 
the right to freedom of religion from the 
perspective of an Islamic state's obligation to 
promote and preserve the state religion, i.e., 
Islam. Consequently, the Court decided by a 
majority that the Ordinance was not 
unconstitutional, thereby throwing the Ahmadis 
into an apparently perpetuating state of 
insecurity and frustration. It seems that the 
court's unduly restricted interpretation of 
'freedom of religion' was much influenced by the 
Pakistani politics of that time. Labeling the 
Ahmadis as 'non-Muslim minority', the Court held: 
"The freedom of religion is guaranteed by Article 
20 .... The overriding limitation .... is the 
law, public order and morality. The law cannot 
override Article 20 but has to protect the 
freedom of religion without transgressing bounds 
of morality and public order. Propagation of 
religion by the appellants (Ahmadis) who as 
distinguished from other minorities, having 
different background and history, may be 
restricted to maintain public order and 
morality.''

Right to freedom of religion is a very special 
kind of fundamental right which touches a 
person's belief as to his creation, life and 
death as well as his way of life and thinking. 
Interaction with religion and the state has been 
therefore inevitably critical and intriguing and 
maintaining a peaceful atmosphere between 
different believers of the same or different 
religions has emerged as a potentially difficult 
job for the state. A strategy of attaining that 
objective of peace is by resorting to the state 
principle of secularism or by adhering to the 
principle of ensuring human rights for all 
ethnic, social and religious minorities. But 
secularism is not always an ideal solution to the 
problems with freedom of religion, unless there 
is democratic political will. An examination of 
the developments in this field in India reveals 
that freedom of religion is not absolute even in 
a secular state. And, from the Pakistan's 
experiences as above, we have learnt that 
interpretation of freedom of religion in a 
religious state brings forth a further dimension 
to the judicial discourse.

Truly speaking, as regards legal and political 
difficulties ensuing from the interpretation of 
the right to freedom of religion, Bangladesh does 
not fit into the systemic position of either 
Pakistan or India. Although Bangladesh initially 
adopted secularism as one of its core fundamental 
principles of state policy, she has abandoned the 
principle later, following, of course, not a 
truly democratic process. On the contrary, it is 
not a Islamic state either. Nor is its legal 
system Islamised, although Islam has been made 
'state religion' by amending the Constitution 
through another undemocratic means. Bangladesh is 
a democratic, plural society with a record of 
fairly peaceful coexistence of a diverse number 
of religious, ethnic or linguistic minorities. 
Its Constitution is a unique piece of supreme 
legal document encompassing almost all human 
rights. The Constitution has unequivocally and 
emphatically insisted on democracy, rule of law 
and social, economic and political justice. 
Needless to say, the level of democracy or 
civility of a society is measured in terms of its 
record of preserving and promoting fundamental 
human rights of all including minorities without 
any sort of discrimination.

Fighting for freedom of religion!

Article 39 (1) of the Constitution guarantees 
freedom of thought and conscience. Interestingly, 
unlike freedom of speech and expression 
guaranteed by Art. 39 (2), this right has not 
been subjected to any legal restrictions. 
Correspondingly, the threshold of the 
government's obligation not to interfere with the 
citizens' freedom of thought is high. Prohibition 
by government of Ahmadiyan publications is 
undoubtedly a severe blow on the community's 
freedom of thought. More importantly, the banning 
order has violated the community's right to 
freedom of religion. Article 41 of the 
Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, 
albeit subject to 'law, public order and 
morality'. However, it is a cardinal principle of 
constitutional jurisprudence that 'public order 
and morality' ground does not authorise the 
parliament to take away the very right to freedom 
of religion. That said, it should also be noted 
that law does not also allow any one to impede 
social order or to jeopardise public morality. 
What is tricky is that government does often play 
politics with 'public order and morality' ground 
as this has not been defined in the Constitution 
or any other law. Absent such a definition, it is 
a challenge for the courts to determine what 
'public order and morality' means in a given 
situation. Thus when a governmental action is 
alleged to have violated freedom of religion of a 
person or people and the government advances the 
ground as justification, the court has to make a 
balancing exercise keeping in mind that the 
concept of public order and morality is not 
static, rather society-specific.

