SACW | 30-31 March 2004
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Tue Mar 30 14:23:01 CST 2004
South Asia Citizens Wire | 30-31 March, 2004
via: www.sacw.net
[1] International Textile, Garment and Leather
Workers' Federation files complaint against
Bangladesh
[2] Bangladesh: A Response to Ammu Abraham's
comment in SACW of 28 March (Sara Hossain)
[3] India: Secularism under siege (K.N. Panikkar)
[4] India: Press Release (Defeat BJP Forum)
[5] India: Passing Away of Tarkunde - End of an Era (N.D. Pancholi
[6] India: Statistics and demography (C. Rammanohar Reddy)
[7] India: Racialism has No Place in Shining India (Shiv Visvanathan)
[8] India: Secret society (Siddharth Varadarajan)
[9] USA/ India: Threatened Existence: Fascism in
India/Genocide in Gujarat : Talks by Ram Punyani
and S. Shah (New York City, April 1, 2004)
--------------
[1]
International Textile, Garment & Leather Workers' Federation
(ITGLWF) Press Releases
ILO COMPLAINT LODGED AGAINST GOVERNMENT OF BANGLADESH
11/3/2004
Press department
ILO COMPLAINT LODGED AGAINST GOVERNMENT OF BANGLADESH
The International Labour Organisation in Geneva
has been asked to examine the continuing refusal
by the government of Bangladesh to respect
freedom of association in the country's Export
Processing Zones.
A formal complaint has been lodged by the
Brussels-based International Textile, Garment and
Leather Workers' Federation.
Twelve years after agreeing to phase out the
labour law suspensions in EPZs, the government
has failed to live up to its commitment to
restore trade union rights in the zones by
January 2004.
The government of Bangladesh gazetted an official
notice on January 31, 2001 to the effect that all
workers in EPZs would have their legal and
related rights in the Zones, effective from
January 1, 2004. But towards the end of last
year, the government indicated it would seek an
extension or alternative plan.
On December 28, the US agreed to extend the
deadline for a relatively short period, during
which an agreement should be negotiated to enable
freedom of association to be provided in the
EPZs. The Bangladesh government has invited the
World Bank to mediate this process.
Says ITGLWF General Secretary Neil Kearney: "The
ITGLWF has repeatedly made approaches to the
government, stressing that under ILO standards,
to which Bangladesh is committed as a member of
the ILO, EPZs do not constitute a reason for
denying freedom of association or the right to
bargain collectively. Workers in such zones have
as much right as any other workers to the full
application of these standards. To suggest
otherwise shows considerable contempt for the ILO
and these core standards, which are applicable in
every member State, including Bangladesh".
"Continued denial of trade unions in EPZs will
not just risk cancellation of the Generalised
System of Preferences but will send a clear
message that Bangladesh doesn't take worker
rights seriously and that sourcing garments in
Bangladesh poses a potential public relations
disaster for leading US and European retailers
and brand name companies.
At a time when the impending phase-out of the MFA
is threatening to destroy the country's economy,
Bangladesh can ill afford to be seen as a
dangerous place to do business", concluded Mr.
Kearney.
-end-
The International Textile, Garment and Leather
Workers' Federation is a global union federation
bringing together 220 affiliated organisations in
110 countries with a combined membership of 10
million workers.
For more information, contact:
Neil Kearney (General Secretary) at 32/475932487 (mobile) or nk-gs at itglwf.org
ITGLWF Secretariat at tel: 32/02/512.26.06, fax:
32/02/511.09.04 or office at itglwf.org
website: www.itglwf.org
_____
[2]
Subject: RE: SACW | 28 March 2004
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 08:34:20 +0600
FOR AMMU ABRAHAM
Dear Amma Abraham
Its interesting (to avoid using more loaded words such as 'outrageous' which
seem preferable in the context) to see how you define communities when you
make your decisions about what is and is not genocide. Somehow it does not
seem possible for you to see the assault by the Pakistan Army in terms of
various non-religion based communities, for example as an attack by
(largely) Panjabis on (largely) Bengalis -- the latter incidentally being a
distint group incidentally, just as much as Chakmas perhaps. Rather you
prefer to see the Bengalis as being identified by their 'Muslim' ness,
really rather extraordinary given the large nos of non-Muslim Bengalis
massacred by the Pak Army during the Liberation War.
Also interested in why and how you categorise Ahmadiyas. The bigots are
happy to declare them non-Muslims, but they certainly describe themselves as
Muslim and many of us -- Muslim or not -- would respect their choice to do
that.
