SACW | 6-8 April 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  6-8 April,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Pakistan: Pregnant teenager faces death decree by local tribe
[2] India Pakistan: Open Letter to the President of India
Turn Siachen, the "highest battlefield of the 
world", into a "Peace Park" (Subhash Gatade)
[3] Can India be as civil as Rwanda? (Daya Varma)
[4] India - Gujarat: Because Human spirit refuses 
to be vanquished (Biraj Swain & Mr Somnath Vatsa)
[5] Upcoming Event: 50th Birth Anniversary of 
Safdar Hashmi (New Delhi, 12 April)
[6] Upcoming Event:  Film screening and 
discussion: "Autumn's Final Country" a 
documentary by Sonia Jabbar women  and conflict 
Jammu and Kashmir (New York, 14 April)
[7] Assertive Religious Identities: A Conference Report (Anjan Ghosh)


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

[1]


IRIN News.org

PAKISTAN: Pregnant teenager faces death decree by local tribe

ISLAMABAD, 7 Apr 2004 (IRIN) - A pregnant 
17-year-old from rural Sindh is seeking refuge in 
the southern port city of Karachi in an attempt 
to escape death by "karo-kari", or honour 
killing, says a member of the provincial 
opposition who is campaigning to save her.
Rozina Ujjar was divorced by her husband after he 
spotted her standing outside her house, in a 
small village in rural Sindh, as a 15-year-old 
schoolboy passed by. A local assembly of tribal 
elders, or jirga, then declared the woman "kari," 
(or liable to honour killing) Humaira Alvani, a 
Pakistan People's Party Parliamentarians (PPPP) 
legislator in the Sindh provincial assembly, told 
IRIN from Karachi on Wednesday.
"I've been trying to protect her. First, I've 
tried to secure her safety. Then, yesterday, I 
took this issue to the assembly and asked the 
government why they are not making a law against 
this custom of honour killings," she said, adding 
that Rozina was now in Darul Aman, a 
government-run home for destitute women.
"Yesterday, when I spoke in the assembly, she 
(Rozina) was also present. I pointed her out to 
the media and everyone else and said this is the 
girl who is going to be "kari" and said the 
government should take the initiative to protect 
her, to give her life security," she stressed.
In her statement before a magistrate, Rozina said 
that she is scared that they are going to kill 
her, Alvani maintained.
"The boy [referred to as "karo"] was only made to 
pay a penalty of Rs. 80,000, so he is safe now," 
she said.
A rights activist from the Aurat [Woman's] 
Foundation, a women's rights and advocacy 
organisation, said that Alvani had contacted them 
to step up the campaign for Ujjar's safety and 
that they were currently waiting for more details 
before taking the case up.
"Rozina wasn't in a state to talk until now," 
Nuzhat Shirin, the regional coordinator for the 
organisation's Legislative Watch Programme, told 
IRIN from Karachi.
The authorities now say they will register a 
case, Shirin said, noting that they had asked 
Alvani to inform them if this did not happen.
"This is just another example of the way 
tradition is misused against women and the fact 
that, despite statements made very loudly in 
public by officials that a lot is being done to 
change the status of women, nothing is actually 
happening on the ground because district-level 
officials don't act to prevent jirgas from meting 
out such verdicts," Kamila Hyat, the 
joint-director of the Human Rights Commission of 
Pakistan (HRCP), told IRIN from the eastern city 
of Lahore.
If someone is accused of committing a crime, they 
have to appear before a court under the normal, 
legal procedure in the country, she said.
"The fact that jirgas are allowed to give 
verdicts like this means that the system is not 
working in the sense that top officials are not 
passing down orders to district level officials 
about what to do. That's the basic crux of the 
problem," Hyat stressed.
According to an annual report published by the 
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), over 
600 women were killed in the name of honour 
across Pakistan in 2003.
But Alvani claimed that the figure only 
represented the cases that were reported to 
authorities.
"Unofficially, there are over 3,000 women who 
have fallen prey to honour killings in this year 
in Sindh. Officially, the reported cases are 600. 
But, unofficially, the number is 3,000 women 
killed in the name of honour in Sindh alone," she 
maintained.

_____


[2]


Mainstream [India]
April 3, 2004

Open Letter to the President of India
Turn Siachen, the "highest battlefield of the world", into a "Peace Park"