A pertinent question, therefore, is whether 
Ahmadiyan activities are against public order and 
morality justifying the government's action. As 
we have seen above, in Pakistan, the activities 
of the Ahmadis were legally prohibited and they 
were declared non-Muslim on the ground of public 
order and morality. But the situations - legal, 
political and constitutional - in Pakistan are 
clearly not the same as in Bangladesh. We have 
seen that present constitutional scheme disallows 
the type of action the government has taken. One 
might however argue that there are at least two 
potential elements that might liken the 
situations to those of Pakistan. These are: (i) 
that the principle of absolute trust and faith in 
the Almighty Allah is a fundamental principle of 
the Constitution and state policy and (ii) that 
Islam is the state religion of Bangladesh. A 
closer look at these previsions will show that 
attack on Ahmadis' freedom of religion cannot be 
justified with reference to these provisions. 
Because, true faith in Islam requires us to show 
tolerance to others who expresses different 
opinions and even to those who oppose Islam. That 
Islam itself acknowledges various sects is 
particularly educative for us. State religion 
provision of the Constitution does not permit the 
state, it is argued, to lay unreasonable 
restrictions on Ahmadis' freedom of religion, 
because the provision does not obligate the state 
to do anything in relation to state religion. 
This is merely a recognising or declaratory 
provision. Another potential argument in defence 
of the governmental action might be that 
government did not actually prohibit the Ahmadis' 
activities, nor were they declared non-Muslims 
and thus their right to freedom of religion is 
kept untouched. Instead, it has only forfeited 
some of the Ahmadiyan publications on the ground 
that these did hurt the belief of general of 
Muslims. As said earlier, regulation of religious 
activities may be justified on the ground of 
public order (Jibendra Kishore, 9 DLR (SC) 21). 
The 'public order' ground must, however, be 
exercised bona fide and objectively. In 
Bangladesh Anjuman-E-Ahmediya (45 DLR 185), the 
court upheld the forfeiture of a book as it 
outraged the religious belief of bulk of Muslims. 
But now the government seems to have forfeited 
the Ahmadiyan books on a wholesale basis and 
seemingly to console those who are demanding the 
complete prohibition of practising Ahmadiyanism.

Thus at any rate, governmental action in question 
appears to be blatantly illegal and incompatible 
with its constitutional duty to preserve and 
promote human rights for all.

Ridwanul Hoque is an Assistant Professor, 
Department of Law, Chittagong University.


_____


[2]

'Gods for Sale'
Religion on the Retail

By Satya Sagar

[24 Jan 2004]

It is a very, very Indian story.

A few weeks ago a friend of mine filed a petition 
in the Indian Supreme Court against - believe it 
or not- the tenth incarnation of the Hindu God 
Vishnu!  Or at least, against a person who claims 
to be nothing less than that and has in the past 
decade drummed up a following of over several 
million people in the southern part of India.

Blasphemous as the claim of this audacious avatar 
is the court battle is not really about the finer 
details of Hindu cosmology or theological 
doctrine.

Based on several years of painstaking 
investigation and research it is my friend's 
claim that 'Kalki Bhagwan', as the defendant 
calls himself, has taken money from the public 
for rural development activities and fraudulently 
diverted it to his personal bank accounts as well 
as that of his close relatives.  From being an 
ordinary clerk working for a state-owned life 
insurance company fifteen years ago today the 
'Tenth Incarnation of Vishnu' is allegedly worth 
many million dollars and owns vast properties in 
many parts of South India.

The Indian Supreme Court has been asked, based on 
the merits of the evidence presented, to order a 
thorough investigation by state agencies into the 
functioning of the  'Kalki' empire.

The 'Kalki' case is not very unique in a country 
that gave the world the word 'guru' to begin with 
and produces more of them every year than the 
rest of the world combined. (I am including some 
software programmers here!!!). The manipulation 
of abstract (often abstruse) thought to 
manipulate or motivate animate creatures has deep 
roots in this ancient land, which has produced 
several of the world's major religions apart from 
numerous cults and mystical traditions.

Out of all the  'gurus' that routinely spring up 
on the spiritually fertile Indian soil only a few 
are genuinely enlightened souls who help spread 
goodness and true religiosity around them. In 
recent decades however, a bulk of them have been 
unfortunately ordinary conmen out to make a quick 
buck.

Once upon a time the typical 'guru' would prey on 
the gullibility of the predominantly rural and 
illiterate Indian population. Considering the raw 
deal these village folks got here on Planet Earth 
their attraction to anyone promising a better 
life in the Heavens above was never surprising.

But the new trend is that god men and gurus of 
all kinds are now developing a huge following 
within the urban Indian lower middle and middle 
classes.  Since the early eighties in particular 
there has been a boom in the `guru industry' 
across urban India and some of them have acquired 
virtual pop-star status. (All that long hair 
helps, I am sure)

So what explains this phenomenon of otherwise 
educated, well-heeled Indians queuing up in 
droves to fall at the feet of fake god men and 
shower them with money? Is this about the genuine 
quest of individuals seeking spiritual salvation 
in a very materialist world or is it about their 
dishonest attempts to get quick-fix solutions to 
the moral dilemmas they face in an increasingly 
unscrupulous world? To be fair I guess one would 
have to say it is a bit of both.

On one hand there is a genuine search for 
spiritual satisfaction that many individuals 
undertake, in a world where there is growing 
material consumption but diminishing human 
happiness. This leads many to experiment with one 
false prophet after the other in the hope of 
arriving at a magic formula that will bring 
balance between mind and matter.

Also given the inability of institutionalized 
religion to cater to the specific spiritual needs 
of individuals, many people turn to gurus who 
offer precisely such personalized service.  Like 
having your own custom-built conduit to nirvana.