Maybe having a day on genocide doesn't mean that much in the face of
continuing hypocrisies and hr violations perpetrated by international
agencies, northern states etc, but it beats being categorically dismissed by
fellow activists.
Regards
Sara Hossain
Bangladesh
Email: [. . . ]
_____
[3]
The Hindu [India]
March 31, 2004
SECULARISM UNDER SIEGE
By K.N. Panikkar
Rather than redefining secularism, what is more
compelling is rethinking secular practice,
particularly by the political class.
THE SURGE of Hindu communalism during the last
few years is a reflection on the inadequacies and
weaknesses of secular practice in India. It has
neither lived up to its principles nor adopted
innovative modes of communication to reach out to
the people. At least so believe many even among
those who have been engaged in defending the
secular space. Several others hold that the
concept of secularism, borrowed from the West by
a modernising elite headed by Jawaharlal Nehru,
itself is flawed and irrelevant in Indian
conditions, since it is not rooted in Indian
social, cultural or political experience.
According to them, this rootlessness has
adversely affected its vibrancy and
acceptability. Therefore they believe that
secularism has no chance of survival and is
doomed to an eventual and inevitable death,
unless it is reconceptualised. Hence the plea in
recent times to `rethink' and `redefine'
secularism.
Such a view is shared by people of diverse
ideological and intellectual persuasions. Hindu
communalists reject secularism as a Leftwing
conspiracy intended to undermine the Hindu nation
and to appease the minorities. The alternative
they advocate is a `true secular' polity guided
by Hindu religious tenets. India is secular, they
argue, and would remain so only because it is
Hindu. For others, its exogenous origins and
links with European modernity are the critical
factors. Earlier confined to a small group of
intellectuals, the number of sceptics and critics
has marked some increase recently. The discomfort
now appears to have spread also to some
politicians who claim to be the defenders of
secularism, even if their past practices do not
betray any commitment to the cause. Whether it is
an election itch only the future can tell.
Much of the debate about secularism, influenced
by the European model, revolves around the
relationship between state and religion. The
focus therefore is on the secularisation of
polity as happened in the West through the
separation of the church and the state. There is
hardly any society, including the Indian, which
has not undergone the process of secularisation,
even though the trajectories are not necessarily
the same. In a multi- religious society such as
India, secularisation is not a purely political
phenomenon; it equally embraces the social and
the cultural.
Not that the political practices did not
influence the process. They surely did, but the
secular state in India as conceived by the
Constitution was not an exclusively
political-intellectual construct, but it
reflected the social and cultural reality of
Indian society, even if the example of other
countries has been useful precedents. The choice
of secularism as one of the guiding principles of
Indian nation, despite the communal conflagration
during the Partition, is influenced by the
historical experience of Indian society. Both
Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were alive to
the social reality. That is the reason why they
attached great importance to communal harmony, if
secularism was to survive in India. What the
Sangh Parivar is now trying to set aside are the
social relations and political structure which
history has bequeathed to the nation. Their
success is not because a void existed in
socio-political consciousness, but because they
created a new one by obfuscating religious
identity as national identity and by organising
politics around emotionally charged religious
issues.
By the time India achieved Independence, the
necessary pre-conditions for a secular society
and polity had already evolved through a process
of secularisation in the social, cultural,
administrative and intellectual domains. The
common participation of people, regardless of
their denominational differences, marked the
engagements in all these fields. The state
institutions, from the medieval times itself, had
officials, generals and soldiers drawn from all
religions. Muslim and Hindu rulers liberally
employed the followers of other religions,
particularly in the revenue administration and
the army. Sher Shah Suri, Akbar, Aurangazeb,
Shivaji, Ranjit Singh and a host of others did
so. These rulers also took care to ensure that
the officials conducted themselves in discharging
public duties with a non-religious outlook.
Building upon this tradition, the colonial rule
created a secular administrative structure, which
was able to withstand even the communal onslaught
of the Partition days.
The movements in the intellectual-cultural field
also prepared the ground for the emergence of
secular ethos in society. The Bhakti and Sufi
traditions enabled Hindus and Muslims to
understand one another's religious and
philosophical systems and thus to bridge their
social differences. What they had initiated was
carried forward by innumerable heterodox sects
who, by challenging the Brahminical order, tried
to recover their own cultural personality. They
did not champion Sanskritisation, but in a way
the reverse of it by trying to construct an
identity distinct from that of the upper castes.
