SACW | 14 June 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  14 June,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1]  Pakistani Seminary Probed in Wave of 
Militant Attacks (John Lancaster and Kamran Khan)
[2]  Bangladesh: Debating the Ahmadiyya ban (Naeem Mohaiemen and Zafar Sobhan)
[3]  Pakistan: Road to perdition (Mahmood Farooqui)
[4]  India / Mauritius: Bonding without bigotry (Dileep Padgaonkar)
[5]  Kashmir: Shame (Bashir Manzar)
[6] Indian: Silence Or Ruckus?  How the Bharatiya 
Mundan Party took the experience of defeat
(Githa Hariharan)
[7] India: The documentary film 'Aakrosh' and its battles with the Censor Board
[8] Viability of Islamic Science - Some Insights 
from 19th Century India (S Irfan Habib)
[9] Book Review: Amn Ki Tasveerein: Peace Can Be 
Achieved Piece by Piece (An anthology of poems by 
children)
[10] India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch Compilation # 143


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

[1]

Washington Post [USA]
June 13, 2004; Page A22

AT AN ISLAMIC SCHOOL, HINTS OF EXTREMIST TIES
Pakistani Seminary Probed in Wave of Militant Attacks

By John Lancaster and Kamran Khan
Washington Post Foreign Service

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Gracious and fluent in 
English, which he said he learned while growing 
up in South Africa, the bearded religious scholar 
welcomed a foreign visitor onto the well-kept 
grounds of the Jamiat-ul-Uloom Islamiya, one of 
the country's largest Sunni Muslim seminaries.

"I will answer all of your questions," said the 
scholar, Ismail Mulla, as an attendant poured 
cups of sweet, milky tea. Nearby, students in 
prayer caps strolled across a white-marble 
courtyard, hunched over religious texts in 
sweltering classrooms or sat cross-legged on 
carpets for a midday meal of mutton and flatbread.

As Mulla described it, the institution has one 
purpose: to prepare young men for a life of 
propagating Islam. "We teach basically the Koran 
and the Sunnah" -- the sayings of the prophet 
Muhammad -- said Mulla.

But the placid setting belied what some analysts 
and police investigators have said is a link 
between some people at the seminary and Islamic 
extremists responsible for a wave of attacks 
against foreigners, senior government officials 
and religious minorities over the last few years.

The seminary, or madrassa, had been led by Mufti 
Nizamuddin Shamzai, until he was gunned down in 
front of it on May 30. Shamzai, an associate of 
Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mohammad Omar, 
publicly urged his followers to wage holy war 
against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. A number of 
former students at the madrassa are being held at 
the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, 
Cuba, according to a May 4 report in the 
English-language newspaper Dawn.

Certain students or graduates of the madrassa 
have been implicated in an escalating series of 
attacks on members of the minority Shiite Muslim 
population, including the suicide bombing of a 
Shiite mosque that killed 23 worshipers on May 7, 
police said. That bombing marked the opening 
salvo in a surge of extremist violence -- 
including a brazen daylight attack Thursday on 
the motorcade of a senior army general -- that 
has killed more than 70 people in Karachi, the 
country's largest and most economically important 
city, in little more than five weeks.

Mulla, who was designated to speak for the 
organization, dismissed charges that the school 
is linked to terrorist groups. "Right next to us 
is a police station, so these are all lies," he 
said.

More broadly, the bloodletting has cast a 
spotlight on the nexus between some of Pakistan's 
estimated 10,000 madrassas and armed extremist 
groups. These groups once operated with the 
backing of the country's security services but 
more recently have targeted the government of 
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, in 
response to his support for the U.S.-led war on 
terrorism.

The government has not followed through on 
pledges to regulate the madrassas -- including 
plans to require the teaching of secular subjects 
such as math and science -- and to control their 
funding, some of which comes from radical 
sympathizers in Saudi Arabia and other Arab 
countries. Musharraf is reluctant to enforce the 
regulation, analysts said, because he wants to 
remain on good terms with radical Islamic 
political parties. The parties, along with the 
army, constitute a vital part of his power base, 
even if he has little use for their ideology.

"This government has done nothing to curb 
religious extremism in Karachi," said Samina 
Ahmed, who heads the Islamabad office of the 
International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based 
nonprofit that specializes in conflict 
resolution. "The madrassas are flourishing."

Government officials said most madrassas do not 
promote extremist violence. They described them 
as an important part of Pakistan's social safety 
net, providing free schooling and often room and 
board for hundreds of thousands of impoverished 
young people.

"If there are one or two rogue elements in any 
institution, it certainly doesn't seem prudent to 
close down the entire madrassa," said Interior 
Minister Faisel Saleh Hayat said in a telephone 
interview from Islamabad. "Such rogue elements 
can be found in any institution."

Hayat rejected criticism of the government on 
regulating the madrassas, saying the new federal 
budget will address modernizing their curriculum.

But the madrassas are likely to resist.

"Why do we have to change our curriculum?" asked 
Mulla, the Islamic scholar, noting that his 
madrassa -- while concentrating on religious 
studies -- already requires three years of 
schooling in math, science, English and social 
studies. In any case, he added, "do we go to the 
universities and say, 'You're teaching 
engineering, now you have to teach the Koran?' 
It's our right. Why should they interfere?"

Over the last two decades, military and civilian 
governments have encouraged the growth of the 
madrassa system, which has provided recruits for 
extremist groups allied with Pakistan's security 
forces. Many of the former students have become 
fighters in Afghanistan and in Indian-held 
Kashmir.

As part of his policy U-turn after the Sept. 11, 
2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, 
Musharraf has taken a number of steps to sever 
the ties between the government and extremist 
groups, some of which were banned in 2002. By all 
accounts, however, most madrassas have yet to 
change their way of doing business, and continue 
to churn out thousands of religious zealots 
yearly.

The Jamiat-ul-Uloom Islamiya is a case in point.