At another level, the kind of things that most 
members of the middle-classes need to do in their 
jobs to both keep their jobs and get ahead of the 
Jains (the Indian equivalent of the Jones) 
creates considerable moral turbulence to say the 
least. While most people justify whatever they do 
as being part of 'what everyone does to survive' 
the fact is their conscience still undergoes a 
torment that simply cannot be wished away- and 
hence has to be whitewashed away.

The more troubled a society is by feelings of 
guilt and sinfulness that the consumerism of the 
few amidst poverty of the many engenders, the 
more frenetic its public display of pretended 
religiosity. It is this vast growing market for 
moral mufflers across the small towns and cities 
of India that the guru industry has managed to 
cleverly identify and capture.

With their instant solutions of spiritual 
salvation- sold at steep moral discounts with 
pay-as-you-pray options- the gurus have struck a 
commercial goldmine. In exchange for a fat fee 
they offer the modern citizen an easy way out of 
the more difficult task of maintaining integrity 
or decency in their day-to-day lives.

There was a time in the past when the typical 
guru would become popular by exhorting the public 
to give up their material desires and then sit 
back to watch all the lovely money flow into his 
own bank account. Nowadays though the average 
guru is more realistic about public attitudes and 
instead promises them all kinds of shortcuts to 
instant wealth while charging a commission for 
his services.

"Don't shun worldly pleasures, seek ultimate 
happiness" the Tenth Avatar is quoted as 
preaching to his devotees, (sounds like the late 
Chairman Deng to me!) to whom he promises 
everything from winning lotteries to marrying a 
bride who looks just like their favorite movie 
star. His foundations charge followers for 
attending courses on something called 'pragmatic 
materialism'.

The Indian public is lapping up this kind of 
drivel and paying for it too. Today the sad 
situation is that while the average urban Indian 
becomes more and more overtly religious in 
his/her public activities, politics, priorities 
and cultural symbolism- this is accompanied by a 
steep fall in his/her actual moral worth.

For all their hedonist holiness the Indian 
middle-classes have neither become more 
charitable, or generous, or kinder or tolerant- 
not a single sign that they have somehow become 
better human beings than before. ('Don't 
interrupt my orgasm! You unhappy, pseudo-secular, 
bloody communist!!' I can hear them say)

At the macro-level too there are other pressures 
that bear upon the individual pushing them 
towards blind unquestioning faith.  One of these 
is the deliberate injection of uncertainty into 
the material lives of millions of low-income 
Indian families in recent decades by successive 
governments implementing neo-liberal economic 
policies.

Since the early eighties successive Indian 
regimes have pursued a path of Liberalisation, 
Privatisation, Globalisation (the LPG model) 
which has resulted in increasing income 
inequalities, diminishing job opportunities and 
the rapid erosion of the rights of employees in 
both the state and private sectors. The last two 
decades of the Indian economy has been aptly 
characterized by some as consisting of an 
industrial sector which had growth without jobs, 
while the rural sector saw employment without 
income. According to the Indian Planning 
Commission there are currently 212 million people 
in the country between the ages of 14 to 24, but 
only 107 million have jobs.

The insecurity of the average Indian family today 
is one of gigantic proportions as they witness 
before their own eyes the systematic destruction 
of all hopes for a better life by policies 
designed only to enrich a few at the expense of 
the many. Unable to understand this process and 
in the absence of organized resistance many have 
resigned themselves to their fate or sought 
refuge in the false but comfortable world of 
pseudo-religiosity.

Another major factor promoting the growth of 
spiritual supermarkets and religious retailers in 
India is of course the speculative greed 
unleashed among its middle classes by the 
'casinofication' of its economy- as a consequence 
of globalisation.

The sheer volumes and velocity of global 
financial flows conjures an awe among many human 
beings that was once upon a time reserved only 
for the grand forces of Mother Nature.  And in a 
world where money mysteriously appears in some 
lives and disappears from others, like the 
incarnation of an ancient God, it is difficult 
not to become superstitious.

It is not accidental therefore that financial 
speculators, aptly dubbed as 'wizards' by the 
media, have become the new high priests of our 
societies and role models for many people. "When 
in sorrow contact Soros, for happiness try the 
Hedge Fund! " has become the new mantra of the 
punting classes.

And like all gamblers everywhere the speculating 
middle-class citizen today will do any damn 
desperate thing to keep the fate of his/her 
financial investments prospering. Go through the 
classifieds section of any major Indian newspaper 
and you will find outfits peddling everything 
from astrology, numerology, fengshui, magic gems 
side by side with finance companies, stock 
brokers, real estate agents, investment 
consultants, wheelers and dealers of every 
description.

  So what we have right now in much of urban India 
is a mad scramble by the middle classes to 
blindly bet everything they have on the market 
and equally blindly buy insurance from the 
nearest holy-looking scamster and hope it all 
works out fine.

