SACW | 26-27 March 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  26-27 March,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Bangladesh: UN bodies support March 25 as 
Int'l Day of resistance against war, cruelty
[2] India - Movie Review: The Reel Savarkar (Niranjan Ramakrishnan)
[3] Deserted by Doctors, India's Poor Turn to Quacks (Celia W. Dugger)
[4] India: The more things change... (Urvashi Butalia)
[5] UK/India: Probe Use of Funds Raised Abroad by 
Hindutva Groups (President, PUCL)
[6] Pakistan: an exhibition of works 1980-2003 by lala rukh (Lahore, April 2)
[7] India: Panel Discussion The Indian Economy: Stock Taking in Industry,
Infrastructure and Health Sectors (New Delhi, March 27)
[8] India/ Pakistan: Letter to the Editor (Mukul Dube)
[9] Governmentality, Population and Reproductive 
Family in Modern India (Sarah Hodges)

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

[1]


www.bangladeshobserveronline.com

UN bodies support March 25 as Int'l Day of resistance against war, cruelty

Staff Correspondent

Bangladesh War Crimes Facts Finding Committee, a 
civil rights group has received overwhelming 
support from the United Nations bodies, world 
leaders and international organisations to 
declare March 25 as "International Day of 
Resistance Against War and Cruelty".

UN Secretary General Kofi Anan and Koichiro 
Matsuura, chief of UNESCO have positively 
responded to the proposal of an international day 
against war and cruelty.

The day commemorates the incident of barbaric 
crack down on the Bangla-speaking unarmed 
civilians of the Pakistan's eastern province. An 
estimated three million people in Bangladesh were 
killed, in the worst ever genocide after killing 
of the Jews in Germany.

The anti-war WCFFC has appealed to Bangladesh 
authority and NGOs affiliated with UN to move a 
resolution 53/199-12/98 in the forthcoming 
general assembly, which will enable to declare 
March 25 as an international anti-war and cruelty 
day.

Dr M. Hassan, founder of WCFFC and a medical 
scientist believes the observance of the day 
would cause global awareness to unite against 
genocide, not in conformation of humanity, 
cruelty and death caused from chemicals, germ and 
nuclear warfare.

Trained to participate in the liberation war of 
1971 as a military officer, Dr Hassan told the 
Bangladesh Observer that the day should also be 
observed in everybody home, to express their hate 
against war crimes and demand trial of war 
criminals.

The day needs to be observed to allow the 
perpetrators of the collaborators of the war 
crimes, to confess their guilt. #

NOTE: For more information please write to Dr M. 
Hassan <gull at pradeshta.net>, <aaersci at aitlbd.net>


_____


[2]


www.indogram.com/

Bus, Stop - by Niranjan Ramakrishnan

The Reel Savarkar
Movie Review
[March 23, 2004]

In the early years of the 20th century, a young 
Maharashtrian Brahmin from Ratnagiri goes to 
London to study law. Coming from a nationalist 
family, he is soon in contact with some of the 
other Indian patriots in London. The young 
student, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar (1883-1966), 
jumps into this small group of dissenters. Far 
away from their country, yet nobly drawn to do 
something for its freedom, raging at what Britain 
has done to India but impotent to punish her, 
these young men and their academician mentor, 
Shyamaji Krisnavarma (another newfound icon of 
the BJP's effort to recast history and find 
freedom struggle heroes with a Saffronite bent - 
slim pickings, unfortunately) revel in little, 
largely inconsequential, conspiratorial eddies 
(usually attempted assassination), whose purpose 
(unrealized) is to assuage their own egos.

It is at this stage that we first encounter 
Savarkar in director Ved Rahi's film about his 
life, now doing the rounds in North America.

Savarkar comes across as an intense person who is 
able to inspire others to commit acts of 
violence. In 1908, one of his acolytes, Madanlal 
Dhingra, shoots an English official, for which he 
is hanged. Gandhi condemned the act 
unequivocally. Savarkar's response is unclear -- 
he is shown disrupting a meeting of Indians to 
condemn Dhingra's action, but never says anything 
definitive to outline his philosophy.

Two kinds of revolutionaries fought for India's 
freedom. One was of the Gandhian kind, who 
suffered and courted imprisonment, all 
peacefully. The other was of the Bhagat Singh and 
Bagha Jatin variety, who fought the British with 
arms, and had the courage to go to the gallows 
for his acts. Savarkar, who fit neither category, 
was unique. He instigated and incited others to 
die for his beliefs, quite happy to avoid the 
gallows himself.