Sanskritisation advocated as a strategy for
erasing caste differences is a part of the
communal agenda, as it privileges the Brahminical
practices. Therefore, adopted as a conscious
strategy, instead of ushering in secularism, it
is likely to promote the communal cause as it
would reinforce the Brahminical hegemony. It
would also undermine the cultural identity of the
lower castes. Sanskritisation as a means for
homogenisation is, however, entirely different
from the social process, which M.N. Srinivas had
conceived.
The intellectual basis for the creation of a
secular society and polity was conceived,
elaborated and disseminated during the course of
the 19th century. It was integral to the
intellectual and cultural movements, which tried
to unravel the religious truth common to all
faiths. They were inspired by the ideas drawn
from both indigenous and exogenous sources. The
monotheism of the Vedas and monism of the
Vedanta, on the one hand, and rationalism and
humanism of the Enlightenment, on the other,
moulded their perspective. From this engagement
emerged the notion of religious universalism,
which generated the intellectual rationale for
people to participate in secular public sphere.
It was in this secular space that the
anti-colonial politics emerged and operated.
Neither the intellectual movement nor the
politics that followed were monochromatic. There
were several fissures within. Yet among Hindus,
communalism did not strike strong roots during
the colonial period. And only a section of
Muslims opted for religious politics. By the time
India achieved Independence, the overwhelming
sentiment was in favour of secularism, despite
the Partition and the communal riots that
followed it.
During the early days, when the Republic was
struggling to find its moorings, Donald Smith, a
sympathetic American political analyst, had
observed: "It is far too early to dismiss the
possibility of a future Hindu state in India.
However, the possibility does not appear a strong
one. The secular state has far more than an even
chance of survival in India." Today many may not
share the optimism of Smith about the survival of
secularism as Hindu communalism threatens to
conquer the society. Over the last 50 years,
communalism has transformed itself from a
marginal force to the centre stage of Indian
politics. Such a transformation is not purely the
result of its organisational success and
emotional appeal, however strong and effective
they were, but more due to the weakness of
secular forces or at least those who claim to be
secular.
During the early days of the Republic, the Hindu
communal forces lacked legitimacy in popular
estimation and hence could not make an advance in
Indian politics. Suspected to be involved in the
assassination of the Father of the Nation, their
ideology was understood as anti-humanist,
obscurantist and violent. They were therefore
outside the mainstream of bourgeois politics and
were not looked upon by people as an acceptable
political alternative. Overcoming this stigma
took years, but they did overcome it with the
help of secular parties.
The coalition experiment beginning with the
post-Emergency government and those that followed
thereafter at the Centre and in the States,
earned the communal forces a legitimate place in
mainstream politics. The lure for power persuaded
the bourgeois parties to discard their initial
reservations and objections and to collaborate
and ally with the communal forces. Even those who
were ardent advocates of secularism do not now
hesitate to be in the company of communal forces.
The legitimacy and acceptance the communal forces
thus gained is the most decisive transformation
Indian politics has undergone during the last few
years, which has enabled communalism to control
and operate state power. If secularism is under
siege today the major responsibility for it rests
with those `secular' politicians who made
communal advance possible by legitimising
communalism and helping it to come to power. It
is unfortunate that there is no realisation that
the rising tide of communalism can be stemmed
only by an uncompromising secular stand.
This is not to suggest that the success of
communal forces is only due to the political
opportunism of secular political formations. On
the contrary, much of their advance was made
possible because of the continuous intervention
in the cultural life of people through the
activities of innumerable organisations set up in
different parts of the country. Through such
activities, they have succeeded in transforming
the cultural consciousness of people from the
secular to the religious. This is a qualitatively
different effort from that of the secular forces
who mainly concentrate on cultural intervention,
the impact of which is limited and transient. The
difference between cultural intervention and
intervention in culture distinguishes the
cultural engagement of the communal and the
secular and their relative success.
Rather than redefining secularism, what is more
compelling is rethinking secular practice,
particularly by the political class.
_____
[4]
DEFEAT BJP FORUM
38/2 Probyn Road, University of Delhi
New Delhi-110007
Tel-27666253/26691162
<somanshu at bol.net.in>
<madhuchopra at hotmail.com>
30.3.2004
PRESS RELEASE
We are a group of citizens who have come together to
join the struggle to defeat the BJP in the forthcoming
general elections so that the country is saved from
the pernicious ideology and practice of the RSS. This
is the most crucial election since Independence. At
stake is the survival of India's republican
constitution and the plural, democratic conception of
society on which it is based.
The BJP-dominated government has been the instrument
for the consolidation of the communal-fascist agenda
of the RSS. The RSS which is accountable to no one is
exerting a dangerous extra-constitutional authority.