While I have described so far the dilemmas of the 
temple (also mosque/church in the Indian context) 
going public the question that troubles me is 
that if the people have become vulnerable is it 
not the responsibility of the truly religious to 
restore their moral spines? Unfortunately as far 
as most contemporary religious institutions are 
concerned one sees no attempt whatsoever to help 
ordinary citizens cope in an honest and dignified 
manner with the momentous economic and social 
upheavals tossing around their once simple lives.

  Instead what we witness is that religious 
outfits- after having served out their feudal 
masters in the past- are quickly adapting to the 
corporatisation of the world and becoming 
full-fledged enterprises on their own. And all 
signs are that they have been extremely 
successful too- using every modern corporate tool 
from slick advertising to internet marketing to 
get their customers.

This is a global phenomenon in fact and just to 
give an example from Thailand- one new Buddhist 
sect here called the Dhammakaya which preaches 
the Kalki/Deng line of "to get rich is glorious' 
actually won a national award in 1988 for its 
'market planning strategies' from the Business 
Management Association of Thailand.

  Before anyone gets me wrong let me explain that 
I do seriously believe in the possibility of 
religious institutions playing a very positive 
role in many societies provided they put the 
interests of ordinary folk above that of rich 
elites or their own survival. Just to give 
another example from Thailand again the Buddhist 
Sangha here does a fantastic service to society 
by absorbing large numbers of rural youth from 
poor farming families into the monkhood. The 
Sangha provides the young monks with shelter, a 
basic education and a sense of social 
responsibility and at the same time is not 
dogmatic or rigid about their leaving the 
monkhood to take up other professions. Some of 
Thailand's best know writers, artists and even 
social activists come from a background in the 
monkhood.

Maybe one can argue that it is the role of the 
state to provide such welfare but in many a 
developing country given the dysfunctional state 
of the state such traditional social welfare 
systems still have an important role. (If such 
opportunities were extended to young Thai women, 
who are unfortunately discriminated against, 
Thailand could get rid of much of its notorious 
commercial sex industry)

In stark contrast in India, with a few splendid 
exceptions, most religious institutions  and 
those claiming special spiritual powers have 
ceased to serve the public in any meaningful way 
and instead parasitically live off them.  At the 
time of Indian Independence Jawaharlal Nehru, the 
first Prime Minister, famously claimed that 
industries would become the 'temples of modern 
India'.  What we see now is that instead it is 
the temples that have become the  'industries of 
a revivalist India'!

If this is going to be the case then I have a 
suggestion to make. Subject all gurus and 
religious institutions to the same laws that 
apply to all other industries, businesses and 
trade. Allow all those employed by the religious 
industry to form trade unions and empower 
consumers of religion to claim compensation in 
the courts when they get products of 'low 
spiritual quality'. If they are in the business 
of selling God then there should at least be a 
sales tax on the proceeds. Tax these religious 
outfits and use the money to pay for truly 
religious actions such as giving the weak and 
poor a better life.

A good start would be to straighten out the 
booming business empire of none other than our 
dear 'Tenth Avatar of Vishnu'.

Satya Sagar is a journalist based in Thailand.


_____



[3]

Outlook [India]
March 23, 2004
OPINION

Terror By Law
Is Maharashtra's Home Minister declaring another 
Emergency of his own during this pre-election 
period? Will champions of civil liberties remain 
articulately silent and silently articulate in 
the face of this clear and present danger to 
democracy itself?

DILIP CHITRE

The front page of the Pune City Edition of the 
Marathi daily newspaper Sakal (23 March) had the 
shocking news today that the Home Minister of 
Maharashtra, R. R. Patil has "ordered the 
Commissioner of Police, Pune to investigate the 
persons at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research 
Institute responsible for supplying malicious 
information on 'Jijau' (Shivaji's mother) to 
James W. Laine, so that the State can take 
appropriate action against them."    

[It is interesting to note the different focus in 
reportage in this Marathi newspaper as compared 
to the various English publications, or even the 
PTI feeds, where the reportage is confined to the 
Maharashtra government's threat to enlist 
Interpol's help for arresting James Laine - Ed, 
outlookindia.com]

This ridiculous-sounding statement, was made by 
Home Minister Patil at a press conference in 
Mumbai on March 22. The Home Minister has helped 
to camouflage the extremely serious criminal 
assault on the B.O.R.I. on January 5 -- that was 
no ordinary conspiracy or act of dacoity -- into 
what Marathi newspapers are now referring to as 
'The James Laine issue'!

While James W. Laine's book has already been 
banned and a police case against the author and 
his publishers has been filed in Pune, the 
Special Branch of the Maharashtra Police has not 
yet shown any interest in tracing and 
investigating the persons, organizations, and 
political parties that have instigated the 
assaulters. This has been treated as a case of 
'hurt sentiments' though it is in all probability 
a case of pre-calculated incitement of uninformed 
public opinion for the sake of electoral and 
other gains, or for 'recognition of 
extra-constitutional clout'. 