"No one, in our time, believes in any sanction 
greater than military power; no one believes that 
it is possible to overcome force except by 
greater force", wrote George Orwell once. While 
Orwell was speaking of post World War I 
consciousness, defining this as the central tenet 
of fascism, Savarkar believed in it reflexively, 
long before Orwell's words were written. 
Throughout his life he was fascinated with 
violence. His political career began with sending 
guns to India in ones and twos, packed inside 
hollowed out books, sending bomb-making 
instructions to India, gleaned from Russian 
Revolutionaries -- things which when our enemies 
do today we call 'terrorism'. It ended with the 
assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

Savarkar is soon arrested by the British 
authorities, who had also banned his book on the 
1857 revolt. While being transported to India by 
ship, he jumps into the sea and escapes to the 
shore in Marseilles, France, only to be chased 
and caught by the British and taken to India 
(spending the rest of the journey in irons). 
After a trial in Bombay, during which he remains 
curiously silent (no "History will vindicate me" 
speech), he is banished to the Andamans (Kala 
Pani), the Gulag of British India.

It is at this point, it would appear, that 
director Rahi decided to not let any more facts 
stand in the way of a stirring hagiography.

Where do we start? Savarkar is shown as a leader 
of Indian prisoners in the Andamans. This is not 
quite how other Andaman prisoners remember it. 
Some have recalled that the Savarkar brothers 
refused to join them (other Indian prisoners) in 
their protests, because (in Savarkar's words), 
"Why should we lose our hard earned special 
privileges?". Contrary to the picture drawn by 
the film, the archival records reveal that 
Savarkar appealed for clemency in rather dulcet 
tones within a year of his reaching the Andamans. 
Indeed, in one of his communications, he says, 
"...if the government in their manifold 
beneficence and mercy release me, I for one 
cannot but be the staunchest advocate of 
constitutional progress and loyalty to the 
English government which is the foremost 
condition of that progress ... Moreover, my 
conversion to the constitutional line would bring 
back all those misled young men in India and 
abroad who were once looking up to me as their 
guide."

The film does not mention the appeal. It does 
introduce a new element, however. Contradicting 
everything we've read about the freedom struggle, 
of how the years in jail united Hindus and 
Muslims (indeed, this is a pretty good rule of 
thumb -- those leaders, Hindus or Muslims, who 
spent time in British jails in the Freedom 
Struggle, were generally secularists; men like 
Jinnah and Golwalkar, who never did, were 
generally communalists), one the first issues 
Savarkar is shown raising (after first having 
sought permission to meet his brother), is Hindu 
conversions to Islam in the Andaman prison. This 
is news indeed. The film seeks to indicate that 
this is what started Savarkar along on his rabid 
anti-Muslim path. If so, it points to rather 
cloistered thinking. After a decade in the 
Andamans, he is released, on condition that he 
not leave his district of Ratnagiri, and that he 
not engage in political activity, conditions he 
accepts without demur. No one can deny Savarkar's 
privations in prison, but he surely wasn't the 
only one to undergo them, and many others 
suffered even more without seeking clemency. But 
back to the film.

We next see Savarkar as a great Hindu reformer, 
with a scene showing him leading untouchables 
into a Hindu temple in the teeth of upper caste 
opposition. However, this seems to be a one-scene 
fascination, for the film shows no more 
involvement with the dalit movement -- indeed, 
the inveterate antagonism Savarkar's 
organizations engendered among Ambedkar and 
others continues till today. Whatever the film 
may like to pretend, Savarkar was no Jyotiba 
Phule (the well known Maharashtrian social 
reformer).

No, Savarkar's preoccupation, from the time he 
came to Ratnagiri to the time he managed to 
accomplish Gandhi's assassination, was plain and 
simple; it was his fascination with violence.

The film shows a meeting between Gandhi and 
Savarkar at Savarkar's home in Ratnagiri. 
Savarkar berates the caste system without 
suggesting how he would dismantle it. The film 
depicts Gandhi as advocating for the caste 
system, a half-truth at best. Gandhi's associates 
came from all castes and communities; Savarkar's 
were strictly Chitpavan Brahmins, but don't 
expect the film to dwell on these small details. 
More interesting is the brief conversation about 
violence. Savarkar challenges Gandhi on his 
advocacy of non-violence. This is an interesting 
argument. Savarkar's point is that Britain is 
such a strong power that she can only be 
dislodged by violence. Gandhi is shown as 
implying that the reason for using non-violence 
is because we could never muster enough arms to 
confront Britain. This is plain falsehood, as his 
approach to Chauri Chaura would show. But the 
film needs to decry Gandhi to show Savarkar as an 
equal. (A quick peep into factland -- at the time 
the meeting took place, Gandhi had mobilized 
hundreds of thousands of people, both in India 
and South Africa, and electrified the whole 
country, as Savarkar and his 
revolvers-tucked-into-books never would. Many 
charismatic leaders in India felt their place 
usurped by Mahatma Gandhi's advent, Jinnah and 
Savarkar among them. Each would take his revenge 
in his own way.)