by Subhash Gatade

Dear Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam,
This is with reference to the news that appeared 
in a section of the media which talked about your 
first visit to Siachen, the "world's highest 
battle-ground". (rediff.com, March 22, 2004) It 
has also been reported that this proposed visit 
of yours as the Supreme Commander of the Armed 
Forces of the Indian Union will be held sometime 
in April. It has further been reported that for 
this first ever visit by a President to Siachen 
the Army Headquarters in New Delhi is in touch 
with Rashtrapati Bhavan to finalise the dates of 
the visit.
The nation very well knows your unprecedented 
visit to Gujarat after the infamous chapter in 
the State's history wherein various national and 
international human rights organisations found 
fault with the State's response. Definitely 
nobody can contest your right as the Supreme 
Commander of the Armed Forces of the Indian Union 
to visit different places which are important 
from the security point of view. Nobody can 
question the prerogrative you have as the first 
citizen of the Indian Union to act according to 
the best interests of India. But it needs to be 
said that the timing of the visit chosen by you 
does raise some nagging questions which seems to 
have been forgotten in the Indo-Pak bonhomie 
which has set in for quite sometime.
Particularly the selection of Siachen as your 
next jaunt does raise a sense of discomfiture. 
The reason is that for any peaceloving person in 
India the present juncture in the history of the 
subcontinent is a crucial one. And to be very 
frank, for all such persons on both sides of the 
border, who definitely are a part of the silent 
majority, who want permanent friendship between 
the two countries, 'Siachen' essentially 
represents the intransigence and callousness of 
the rulers on both sides of the border. It 
symbolises the disrespect the rulers on both 
sides have had for the lives of their own people 
whom they claim to represent and protect.
You are well aware that the roots of the Siachen 
conflict lie in the non-demarcation of the Line 
of Control on the western side beyond NJ9842. The 
1949 Karachi agreement and the 1972 Simla Pact 
presumed that it was not feasible for humans to 
inhabit areas beyond NJ9842. But defying the 
logic that humans cannot inhabit that area the 
governments on both sides took precipitative 
steps and as a sequel came deaths of innocents on 
both sides. It is worth noting that it all 
started in the 1980s; till then the whole area 
acted as a buffer land between the two 
neighbours. According to India, it was the period 
when Pakistan started what is known as 
'cartographic invasion' showing the Siachen 
Glacier on its maps, and it also authorised 
mountaineering expeditions to the region.
And then on one fine morning of April 13, 1984, 
when the nation was engaged in celebrating 
Baisakhi, Indian troops were airlifted to that 
area without any wherewithal to withstand the 
tough conditions there. Interestingly it did not 
take much long for Pakistan also to send its own 
troops to the other part of the glacier. On April 
16 Pakistani Rangers were also sent there 
supposedly to fight for 'national pride' much on 
the lines of their Indian counterparts. It is 
also history that towards the end of the 
eighties, India and Pakistan had come to an 
agreement on ending the confrontation over the 
Siachen Glacier. Foreign Secretaries-Rasgotra of 
India and Niaz Naik of Pakistan-had agreed on the 
draft of a peace deal. The Indian side blames 
Pakistan for going to sleep over it. Pakistan 
blames India for not solemnising the agreement.

A few months ago I was really shocked to know 
that only three per cent of the casualties there 
are from fighting, the rest 97 per cent die in 
avalanches, fall into crevasses, or succumb to 
high-altitude sicknesses. In a report written for 
Reuters 'Nature devours men on world's highest 
battlefield' (October 13, 2003) Myra MacDonald 
and Sanjeev Miglani had given details of the 
genesis of this conflict where "since 1984, India 
and Pakistan have been fighting for control of 
the Siachen Glacier and the surrounding tangle of 
mountains where South Asia, Central Asia and 
China collide". The most tragic part is that in 
this wasteland of rock and ice, soldiers fight 
each other and the weather at heights above 
18,000 feet (5500 metres), where their bodies get 
wasted and are starved of oxygen. It is a battle 
which is not for the land itself because, 
according to the report, "the entire area is 
uninhabitable-but for national pride and a belief 
that holding the heights of Siachen offers a 
strategic advantage".
The report by Miglani and MacDonald also made it 
clear to a layperson like me that
Indian officials estimate it costs India and 
Pakistan some 30 million rupees a day each to 
keep their troops deployed on the world's highest 
battlefield, where temperatures can fall to minus 
50 degrees Celsius. Troops are given the best 
equipment and rations available. It costs 51,000 
rupees just to clothe one soldier. Rations and 
kerosene are flown by helicopter in what the army 
says is the longest, highest and most expensive 
air maintenance operation in the world.
We all very well know that as things stand today 
it is true that Defence Minister George Fernandes 
has set a record of sorts by visiting the glacier 
several times; it is also true that due to his 
intervention alone there has been a qualitative 
improvement in the lives of the Army people 
stationed there.
Significantly, the Indo-Pak ceasefire which is in 
force since November 2003 has definitely brought 
some relief to these "snow warriors" though it 
has in no way changed the tough lifestyle at the 
world's highest battlefield. Brigadier H.P.S. 
Bedi, commanding the forces in Siachen, had told 
PTI (January 27, 2004) that now "weather is the 
only enemy" although the soldiers were 
"maintaining constant vigil". A rediff.com report 
on January 27, 2004 had also shared the optimism 
of these snow warriors. In its report it had 
given further details of the tough operating 
conditions which existed there:
The 20-year-old strategic control of the region 
through 81-odd posts has not come cheap, as there 
have been numerous casualties, mostly due to the 
extreme weather conditions...
The technical staff has to maintain helicopters 
in sub-zero temperatures when the skin sticks and 
peels off if any metallic object is touched... 
During operational sorties, pilots have to brave 
temperatures as low as 35 degrees Centigrade, 
strong winds, acute shortage of oxygen and poor 
weather conditions in close proximity of 
mountains. There is always the threat of powerful 
downdrafts that pull the helicopters down.
One does not know whether your proposed visit is 
designed to boost the morale of the armed forces 
stationed there as has been a regular practice 
with different heads of states visiting their own 
people doing 'odd jobs' in some other corner of 
the world or at difficult locations in their own 
country. It is quite possible that you want to 
see for yourself the defence preparedness or take 
a status report yourself. Or it is just part of 
the many not-so-conventional trips you have made 
in your capacity as the President of the Union.
As a permanent votary of friendship of the 
peoples of the two nations I am of the opinion 
that whatever may be the rationale behind your 
trip please seriously consider taking steps to 
restore the situation which existed there before 
1984 to save innocent lives on both sides. They 
may be dressed up as jawans but are worthy sons 
of their parents who would never like them to die 
from extreme cold. It is time to throw the 
'rivalry' which has been a bane of the two 
nations 'in the dustbin of history' and further 
the friendly relations between the two countries. 
It is time that we decide not to bind ourselves 
into in a situation where 'our past' keeps 
deciding about our 'future'.