It is significant that the Home Minister and his 
own party -- the N.C.P.-- have tried indirectly 
to justify the 'Sambhaji Brigade' and the 'Chhava 
Sanghatna' who attempted to disrupt the Prime 
Minister's election campaign meeting in Beed, 
raising slogans about the Laine book. The Prime 
Minister too obliged by retracing his steps from 
an earlier liberal stance in the matter of 
censorship.

While neither James W. Laine nor the hero of his 
book, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, have any 
conceivable role to play in the 14th Lok Sabha 
polls, the Constitution of the Secular Democratic 
Republic of India is itself under attack from 
domestic terrorists and their political clients. 
Would Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, were he to 
reappear in the 21st century, make caste-wars the 
foundation of his Svaraj? 

Is Maharashtra's Home Minister declaring another 
Emergency of his own during this pre-election 
period? Will the Election Commission ignore this 
on technical grounds? Will the Union Government 
find it politically embarrassing to act 
appropriately and bring to book those who 
engineered and carried out the attack on BORI? 
Will champions of civil liberties remain 
articulately silent and silently articulate in 
the face of this clear and present danger to 
democracy itself?
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dilip Chitre is Honorary Editor New Quest - a 
quarterly journal of participative inquiry into 
society and culture - and this piece appears in 
New Quest Number 155 (January-March 2004) 
focussing on "the rise of neo-Fascism in India".


o o o o

Outlook [India]
March 23, 2004

Drowning Dissent
What we have at stake in the floundering career 
of our Republic is the plural character of our 
polity pitted against a conformism imposed from 
above, i.e. by an elite conspiring and conniving 
to rule the vast mass of population.

DILIP CHITRE

In a remarkable essay, The Prevention of 
Literature, published in 1945, George Orwell put 
it most succinctly: "Šfreedom of the Press, if it 
means anything at all, means the freedom to 
criticize and oppose." 

What we have at stake in the floundering career 
of our Republic is the plural character of our 
polity pitted against a conformism imposed from 
above, i.e. by an elite conspiring and conniving 
to rule the vast mass of population, a sixth of 
humankind inhabiting the entire planet crowded 
within the frontiers of a modern nation-state.

Orwell's essay, written sixty years ago when the 
Second World War was just ending, seems just as 
relevant today and prophetic in retrospect. I am 
tempted to quote him at some length: 

  "In our age, the idea of intellectual liberty is 
under attack from two directions. On the one side 
are its theoretical enemies, the apologists of 
totalitarianism, and on the other side its 
immediate practical enemies, monopoly and 
bureaucracy. Any writer or journalist who wants 
to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by 
the general drift of society rather than by 
active persecution. The sort of things that are 
working against him are the concentration of the 
Press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of 
monopoly on radio and films, the unwillingness of 
the public to spend money on books, making it 
necessary for nearly every writer to earn part of 
his living by hackwork, the encroachment of 
official bodies like the M.O.I. and the British 
Council, which help the writer to keep alive but 
also waste his time and dictate his opinions, and 
the continuous war atmosphere of the past ten 
years, whose distorting effects no one has been 
able to escape."

(Inside the Whale and Other Essays;
Penguin Books, 1962).  

As a writer who was nine years old when India 
became an independent and new nation-state, and 
twelve years old when the Constituent Assembly 
declared ourselves to be citizens of a Republic, 
I have lived through a period of 'continuous war 
atmosphere' not unlike what Orwell was talking 
about. I now think that the entire Indian 
subcontinent -- or indeed the whole of South Asia 
comprising nations erupting out of a tenaciously 
surviving civilization with a precariously 
balanced plurality of character -- has been in 
the throes of a continuing civil war. 

In a civil war situation, the vox populi is no 
longer reasonably unanimous or consensual. It 
turns polyphony into cacophony resulting in a 
Tower of Babel type of crisis. Prior to 
independent nationhood, we were plunged into what 
some people would call a fratricidal communal 
conflict and others a genocidal deluge. Both 
Muslim and Hindu 'nations' here were conceived 
and carved out in genocide; and territorial 
disputes over historical cartographic illusions 
show no signs of going away in the near future. 

Drowning the voice of dissent has been a regular 
exercise throughout the new nation-state of India 
whose ruling elite learnt the wrong kinds of 
political lessons from their occidental political 
mentors including Great Britain, Europe -- 
Western, Central, and Eastern -- and the United 
States.

If we read the Constituent Assembly Debates and 
listen to the voices of our Founding Fathers who 
represented our ruling elite then, we get a vivid 
picture of the challenges to our present 
Constitution and where they come from.

It seems a miracle now that individuals like 
Nehru and Ambedkar, who were actually in the 
liberal minority, prevailed then. The passage of 
the Hindu Code Bill through the Parliament was 
fraught with the same hazards. At each stage, 
human rights were sought to be limited and 
concessions were carved out to appease religious, 
communal, ethnic, and gender interests in the 
status quo. Modernisation itself was seen by the 
majority among the ruling elite as culturally 
dangerous and undesirable.