In Ratnagiri, Savarkar is shown as being 
harrassed constantly by the secret police. One 
wonders why, for both the Hindu Mahasabha and the 
Muslim League were doing exactly what the British 
wanted -- dividing the country on communal lines 
and acting as a couterweight to the national 
movement.

In the film, Subhas Chandra Bose visits Savarkar 
(at the suggestion of no less a personage than 
Jinnah!) to seek his advice. Before Netaji 
arrives, Savarkar tells his aide that no one 
else, including the aide, should be present at 
the meeting. Very convenient. Since Bose has 
never mentioned it, we have only Savarkar's word 
for what took place. The movie contends that it 
was on Savarkar's instance that Netaji raised the 
Indian National Army (talk of Al Gore inventing 
the Internet)! The movie later says that Bose, in 
one of his radio broadcasts from Singapore, 
praised Savarkar as the only Indian leader with a 
vision. If so, it was different vision from 
Bose's own. Netaji did not distinguish at all 
between Hindus and Muslims in the INA.

Freedom comes, and Savarkar is shown to be deeply 
troubled by the country's partition. Not 
surprisingly, the film omits the fact that it was 
Savarkar who propounded the Two-Nation Theory -- 
at least 3 years before Jinnah did. For all his 
anguish, what did he do to oppose partition? The 
film does not answer. One perversely wonders, 
since the Swatantrayaveer did not want partition 
and believed fervently in assassinations, why 
didn't he try to bump off Jinnah, who wanted 
partition instead of Gandhi, who opposed it? The 
tart answer is that Jinnah had bodyguards. 
Therein lies a kernel of truth. Savarkar, and his 
inheritors in the Hindutva Brigade today, are 
primarily raucous bullies, active against unarmed 
victims, mumbling conformers in the face of 
stronger opponents. Savarkar's life is testimony 
to the validity of Gandhi's admonition about 
hatred. Hate will morph. Savarkar's hatred of the 
British is palpable in the scene where he stands 
before the English parliament shortly after he 
reaches England. Soon England is left behind but 
the hatred stays -- first of the British, then of 
the Muslims, and finally, of Gandhi.

The movie tells an interesting story, and is 
generally well cast. The best actor, 
incidentally, is the Irish jailor (Tom Alter). 
Savarkar's character is a close second, 
displaying an almost clinical coldness which was 
central to Savarkar's psychology. Savarkar' 
brother Babu Rao's is more human. The other 
characters do not register. One wishes Rahi had 
used Englishmen for some of the English roles to 
make the dialogs more realistic.

The film ends with Freedom, with Savarkar 
enigmatically carrying two flags, one the Indian 
tricolor, and the other showing a Swastika. It 
does not deal with two vital aspects -- one, as 
mentioned earlier, Savarkar's indictment and near 
conviction (a later inquiry found more evidence 
which would have surely convicted him) in the 
Gandhi murder.

The second, and equally important aspect, is his 
treatise on Hindutva, the bedrock of the current 
ruling party's philosophy in India. This would 
have made for an interesting, and indeed, 
educational viewing. The only time the movie 
touches upon this is when Savarkar talks to some 
muslims about the Khilafat movement. Gandhi's 
participation in, and encouragement of, the 
Khilafat movement was controversial at the time. 
Savarkar, with many others, rightly saw in it a 
Pan-Islamism which was at least orthogonal, if 
not exactly opposed, to the concept of Indian 
nationhood. But Gandhi saw in it an opportunity 
for Hindus in India to make common cause with 
their brothers the Muslims of India, at a time 
when the latter were suffering an emotional hurt. 
But Gandhi was not so wrong as it might seem. The 
same groups that are bringing Savarkar's movie to 
theaters in America, who get agitated by what 
goes on in India, could similarly be told by 
Americans that their interests represent a 
Pan-Indianism or Pan-Hinduism which is 
incompatible with being an American. In the end, 
whatever he did, Gandhi promoted friendship and 
the culture of non-violence. Savarkar preached 
hatred of minorities and fostered assassination.