A few months ago an international environment 
group had appealed to India and Pakistan to turn 
this region between the two countries which 
includes Siachen into a Peace Park. It has 
written to the heads of both the states that 
there are one hundred and seventy such peace 
parks which have come up on the borders of many 
countries.
Nobody can deny that these two countries have 
shed much of their own citizens' innocent blood 
in the overt and covert wars which have been 
conducted since we both emerged as separate 
entities on the face of the earth after the 
intensely fought struggle against colonialism. It 
is time to make a new beginning.
I still remember that in one of your recent 
speeches you have rightly underlined that future 
generations would not remember us for the number 
of temples we have built but for the material 
progress which we have achieved in all fields. As 
far as the status of the material progress which 
we have achieved the situation does not appear 
bright whatever may be claims of the people in 
power about 'Shining India'. We know that India's 
rank in the international scale of human 
development indices fell last year from 124 to 
127 and it is interesting to know that Pakistan 
has been our firm ally on the 'Human Development 
Index' scale.
I very well know that the Constitution mandates 
the President of India very limited powers. But 
it does not mean any government in power can wish 
away with the moral authority the President 
exerts in its functioning.
It would be great if you can look into all the 
aspects of the case and facilitate the process of 
normalisation of relations and accelerate the 
journey of moving beyond symbolism by taking some 
de-escalating steps at Siachen, the world's 
highest battlefield.
Subhash Gatade

______



[3]


Can India be as civil as Rwanda?
by Daya Varma

Reproduced from: INSAF Bulletin *,  April, 2004 [Canada]

Ten years ago, nearly one million Rwandans, 
mostly Tutsis, were massacred in 100 days by 
machete-yielding Hutus under the direction of 
Hutu Generals. The Hutu government was defeated 
by Tutsi-led RPF and thousands were arrested for 
orchestrating the genocide. Ismail Muhakwa, a 
Hutu, who admits to killing a young Tutsi man now 
goes from house to house repenting his past and 
apologizing to every one for his crime. There are 
many like Muhakwa.

In the three days following the assassination of 
Indira Gandhi, almost 10,000 Sikhs were murdered 
all over India. In a period of two months 
(March-April)  in 2002, almost 2,000 Muslims were 
butchered in Gujarat, Muslim women were raped and 
Muslim property burnt and destroyed. The number 
of dead in India is obviously smaller than in 
Rwanda but the pattern and patronization of the 
crime is similar.

It is indeed sad to note that Indian rulers are 
not as law-abiding as Rwandan since almost nobody 
has so far been punished for crimes committed 20 
and 2 years ago. It is pointless to hope that 
criminals responsible for these atrocities will 
ever become as civil as Rwandan Muhakwa and go 
around apologizing from house to house.  To 
belong to Sangh Parivar means to be proud of what 
you have done and do it again.


[ * ] INSAF Bulletin [24], April, 2004
International South Asia Forum
Postal address: Box 272, Westmount Stn., QC,
Canada H3Z 2T2 (Tel. 514 346-9477)
(e-mail; insaf at insaf.net or visit our website: www.insaf.net)


______


[4]

South Asia Citizens Web | [April 2004]
GUJARAT:
BECAUSE HUMAN SPIRIT REFUSES TO BE VANQUISHED,
BECAUSE HOPE IS STILL NOT A DEAD LETTER. . . . . . .

In this report, the authors, Ms Biraj Swain & Mr 
Somnath Vatsa, trace the concerted, all 
encompassing State terrorism & different forms of 
violence being meted out to the members of the 
minority community in Gujarat 2 years after the 
carnage. They also map the civil society reaction 
to counter the same in various forms of peace & 
justice interventions. However, they raise 
questions about the reactive responses of the 
long operating civil society bodies & the secular 
activists & make an argument for the 
stake-holders to be more pro-active & concerted 
in their responses & the imminent need for a more 
humane response & a new discourse.