But to focus more sharply on to the conflict 
between pluralism and censorship, one must 
examine the implications of Article 12 to Article 
35 of the Constitution of the Republic of India. 
These are stated in Part III of the Constitution 
that deals with Fundamental Rights.

These rights proclaimed on January 26, 1950 
converted us legally from being vassals or 
subjects of an absolute sovereign authority (such 
as the British Monarch that ruled us till August 
15, 1947) to having become citizens with 
inalienable rights and privileges. Our individual 
status as citizens of India was guaranteed 
regardless of race, religion, sex, creed, caste 
and so forth.

This was a written text modifying which was made 
deliberately difficult so that it could be done 
only with an overwhelming majority of our elected 
representatives agreeing to a change and its 
President assenting to such a change, subject to 
a review by the nation's judiciary.

There can hardly be a dispute that our Founding 
Fathers conceived our Republic as consisting of 
plural communities that were regarded as one 
people and that this plurality was a delicately 
balanced unity that would be safeguarded from any 
brute majority or rogue force trying to crush or 
oppress individual citizens or minorities in 
terms of religion, race, creed, language, caste 
and so on.

However, people who traditionally perceived 
themselves as subjects and their leaders as 
headmen or masters by birth privileges such as 
caste, gender, or religious and traditional 
communal consensus that would directly be in 
conflict with their paper status as individual 
citizens, continued to live under the illusion 
that they were vassals of a government that had 
absolute power over their lives and destinies. 
The realpolitik governing India did not change 
just by the ushering in of a Constitution that 
reflected modern democratic aspirations and a 
value-perception of human life and freedom that 
informed our Founding Fathers. Indeed, one of 
them, Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar once bitterly 
remarked that constitutional morality was 
difficult to cultivate in our soil.

Our Constitution, 54 years after it was launched, 
remains fundamentally unaltered despite some 
questionable or dubious amendments. But 
successive governments both at the centre and in 
the states since 1951-52 have in practice abused 
state power on a growing scale so that we now 
have political parties that agree to fight it out 
amongst themselves by coercion and corruption.

Money has been a seemingly benign but always 
malignant source of power and violence in culture 
and society. Today with the globalisation of the 
capital market it can make nations and 
governments bounce like dud cheques with instant 
shifting and relocation of power, pauperizing 
communities at will, rendering local and regional 
labour jobless and powerless with one decisive 
electronic click. The global creation and 
distribution of wealth is itself controlled 
largely not by nation-states but by those who eye 
their natural resources--human resources 
included--with an eagle but piratical eye.

The world's map is already warped by this. It 
makes Texas look larger than the United States of 
America in terms of control of oil producing 
regions of the planet; and the North American 
N.R.I. as powerful in Gujarat as the Jewish lobby 
in the U.S. is in determining the fate of 
Palestine. The real Clash of Civilizations is 
between the Old World and the New, and Europe is 
only just discovering the nature of the 
trans-Atlantic challenge and the Anglo-Saxon 
sweep of the globe through a communication 
revolution and an information explosion. 
Decisions made in board-rooms thousands of miles 
away determine our fate in formerly inaccessible 
parts of India such as the once-heavenly Bastar. 
Our General Elections, whether we perceive it or 
not and whether we like it or not, are also an 
auction of South Asia at which we --as the actual 
voters--are the weakest bidders. 

Speaking of fundamental rights only, look at our 
children below the sub-voting age that comprise 
the largest segment of our population. Girl-child 
labour, girl-child malnourishment, and girl-child 
illiteracy in India are a horrifying reality that 
would inevitably lead to a shrivelling of the 
very roots of our society within a generation. In 
fact, the entire female population of India seems 
to be heading for a qualitative-quantitative 
decline.

More than 60% of male children in the 0-18 
segment would seem to fare no better. While girls 
before they are married serve as domestic labour 
in their own homes, spend hours fetching drinking 
water from scarce and distant sources and looking 
after younger siblings, the relatively 
'privileged' male child provides farm labour and 
performs other unpaid chores before dropping out 
of primary school or secondary school altogether. 
Rural families regularly migrate to semi-urban or 
urban centres with their children who then become 
urban urchins, rag pickers, or small-time 
criminals on a daily percentage basis in the big 
cities. Some girls become sex workers even before 
reaching puberty, and their brothers may become 
pimps or illicit drugs or bootleg liquor vendors, 
or join gangs. A few of the luckier boys join 
political front organizations sent out to collect 
protection money; and the brightest among them 
may be trained as sharpshooters in the supari 
murder trade, or become small-time netas and 
muhalla-level terrorists. 

Have you ever wondered where the fighting-fit, 
street-smart squads of organizations such as the 
Bajrang Dal, the Patit Pavan Sanghatana, the 
Sambhaji Brigade, the Raza Academy and so on -- 
and their ilk elsewhere in the country under 
various local labels -- come from? Don't you know 
who their political bosses are and which of the 
regional and national political parties' 
interests they serve? 