Nor does the film highlight Savarkar's skills as 
a writer or poet (except for one excruciatingly 
long poem shown being recited by the hero, with 
the Sanskrit text clashing with the English 
subtitle making it all the more difficult), which 
are said to be considerable. When visited by a 
police officer, he hands him a pen, saying that 
the pen is mightier than the sword. Apparently 
that cliche was only for others. Judging by his 
life, he applied exactly the opposite dictum to 
his own conduct.

For all its faults, this film should be mandatory 
viewing for every Indian for one simple reason. 
So strong an indictment of VD Savarkar and what 
he represents would be hard to make by any critic 
-- the director has inadvertantly managed it. The 
Swatantrayaveer comes out as an egotist, a 
self-involved if precocious man-child who never 
outgrows the stage of pre-adolescent 
score-settling.
_____


[3]


The New York Times
March 25, 2004

Deserted by Doctors, India's Poor Turn to Quacks

By CELIA W. DUGGER

BHOMATAWARA, India — The sturdy little public 
clinic in this poor, sickly village was locked up 
one recent afternoon, but that is nothing 
remarkable. Rampant absenteeism among government 
doctors and nurses is an open secret across India 
and much of the developing world, and they 
virtually never get in trouble for not showing up.

"Sometimes the nurse is here, sometime she's 
not," said Nagji Lal Pandore, a skinny old man in 
a saffron turban. "Sometimes she has medicines, 
sometimes she doesn't. Why take a chance?"

So, like many people here, his family has turned 
to amateur private "doctors" who have regular 
hours and plentiful medications to sell.

His daughter-in-law Shanti Bai, 30, went to such 
a doctor for a fever six months ago. He gave her 
an injection. The next day, she was dead and her 
children motherless.

Villagers blamed the doctor and he fled, but the 
heartache remains. Mr. Pandore and his wife have 
broken the news to their 5-year-old grandson, but 
they are still telling their 3-year-old 
granddaughter that her mother is away on a trip. 
"She cries and cries and asks, `Where is my 
mother?' " he said.

India has a vast primary health care system to 
serve its billion people, with clinics for every 
3,000 to 5,000. But the system is often just a 
skeleton. New studies have documented the 
startling, damaging dimensions of chronic 
absenteeism — and not just in India.

Researchers for the World Bank discovered through 
large national surveys that medical personnel 
were absent from their public posts 35 to 40 
percent of the time in India, Bangladesh, 
Indonesia and Uganda, and about a quarter of the 
time in Peru.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology and Princeton, in a detailed survey of 
100 villages here in Rajasthan, in north India, 
found a no-show rate of 44 percent. When combined 
with absences for meetings and other work-related 
reasons, these vital clinics were closed more 
than half the time.

As the United Nations leads a global effort to 
prevent millions of deaths from AIDS, 
tuberculosis, malaria and a range of childhood 
illnesses, the fissures in public health systems 
are emerging as a main obstacle.

There is an increasingly heated debate among 
experts about whether multibillion-dollar 
infusions of foreign aid or politically sensitive 
domestic reforms are more central to repairing 
public health systems.

What is starkly clear in India, home to more poor 
people than any other country, is that the health 
system is both starved for resources and 
desperately in need of reform.

Here in the villages outside Udaipur, one of 
India's loveliest tourist destinations, 
rough-hewn clinics for the rural poor generally 
have no phones, no vehicles, no running water. 
Most have no electricity. On a recent day, they 
lacked syrup-based medicines to treat young 
children for fevers, vomiting, coughs and 
respiratory infections. Some nurses said they had 
run out of the basic pills provided by the 
government.

India's public health spending is among the 
lowest in the world — $4 a person per year, less 
than 1 percent of its gross domestic product, the 
United Nations Development Program says. The 
United States spends about $2,000 a person, or 
almost 6 percent of gross domestic product.

But India's experience also shows that more money 
alone is not the answer. India sharply increased 
its health spending in the 1990's, but most went 
for new hiring and for pay raises to those 
doctors and nurses who are not showing up for 
work, according to a World Bank analysis.

The dramatic progress in reducing infant 
mortality in the 1980's slowed in the 1990's, 
while mortality for children under 5 did not 
improve at all.

The economists coordinating the research here — 
Professors Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, 
co-founders of the Poverty Action Lab at M.I.T., 
and Angus Deaton at Princeton — will work with 
120 villages and 100 clinics.

They will add a nurse to each clinic and monitor 
attendance through a punch clock or dated digital 
photographs. They also will try chlorinating 
contaminated well water, fortifying flour with 
iron to fight anemia and paying parents to have 
their children immunized.