Founded in the 1950s, the madrassa consists of a 
large walled compound whose red-painted minarets 
overlook a busy commercial thoroughfare in the 
Binori neighborhood of this overcrowded port city 
of more than 10 million people. The madrassa 
serves roughly 10,000 students, most from 
Pakistan but some from other countries such as 
Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, according to 
Mulla, 47, who is of Pakistani origin. He studied 
at the madrassa and returned here from Durban, 
South Africa, seven years ago to teach. The 
students, who range in age from 5 to 40, are 
schooled in the fundamentalist Deobandi 
tradition, which is similar to the austere 
Wahhabi version of Islam practiced in Saudi 
Arabia.

"Every Muslim is a fundamentalist, and he should 
be," said Mulla, a tall, sinewy man with a stiff 
beard. "They should be practicing their religion 
to the teeth."

Though Mulla said the madrassa has no formal 
relationship with extremist groups, the late 
rector, Shamzai, made no secret of his 
sympathies. During the early 1990s, Pakistani 
intelligence officials said, Shamzai helped 
launch Harkat ul-Mujaheddin, which provided 
fighters for the insurgency against Indian forces 
in Kashmir and subsequently was blamed for the 
murders of five Western tourists in the disputed 
province. The leader of the group, Maulana Fazlul 
Rahman Khalil, was his former student at the 
madrassa.

In a 2002 interview, Shamzai boasted of his ties 
to another former student, Maulana Masood Azhar, 
a radical cleric imprisoned by Indian authorities 
and released after his followers hijacked an 
Indian Airlines jet to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 
late 1999. A few months after that, Shamzai 
appeared with Azhar at the Karachi Press Club 
when Azhar announced the founding of 
Jaish-e-Muhammad, which was implicated in the 
December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament 
complex in New Delhi and has been branded a 
terrorist group by the United States.

A soft-spoken man who died at 75 , Shamzai said 
in the 2002 interview that bin Laden had been 
"kind enough" to invite him to his son's wedding 
in Kandahar in 1998. Shamzai also considered 
himself a friend and admirer of Omar, the 
fugitive Taliban leader, according to Mulla. 
Following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, 
Shamzai issued numerous fatwas, or religious 
edicts, urging Muslims to rush to the aid of the 
Taliban.

"We support anybody that holds the banner of 
Islam," Mulla said. "We are all Taliban. You can 
say that."

The madrassa has also been accused of fostering 
violence against minority Shiite Muslims. One of 
its more notorious former students, for example, 
was Azam Tariq, the head of the anti-Shiite group 
Sipah-i-Sahaba, who was assassinated in last 
October in Islamabad. At the time of his death, 
Azam had 28 criminal cases pending against him, 
18 of which involved sectarian violence, 
according to Muddassir Rizvi, an analyst at the 
International Crisis Group.

Recently, police have traced the May 7 bombing of 
the Hyderi mosque, a sandstone structure on the 
grounds of a colonial-era school, to a student at 
the madrassa, Qari Ghulam Murtaza. Although he 
had not completed his studies, Murtaza, in his 
early twenties, often led prayers at the Quba 
mosque in Karachi's Baghdadi district, where he 
recruited and "brainwashed" the young police 
trainee who carried out the suicide bombing, 
according to a senior investigator.

Another investigator described Murtaza as "very close" to Shamzai.

Qari Ahmad, the imam of the mosque, a simple 
structure whose main entrance opens onto a 
litter-strewn alleyway, said in an interview this 
week that Murtaza, who has since disappeared, 
went to Afghanistan twice to wage holy war 
against U.S.-led forces there. But Ahmad said 
that if Murtaza harbored any ill feelings toward 
Shiites, he kept them to himself. "I have no idea 
why he did it," Ahmad said. "I've never heard 
anything against Shiites here."

The Hyderi bombing set off a wave of violence 
that is still reverberating here. Three weeks 
after the attack, in an apparent act of 
retaliation, gunmen firing assault rifles from a 
car and a motorcycle killed Shamzai as he left 
his apartment across the street from the 
madrassa. The killing took place at about 7:30 
a.m., triggering riots by Shamzai's students and 
followers.

A day later, a suicide bomber walked into another 
Shiite mosque less than a mile from the madrassa, 
detonating a blast so powerful that it split the 
concrete dome overhead. Sixteen worshipers died.

Mulla, the madrassa spokesman, said that if 
Murtaza was involved in the first bombing, "it 
wasn't because of us." In any case, he said, the 
school should not be held responsible for the 
actions of individuals. "If he's part of any 
organization, I can't do anything about it."

______


[2]

The Daily Star [Bangladesh]
June 14, 2004

DEBATING THE AHMADIYYA BAN
Naeem Mohaiemen and Zafar Sobhan

The two recently engaged in a free-spirited 
debate about the Ahmadiyya book ban and the state 
of human rights in Bangladesh.

Mohaiemen: Our government must come to its senses 
and lift the ban. What is accomplished by this 
ban? Peace and stability has not been restored. 
The Khatme Nabuwot has actually increased its 
campaign since the ban. Now they have given a 
June 30 deadline of declaring Ahmadiyyas 
non-Muslim. They have started calling themselves 
the "International Khatme Nabuwot" (makes you 
wonder who is funding them?). They have formed an 
executive committee with 33 members which had 
pledged to go from village to village in 
Bangladesh until all 91 Ahmadiyya mosques are 
liberated. In Rangpur, they kidnapped and 
tortured 15 Ahmadiyyas, forcing them to do tawba 
and renounce Ahmadiyya Islam. What kind of Islam 
is this? Did the Prophet Mohammed (SM) teach us 
to torture in the name of Islam? Khatme Nabuwot 
is perverting the meaning of Islam and giving a 
black eye to all Muslims. The government cannot 
be a passive spectator. They must step in and 
arrest the zealots of Khatme Nabuwot. And they 
need to take quick actions to remove the ban.