FULL TEXT IS AVAILABLE AT:
www.sacw.net/Gujarat2002/SwainVatsa042004.html


______


[5]

12 April- 50th Birth Anniversary of Safdar Hashmi

SAHMAT
8, Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg,New Delhi-110001
Telephone- 3711276/ 3351424
e-mail: sahmat at vsnl.com, sahmat8 at yahoo.com

7. 4. 2004

12 April 2004 marks the 50th birth anniversary of 
Safdar Hashmi -- political activist, playwright, 
actor and poet.. Even as it has been observed as 
National Street Theatre Day in Safdarís memory 
for the last 15 years -- ever since he was 
fatally attacked on 1 January 1989, while 
performing a street play with Jana Natya Manch, 
in a working-class area near Delhi ñ this day 
assumes special significance and poignancy this 
year. It reminds us of the premature and brutal 
death of a friend, comrade and ally in the 
struggle to achieve freedom of creative 
expression and unity in the fight against 
communal divisiveness. It also renews in us the 
pledge to carry forward Safdarís legacy, by 
strengthening the bonds of democratic unity among 
the creative community, be they artists, theatre 
activists, writers, intellectuals or other 
like-minded people.

The activities of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial 
Trust (SAHMAT) over the last 15 years, in 
continuation of this legacy, have focused on some 
of the huge challenges that we as a nation face 
today -- the assault on accepted notions of 
identity, culture and nationalism in the form of 
a massive polical and cultural mobilisation on 
communal lines, that has led to violence, death 
and terror among marginalised communities.

On 10 and 12 April this year, SAHMAT will organise the following events:

Saturday, 10 April 2004

Public Lecture: 'The Republic of Hunger'
by Prof. Utsa Patnaik
Chairperson: Prof. Aijaz Ahmad

Speaker's Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi

5.30 pm

Monday, 12 April 2004
Naya Theatre presents
'Sadak'
written & directed by Habib Tanvir

and

'Ponga Pandit'
a Chattisgarhi folk play

Jana Natya Manch presents
'Nahin Qubool'
Back Lawns of Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg, New Delhi [India]
5.30pm


_____


[6]

Asia Society Event
Film:
AUTUMN'S FINAL COUNTRY (Mini DV/66 
min./2003/English/Hindi with English subtitles)
Co-sponsored by Breakthrough

Date:
Time: April 14th
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Location: New York
Asia Society and Museum, 725 Park Avenue, New York
Cost: $7 members/NGOs; $10 nonmembers; $5 students Phone: 212-517-ASIA Web:

Autumn's Final Country is the touching story of 
Indu, Zarina, Shahnaz and Anju, four women who 
suffer displacement in the conflict-ridden Indian 
state of Jammu and Kashmir. Recorded as 
testimonials for the South Asia Court of Women 
(Dacca, Aug.2003), the film explores the lives of 
each woman as she relates the circumstances 
leading to her rootlessness, and reveals an 
intimate dimension of the Kashmir conflict, 
raising questions about patriarchal values and 
power, communal identities, patriotism and war.

Discussion follows after the screening with 
filmmaker, Sonia Jabbar who will be joined by:
Farooq Kathwari, Chairman & CEO Ethan Allen Inc. 
and Chairman, Kashmir Study Group
Maya Chadda, Professor of political science, 
William Paterson University of New Jersey
Mallika Dutt, Executive Director, Breakthrough (Moderator)

Made possible with generous support from Irfan Kathwari Foundation, Inc.



_____


[7]

The Economic and Political Weekly
March 27, 2004

ASSERTIVE RELIGIOUS IDENTITIES: A CONFERENCE REPORT

As religious chauvinism makes its presence 
increasingly felt in south Asia, the question of 
probing this 'legacy of cleaving' assumes greater 
importance. A recent conference studied various 
aspects of religious identity, and how identities 
were shaped and moulded in pre-modern, colonial 
and independent India. In pre-modern India, 
identities were fluid, even mutable. However, 
in more modern times, while attempts are made to 
'shape' particular identities, identity itself 
can be adapted to meet changing circumstances and 
can sometimes be in the nature of protest.

by Anjan Ghosh

In the letter of invitation the seminar had been 
advertised as 'Assertive Religious Identities'. 
At the venue in Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 
the name had undergone a subtle change. The 
banners and programmes proclaimed 'Asserting 
Religious Identities'. Did the previous day's VHP 
rally at the Ram Lila ground and the impending 
march to Ayodhya prompt the shift!

Oganised by the Academy of Third World Studies 
(ATWS), Jamia Millia Islamia, in collaboration 
with the Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, the 
international seminar on 'Assertive Religious 
Identities' was held on October 16-18, 2003 at 
the Jamia Millia Islamia campus. Twenty papers 
were presented over three days in an ambience of 
enthusiastic participation and critical 
engagement. While the overwhelming audience 
thinned a little after the inaugural session, 
attentiveness did not flag during the academic 
sessions.