Breaking with the constitutional tradition of
neutrality of gubernatorial positions, almost all
governors of states are RSS members. In the sphere of
education and culture, the government is propagating
the ideology of the RSS by enforcing changes in the
school curriculum, initiating reactionary programmes
in colleges and universities, and installing RSS
members and supporters in academic and cultural
institutions of national importance. Further, no
action is taken against the storm troopers of the
sangh parivar even when they vandalize, maim and kill.
The government has sought to directly attack
vulnerable sections of the society - the minorities,
dalits, tribals, landless peasants - with laws such as
POTA and by unleashing a police raj. In Gujrat,
state-supported violence and the continuing economic
and social boycott of the minorities threatens the
unity of the society.
The economic policies of the government have led at
once to immense concentration of wealth and to
impoverishment of vast masses of people.
Indiscriminate privatization, particularly of the
social sectors, and disinvestment of even
profit-making PSUs and those in strategic sectors,
have added to the burden of the people.
The BJP has been able to implement this programme
because of its electoral gains in the last two general
elections. The division of the secular vote has
contributed significantly to these gains in many
constituencies. In this context, people's initiative
is urgently needed.
This forum is one such initiative. To ensure the unity
of the secular vote in constituencies where the BJP is
fielding its candidates, we have already appealed,
through a signature campaign, to secular, democratic
parties and organizations.
The second phase of the programme, which begins with
this press conference, aims to place the issue
directly before the people at the national level.
Interventions at the constituency level are also being
worked out to approach voters directly.
______
[5]
Report:
PASSING AWAY OF TARKUNDE
(3.7.1909 - 22.3.2004)
-End of an Era
Passing away of Tarkunde on the
evening of 22nd March,2004 has saddened all those
who are concerned with democracy, human rights,
rationalism and above all, humanism in India and
elsewhere. He suffered from leukemia for last
few days and was admitted to Apollo Hospital,New
Delhi on 9th March,2004 for treatment and met
his demise there. Before being admitted to
hospital, he , as usual, kept himself concerned
with various problems facing the nation and used
to discuss the same with activists and other
concerned who went to meet him at his residence.
On 25.1.2004, he wrote a letter to Atal Behari
Vajpayee and General Parvez Musharraf requesting
both of them to discuss the possibility of
complete eliminatnion of nuclear weapons of both
our nations by mutual consent and within a period
of couple of years.
As soon as the news of his death broke
out, it looked as if an ear of struggle for
democracy, civil liberties and humanism has come
to an end. Large number of people turned up at
the electric crematorium, Lodhi Road, New Delhi
at 1 PM on 23rd March for his last rites, which
included I.K.Gujral, Soli Sorabji, F.S.Nariman,
Justice B.N.Kirpal, Justice A.S.Anand,
M.C.Bhandare, many judges of the Delhi High
Court, social and civil liberty activists,
amongst others.
There has been spontaneous reaction from
both his admirers and critics paying glowing
tributes to his extraordinary accomplishments.
A Condolence meeting was organized at
Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi on 27th March
on behalf of PUCL, Indian Renaissance Institute,
Indian Radical Humanist Association, Champa-the
Amiya & B.G.Rao Foundation, Forum for Democracy
and Communal Amity, Minorities Council,Gandhi
Peace Foundation, Human Rights Trust,
Co-ordination Committee on Kashmir, Committee
against Communalism and Citizens For Democracy to
pay tributes to him. Auditorium was overcrowded.
Prof. Rajni Kothari presided over the meeting.
At the beginning of the meeting two
minutes silence was observed in his memory.
Prof. Kothari, in his opening remarks, said that
in the demise of Tarkunde India has lost a great
champion of human rights and fearless fighter
against all that are illegal and oppressive.
Other speakers included Justice A.S.Anand-former
Chief Justice of India and presently Chairman of
the National Human Rights Commission, Justice
Leila Sheth - former Chief Justice of Himachal
Pradesh High Court, Ashok Desai and Shanti
Bhushan - both Senior Advocates, Kuldip Nayar and
B.G.Verghese-both eminent journalists, Dr.Gauri
Bazaz Malik- Chairperson Indian Renaissance
Institute, Arun Shourie-Central Minister,
Y.P.Chhibber-General Secretary PUCL, Maulana Ejaz
Ahmad Aslam-Forum For Democracy & Communal Amity,
E.Yasir from Students Islamic Organisation,
Ranjan Dwivedi-Manav Ekta Abhiyan,
S.R.Bommai-former Cabinet Minister at the Center,
Vinod Jain-Indian Radical Humanist Association,
and Suhas Borker-General Secretary of Citizens
For Democracy. All in their tributes recalled the
variety of causes which Tarkunde espoused and
struggled for the rights of underprivileged,
minorities and oppressed.