Sobhan: Let's call a spade a spade. This is not a 
question of being a passive spectator. The ban is 
law. It was promulgated by the government. The 
government is therefore -- whether it intended to 
be or not -- an active participant in the 
persecution of the Ahmadiyyas. And as you point 
out, there is a direct connection between the ban 
and the emboldenment of the extremists which we 
are now seeing play out in Rangpur and elsewhere. 
And to the extent that the government does 
nothing to protect the Ahmadiyyas, it is again at 
fault. Government inaction is not passivity. It 
is an active choice. The government could easily 
protect the Ahmadiyya communities if it wanted 
to. It has the capability. Are you telling me 
that the KN has the numbers to even bring Dhaka 
to a standstill, let alone the country, as they 
have threatened? Last time I checked, the 
government was actually rather efficient -- some 
might say a little too efficient -- in putting 
down demonstrations against it.

Mohaiemen: One journalist made an excellent point 
at a screening at the Goethe Institute. He said, 
"Any time there is any sort of communal trouble, 
our liberal Muslim neighbors come forward and 
say, 'We will protect you.' But why should people 
need to protect people? That is the state's role. 
Only if the state mechanism is broken does this 
sort of 'people protecting people' need to 
happen." I agree with that. The state needs to 
play a positive role in safeguarding minorities. 
And the state has done that at times. When some 
major riots happened in India, the Bangladesh 
government played a positive role in making sure 
retaliation riots didn't happen here. But the 
state has failed in the case of Ahmadiyyas and 
given in to the extremists. Why it has abdicated 
its responsibilities here is a mystery.

Sobhan: As you have pointed out, the government 
has successfully protected other constituencies 
in the past. And news reports make clear that 
when the government does take affirmative steps, 
such as in Barisal and Patuakhali recently, they 
have successfully stopped programmes of 
persecution. So I think that it is pretty clear 
that the government is actually unwilling -- not 
unable -- to do more to stop the persecution. The 
government is in hock to its extremist coalition 
partners who want their pound of flesh. They are 
beholden to both the JI and the OIJ, without 
whose support and electoral alliance they would 
not have come to power, and they owe them 
big-time. And the religious parties have decided 
that this is the issue they want to push. There 
are always political points to be scored by 
beating up on a minority. Sadly, it remains a 
sure-fire way to get votes. In Rangpur, for 
instance, the persecution has taken place in a 
constituency which is at present controlled by 
the Jatiya Party and has been targeted by the 
four-party alliance in the next election. The 
anti-Ahmadiyya campaign is their first shot at 
establishing a presence there with the ultimate 
goal of taking the seat.

I fear, too, that some of the BNP leaders are not 
merely motivated by politics in not opposing the 
extremism of their alliance partners. They 
actually feel the same way. Their attitude is 
that Ahmadiyyas should be declared non-Muslim and 
have their books banned, and if they get burned 
out of their homes or raped or murdered as a 
result . . . well, that's not our fault, right?

Mohaiemen: Let's talk about Christine Rocca's 
visit, during which she brought up the Ahmadiyya 
book ban. It actually infuriates me that the 
government will respond to US officials when they 
complain about this issue, yet we Bangladeshi 
activists have been protesting about this for 
over six months. The government doesn't feel any 
need to respond to domestic human rights 
activists. ASK and others filed a "Demand Of 
Justice" notice the day after the ban, yet the 
government has yet to respond to that petition.

Ultimately, Bangladesh's problems have to be 
solved by us. You can't solve these problems 
through external pressure. Even if external 
pressure causes something to happen, it is a 
temporary fix. We have to build up the 
infrastructure and support for human rights and 
tolerance from inside Bangladesh. Also, I don't 
want my work co-opted by those who would divide 
the world into "us and them." I am fighting 
religious extremists, but I don't consider Bush's 
"Pax Americana" project to be my ally. Those who 
do, like Fouad Ajami and Bernard Lewis, are 
losing their own credibility with their "enemy of 
my enemy is my friend" philosophy. I am reminded 
of the Asian Dub Foundation song: "Enemy of the 
Enemy/Is a Friend/Until He's the Enemy Again."

Sobhan: I disagree. The way I see it, whatever 
pressure can be put to bear on the government is 
a good thing. I am not worried about the 
hypocrisy of the US government -- in this context 
it is not my problem. In fact, to me, this 
argument is a bit of a red herring thrown up by 
those who don't want change -- they can now say, 
well, you know, who is the US to be telling us 
what to do? This is total avoidance of the real 
issue. The only problem I have with Rocca 
speaking out is that it may delegitimise the 
struggle and could be used by the anti-Ahmadiyya 
activists to discredit the Ahmadiyyas. But I 
wouldn't want to play into that.

Your main frustration is over the government 
response to Rocca. But isn't that what 
governments do? They act in their own self 
interest and respond to those parties which have 
leverage over them. They don't respond to human 
rights activists because they don't see the need 
to. To make governments responsive, they have to 
fear negative repercussions -- and the only thing 
any government really fears is being thrown out 
of office. So the thing for activists to do is to 
raise awareness to the level that it becomes an 
electoral issue.

Mohaiemen: In the context of the US role in 
today's world, I am always interested in making 
linkages and parallels with other global 
situations. One of the things I have talked about 
at these film screenings is my own experience 
working with people like Blue Triangle and Not In 
Our Name in the US. These groups work to protect 
the civil rights of Muslim immigrants. In fact, 
Muslims are victims of the same racial profiling 
that tormented black Americans for decades. Now, 
in the post 9/11 hysteria, Muslims have become 
the new disenfranchised minority in America and 
Europe. Yet, in our own country where we Muslims 
are the majority, we do not hesitate to 
disenfranchise our own minorities. So, global 
activists cannot condemn only oppression against 
Muslim minorities in America. We have to speak 
out against oppression being carried out by our 
fellow Muslims. Otherwise it's a double standard.

