SACW | 16 Jul 2004 | Pakistan ; India: Minorities / History texts / Film Fest

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire    |  16 July,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1]  Reinventing Pakistan  (Mohsin Hamid)
[2]  Will reservation benefit the Muslims in India? (Pratap Bhanu Mehta)
[3]  India: [Mullahs fling mud at Secular Voice] Javed Akhtar faces 
the music over triple talaq (MD Wajihuddin)
[4] [ Hindutva Damage to History Education in India:]
  - India considers historic rewrite (Scott Baldauf)
  - 'History of India can't be history of North India' [say 
historians] (Diptosh Majumdar)
  - Under Mulayam nose, textbook finds temple under Babri mosque (Amit Sharma)
[5] India: Films For Freedom: A 'Say No to Censorship' Festival 
(Bangalore, 29 July - 1 August)


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


[1]

Smithsonian Magazine
July 2004

Letter from Lahore

REINVENTING PAKISTAN

Welcome to Lahore, where an
explosion of art and media is
offering a vibrant alternative
to the strictures of religious
conservatives and is transforming
one of America's most important --
and most ambivalent --allies

By Mohsin Hamid
Photographs By E D Kashi

ONE NIGHT, as troops from Pakistan's army massed 300
miles away to hunt for remnants of Al Qaeda in the tribal
areas bordering Afghanistan, I went to a concert in my
hometown of Lahore. It was a pleasant evening, warm, with
a light breeze carrying the smell of April flowers: flame trees,
magnolias, jasmine. We sat outside on carpets spread across
the lawn of a white bungalow, the audience ranging from
teenagers with soul patches and ponytails to elegant matrons
in saris. My back ached slightly, and I mentioned this to a
friend as I reached for the only available cushion I could see.
"Don't even think about it," she said, patting her very
pregnant belly. "It's mine."

The music we had come to hear was a fusion of modern and
traditional percussion. There were seven musicians, all Pakistani.
Three wore Western clothes and played Western instruments:
keyboards, drum set and trumpet. Three wore
loose-fitting, traditional Pakistani dress and played the dhol: a
heavy, two-sided barrel of a drum hung from the shoulders on
a thick leather strap. The seventh played a slender Egyptian
drum held between the knees. The performance was a work
in progress, an experiment that the group hoped to refine and
take on tour to Europe and the United States in the summer.
For all their individual talents, the musicians had trouble
finding a groove. But at times the audience could sense the
potential of what was struggling to emerge, and in those moments
I could see the excitement on people's faces.

The words "explosion" and "revolution" are often applied
to Pakistan, a nuclear power contending with a tangle of domestic
and geopolitical challenges, but the words should also
be applied to the cultural life of the nation. Pakistan is witnessing
an explosion of music, part of a revolution in art and
media with potentially far greater appeal to its young people
than the sermons of religious conservatives urging them to
abandon modernity and confront perceived threats to Islam.
Over the past three years, a dozen independent television
channels have sprung up, from general networks to specialized
news, fashion and music stations. Combined with a
boom in advertising, increasing economic growth and rapid
cable and satellite penetration, these outlets are fueling not
only a new industry, but also a new culture--one not limited
to a narrow Westernized elite.

True, Pakistan is desperately poor, with half the population
of 150 million illiterate and many subsisting on less than
a dollar a day. But between 30 and 40 percent live in cities,
and that percentage rises to more than 50 percent when one
includes settlements within commuting distance of urban
centers. For this half of Pakistan's population, electricity,
telephones and television have become a part of ordinary life.
Even in rural villages, TV can be found in restaurants and tea
shops that are often as crowded with viewers as movie theaters.
Last year, when members of the Pakistani rock band
Junoon visited some of the country's most destitute and isolated
regions, they found themselves mobbed by fans who
knew their songs by heart.

This budding mass culture, virtually unknown to the
West, is being created in cities like Karachi, Islamabad and
Lahore. Karachi, home to 13 million people, is Pakistan's
commercial capital, an enormous, humming metropolis
whose occasional spasms of sectarian and criminal violence
make for international headlines. Islamabad is Pakistan's political
capital, small and quiet, with fewer than a million inhabitants
and yet the most international of Pakistan's cities.

But Lahore occupies a special place in the new mass culture.
Aprosperous city of seven million, Pakistan's cultural capital
has long been a bastion of liberalism, hedonism and easy living,
where late-night partying, open-air dining and colorful
festivals, such as the kite-flying extravaganza of Basant every
spring, draw visitors from all over the country and beyond.

DURING THE 16TH AND 17TH CENTURIES, the Mogul
rulers of what was then India left Lahore a magnificent fort
with an entrance ramp wide enough for elephants, a royal
mosque among the largest in the world when it was built, and
a palace with a mirrored ceiling that reflects candlelight like
the flickering of stars. More recently, the British Empire built
universities, clubs, courts of law and military quarters, or cantonments,
in Lahore. The young protagonist in resident Rudyard
Kipling's novel Kim told "tales of the size and beauty of
Lahore"; a visiting Mark Twain came to the conclusion that
he "could easily learn to prefer an elephant to any other vehicle."
Famous for producing poets and artists and writers,
the city is now also becoming known for its newscasters, actors,
fashion models and pop stars.