They will try each strategy in half the villages 
or clinics, then compare the health of people in 
villages that got the help with those that did 
not.

What is here now is not working very well. The 
survey and accompanying blood tests of villagers 
found that most people were scrawny and weakened 
by anemia. Three out of 10 said they had trouble 
mustering the strength to walk a couple of miles 
or draw water from a well.

But when asked to rate their health on a scale of 
1 to 10, most placed themselves in the middle.

"Their health is awful and their health care even 
worse," said Professor Deaton, an expert on 
Indian poverty. "They know they're really poor, 
but they don't know they're really sick. One of 
the things that drives some of us to despair is 
that this isn't a political issue among them."

In Bhomatawara, where the young mother, Shanti 
Bai, died, villagers say the government nurse is 
often not at the clinic. On three visits to the 
village, she was never there.

So when Ms. Bai developed a fever, her family 
turned to the amateur doctor. He gave her a shot 
and used the same syringe to give her 
brother-in-law an injection, her husband said. 
She developed an infection at the site of the 
injection.

The next day she died. The doctor paid the family 
$930 before he left town. A post-mortem found the 
underlying cause of her death was severe anemia.

The government nurse, Tulsi Meghwal, was located 
at her home in a town about 12 miles away. She 
said she had given Ms. Bai iron pills a couple of 
times, but declined to go to the clinic and show 
the notations in the register.

The only medical training the amateur doctor had 
was what he had picked up doing menial work for a 
real doctor, Ms. Meghwal said.

Because the public service is so undependable, 
the survey found, even the poorest turn to 
private doctors or traditional healers 79 percent 
of the time, spending 7 percent of their monthly 
budget on medical care. Four out of 10 private 
doctors surveyed had no medical degree.

Chronic absenteeism among government doctors and 
nurses is a hard thing to stop in widely 
scattered villages. The clinics have no phones, 
so it is impossible to check on the staff's 
presence with a simple call. The local village 
councils are supposed to ensure attendance, but 
they have no authority over the medical staff, 
whose salaries, transfers and promotions are 
controlled at the district and state levels.

No one around here could remember any doctor or 
nurse ever being disciplined for failing to go to 
work.

At the same time, there are powerful forces 
pulling the medical staff away from the small, 
backward villages where they are assigned to 
work. Their desire to see their own children well 
educated is the strongest. Doctors and nurses 
interviewed in half a dozen villages sent their 
children to the city for school. Some commuted 
from the city; others sent their families to live 
there.

"When government doctors are posted here, they 
want out as quickly as possible," said Dr. 
Mahindra Parmar, who serves in Chhani village and 
has two sons, 3 and 4. "Everyone wants to live in 
the city. I'd like a transfer to Udaipur. If not, 
I'll have to move my children there. I'm an 
educated person. What opportunity is there for my 
children here? If you allow them to mix with 
local children, they begin to use the local bad 
words."

The failings of both public and private health 
care were on display in Dabaycha. The clinic's 
metal doors were bolted and padlocked one recent 
afternoon. Some villagers said they did not even 
know a government nurse was assigned to the 
village.

"Sometimes she's here, sometimes she's not," said 
Jivi Mohan, a mother of four who was smoothing a 
mixture of dung and mud on the walls of her home. 
"Laxman is always there."

Laxman Damor, 49, is the most popular "doctor" in 
the village, though he never got past the seventh 
grade. The way to his house lies through wheat 
and lentil fields and past grazing cows.

"By and large, whoever comes to me, I give them 
an injection," he said. "Often, tablets are 
better, but they want injections. If I don't give 
them one, they'll go to someone else. I'll lose 
my customer."

He is also liberal with the intravenous glucose 
drip, which gives a person sapped by anemia a 
temporary sugar surge. He charges more than $2 
for a drip, in an area where people spend on 
average $10 a month per person for total 
household expenses.

A young laborer, Babu Lal, walked into Mr. 
Damor's courtyard, complaining of a chest cold. 
He had hiked several miles. Mr. Damor immediately 
put him on the examining table. In no time, the 
needle was out and Mr. Damor stuck him in the hip 
with an antibiotic.

That same afternoon, the public health nurse, 
Kesara Ahari, returned to the village, saying she 
had been working in the fields. But she did not 
unlock the clinic. She said she always works out 
of her home.

She acknowledged she has trouble competing with 
Mr. Damor. He has medicines that she does not. 
She does not give the injections and intravenous 
drips that people want.