At the outset Satish Saberwal (ATWS) briefly 
posed the problematic of the proceedings. He 
maintained that in the context of rising 
chauvinistic tendencies of the religious 
nationalist kind in south Asia, historians and 
social scientists had for long ignored the 
'legacy of cleaving' in India. Identifying two 
time horizons, in the medieval period as well as 
in later 19th century, he argued how the 
identities of 'Hindus' and 'Muslims' were 
produced and the kind of conflict it led to. 
Drawing upon the ambiguous medieval legacy of 
both social insulation and social mixing Saberwal 
traced the roots of later communal conflict to 
this era of overarching identity formation. 
Contesting identities were accentuated in the 
19th century by the politico-administrative and 
documentary practices of the colonial state 
including 'novel institutional models and 
technologies of communication'. The spiralling of 
identity conflicts culminated in communal 
violence in the 1940s, a divided nation and a 
legacy of communal rancour that can be stoked for 
political ends in post-colonial India. Saberwal 
considers this history of cleaving and its 
sources to constitute a 'blindspot' of social 
science scholarship in India. He contended that 
it must be enquired into from a comparative 
perspective taking Europe's experience into 
consideration.

Karan Singh's inaugural speech which followed, 
identified religious identities as among the 
leading five areas of global importance. Taking 
issue with the liberal and Marxist rejection of 
religion, Karan Singh suggested that religion's 
writ ran deeper than the progressive 
intellectuals believed. Even the liberals have 
harnessed religions symbols to mobilise people. 
He then went on to assert that even though 
religious identities have been asserted in 
history this did not necessarily perpetrate 
inequality among faiths. Instead the inter-faith 
movement could promote peace and conflict 
resolution. He concluded by emphasising that 
people had multiple identities and that there was 
a necessity to reassert the spiritual identity of 
individuals.

Identity in Pre-Modern India

The academic sessions commenced with Raziuddin 
Aquil's (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, 
Calcutta) densely argued paper on Chishti Sufi 
accounts of early Islam in Hindustan, entitled 
'From Dar-ul-Harb to Dar-ul-Islam : Chishti 
Accounts of Early History of Islam in Hindustan', 
In his paper Aquil sought to achieve several 
objectives. In an effort to displace 'Mughal 
centrism' in medieval Indian history he suggested 
that the 'Mughal system' 'grew and evolved both 
before and after Akbar's reign'. Hence there were 
continuities from the Sultanate period. Secondly 
he sought to divert attention from the economic 
history of Mughal India towards a more cultural 
and social history of medieval India. Thirdly he 
also debunked the notion that the Sufis were only 
concerned with spirituality and mysticism and not 
with worldly matters. Basing himself on the 
'malfuzat' (compilation of conversations with 
Sufis) literature, Aquil demonstrates how the 
Sufi mystics not only concerned themselves with 
worldly matters like battles and conquest, as 
well as the conversion of non-Muslims. On the one 
hand the Chishti Sufis were not only engaged in 
contests with yogis but also took part in 
military campaigns, on the other they were 
concerned with the conversion of the 
non-believers. In sum Aquil proposed that the 
behaviour of the Chishti Sufis were in keeping 
with the situation or context of Muslim rule. As 
and when Muslim rule faced a challenge the Sufis 
were belligerently behind the Islamic forces. 
Once the Islamicate was in power, the tolerance 
levels of the Sufis also increased and they were 
favourably inclined to the devotional poetry of 
the Hindus.

Iftikhar Ahmed (M S University, Baroda) provided 
an account of the nature of conflict among 
religious communities in Gujarat during the 
pre-colonial period. His 'Riots, Rituals and 
Public Space: Religious Identities in 
Pre-colonial Gujarat' dwelt on several instances 
of community conflicts in the 18th century 
primarily but not exclusively in Gujarat. He 
recounted how communal strife was occasioned by 
incidents of transgression when Hindus smeared 
colour on Muslim passersby during Holi as also by 
the transition of political authority from 
the Mughals to the British. However, to consider 
all the riots as communal seemed to beg the 
question of the role of colonial state.

G Arunima's (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library) 
paper on 'Who is a Malayali Anyway? Language, 
Community and Identity in Precolonial Kerala' was 
more a methodological exercise in problematising 
the prisms through which Kerala history is 
framed. By pointing to the linguistic and 
religious diversity of Kerala for over a thousand 
years she tried to locate its history in the 
'wider social geography of the Indian Ocean' 
thereby questioning the stable notion of the 
region. The enduring coexistence of four world 
religions Judaism, Christianity, Islam and 
Hinduism, as well as the heterogeneity of its 
social structure distinguished Kerala as social 
space. By critically reading into the 'origin 
myths' of each of the communities Arunima sought 
to destabilise the location of Kerala in Indian 
history. In the process she identified moments of 
anxiety among the communities. While her account 
was certainly thought-provoking, questions 
remained about accessing 'origin myths' as 
sources. Further when were these myths drawn upon 
and by whom? Her paper brought to a close the 
session on 'Pre-modern India'.