Sobhan: I couldn't agree with you more. I find it 
ironic that we here in Bangladesh can get so 
outraged -- rightly -- over what is happening in 
Iraq or Palestine or the US, but can be so 
complacent about what is going on right under our 
noses. This is not to excuse the policies of the 
US or Israeli governments, but merely to point 
out that we should reserve a little more outrage 
for injustice that directly affects us and that 
we can actually do something about. Let me 
mention the case of Abdur Rob, Deputy Director of 
Proshika's Cultural Department, who has finally 
been released on bail, but has made credible 
allegations of torture while in custody. I found 
it very telling that we are so upset about 
torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, but have been so 
silent about torture and abuse in our own jails. 
Abdur Rob isn't the first person to raise 
credible allegations of torture in custody -- 
which is almost always politically motivated -- 
but the outrage over these atrocities pales in 
comparison to the outrage registered by events 
abroad.

Mohaiemen: One disturbing trend is that a lot of 
people in Bangladesh and elsewhere think the 
religious parties are the only ones resisting 
neo-imperialism. Therefore, they tolerate and 
quietly support the religious parties. I keep 
hearing how the mosques and religious parties 
brought out largest rallies against the Iraq war. 
In fact, this is the failure of the Bangladesh 
left. Why couldn't they bring out massive rallies 
against the Iraq war? Kolkata had a very strong 
anti-war movement. They even mobilized a very 
successful boycott of American products. But it 
was all organized by the Kolkata left, not the 
religious parties. In fact, there are many ways 
to resist Empire. In America, some of the 
strongest voices against the war have been 
families of GIs, Vietnam vets, labor unions and 
black and Latino groups. So I have found other 
allies in the fight against imperialism, I don't 
feel any need to cozy up to the religious parties 
to resist Empire.

Sobhan: Well, the left parties did protest the 
recent visit of US Secretary of Defense Donald 
Rumsfeld, as did the religious parties. But one 
thing to keep in mind is that the left in 
Bangladesh has been almost wiped off the face of 
the Earth. So even when they do take action, it 
has little impact. The worrisome thing is that 
there is a strong anti-imperialist, anti-Western, 
anti-globalisation constituency in the country, 
and many of their grievances are legitimate and 
deserve to be addressed, but in the absence of a 
healthy and durable left-wing in the nation, the 
only parties speaking to this constituency are 
the religious parties. This is something the more 
mainstream parties must address unless they want 
their base of popular support to continue to 
decline. The anti-Ahmadiyya movement, is, in my 
opinion, ultimately an electoral strategy, but it 
is only one of many that the religious parties 
are pursuing in order to consolidate and enhance 
their power.


Naeem Mohaiemen is the New York based director of 
Muslims or Heretics? 
(www.pinholepictures.com/ahmadiya), a documentary 
on persecution of Ahmadiyya Muslims.

Zafar Sobhan is an Assistant Editor of The Daily Star.

_____


[3]

Mid Day [India]
June 11, 2004

ROAD TO PERDITION
By: Mahmood Farooqui

The apocalypse came, liked what it saw and has 
chosen to stay it out permanently.

For over 40 years, Pakistan has been trying to 
wrest its 'stability' back from the apocalypse, 
but each passing year paints the previous one 
with a rosier brush. So we get from bad to worse 
to worst and it hangs there.

You ask Pakistanis why they are in a state of 
permanent convulsion and they will tell you that 
God especially loves them, sanctifies their 
formation even by throwing constant signs of 
perdition their way.

Perdition, it appears, would not come down in one 
fell swoop, instead Qayamat will gradually extend 
outwards from the port city of Karachi and engulf 
us one by one, bit by bit.

Prices never fall after rising and morals never 
rise after falling, goes an Urdu maxim. One may 
add a new one to that, religious laws, once 
implemented, can never be rolled back. For, 
either they are true or they are not, but once 
their enactment ordains their truth-ness as it 
were.

Ask Pervez Musharraf. He has called for making 
Islamic laws more flexible and modern. He has 
called for sincerity, flexibility and boldness to 
find a 'viable, genuine and lasting' settlement 
of the Kashmir dispute. Alas, his exhortations to 
the civil society to condemn religious extremism 
have become so repetitive and frequent that the 
number of aye-sayers is now negligible.

You ask a Pakistani Islamicist what he thinks 
about Jehadis killing innocent Muslims and he 
will tell you anybody killing Muslims is not a 
Muslim. You ask him why the killing of innocent 
westerners is justified when it is their 
governments who are the enemy, and he will 
respond that this is not real Jehad; the 
Jehad-e-Akbar against one's baser self is a more 
exalted form of Jehad. You ask the liberal 
Muslims what they think of all this and they will 
say it is the ignorant Mullahs who preach this 
kind of obscurantism.

You ask the Mullahs why and they will tell you 
how and why America is evil and that the 
liberal/secular intelligentsia is hand-in-glove 
with them.

Eventually, you ask them about sectarian 
killings, as in the assassination of the Deobandi 
cleric in Karachi and the reprisals that are 
still going on and they will tell you that all 
Muslim minorities are a front of the US.

Here is Qazi Ahmed Hussain, the head of Pakistani 
Jamaat-e-Islami, justifying his political party 
MMA's agitation against the Aga Khan Foundation, 
which is to take over the handling of the 
country's education boards: "It has been proved 
beyond doubt that recent attempts to remove 
chapters on holy Muslim personalities and the 
teachings about jihad from the syllabi were a 
western conspiracy since the people who have been 
condemning the Islamic values of modesty and 
jihad were involved in it."

However, why are civilians being targetted in 
these reprisals in Karachi or in Iraq, for 
sectarian or national-liberation causes? Hussain 
explains why the AKF centres were targetted: "The 
AKF centres were among dozens of banks, petrol 
stations, restaurants and vehicles set on fire 
when the police prevented protestors from giving 
vent to their anger by raising slogans, and used 
tear gas and batons to disperse them."