N.D.Pancholi referred to some of the
messages received by that time. Justice
O.P.Chinnappa Reddy (retd) in his message said
that Tarkunde was a great humanist, and "His
passion was democracy, his passion was civil
liberties, and his most ardent passion was
humanism." Soli Sorabji, Attorney General of
India, who regretted his inability to attend the
Condolence Meeting as he was out of Delhi to
inaugurate a seminar under the auspicious of the
Bar Council of India, sent a message saying that,
"Tarkunde has joined the ranks of immortals.. His
passing is a deep loss to legal fraternity and
the world of human rights. His passing away has
left a void which would be difficult to fill."
Mubashir Hasan, former Finance Minister of
Pakistan and who is actively engaged in the
campaign for improving people to people relations
between India and Pakistan, sent his message from
Lahore saying, " In the demise of V.M.Tarkunde,
South Asia is bereft of a compassionate and noble
soul. Not only he was an untiring fighter for
civil liberties but he saw the need of
Pakistan-India friendship long before any of us
had started working for it, Pakistan mourns for
VMT as India does."
Others who sent message for condolence
include K.R.Narayanan-former President of India,
Rabi Ray , Era Sezhiyan, Amrit Wilson, Lalita &
Ramdas, Sumanta Banerjee and Fred
Edwords,Editorial Director of American Humanist
Associatioon . Fali S.Nariman, paid his tributes
by way of an article which was published on the
front page on 24th March,04 in the Indian Express
titled: "He administered justice, not just law,
the Bar's noblest soul." Shastri Ramchandaran,
Associate Editor of Tribune, paid his tributes by
writing an article in his paper on 26th
March,titled "Tarkunde :Gentle Giant". Prashant
Bhushan wrote his article for Tahlaka:
"V.M.Tarkunde: Father of Civil Liberties".
Messages are pouring in and articles are being
published in national and regional language
papers. Condolence meetings have been held in
large number of cities & towns.
It would be appropriate to end this report
with what Justice Chinnappa Readdy said in his
message: "May his humanism be an example to us
and guide the rest of us in our behaviour towards
each other".
(N.D.Pancholi)
30th March,2004
______
[6]
The Hindu [India]
Mar 30, 2004
STATISTICS AND DEMOGRAPHY
By C. Rammanohar Reddy
Suggestions that Hindus will turn into a minority
are simply not validated by any projections of
scholarly integrity.
FOR DECADES, the fringe elements in Indian
politics have drummed up a vision of an India in
which uncontrolled fertility among Muslims will
reduce Hindus to a minority. Increasingly,
supposedly scholarly analysis is being presented
to give an intellectual veneer to this argument.
An excellent example is Religious Demography of
India, authored by A.P. Joshi, M.D. Srinivas and
J.K. Bajaj (JSB), published last year with a
foreword by no less than the Deputy Prime
Minister, L.K. Advani. Critics have commented on
the authors' questionable categories of `Indian
Religionists' (i.e. mainly Hindus) and `Other
Religionists' (Muslims and Christians), the
latter by implication are `non-Indian' people.
They have commented on the authors' equally
questionable geographic categories of `India' and
the `Indian Union' - the former covering what is
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, while the latter
is the India we live in.
The core argument, however, is contained in a few
pages (pp37-39). There is a very suggestive graph
of two intersecting lines. One shows the
declining share of `Indian Religionists' (IR) in
the population of `India' from 1901 to 1991,
which is projected up to 2071. The second is the
rising share of the `Other Religionists' (OR)
over the same period. This graph persuades the
authors to observe that "if the trends of the
last hundred years continue to persist in the
future, then Indian Religionists shall become a
minority in the near future" (p38). The lines
cross between 2051 and 2061. That is when Hindus
are projected to become a minority and Muslims
and Christians a majority.
Leave aside the social connotations of referring
to `Indian Religionists' and `Other Religionists'
and the political implications of using `India'
to refer to three countries. The crucial question
is: How valid are projections that say Hindus
will soon turn into a minority? None whatsoever.
The statistical techniques the authors JSB have
used to project past trends into the future are
inappropriate, yield inconsistent results and are
a good example of an abuse of statistics to prove
a pre-determined conclusion.