We live in an India where the obvious has become 
invisible by 'civilized' consensus. We ignore the 
fact that terrorism is a form of 
employment--created out of human resources given 
criminal training of which democracy and civil 
society are prime soft targets--and its ends are 
political and financial power. 

We refuse to consider that the law favours the 
lawless through the docility or with the 
connivance of those who already wield political 
clout; or that 'populist expressions' of 'hurt 
sentiments' are engineered by vested interests 
against constitutional guarantees given to 
individual citizens or fragile 'classes' and 
'micro-minorities' such as writers, artists, 
investigative journalists, outspoken 
intellectuals, honest officials, and scholars. 

At bottom, these 'small voices' represent our 
decency, our plurality, our cultural vibrancy, 
our innovative and critical nature-- dissent, 
debate, and discussion--all of which are sought 
to be drowned in a barbaric pandemonium 
comprising slogan-shouting, instigatory and 
inflammatory oratory, and actual fisticuffs even 
in such formerly hallowed places such as 
Parliament and the state legislatures. By now, 
even impressionable children watching televised 
house proceedings see adult representatives of 
the people doing things for which they (the 
children) would not be spared by their teachers. 

Extra-Constitutional bullying is not recognized 
as a criminal offence by the Government of 
Maharashtra who have posted an armed guard at my 
door since January 7, 2004 to 'protect' me. 
Surely, the government of my state knows from 
whom there is a threat to my person. I am 
targeted among others by the Maratha Seva Sangh 
as one of those who have been thankfully 
acknowledged by Professor James Laine, author of 
the hastily banned book Shivaji: Hindu King in 
Muslim India that now the government thinks 
provoked sensitive Maratha minds to attack the 
B.O.R.I. 

The Maharashtra police, despite some of their 
elite officers being currently embroiled in the 
Telgi scam investigation, are reputedly efficient 
in containing crime. They have a Special Branch 
and a Crime Branch that is supposed to have sharp 
noses and ears, and agile legs and arms, not to 
mention acute brains.

Don't they already know who attacked the 
Bhandarkar Research Institute on January 5, which 
tabloid weekly instigated and provoked the 
'public' to teach a lesson to American historian 
James Laine and his supposed 'collaborators' (all 
of them allegedly Brahmins conspiring to damage 
the legend of Shivaji the Founder-King of Maratha 
Swaraj)? Which Pune 'historians' protested 
against the book Shivaji: Hindu King in Muslim 
India simultaneously approaching the Oxford 
University Press and the Government of 
Maharashtra? Don't they know the systematic 
build-up of the 'hurt sentiments' myth by an 
organization floated by one of their own 
bureaucrats while in active service, his name, 
and his organization's name? 

I refuse to believe that they are that inept. 
Their only fault seems to me to be that they 
think that the realpolitik in Maharashtra is more 
sacred than the Constitution of the Republic of 
India. They are not alone in this. Their 
counterparts in every state of the Republic think 
similarly, and so do their counterparts in Delhi.

This is a dismal scenario pointing to an even 
bleaker future. But without facing it squarely, 
our future will soon look like the worst part of 
our past.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dilip Chitre is Honorary Editor New Quest - a 
quarterly journal of participative inquiry into 
society and culture - and this piece appears in 
New Quest Number 155 (January-March 2004) 
focussing on "the rise of neo-Fascism in India".


_____


[4]

The Times of India
March 24, 2004

Historians rue attack on freedom of expression
VAISHNAVI C. SEKHAR
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2004 12:15:41 AM ]
MUMBAI: As an eminent scholar who did pioneering 
research in Maratha history and held prestigious 
posts, A R Kulkarni should be complacent in 
retirement. But today he is an anxious man. "I 
don't think I should say anything, I don't want 
to get involved,'' he pleads with this newspaper 
over the phone from his home in Pune.

Kulkarni is nervous for good reason. His name 
figures in the acknowledgements of a book that 
has already brought violence to one scholar and 
vandalism to a great institution.

The allegedly derogatory remark in US scholar 
James Laine's controversial book about Shivaji 
has been deleted, and the book itself banned, but 
this has not stopped political groups from 
terrorising those even remotely connected to it. 
Kulkarni, once head of Pune university's history 
department and the Indian Council for Historical 
Research, is eager to disassociate himself from 
the book.

"As department head, I have met so many scholars 
,'' he explains. When politicians in Maharashtra 
vie to show who loves Shivaji more, history 
becomes hazardous business. Academics say that 
the recent cultural policing has left many afraid 
of a witch hunt. "It's suffocating,'' says J V 
Naik, former head of the Mumbai university's 
history department. "You can get into trouble for 
just expressing a point of view.One feels afraid 
to talk even on the train.''