Petrol pumps, KFC and McDonald outlets, anything 
with a western insignia can be attacked on the 
grounds of collaboration, but crucially, not the 
weapons that the Mullah's bodyguards use, nor the 
jets and the Pajeros in which they gallivant, nor 
the hospitals they are treated in.

The JI is only following its founder's example 
after all, after life-long anti-Americanism and 
dreams of a resurrected Islamic Pakistan, 
Maudoodi felt no hesitation in travelling to 
America to get himself treated, the better to 
condemn it.

After all this if you still find some faults with 
the Jehadis, they can always enlist the enemy and 
his tools for support: "True, the persecution of 
minorities and the torture of prisoners is 
unIslamic, but again the writer has simply 
ignored the fact that leaving aside dictatorship 
and monarchies, no Muslim state is known for 
persecuting minorities and torturing prisoners 
more than the US which calls itself the champion 
of civil, human, women and all kinds of rights 
which it denies to the Muslims."

Since its inception, Pakistan charted out a 
double course, which converged in Kashmir, down 
with India, on with Islam. The method to achieve 
its destiny would be proxy warfare that began in 
1948 and continues to date.

Foreign policy, domestic strategy and the ruling 
ideology all fitted into the same prism. It was, 
in fact, not Zia, but a socialist, Bhutto, who 
started Pakistan's Islamisation, like banning 
Qadiyanis and declaring Friday a holiday.

The state now wants to roll back because the 
world is forcing it to; the nation, however, 
whose religious, national passion has been 
progressively co-opted in favour of the state, 
finds it difficult to give up that same consensus.

How is it possible to purge Waziristan of 
'foreigners'™ for instance, when in the Federally 
Administered Tribal Areas the Pakistani army is 
virtually an occupying force, when they are the 
very ones who served the national ideology, in 
Kashmir, Afghanistan, Central Asia.

Especially when the army refuses to disengage. 
The rebel leader in Waziristan, Nek Muhammed, 
local leaders allege, is being protected by the 
army.

Anthropologists have contended that in Islamic 
societies orthopraxy "the right practice is often 
considered more important than orthodoxy" the 
right belief.

The ideological basis of Pakistan, the little 
history and the great myth that its populations 
have successively imbibed about their nation, 
their religion and their past can rarely be 
openly or directly questioned, let alone 
reversed, because the conventions of conduct are 
so important. If you criticise Jehadis, append an 
equally long condemnation of the US.

If you condemn the army, damn the politicians as 
well. If Islam is the truest and Muslims the 
best, goes the Islamicist, show it to us in state 
practice, in everyday life, in state 
institutions. However, if a glorious past is 
one's future then all answers are already given 
because the past is everything we want it to be.

Once they went for the Americans, then they went 
for the Shias, then they went for the Christians, 
then they went for the Barelvis. Can Qazi Hussain 
Ahmed be far behind? 



_____

[4]

The Times of India
June 12, 2004

BONDING WITHOUT BIGOTRY
Dileep Padgaonkar

Port Louis : Nowhere do developments in India 
affect people of Indian origin as dramatically as 
they do here in Mauritius . Part of the reason is 
demographic. Close to 70 per cent of the 1.2 
million strong population of this divinely 
endowed island-nation traces its roots to Bihar , 
Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat , Andhra Pradesh, Tamil 
Nadu and Maharashtra . The languages, cultures 
and religious practices prevalent in these states 
are kept alive in homes and through a network of 
caste and community-based associations.

Another reason for the strong presence of India 
relates to the official and non-official ties 
that link Mauritius with the mother country. 
Governments may come and go in Port Louis and New 
Delhi but the ties, especially in defence 
matters, are left untouched. This is increasingly 
true of economic relations too. Add to this the 
many cultural and scientific undertakings of the 
Indian government.

Outside the government sphere Mauritians are 
exposed to India through films and television, 
itinerant spiritual gurus and now more and more 
thanks to Indian enterprises operating in the 
country. The latest Bollywood films are screened 
in cinema halls often before they are released in 
India . Their DVDs are also on sale at every 
other street corner. Many Indian TV channels can 
be accessed on cable. The second channel of the 
state-owned television network almost entirely 
broadcasts Indian programmes.

This explains in large measure the very high 
interest in Indian politics and indeed in any 
issue of national significance in India . That 
level of interest is also to be found in India 's 
economic advances in recent years. The growing 
stature of India in the world instils a sense of 
pride and perhaps also enhances the community's 
self-esteem in this multi-ethnic, religious and 
cultural environment.

There is however another, less rosy side to this 
picture. The elite in the Indo-Mauritian 
community look to Britain , France and the United 
States rather than to India to advance their 
professional interests. French remains the 
dominant language of education, culture and even 
commerce. The tiny Franco-Mauritian community 
controls a major chunk of the economy. 
Sino-Mauritians and Muslim Mauritians of Indian 
descent more or less monopolise retail trade.

Until not too long ago, the Hindus held the keys 
to political and administrative power. But their 
innate divisiveness, which non-Hindi Mauritians 
are said to have exploited to the hilt, got the 
better of them. Caste, religious and regional 
identities were brought into full play.

The accumulating frustrations found expression in 
the radicalisation of the Hindu community. The 
ascendancy of Hindutva in the mother country 
throughout the 1990s and in the early part of the 
new century contributed to this trend. A static, 
exclusivist idea of Indian culture with strong 
authoritarian undertones began to strike roots. 
This, in turn, accounts in part for the emergence 
of fundamentalist tendencies in the Muslim 
community too.

The fact remains however that an overwhelming 
majority of Hindus and Muslims treat religious 
extremism with the disdain it deserves. The 
younger generation in particular is attached to 
religion and culture. But it is in no mood to 
allow that attachment to be harnessed to 
political or ideological goals.