Population projections are regularly made by
international agencies. But as K. Navaneetham, a
demographer at the Centre for Development
Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, points out, these
estimates are based on trends in the three
determinants of population growth: fertility,
mortality and migration. In contrast, Religious
Demography merely projects past movements of
population shares/ratios into the future. The
bigger problem lies in the statistical model that
has been used to generate the conclusion of a
Muslim-majority `India' by 2061. A particular
mathematical equation - a third order polynomial
- has been estimated in order to extrapolate the
1901-1991 IR and OR ratios up to 2071.
However, there is no statistical validity in this
model. Chandan Mukherjee, also at the CDS, points
out that while polynomial equations can indeed
serve the purpose when examining changes between
two points of time or even for extrapolations
into the near future, they yield major errors
when used for long-term projections.
To illustrate, Dr. Mukherjee and Dr. Navaneetham
use the same population share data for 1901-1991
and the same equation to extend the projections
that JSB come up with a century after 2071. The
share of Hindus in the total population (i.e. the
IRs) does keep falling decade after decade, and
that of the others keeps rising. So much so that
by 2171, the IRs' share falls to minus (yes,
minus) 5 per cent and that of the rest to 105 per
cent! This is clearly absurd. But these results
are very much part of the same model that
Religious Demography uses to extend the past into
the future.
In another exercise, the CDS researchers also use
the same model but make projections with the data
on the 1901-1991 population, not ratios. The IR
population share does fall and that of the OR
increases. But there are two differences. One,
the decline is much more gradual, so much so that
even by 2171, the IRs will still be a majority.
Second, the total population of `India' projected
for 2051 turns out to be much larger than the
U.N.'s projections for India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh for the same year: 3.8 billion versus
2.2. billion. By 2171, according to the
projections generated by the polynomial, the
population of the region would rise to an
astronomical 16 billion. This is clearly
impossible and reveals the fundamental flaws of
the Religious Demography model.
In other words, the picture that the authors draw
to suggest that Hindus will turn into a minority
is simply not validated by any projections of
scholarly integrity. The problem essentially is
that techniques of the kind the authors have used
are totally inappropriate for making long-term
projections.
In an exhaustive critique, D. Jayaraj and S.
Subramanian of the Madras Institute of
Development Studies point out (Economic and
Political Weekly, March 20, 2004) similar and
many more fundamental errors in the JSB analysis.
One absurdity is that, as a cross-check, if the
same polynomial equation is used to make a
projection into the past, then we will find that
in 1781, Hindus accounted for 99.7 per cent of
the `India' population. And if the same equation
is used to project the share of Asians in the
U.S. population, then we will end up saying that
by 2140 Asians will be a majority in that country!
What we have here then is neither statistics nor
demography. It is the use of pseudo-statistics in
the interests of pseudo-demography, the objective
being to feed a fear of the minorities.
______
[7]
The Times of India
March 31, 2004
CITIZEN SONIA: RACIALISM HAS NO PLACE IN SHINING INDIA
By Shiv Visvanathan
Shining India is now a fact of life. But as it
shines across middle class, diasporic culture,
claiming that opportunity has found a new
geography, one must look at its shadows. One
major issue is the debate around foreigners,
especially whether we can have someone of foreign
origin as leader of our country. Packaged as an
election issue, it hides more fundamental
problems of citizenship, hospitality and history.
Let us begin with three events. Recently, when
Varun Gandhi joined the BJP he stated clearly
that he was not going to attack his aunt Sonia
Gandhi. She, with equal civility, replied that
she wished her nephew the best. It was a
beautiful event â¤" civil, courteous and utterly
correct. Its ritual beauty was broken in the next
few days with Varun Gandhi's idiot joke that he
would rather be a leader than a reader. Poetical
merit apart, it had all the makings of a BJP gag.
On the 16th evening, BJP advertisements on TV
hailed the national movement of Gandhi and Patel
and asked whether this should pass to a
foreigner. If the BJP were merely saying that
Sonia doesn't deserve the legacy, it is
commenting on a dynastic problem; it is stating
that Sonia is part of a lesser epigoni, third
generation mediocrity of a great family. But,
when the BJP says she has no right to be a PM, it
is not merely being crude but raising issues of
history, prejudice and citizenship. What is the
foreigner's issue? Is it only the argument that
someone of foreign origin cannot lead the
country? Or is it a more racial argument that
someone "White" sticks in our throats? Or is it a
tactical ploy of the Sangmas and the Pawars when
they have run out of ideological steam and are
not feeling particularly bright?