Historian Jairus Banaj[i], who almost got 
arrested when he heckled Gujarat chief minister 
Narendra Modi at a seminar, is blunt. "As the 
elections near, politicians outdo each other in 
pandering to the worst kind of communal 
chauvinism. It is typical that they can work up 
more passion about their 'outraged' sentiments 
than about all the squalor, violence and 
deprivation surrounding them.'' Banaj[i] adds, 
"If we are a modern democracy and not a fascist 
cesspool, then scholars have every right to 
express themselves within a democratically 
acceptable discourse.''

While scholars agree it is incumbent to be 
sensitive, they say the spaces for intellectual 
debate are diminishing. "Laine's book is meant 
for other scholars,'' notes Partha Chatterjee, 
head of the Centre for Studies of Social 
Sciences, Kolkata, who found the book to be 
largely sensitive.

"And what is appropriate for a scholarly 
discussion may not be apprropriate for a broader 
audience. The issue here is how do we protect the 
fora for scholarly discussion, prevent it from 
being hijacked by people who are not even 
reading'' she says.

In this case, Chatterjee notes, the fact that the 
author is not Indian is adding fuel to the fire. 
"Certain things that can be said in the Marathi 
press, which has a tradition of critically 
discussing great men, won't be accepted from a 
foreigner.''

The casualty of cultural censorship may be 
scholarship.Already, academicians are polarised, 
says Arvind Ganachari, professor in the Mumbai 
university's history department. "If you praise 
Shivaji, you're a Sainik, but if you criticise 
him, you're a JNU Marxist. There's no middle 
ground,'' he complains.

On a practical level, some say they will think 
twice before writing. Shrikant Bahulkar, the 
80-year-old Sanskrit scholar whose face was 
blackened by Shiv Sena activists for translating 
some texts for Laine, says he is now even wary of 
helping other scholars.


_____


[5]

Date: Tue, 23 Mar 2004 10:56:09 +0530 (IST)

Subject: A request for support

Dear Friends

We had circulated this appeal earlier. We could not raise sufficient
funds. Now we have decided to buy the CD projector, come what may.

We urge upon you to kindly spport this effort.
You may please forward the appeal to other concerned friends as well.

Thanks and best wishes

Waqar Khan(Dharavi) Daniel Mazgaonkar (BSFC) Ram Puniyani (EKTA)
--


An Appeal for Support

Dear Friends

Some of our friends have been working on the issue of Communal Harmony in
Mumbai slums, especially in Dharavi. Apart from intercommunity programs on
National days and intercommunity celebration of festivals they are
regularly screening films giving the message of communal harmony. One such
film, Ham Sab Ek Hain, (We are all one) has been made by Mr. Waqar Khan, a
basti activist himself, who along with Bhau Korde is the key person
conducting these programs. So far nearly 30 shows of the film have taken
place. They also plan to broaden this work by undertaking film screening
in other Bastis and also by incorporating other films as well.

The constraint is the VCD projector, which they have to hire and the usual
difficulties about that. We plan to help them buy this projector for which
a sum of Rs. 80000 has to be raised. This is an appeal to help in this
work and send your contributions for the same. Please send your
contributions in the name of

Bombay Sarvodaya Friendship Center
Friendship Building
Kajupapda Road
Kurla Mumbai 400072
(tel. 28513660)

Please also send a covering letter or an email stating the purpose of your
donation

Email your support letter to

danielm at vsnl.com
jhang45 at yahoo.com


With best wishes

Ram Puniyani

_____


[6]


Voices against communal terror and for cultural freedom in
India

South Asia Solidarity Group invites you to a meeting with
Shabana Azmi  and Javed Akhtar

Thursday April 1
6.30 - 8.30pm,
SOAS,
Thornhaugh Street,
Russell Square,
London WC1  [UK]

Shabana Azmi, actor, social activist and ex-MP will discuss
the struggle to defend cultural freedom from the onslaught of
the stormtroopers of far-right Hindutva.

Javed Akhtar, acclaimed Urdu poet and lyricist  and activist
will discuss his anti-communal work with children and young
people across India.

Details: 0207 267 0923,  sasg at southasiasolidarity.org

South Asia Solidarity Group is a campaigning organisation
committed to strengthening movements for secularism, justice
and genuine democracy, both in South Asia and among South
Asian communities in Britain. Our activities and analysis
make the connections between the racism of the British state,
America and Britain's so-called 'war on terror', and the rise
of fascist forces in South Asia. We are involved in struggles
against patriarchal oppression within South Asian communities
and in exposing the ways in which it is reinforced and
reshaped by the British state. We aim to develop an
understanding of the changes which are occurring in South
Asia and globally from a revolutionary left perspective.

Currently we are organising  under the slogan 'Stand Together
Against Communalism and War' to
·	Resist the attempts of the religious right to divide
South Asian communities in Britain
·	Stem the flow of funds raised in Britain for fascist
Hindutva organisations in India
·	Build  a strong and united South Asian presence in
the anti-war movement in Britain
We are founder members of Asian Women Unite! a network of
Asian Women's organisations in Britain


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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
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--