She brought out the empty tins that should have 
held her stock of medicines. She was even out of 
oral rehydration salts, which can cheaply prevent 
dehydration from diarrhea, a leading killer of 
children in developing countries. Many of those 
who come to her for care wind up going to Mr. 
Damor to buy the pills they need.

Her register showed entries only intermittently, 
sometimes with gaps of almost a week.

"I don't have medicines, so what do I give them?" 
she asked, shrugging. "What is the point of 
filling the register?"

_____



[4]

The Hindustan Times
March 26, 2004
  	 
The more things change...
By Urvashi Butalia

  Founded in 1984 as a modest resource and 
documentation centre, Jagori, a Delhi-based 
women's group, has grown from strength to 
strength in the last two decades. And as with all 
such groups that are involved in hectic 
day-to-day activity, there's been little time to 
reflect, to sit back and take stock. Until the 
20th birthday came round, that is.

But birthdays are also occasions to celebrate. So 
there were discussions and cultural events. And 
celebrations, as women from all over the globe 
came together in an expression of solidarity, an 
assertion that the women's movement is alive and 
well, an affirmation that the friendships it 
engendered still endure, a belief that feminist 
border crossings have a different quality to them.

It was in the spirit of celebration that 
Pakistani theatre director Madiha Gauhar brought 
her play, Barri, to Delhi, and Eve Ensler 
performed The Vagina Monologues, now part of a 
worldwide movement against gender-based violence 
called V-Day, to enthusiastic

audiences. Several hundred women stood up and 
applauded in what was clearly an emotional 
outburst as 90-year-old Uzra Butt enacted the 
role of a woman prisoner caught in a Pakistani 
prison, in Barri. A Bangla-deshi woman stood up 
and spoke movingly of the despair of facing 
violence against women in her society, and the 
sense of empowerment she felt after watching 
Ensler perform. At the same event, a Somali woman 
took the microphone and spoke about what it had 
meant to her to be genitally mutilated. There was 
not a dry eye in the hall.

While the evenings were for celebration, the days 
were reserved for discussions. Since the early 
days of the contemporary women's movement in 
India, violence against women has been one of the 
key issues addressed. And this was the subject 
Jagori chose to focus on. From the initial 
emphasis on rape and dowry, the understanding of 
violence against women has considerably expanded 
within the women's movement.

No longer do women speak only of violence within 
the home and family - which remains the most 
hidden form of violence against women. They also 
talk of the violence of war, conflict and 
militarisation, which has long lasting 
consequences for women. Of the violence of a 
legal system that discriminates against one half 
of the population of many countries, of the 
violence confronted daily in the workplace, in 
the streets, indeed, even in the language in 
which they are addressed.

Among the successes that women activists measure 
is the recognition, at the international level, 
of violence against women as a human rights 
violation in 1993, and the subsequent 
appointment, by the UN, of a Special Rapporteur 
on Violence Against Women. While there are some 
positive signals to be read into the fact that 
the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of 
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has been 
ratified by many countries, there is also 
considerable concern that this is the one 
international convention that has the largest 
number of reservations attached to it. As always, 
it is women's rights that seem to be the most 
threatening.

Activists are painfully aware that gender-based 
violence is on the increase, and taking new 
forms. In India, one merely has to look at the 
declining sex ratio to understand how the female 
child continues to be devalued. In Nepal and Sri 
Lanka, one only needs to observe the increase in 
female-headed households as a result of the 
conflict to understand how women are being 
additionally burdened.

While activists dream of a world free of violence 
against women, they know that the world they live 
in is one where this possibility remains a 
distant dream. Activists at the meet organised by 
Jagori, Sangat, Anhad and V-Day recognised not 
only this reality, but also the fact that because 
of the growth of fundamentalisms, and the 
simultaneous spread of militarisation and 
globalisation, women are today confronted with 
multiple and complex forms of violence. While 
some of these may take culturally specific forms, 
some like the misnamed 'honour killings' are 
common across borders in South Asia.

It was this realisation that led to the 
understanding, articulated by Jagori, that "There 
is a need to reflect on our struggles, on battles 
won and lost, on strategies, and how much 
difference we have made". Two decades of work 
provided the opportunity to reflect an exercise 
that is becoming common among South Asian women's 
groups. Few other political movements are open to 
such self-questioning.