There is also a semiotic issue here. Sonia
projects herself as the Bahu, as daughter-in-law,
as part of an Indian family. To the logic of the
nation state, she offers the framework of the
family. She might have been an outsider but she
has been ritually incorporated. Given her
loyalties and behaviour she must now be seen as
Indian and as family. In reply, the BJP claims
she is a foreigner. They portray her as an alien;
tacitly suggesting her very foreignness makes her
vamp-like and therefore, unredeemable.
Unconsciously, they even play on the foreignness
of the name without realising that Bollywood, the
great leveller, with its song You are my Sonia
has already indigenised and internalised that
name into the local imagination. You are my Sonia
could not be Advani's favourite song. But it does
show that local cinema can be more cosmopolitan
in style than BJP.
The BJP's idea of the foreigner reveals a
misreading of Indian history. It also marks the
difference between the openness of Indian
nationalism and the narrowness of the BJP's idea
of the nation state. Indian nationalism was not
just an act of liberation but an attempt to
rescue and redeem the British. In that lay its
cultural confidence. Simply and statistically no
other national movement was as open to foreigners
as ours was. Allan Octavian Hume was father of
the Indian National Congress. Annie Besant was
president of the Indian Congress. Are we going to
erase their names from history because they were
foreigners? Imagine if the foreigner's issue had
begun then? Think of the foreigners who gave to
India and Indianness and cosmopolitanism. Think
of Madeline Slade, Sister Nivedita, the
bio-logist Patrick Geddes, the botanist Albert
Howard. Think of the Theosophists. Are we going
to erase or rewrite history a la Stalin? Should
we turn them into non-persons because they were
foreign in origin? The idea of Shining India can
have no integrity if this is our attitude to the
foreigner.
What begins as a celebration, a feel-good
festival can actually become an obituary of a
parochial self? Beyond illiteracy of history,
there is the question of citizenship. It is
around citizenship, around the rituals of
inclusion and exclusion, that a democratic
imagination is built. The issue of citizenship
has to face the mobility of our populations. One
is not just talking of nomads and pastoral
groups, most middle-class Indians are migrants
now. What we do to Sonia at national level we
might do to our migrants at a local level. Are we
to express a diasporic confidence that Indians
are becoming senators in Canada and America and
yet maintain double registers for a reverse wave?
Would the BJP object to a citizen of Bangladeshi
or Sri Lankan origin becoming a future leader?
Beyond hospitality and the crucial question of
rights, it is the idea of India itself. India is
a clearing house, a composite, and a compost heap
of imaginations from the French and the Danish to
the Portuguese. Why not a dash of local Italian?
The alternative to this openness is a touch of
racialism. Are there seeds of race in the BJP
manifesto? If so, one has to conclude that BJP is
a party open to technology but not to people. One
has to admit its manifesto confuses legacy,
dynasty and citizenship. Finally, and most
disconcertingly, it violates the Indian rules of
hospitality to become officially racial. In that
sense it might be following the apartheid models
of Europe rather than the pluralism, hospitality
and openness we are proud of. The price for the
BJP's illiteracy of citizenship and history is
too high. Shining India cannot shine with rituals
of exclusion and impropriety.
______
[8]
The Times of India [ India]
MARCH 27, 2004
SECRET SOCIETY
By Siddharth Varadarajan
Even in secrecy-obsessed India , this story takes
the cake. Historian Baren Ray, an expert on the
politics of pre-Partition India , spent years in
the India Office Library, London , studying a
series of sensitive colonial documents - the
Quarterly Survey of Political and Constitutional
Position in British India from 1937 to 1947 -
declassified by the British government in 1977.
Given their academic importance, Prof Ray, who
began his project in 1988, prevailed upon the
ministry of home affairs (MHA) in Delhi to
publish a portion of the papers so that the
material could become available to a wider body
of scholars.
Since the MHA had given him a grant of Rs 20,000
to make prints from the microfilmed documents, he
handed over the entire material to North Block
for publication.
And then someone in the MHA made the chillingly
absurd decision to, in effect, 'reclassify' what
the British had unclassified some 20 years
earlier.
The documents were simply deemed too sensitive to
see the light of day. The promised book never
came out and Prof Ray's queries were brushed
aside.
Angry at this official censorship, the historian
wrote to the ministry: "I feel very strongly that
while the ministry is free not to publish the
material on its own auspices, with a Freedom of
Information Act in force in the country, the
government should not stand in the way of my
going ahead with doing the needful with these
most important documents... (including making)
their contents known to concerned scholars in the
country."
On November 4 last year, he got a terse reply
stating that the material would not be returned
to him and that the government had given him a
grant of Rs 20,000 on the condition that the
material prepared by him would be the property of
the MHA.