Here is an opportunity for India . For too long 
New Delhi thought it fit to focus its attention 
on Hindi-speaking, Hindu Mauritians. It must now 
reach out to other sections of the population as 
well. For, the appeal of a modernizing India 
which celebrates diversity and tolerance cuts 
across all these communities. Such an appeal 
alone can help to tame the demons of divisiveness 
which threaten to overwhelm this fascinating land 
whose inhabitants are proud to call as chota 
Bharat.

______


[5]

13 June 2004

SHAME
Bashir Manzar

The monster of violence has once again dug its 
ugly teeth in the neck of Kashmir economy and 
this time it has targeted innocent tourists who 
had come here not only to appreciate the beauty 
of the place but to give a boost to the otherwise 
dying economy of State. Those, including the 
children, who were killed in a grenade attack at 
Pahalgam and also those who are injured and are 
battling for their lives had no political agenda. 
Their sole agenda was to relax in the valleys of 
Pahalgam and Gulmarg and to float on the waters 
of Dal Lake and thus breathe in the beauties of 
Almighty. They were not doing the picnicking for 
nothing. They were spending money and who were 
the people getting benefited from that – 
Kashmiris, poor Kashmiris. Shikara Wallas, whom 
the trouble of past more than a decade has left 
bread-less. Houseboat owners who in absence of 
tourists for all these years were living from 
hand to mouth and had no sources of income to 
repair their damaged house-boats. Ponywallas of 
Gulmarg and Pahalgam, who had sold their ponies 
to feed their families and were living a painful 
life. But how could the enemies of Kashmiris see 
Kashmiris earning? They want them to starve. They 
want to turn them into mere beggars. They want to 
keep them always with a begging bowl in their 
hands. Because once the economic condition of 
oppressed Kashmiris comes back on rails, the 
enemies had it. Economically sound and prosperous 
Kashmiris are not fitting in the nefarious 
designs of these enemies. They want people to be 
dependent, dependent for times to come. It is the 
poverty and dependence of Kashmiris that suits 
the enemies. They can exploit them, use them, 
make them to dance to their tunes. So how could 
these enemies be comfortable with such huge 
influx of tourists. The influx was bound to 
strengthen Kashmir’s economy. And thus the 
enemies decided to strike and struck at the very 
vital of the industry. Hurling grenade on the 
tourists, killing and injuring them. Enemy’s job 
is done. Tourists come here not to get killed or 
injured. They come to have some relaxed time away 
from the maddening crowd of big cities and 
terrible heat of plains. But if this so called 
paradise on earth takes away their lives, why 
should not they be happy amid the crowded cities 
and hot plains where at least their life is under 
no threat.
Chakbast would be crying in that world. He was the person who once said:
Zara Zara Hai Mere Kashmir Ka Mehmaan Nawaz;
Rastoun Ke Patharoun Ne Bhi Diya Pani Mujhe.
(Every inch of my Kashmir is hospitable to the 
extent that even stones here helped quenching my 
thirst).
And today in the same Kashmir, the guests are 
being killed and wounded. Let us all hang our 
heads in shame and admit that we being the good 
people was a myth created by biased historians. 
We are bad, bad and bad. Had it not been so, the 
leaders who are always ready to lead Jinazh 
processions and mourning meeting would have not 
adopted criminal silence over the tragic episode 
of Pahalgam. But then why they will react? They 
are poor daily wagers. They get paid on daily 
basis. The more people are killed, the more wages 
they get. And the episodes like Pahalgam earn 
them even some increments and additional 
allowances.  Let them earn their perks, hell with 
ordinary Kashmiris!!

Kashmir Images
www.kashmirimages.info



______



[6]

The Telegraph [India]
June 13, 2004

SILENCE OR RUCKUS?
- How the Bharatiya Mundan Party took the experience of defeat
Second Thoughts / Githa Hariharan

Goddesses of noise
Even a leader like Milosevic appeared on national 
television in October 2000 to make what 
astonished observers described as a gracious 
speech conceding defeat. He thanked those who 
voted for him and also those who did not. "I 
congratulate Mr. Kostunica on his victory," he 
concluded, "and I wish all citizens of Yugoslavia 
every success in the next few years." Closer 
home, I recall a friend who had spent a year in 
jail during the Emergency telling me, after the 
heady electoral defeat of Indira Gandhi in 1977, 
that Mrs Gandhi stepped down without any unseemly 
fuss. At any rate, she knew how to acknowledge 
defeat.

But in the elections of 2004, we witnessed a 
somewhat different kind of response to defeat - a 
response that ranged from sulky silence to 
farcical theatrics. The Bharatiya Janata Party 
combine showed us, once again, that they are 
unique, even in the way they take an electoral 
verdict.

Consider what the BJP leaders did when the 
electorate showed them the door. Some were quiet. 
Very, very quiet. And some others made a great 
big ruckus. The quiet route was the option 
favoured by the seniors of the BJP combine soon 
after the election results. These silver-tongued 
seniors, assigned to wear the elder-statesmen 
masks, were suddenly resoundingly silent. It was 
left to us to imagine a few possible 
behind-the-scenes.

For example, in one scene, the man partial to 
pretend-poetry made a quick speech on television 
that sounded like an old recording. He was then 
reduced to silence, possibly by a severe case of 
telephone fatigue. Those phone calls to 
unsuspecting citizens (and those endless, 
expensive TV advertisements) had used up all his 
one-sided eloquence. In another scene, the man 
partial to pretend-chariots seemed to watch in 
sulky silence as his rath, which he thought ready 
and gleaming for its victory roll, spluttered its 
way into the sunset. He knew there was every 
possibility that it was heading home, the yard 
where used-up junk is taken apart scrap by scrap. 
In yet another scene, the man partial to all 
things gloriously bogus and abracadabra seemed to 
have locked himself into a room specially 
designed for conducting crazy experiments. Except 
this time, it was doubtful whether he was 
inventing anything. Perhaps he was, with the help 
of sundry planetary, lunar and Vedic positions, 
figuring out where his recipe (a tablespoon of 
saffron and a pinch of spiritual values for a 
cupful of pure Hindu zeroes) went wrong.