Tolerance and State Responsibility

From pre-modern India attention shifted to 
Europe's experiences in the next session. Three 
papers by Michael Brenner, Gurpreet Mahajan and 
Michael Dusche were presented during it. Michael 
Brenner's (university of Munich) paper traced the 
persecution of the Jews in Europe from the 
Christian Reconquista in Spain to modern times. 
Entitled 'Conflict and Coexistence: Jews in 
Europe under Muslim and Christian Rule', Brenner 
characterised the Jewish situation in Europe in 
terms of a statement made by Count of 
Clermont-Tonnerre in 1789 to the French National 
Assembly that, 'One should grant everything to 
the Jews as individuals, but nothing as a 
nation'. The continued trend of anti-semitism in 
Europe led to the rise of Zionism and ultimately 
to the formation of Israel. But the linear 
trajectory of anti-semitism which Brenner draws 
glosses over some of the complexities of European 
history like during the Reconquista of Spain or 
in the Balkans during the early years of the 20th 
century.

Gurpreet Mahajan (Centre for Political Studies, 
Jawaharlal Nehru University) spoke on 'Religious 
Difference and the Issue of Tolerance: 
Reflections on 16-18th Century England'. Drawing 
on a reading of Locke's A Letter Concerning 
Toleration, she emphasised that besides 
inculcating a culture of religious tolerance, 
toleration also required the state to play an 
active role in protecting the sovereignty of the 
individual in 18th century England. Hence it was 
necessary in the Indian context to reiterate that 
the state had a proactive role to play in 
creating a space for difference. As she wrote, 
'Tolerance requires space for the expression of 
differences internally, it requires, in addition, 
primacy to the civil rights of the individual'.

Michael Dusche's (Centre for German Studies, JNU) 
paper on 'Religious Minorities in Germany', 
provided a brief overview of the situation of 
religious minorities in contemporary Germany. 
According to him while the Jews are engaged in a 
renaissance in Germany and have made it their 
most preferred destination, for the Muslims, 
Germany remains an ambivalent place. Among the 
second generation Muslim migrants who can opt for 
German citizenship, only about half have acquired 
it while the rest choose to maintain their 
Turkish citizenship.

It was Jan-Peter Hartung's (Erfurt University) 
paper on 'Standardising Muslim Scholarship: The 
Nadwat ul Ulema' which began the morning session 
of the second day. Situating the contest between 
the 'traditionalists' and 'modernisers' among 
Muslim scholars after the Rebellion of 1857, 
Hartung went on to indicate how the Nadwat ul 
Ulema was formed to serve as a united forum for 
all Muslims. However it was the 'traditionalist' 
Sunni scholars who prevailed over 'modernist' 
scholars like Shibli Numani, Later under the 
leadership of Ali Miyan, Nadwat ul Ulema came to 
be associated with the Tablighi Jamaat. Thus the 
National Council of Muslim Religious Scholars 
(Nadwat ul Ulema) instead of being a forum for 
the articulation of multiple views, came to be 
dominated by the traditionalist scholars.

Multiple Identities

Mushirul Hasan (ATWS, Jamia Millia Islamia) in 
his exposition of 'The Secular and the Sacred : 
Delhi in the 19th Century', took his cues from 
Hartung's mention of the qasbah tradition and 
delved deep into the pluralist heritage of the 
urban. Extracted from a larger study of the 
pluralist traditions of the qasbah in Awadh 
region, Mushirul Hasan takes the biographies of 
eight significant Muslim individuals like Ghalib, 
Altaf Hussain Hali, Zakaullah, Sir Sayyid Ahmed 
Khan, Iqbal, Amir Ali and others to illustrate 
the pluralist traditions these individuals were 
heir to. Although these individuals were bound by 
a commonality of faith their experiences remained 
utterly diverse. This was expressed through their 
construction of Islam in a colonial context. Even 
as there was no agreement on 'modernist traits' 
there was no impediment to modernism in Awadh and 
Delhi. Hasan's presentation provoked a member of 
the audience to ask, 'why didn't the pluralist 
trend survive in post-colonial India. Why have 
the voices of Islamic liberals been drowned?' To 
which another member retorted how the spiralling 
of local conflicts from the early years of the 
20th century in the regions created community 
insecurities and culminated in the partition 
riots on the eve of independence.