Sadly for the right to information, this story
doesn't have a happy ending. Prof Ray died last
month, his academic project unfulfilled, his
sequestered historical documents living testimony
to the government's contempt for the citizen's
right to know.
There may be small signs of change visible on an
otherwise bleak horizon - it is now mandatory for
electoral candidates to disclose their assets and
criminal record, if any, and the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) has been passed - but
there are still vast swathes of information that
citizens are denied or are simply not entitled to
know.
From specific contour details on maps to the
40-year-old Henderson-Brooke report on the 1962
India-China war to data on the implementation of
official schemes - the government usually
divulges information to citizens on a strictly
'need to know' basis. And for transgressors,
there is always the dreaded Official Secrets Act.
The irony is that this culture of official
secrecy prevails despite more than three decades
of enlightened jurisprudence on the subject.
In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled (State of UP vs
Raj Narain): "In a government of responsibility
like ours where the agents of the public must be
responsible for their conduct there can be but a
few secrets. The people of this country have a
right to know every public act, everything that
is done in a public way by their public
functionaries. They are entitled to know the
particulars of every public transaction in all
its bearings."
Though the Constitution does not include the
right to information as a fundamental right, the
apex court has read that right to be the key link
between the right to free speech and the right to
life and liberty.
After a sustained struggle waged by people's
organisations in Rajasthan and elsewhere, the
right to information finally came on to the
legislative agenda in the 1990s. The FOIA is a
reality but in the absence of enabling rules, the
Act is in limbo.
In any event, right to information campaigners
have pointed to the large number of exemptions in
the FOIA as symptomatic of the government's
reluctance to make a break with past practice.
"The most blatant of these exemptions," says
Neelabh Mishra, a Jaipur-based activist closely
associated with the right to information
movement, "is the list of defence and security
organisations at the end of the Act which keeps
them out of the purview of the law. It is an
irony that while on the one hand the Act provides
for giving information within 48 hours where the
life and liberty of a person is concerned, on the
other it exempts those organisations from its
purview that are most often accused of violating
civil liberties."
The FOIA also excludes such official bodies as
the vigilance and anti-corruption bureaus from
its ambit. This, says Mishra, "would obviously
only keep the course of various corruption cases
under a shroud of secrecy."
Another key problem is that the onus for getting
information out lies with citizens who must
request it, rather than on official bodies which
must proactively release details of their work.
And in the absence of the repeal or amendment of
the OSA, there will always be a contradiction
between the older, more comfortable imperative to
hide information and the newer mandate for
transparency and openness.
Which way this contradiction is resolved will
depend on the political assertiveness of ordinary
citizens.
_______
[9]
THREATENED EXISTENCE:
FASCISM IN INDIA/GENOCIDE IN GUJARAT
Thursday, April 1
7:30 pm
Brecht Forum
122, W 27 St 10th Floor
Ram Punyani
S. Shah
Moderator: Surabhi K
This evening we will host the New York release of the International
Initiative for Justice (IIJ) report, "Threatened Existence: A Feminist
Analysis of the Genocide in Gujarat." Dr. Ram Punyani, a leading figure in
India's anti-fascist movement, will report on the current struggles.
The rise of fascism in India was never more apparent than after Feb 27,
2002, when in response to an attack on a train carrying Hindu right wing
(Hindutva) cadre the fascist forces carried out the most systematic pogrom
against the muslim minority in the history of independent India. While the
police and government stood by, 2000 people were killed and more than
150,000 were displaced from their homes.
In a strategy resembling events in Bosnia and Rwanda, countless Muslim
women were raped or sexually assaulted and many were killed afterwards. In
response, the International Initiative for Justice was formed, to document
sexual assaults against women during these attacks in Gujarat and to
articulate the links between sexual assaults on women and the larger
agendas of fundamentalist Hindu nationalism in India. The IIJ brought
together a panel of nine feminists to gather information from women who
were affected by the violence. The panel's report will be available at the
event.
Dr. Ram Punyani currently serves as the General Secretary of the All
India Secular Forum. His works The Second Assasination of Gandhi and
Fascism of the Sangh Parivar are well respected primers on the Hindutva
movement in India.
S. Shah and Surabhi K are US based activists who worked closely with
the Womens Forum, Mumbai and helped organize the IIJ process.
Suggested donation: $6/$8/$10 -- sliding scale. Nobody will be turned
away.
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
The complete SACW archive is available at:
bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
South Asia Counter Information Project a sister
initiative, provides a partial back -up and
archive for SACW: snipurl.com/sacip
See also associated site: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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