(The writer heads the publishing imprint, Zubaan Women's Feature Service)


______


[5]

PEOPLE'S UNION FOR CIVIL LIBERTIES
(Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry)
'Husain House', II Floor, 7/1 Kondi Chetty St., Chennai 600 001
Ph: 25245412, 25392459      e-mail : rights at vsnl.com
National Council Member: Sudha Ramalingam

President : R. Niraimathi				General Secretary:
Dr. V. Suresh
23.03.2004
To
	The Chief Reporter

FOR FAVOUR OF PUBLICATION
Sir,
Please find enclosed a Statement for favour of Publication. Since the
subject matter of the statement pertains to an important social issue
relevant to the present political situation in the country we request you to
give widespread coverage to the statement.
	With regards,

							V. Suresh
							Dr. V. Suresh
							General Secretary,
PUCL-TN/Pondy


Probe Use of Funds Raised Abroad by Hindutva Groups

Statement Issued by Mr. K.G. Kannabiran,
National President, People's Union for Civil Liberties
& Dr V. Suresh, Gen. Secy-PUCL-TN/Pondy

A report, titled In Bad Faith? : British Charity and Hindu Extremism, was
released in the House of Lords on February 26th (see www.awaazsaw.org).  It
details how UK-based groups - particularly the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh UK
(the RSS' UK branch), and its fundraising arm Sewa International - have been
raising funds in the name of humanitarian aid in India.  In particular, Sewa
International raised over 2 million pounds (about Rs. 14 crore at current
rates) for disaster relief work after the Gujarat earthquake.  Virtually all
the money raised by these organisations is sent to Sangh Parivar outfits in
India, particularly Sewa Bharati. The report demonstrates that the uses of
this money include relief work that glorified the RSS and extended its
shakha network, construction of the controversial ekal vidyalayas and Vidya
Bharati-run schools, and funding of other Parivar groups, particularly the
Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram. 

	In its investigation into the 2002 anti-Muslim genocide in Gujarat,
the Concerned Citizens' Tribunal had stated that "The source of [Sangh
Parivar] funds, used increasingly for blatantly unlawful and
unconstitutional activities, needs to be investigated."  This report
provides a partial answer to that question. It requires to be highlighted
that both Sewa Bharati and the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram have been directly
involved in anti-minority violence (such as Sewa Bharati's recent
involvement in the Jhabua clashes).

The Peoples Union for Civil Liberties reads this Report with concern and is
apprehensive of the effect such large scale funding of an avowedly communal
outfit will have on the polity and its pluralistic character. RSS can no
longer be taken as some sort of an innocuous cultural organization separate
from and uninvolved with the BJP, universally considered to be its political
face. The fig leaf of being separate entities has been torn off in the
context of the 2004 elections. The 10th March, 2004 edition of the Hindu
carries a report highlighting the plans of the RSS for a larger and more
direct role in the coming 2004 elections. The report points out to the fact
that the RSS this time is insisting on stressing the Hindutva view in all
issues dealt with by the Vision Document of the BJP. Clear instructions have
been issued by the RSS bosses from their Nagpur and Delhi offices to ensure
that their workers not only work during elections for the success of BJP in
the polls to the Lok Sabha but also to see that that the elected
representatives toe the line of the RSS. It is a complete takeover by the
RSS of the entire election campaign of the BJP. It is in this context that
the report of Awaaz raises issues of concern. It is clear that the funds
collected in Britain would not, in actuality, have been used for the
purposes for which they were said to be collected. It is clear that much of
the funds will indeed have been used for ensuring the growth of
organizations affiliated to RSS and their cohort organizations in expanding
their area of Hindutva influence and supporting groups involved in violence.


Though currently there does not exist direct evidence, there is every
possibility that the funds raised may be used for the current election
purposes and such an eventuality cannot be ruled out. These will not be
accounted for in the returns filed on election expenses. People experienced
in monitoring the way election expenses are accounted know that such
diversion is possible without being shown in official election expenses.
This is especially so given the complexity of electoral dynamics and
difficulty in strict monitoring. No political party ever reflects the true
amounts spent on elections. The fact also remains that such funding may well
be  used for funding the current rath yatra of Advani without anyone being
wiser. 

But the true danger of this funding is not just that it may have been used
to directly support violence.  All of the groups discussed in the report
swear by Hindutva and pledge themselves to propagating their view of India
as a 'Hindu nation' where minorities are second-class citizens. They engage
in this by staging massive publicity spectacles like yatras, spreading
misinformation and falsehoods through the media and, most importantly,
running schools that teach distorted, anti-minority propaganda in the name
of education.  For decades these groups have worked to spread their
influence and to ensure that the rights of Muslims and Christians are
increasingly marginalized.  It is worth recalling that, in 1993, the NCERT's
National Steering Committee on Textbook Evaluation described Vidya Bharati's
textbooks as being "designed to promote bigotry and religious fanaticism in
the name of inculcating knowledge of culture in the young generation".
These activities, now we know, are part of its political campaigning This
report is only the tip of the iceberg, and the money spent on captive youth
is prepare them for the support of a theocratic state.   AWAAZ in its Report
has gone into the details of this fund raising extensively. And these funds
are channeled through Seva Bharati and similar organizations registered
under FCRA.