A couple of the middle-level warriors of the 
combine also, surprisingly, chose silence as 
their reaction to defeat. One - the brutish 
hate-machine - could have been quiet for a good 
reason. Perhaps he was refurbishing his speeches 
and updating them with his post-election 
analysis. To him it could well have been as clear 
as his venom: all those who voted against the BJP 
are terrorists. Or foreigners. Or foreign 
terrorists, the worst kind. Or terrorizing 
foreigners, especially the kind from Italy. At 
any rate, the general public suspicion was that 
his silence would be temporary, because now there 
were so many more people to push across the 
border into the mian's arms.

Just as every country-mouse has his counterpart 
in the town-mouse, the brutish hate-machine has a 
cousin in the suave hate-machine. (It must be 
said, though, that despite his burden of 
suaveness, this one hates just as well as the 
brute.) Unfortunately, the election results 
seemed to have gobbled up a biggish chunk of his 
suaveness. When he finally chose to end his 
post-defeat silence, it was only to pick on a 
victim his party had already officially labelled 
a mere child. It might well be the first time an 
election shrank a suave hate-machine to the size 
of a garden-variety school-bully, picking on the 
newest baby in the classroom. It was almost as if 
the bully couldn't seem to decide on the question 
of Silence versus Ruckus. It's no wonder then 
that his attempts to break the big silence just 
didn't have enough circus value. That was left to 
those of the combine (the usual suspects, of 
course) who went, with gusto, for Option Two: the 
big, public ruckus.

Again, it was no surprise that there was 
something of a tussle among these 
attention-getters for the coveted post of 
ringmaster. The first aspirant rushed straight 
from Tirupati to the centre of the ring to show 
off his latest trick: head minus hair. (Now it 
was the turn of the public to be struck dumb by 
the spectacle.) But since this bald-pate didn't 
have much to say anymore, he could only hold 
attention for a moment or two, and he was soon 
hopelessly sidelined by the noisiest of 
ringmaster aspirants. The new champion of circus 
antics, a veritable goddess of noise, cracked her 
whip (blood-red, like the parting of her hair), 
and screamed of hurt sentiments and foreign 
blood. So inspired was her display of love for 
the country and her love for tender sentiments, 
that she outshone, effortlessly, the copious 
tears of love being shed offstage by the election 
winners for their reluctant leader. Everyone got 
caught up in keeping track of her daily non 
sequiturs. The question on everyone's lips was, 
"Will she do it? Will she put the razor (and not 
even one blessed by Tirupati) to her head?"

All this screaming and threatening must have been 
infectious. Already incensed by the defeat and 
the silence of the elder statesmen, the other 
circus-folk ran round the ringmaster, exhorting 
their speechless leaders to get back to where 
they always belonged. (They didn't need to spell 
out exactly where they belonged since the public 
had already had an overdose of their Hindutva 
refrain.)

The rest of us, the long-suffering electorate, 
nodded our heads from our ringside seats. No, we 
were not keeping time to the beat of the scream 
or the threat of Hindutva, shaven or unshaven. 
Just nodding in confirmation of all our most 
nasty suspicions. During the election campaign, 
we were subjected to epic-length speeches on 
television, as frequent as the ubiquitous 
commercial break, on development. On roads, on 
progress, on all things bright and shining. But 
post-elections, when masks and their newly 
moderate rhetoric were no longer of use, we were 
treated to the real face - or the real, shining, 
barren head - of what an irreverent, but precise, 
wit has christened the Bharatiya Mundan Party.



______


[7]

'Aakrosh' and its battles with the Censor Board

---------- Forwarded message ----------

To,
The Chief Reporter

Aakrosh, a short film on Gujarat Riots 2002 was banned by Censor Board,
Mumbai in March 2003 and the ban was upheld by the I& B Ministry, Film
Certification Appellate Tribunal, New Delhi in June 2003. We moved the
matter to Mumbai High Court through Writ Petition No. 2864 of 2003 and in
a hard hitting judgement delivered on 3rd March 2004, Justice A.P.
Shah and Justice S.C. Dharmadhikari came down heavily on the functioning
and attitude of Censor Board to suppress the fact and cover up Gujarat
Riots and ordered Censor Board to issue the Censor Certificate within 90
days to Aakrosh.

Censor Board did not comply the order and maintained silence on the issue.
Aakrosh was selected at the Indo-British Film Festival, London in 2003,
the I&B Ministry than forced festival authorities not to screen the Film
on grounds that it did not have Censor Certificate and that the film was
not cleared by the Government.

Aakrosh was the first film from India to be screened at Locarno Film
Festival as best film on Human Rights issue in 2003 and it was an official
entry at the Milano Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Festival.

We are in the process of producing a feature film in Gujarati on story
based on Gujarat riots, but we fear that the film might meet the same fate
as of Aakrosh, hence shooting is yet to begin. We wonder with the change
in the Central Government whether the Censor Board will change its policy
or continue to pursue the policies laid down by the earlier BJP led
NDA Government in Centre. We need to find it out from the new I&B
Ministry.

Thanking you,

Yours faithfully,
For People's Media Initiative


Ramesh Pimple
Producer & Director


______


[8]


The Economic and Political Weekly
June 05, 2004

Viability of Islamic Science
Some Insights from 19th Century India

Science flowered in Islam during the liberal 
Muslim Abbasid and later Ottoman kings. This was 
possible because the Abbasids welcomed scientists 
and translators from other cultures who willingly 
became sincere participants in the project called 
Islamic civilisation. The 19th century 
interlocutors, a few of whom are discussed in 
this paper, were aware of the 
cross-civilisational character of science in 
Islamic civilisation and modern science for them 
was a culmination of the perpetually shifting 
centres of science in history. This plurality of 
vision and cross-cultural perspective is much in 
contrast to what is being propounded today in the 
name of Islamic science.