The third paper of the morning session was that 
of Nonica Datta's (Miranda House, Delhi 
University) on 'Contrasting Identities: Two faces 
of Womanhood in the Punjab'. By contrasting the 
life histories of two prominent women, that of 
well known Punjabi poet Amrita Pritam and 
Subhashini, an Arya Samaji social reformer from 
rural Rohtak, Datta asked the question as to how 
they perceived religious identities from their 
respective vantage points. As she put it, 'Did 
they perceive themselves only as part of 
monolithic religious communities or did they 
subscribe to multiple identities defined by 
heterogeneous cultural traditions?' The prism 
through which Datta looks at the two life 
histories is their relation to partition. While 
partition prompts Amrita Pritam to embark on an 
'inner journey' which she recounts in her 
autobiography as well as in her fiction Pinjar, 
her accounts impart an agency to women 
protagonists which enables them to circumvent the 
horrors of partition by maintaining a fluid 
religious identity. On the other hand Subhashini 
becomes a zealous Arya Samaji reformer after the 
assassination of her father allegedly by Muslims. 
There is no ambiguity about her Hindu identity 
and she translates the diverse and syncretic 
Punjab cultural landscape into a Hindu narrative 
which memorialises her father's death. Subhashini 
thus invents a tradition of martyrdom for her 
father within the rubric of the Arya Samaj 
movement.

The afternoon session had three papers by Rizwan 
Qaiser, Anindita Chakrabarti and Bhagwan Josh. 
Rizwan Qaisar (History, Jamia Millia Islamia) 
presented his paper on 'Nationalism and Cultural 
Identity: A Study of Jamiat-i-ulema-i-Hind'. In 
an effort to understand the Muslim response to 
nationalism in colonial India, Rizwan sought to 
develop his case study of the Jamiat. However, 
his zeal in reviewing the literature on the 
subject and engaging in a critique of Francis 
Robinson's work overshadowed his case study. 
Jamiat's relation with the Congress Party 
ultimately eroded its capacity to mobilise the 
Muslim masses compared to the Muslim League. 
Commentators on the paper maintained that perhaps 
the Jamiat's attempt at mobilising Muslim masses 
for the Congress may have given rise to the 
notion of delivering a vote bank to the latter 
and the idea of a pampered minority especially 
among the Hindutva acolytes. Further, other 
commentators suggested that the Congress Party 
also distanced itself from the Jamiat in the 
1940s when it realised that the Jamiat would not 
be able to rally the Muslim masses behind the 
Congress. Internal friction within the Jamiat 
between its politically progressive stance and 
socially regressive policies had a debilitating 
effect.

Anindita Chakrabarti's (Delhi School of 
Economics) paper on 'Assertive Religious 
Identities and the Secular Democratic 
Nation-State : The Case of Tablighi Jamaat' 
emanated from her fieldwork experiences of 
studying the Swadhaya movement in Gujarat. 
Tablighi Jamaat's aim of changing the world by 
changing oneself was in contrast to the 
assertiveness of political Islam. While the 
Tablighi movement had a quietist message, in 
Gujarat, it was being implicated in the Godhra 
incident as the chairman of the Godhra Municipal 
Corporation, Kalota who had been arrested for the 
incident was said to have had earlier links with 
Tablighi Jamaat. Anindita posed a contrast 
between religious identities and secular 
democracy in her paper. Such a binary might 
become specious in a plural religious context.

Bhagwan Josh's (Centre for Historical Studies, 
JNU) paper on 'Virility and Cowardice: Exploring 
the Power of a Cultural Stereotype', recounted 
how nationalist leaders including Gandhi took 
recourse to essentialised and mythicised images 
of emasculated Hindus to incite nationalist 
fervour. But this narrative was often derived 
from the Muslim conquest of India and thus the 
nationalist discourse had a communal edge to its 
explication. These images were elicited from the 
19th century historical novels of Bankim Chandra 
Chatterjee, Romesh Chandra Dutta and other 
novelists. Josh's inclusion of Gandhi in this 
nationalist ambit on the basis of some of his 
utterances in the wake of the Mappila uprising in 
1922 caused considerable consternation among the 
audience.

The final day's proceedings commenced with Shail 
Mayaram's (Centre for Study of Developing 
Societies, Delhi) paper on 'Civil Society as the 
Domain of (Un)freedom: Hindu and Islamic 
Transnational Religious Movements'. Taking Hannah 
Arendt's statement that civil society is the zone 
of freedom as her point of departure, she 
considered how religion was undergoing a 
transformation under globalisation by comparing 
two transnational religious movements (TRMs), 
Tablighi Jama'at (TJ) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad 
(VHP). TRMs by intervening in civil society in an 
essentialised way was shackling the 'zone of 
freedom'. Drawing upon her own studies of Meos 
and the Merwara region she indicated how both the 
TJ and the VHP in their proselytising activities 
in the region ignored and marginalised local 
syncretic and pluralistic tendencies. At the 
transnational level too she remarks on the 
Deobandisation of the TJ, as well as the 
promotion of 'shuddhi' and the large 
international congregations like the Virat Hindu 
Sammelans. In the era of globalisation TRMs must 
manifest religious identities in a spectacular 
form but in stringent binaries. Mayaram's paper 
evoked keen interest and a bevy of questions. One 
commentator asked whether VHP could be considered 
a religious organisation the way TJ was? Another 
asked whether it was possible to historicise the 
community and make it more porous and contingent? 
An observer asked why is the particular movement 
studied at a particular time? To these and other 
queries Mayaram responded by maintaining that she 
was interested in the changing modes of 
religiosity in a global world and that she was 
identifying the faultlines and cleavages within 
global religious formations.