	Such funding raises concerns that foreign contributions to FCRA
registered organisations (such as Sewa Bharati) are being used to support
the aims and activities of unregistered political organisations, including
the RSS and the VHP.   The report points out that funds raised for the
Orissa super cyclone were given to a group whose office address is the same
as that of the Orissa RSS branch.  Further, in the light of recent
announcements that the Sangh Parivar will be explicitly supporting the BJP
election campaign, such funding also may be distorting the democratic
process. 

As such, the findings of this report require urgent investigation as
evidence of potential FCRA violations. Under section 10 of FCRA the central
government has wide powers to prohibit acceptance of foreign contributions
from any association or person even though unconnected with the election as
specified by section 4. This section covers persons and associations like
RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal, not covered by section 4, at all times including
the election period. The Central Government shall have the power to prevent
receipt of foreign funds if it is likely to impair "freedom or fairness of
elections to any legislature; or harmony between religious, racial,
linguistic, or regional groups, castes or communities."   Section 5
prohibits any political organization from receiving funds foreign sources.
Organisations of a political nature again have to be notified by the Central
Government.

Over the years the Ruling Party at the Center and the Central Government
have become interchangeable and with this Ruling Party it is all the more
so. It becomes necessary for the Election Commission to consider the
question whether the money spent by RSS etc on the BJP's election campaign
is permissible and if not, consider suitable action to interdict receipt of
funds by these organizations from a foreign source.

	It now remains to be seen if our political class will take up this
matter with the seriousness it deserves.  Crores of rupees have been flowing
to groups who are accused of engineering genocide and other forms of gross
human rights violations.  We call upon national leaders to urgently initiate
investigations into this matter under the FCRA and all applicable laws, and
we call upon democratic groups here and abroad to widely campaign against
fundraising by such groups. 

23.3.2004

V. Suresh								K.G.
Kannabiran
Dr. V. Suresh
K.G. Kannabiran
General Secretary
President
PUCL-Tamil Nadu & Pondicherry					PUCL -
National Unit



______


[6]

sajida haider vandal
principal
national college of arts
invites you to

an exhibition of works
1980-2003
by
lala rukh

on
friday april 2, 2004
at
5pm
at
zahoor ul akhlaque art gallery, nca
4, shahrah-e-quaid-e-azam, lahore [Pakistan]

r.s.v.p.
dr. ajaz anwar director gallery 9210601 ajazart at brain.net.pk

exhibition will continue till april 16, daily 10am-5pm


_____


[7]

DSF/SFI Discussion  in JNU
Date: 27th March,2004
Time: 3.00 PM
Venue Sutlej Mess, JNU
Topic: The Indian Economy: Stock Taking in Industry,
Infrastructure and Health Sectors
Speakers: Prof. C.P. Chandrasekhar, Dr. Amit Sengupta,
Parbir Purkayastha

_____


[8]

D-504 Purvasha
Mayur Vihar 1
Delhi 110091

27 March 2004

Dear Editor,

Now that our leaders have shown their pride in our nation by fêting
our winning cricket team, should they not show common decency by
thanking the Pakistanis for having been such generous and warm-
hearted hosts? That would be something of which India could *really*
be proud.

Your truly,

Mukul Dube

_____


[9]

Economic and Political Weekly [India]
March 13, 2004

Governmentality, Population and Reproductive Family in Modern India

In the 20th century and now into the 21st, 
'overpopulation' presides over its 
own industry of institutions, discourses and 
practices which in turn produce the terrain on 
which questions regarding the nature and import 
of reproduction in India can both be asked and 
answered. Rather than viewing population control 
as a mechanism of regulation/repression, this 
article is about what population control 
discourse produces: the erasure of the very 
possibility of thinking historically about 
population control in India. It presents a 
preliminary history of population as an object of 
knowledge in modern India, highlights the smooth 
ahistoricity of overpopulation discourse and 
addresses the history of the relationship between 
population and governance as it has interpolated 
the reproductive family.

By Sarah Hodges

[THE FULL TEXT OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS AVAILABLE 
FOR ALL INTERESTED. SHOULD YOU WISH TO RECEIVE A 
COPY SEND A REQUEST TO <aiindex at mnet.fr> ]


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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
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