S Irfan Habib

[The full text of above article is available to 
all interested and can be obtained by sending in 
a request to <aiindex at mnet.fr> ]


______


[9]

Dawn
13 June 2004

CHILDREN'S BOOK REVIEW: Yearning for peace
Reviewed by Zofeen T. Ebrahim


It's 92 pages of pure cerebral delight giving you 
an insight into how young minds yearn for peace. 
Peace is no more an abstract idea that our 
children are toying with but an issue that is 
taking up more and more of their time, something 
that they are hankering after and rightly so. 
Little wonder then that Kamran Mohammad (grade 4) 
starts his poem with - 'May there be peace on 
earth and let it begin with me'.
And yet the solutions they give are simple but 
ingenious that leaves an adult mind rather 
befuddled - is achieving peace so simple? In 
fact, since the adults have all but lost on this 
front, it would not be a bad idea to make room 
for the young ones and see if their formulae 
work. Amna Ahmed Sharif (grade 7) defines peace 
as: 'It's just waking up and beginning the day;/ 
By counting our blessings and kneeling to pray;/ 
It's giving up wishing for things we have not;/ 
And making the best of whatever we've got' or as 
Fatima Hassan Kazmi (class 6) says, 'If we hold 
hands and unite on a base'.
This anthology of poems by children - Amn ki 
Tasveerein - is a second laudable attempt on the 
part of the Human Rights Education Programme to 
contribute towards making a "positive difference 
to the world". It comprises some 106 poems, both 
in Urdu and English, selected from some 4,200 
entries submitted to the HREP for their peace 
campaign based on the slogan, 'Peace can be 
achieved piece by piece/Can you contribute a 
piece for peace?' that ran from August 2000 to 
June 2001.
The poems have been edited by Amber Musharraf 
Haq, Ayla Raza, Rumana Husain, Tahira Hasan and 
Zulfiqar Ali and the book has been designed and 
illustrated by Riffat Aliani.
HREP's young director Zulfiqar Ali writes in his 
foreword: "The true worth of education lies in 
its ability to create a thinking and 
participating citizenry. Therefore, the HREP 
continues to strive to promote socially relevant 
education and provide innovative, educational 
activities for children to interact with various 
social concepts and issues.
"Protracted wars is all our children have seen - 
some make-believe on the celluloid and some real 
- with the 20th century perhaps being the 
bloodiest of all centuries and children being 
forced to partake roles and responsibilities that 
are not age appropriate. All agents of change 
with the media spearheading them have 
unfortunately polluted the young minds and turned 
them into precocious kids. You get a glimpse of 
this reflected in their writings. Thus Amreena 
Zulfiqar (class 7) feels that children should 
take on the responsibility when she says: 'With 
war and hate around us and small things leading 
to big fuss;/ We children of the world must 
unite'."
As you take a leisurely journey through the book, 
at places you marvel at the thought processes - 
innocent, pure, naive yet potent, like when 
Jordan Harris (class 8) says: 'Peace is a hand 
shake; between two leaders while neither is 
secretly plotting behind the other's back' and 
'Peace is the only thing that makes sure that we 
are going to wake up tomorrow without worries or 
fear.'
At times it makes you uneasy at how the 
children's minds work and how they see things 
through. They can see through so-called 
politically correct roadmaps that are drawn for 
peace, where mosques, churches and temples are 
targeted to give peace another chance.
The book leaves you with mixed feelings. There is 
hope as well as despair, even sarcasm and 
forewarnings that are hard hitting because they 
are starkly true, like in the first poem given by 
Aeman Majeed (class 9) who taking a leaf off from 
George Orwell's Animal Farm describes the scene 
when the animals gathered together to celebrate 
the self-annihilation of the human race and 
'Peace was brought when all the humans in the 
world;/ Lost their humanity;/ And turned against 
each other;/ When every black turned against the 
white;/ Turned in hatred;/ When the poor;/ Rose 
against the rich'
While the attempt is great, there is something 
terribly amiss. The voices of those directly 
affected by war and conflict. What is missing is 
an Afghan child soldier's feelings when he 
presses the trigger for the first time in the 
name of peace, or how a child on her way to 
school steps on a landmine in Bajaur feels about 
peace. When a young refugee girl learns to read 
and write while in camp, what are her feelings, 
how does a child refugee living in a camp define 
peace; what are their feelings as they enter 
their country.
This is not to undermine the efforts of the young 
writers, or the Human Rights Education 
Programme's attempt at exploring the theme of 
peace, but to help them take their project a 
little forward next time. The children of the 348 
schools who participated with 4,200 entries are 
really remarkable but they need to give a 
concrete shape to their vision of peace based on 
ground realities to keep in mind the children's 
human rights fact sheet, which is so abysmal in 
our country. There is a need to come out of the 
cliches and the rhetoric and only then will their 
writings be refreshing and more meaningful. They 
have to understand that before peace can be 
achieved, they have to plunge in and dirty their 
hands. Peace is not an elusive entity but it 
certainly is difficult to achieve and more 
difficult to retain.
And lastly, one also felt that in some poems the 
children's work had been tinkered with by adult 
thoughts, thereby spoiling their spontaneity and 
naturalness.

Amn Ki Tasveerein: Peace Can Be Achieved Piece by 
Piece (An anthology of poems by children)
Edited by Amber Musharraf Haq, Ayla Raza, Rumana 
Husain,Tahira Hasan and Zulfiqar Ali
Human Rights Education Programme (HREP), 9-C/1, 
8th East Street, Phase I, DHA, Karachi
Tel: 0215800245, 5886481
Email: info at hrep.com.pk
Website: www.hrep.com.pk
ISBN: 969-8347-05-4
92pp. Price not listed

_____


[10]


India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation Watch Compilation # 143
(June, 13,  2004)
See URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/154



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

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.

--