Nandini Sundar (Centre for Law and Governance, 
JNU) presented her paper on the reconversions of 
adivasis by the Hindutva forces in central India, 
entitled 'Adivasi vs Vanvasi: The Politics of 
Conversions and Reconversions in Central India'. 
Her historical and ethnographic observations on 
the conversion and reconversion of the Oraons in 
Jashpur, Chhattisgarh, traced how in order to 
wean adivasis from the Christian fold, the RSS 
family organisation Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram were 
indoctrinating adivasi children in their ashram 
school. With Hinduism as the unmarked state 
religion, adivasi children were imbued with Hindu 
ideology thereby blurring the distinction between 
them and enhancing the distance with the 
Christians. Sundar's 'thick description' affords 
us an insight into how the adivasis are silently 
being incorporated into Hindu society at the 
grass roots.

Ranabir Samaddar (South Asia Foundation for Human 
Rights, Kathmandu) spoke on 'Identity Assertions 
as Contentious Acts'. Charting out four different 
routes of identity formation: sociological, 
psychological, philosophical and political, he 
opts for the fourth to contend that identity 
assertions are 'contentious acts'. He illustrates 
his contention with the example of the Bengali 
Muslim leadership of M Islamabadi, Akram Khan and 
Mawlana Bhasani who transformed a people into a 
nation. Although emerging from the ranks of the 
'anjumans' they were able to translate religious 
reforms among rural Muslims into the prospect of 
agrarian radicalism with the formation of 
Pakistan. Religious assertion whether before 
independence or after arose from contention and 
the tendency to subordinate a people to minority 
status. However, it was when he compared this 
minoritisation to the new cultural politics of 
racism in Europe that Samaddar's statements 
themselves became contentious!

Identity and 'Others'

V V V Nagendra Rao and Rekha Chowdhary's (Centre 
for Strategic and Regional Studies, University of 
Jammu) paper on 'Evolution of Political Islam in 
Jammu and Kashmir' dwelt on the process by which 
Islam has been politicised in a plural situation. 
Emphasising on the syncretic heritage of 
Kashmiriyat embodied in the figure of the 
Mirwaiz, Rao's presentation underscored how the 
rise of Jamaat-i-Islami as contrasted to the 
National Conference sought to politicise Islam 
and divert it towards a revivalist goal. 
According to him political Islam is a negative 
force emanating from the 'resentment of the 
people against successive union governments' as 
well as from the 'transnational Islamic 
influences from across the border and elsewhere'.

Pralay Kanungo (Centre for Political Studies, 
JNU) presented a paper on RSS 'pracharaks'. His 
paper 'The Navigators of Hindu Rashtra: RSS 
Pracharaks' dealt with the recruitment, training, 
socialisation and deployment of RSS pracharaks. 
While Kanungo stressed on individual dynamism and 
sacrifice of the pracharaks and their integration 
into the renunciative tradition of the Hindu 
sanyasin, his account also mentioned how a 
section of the pracharaks were attracted to power 
and pelf in contemporary politics. Some of the 
commentators suggested that Kanungo be more 
circumspect in his portrayal of the pracharak who 
were not always courageous and self-sacrificing.

Amar Farooqui (Nehru Memorial Museum Library, New 
Delhi) spoke on 'Trishul Diksha, Cross Burning 
and the Politics of Hate'. In the context of the 
attempted 'trishul' distribution in Rajasthan by 
the VHP before the state elections, the programme 
of trishul distribution became an intimidatory 
tactic for the VHP. His comparison with the 
tradition of burning the cross by the members of 
the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) underscored the violent 
potential of such acts. Farooqui maintained that 
trishul distribution articulated the code of 
participative communal violence which encouraged 
narratives of hate and intolerance. However, his 
analogy with the cross-burning of KKK invoked a 
racial dimension absent in the Indian context.

The final paper of the conference was Pradip 
Dutta's (Political Science, University of Delhi) 
which dwelt on 'Hindutva and History'. Dutta 
tried to probe the question of the acceptability 
of Hindutva version of Indian history. Engaging 
with K R Malkani's statement that 'There is more 
myth in history and history in myth', Dutta 
proposed that the combination of myth and history 
which the Hindutva historians proposed should be 
called Mystery. He then went on to discuss the 
truth effects of mystery. Mystery privileges the 
present in the past and is dystopic in nature. 
Unlike professional history which does not strive 
to create the political imaginary, mystery is 
structured for mass mobilisation through its 
popular format. Consequently the effects of 
mystery are quite different from history. But 
mystery according to Dutta can only flourish in 
an authoritarian structure of politics. 
Commentators on the paper asked whether mystery 
was performative or mimetic!




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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
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