And not a moment too soon, because Pakistan needs symbols
of openness, debate and the potential for progress and
prosperity in times that many Pakistanis find dangerous and
deeply unsettling, as I was reminded by my parents' night
watchman when I went to their house after the concert.
Rahim Khan is from Pakistan's North-West Frontier
province, from the mountains near the tribal areas where recent
fighting has taken place. He looked worried, so I asked
him what was the matter.

"Have you heard that the army is going back into Waziristan?"
he said, referring to a region that has seen heavy casualties
among both soldiers and civilians in operations to hunt
down foreign militants belonging to Al Qaeda, the Taliban
and other groups.
"Yes," I said.
"It isn't good," he said. "Pakistanis will kill Pakistanis, Muslims
will kill Muslims, all for the Americans."

PAKISTANI SKEPTICISM about U.S. intentions runs deep.
To try to get a better understanding of its origins, I went to
see one of Lahore's most distinguished journalists, Rashed
Rahman, who has covered political developments in Pakistan
for more than two decades. We sat under an intricately
inlaid wooden ceiling in his house in the Cantonment
neighborhood in the eastern part of the city, he beside an antique
writing desk, and I on an old leather couch. He lit a
Dunhill cigarette and shut his eyes for a moment. "Back in
the 1950s and '60s," he said, "there were lots of Americans
living in Lahore. People wanted American cars and American
products. Elvis was huge here. Pakistan was an important
American cold war ally. The U.S. supported our military
regime and gave us aid and weapons."

His desk lamp went out, suddenly and for no apparent
reason. But other lights in the room remained on, so he
shrugged and continued. "Pakistanis thought our alliance
was meant not just to protect America from communism,
but also to protect Pakistan from India. So when Pakistan
and India fought a war in 1965, we expected America's support.
Instead, America slapped us with sanctions and cut off
our aid, because America had come to see India as a counterweight
to China. After the 1965 Pakistan-India war, America
acquired the reputation in Pakistan of being a fair-weather
friend."

He stubbed out his cigarette. "For over a decade, relations
between Pakistan and America kept getting colder," he said.
"Gen. Zia-ul-Haq seized power in a coup in 1977. Two years
later, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, bringing them close
to the massive oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. President Reagan
invited General Zia to the White House and gave him
three billion dollars of aid in exchange for Pakistan's support
against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Thus began the most disastrous
period in Pakistan's history. General Zia's regime set
out to Islamize society, and it didn't tolerate any protest or
dissent. Laws that ended equal rights for women were
passed. Democracy activists were imprisoned. But worst of
all, in camps near our border with Afghanistan, the regime
worked with America to create a monster called the mujahedin
to fight the Soviets." He was referring, of course, to
the now infamous guerrilla groups composed of Afghan and
Muslim fighters from around the world.

His words reminded me of my days as a schoolboy in Lahore
in the 1980s. Religious militants quickly spread from
the mujahedin training camps into the rest of country. Guns
and hard-eyed men with beards became commonplace in our
cities; as a more intolerant and narrow brand of Islam took
hold among civic authorities, my fellow teenagers and I
would be arrested just for going out on dates. Radio and television
began broadcasting news in Arabic, a language spoken
by very few Pakistanis. And my father, then a professor
of economics at Punjab University, came home with stories
about colleagues resigning after being held up at gunpoint
for expressing views that were "un-Islamic."

"The face of Pakistani society was destroyed during our
alliance with America in the 1980s," Rahman went on. "Then
Zia was killed in a plane crash in 1988, and once again the
army stepped back," allowing the return of civilian rule.
"From 1988 to 1999, elected governments were in power,
with Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif alternating as prime
minister. But relations with America deteriorated. In 1989
the Soviets were finally driven from Afghanistan, and the
very next year the Americans slapped Pakistan with the first
of many sanctions for our nuclear weapons program, which
they had turned a blind eye to during the 1980s. In Pakistan,
the perception was that America had flushed us down the
toilet because we were no longer needed."

He leaned back in his chair and spread his arms. "Many
people here may not be educated, but they know what has
happened in the past. So they are skeptical of our current alliance
with America." He smiled. "And if you look at the
track record, their skepticism is logical."

PAKISTAN'S CURRENT ALLIANCE with the United States
began shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001. America's secretary of state, Colin Powell, called Pakistan's
president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, and asked for the
use of Pakistani bases, airspace and logistical support for
America's military campaign in Afghanistan. Musharraf, a
Westward-leaning reformist who had seized power in a
bloodless coup in 1999, agreed, thereby ending Pakistan's
backing of the Taliban. In an address to the nation, the president
explained that refusing the U.S. request "may endanger
our territorial integrity and our survival," but by supporting
the United States "we could emerge as a responsible
and honourable nation and all our problems could diminish."

The overwhelming sentiment among Pakistanis, captured
in newspaper editorials and television interviews, was that
America's war in Afghanistan would bring enormous suffering
to fellow Muslims in one of the poorest countries in the
world. Religious conservatives were furious: "Any collaboration
with the United States is treason," declared a cleric at
Islamabad's Lal Masjid mosque in late September 2001. But
the massive antigovernment street clashes the naysayers
promised failed to materialize. "I was in a peace march," my
mother told me. "There were hundreds of us, all women with
placards and flowers, and we managed only to attract the attention
of one or two foreign journalists. But along the way
we ran into a couple dozen men with beards chanting, 'Death
to America,' and they were mobbed by international television
crews and photographers. It was like they were the Beatles."

After the defeat of the Taliban in 2002, Pakistan's role
shifted to hunting down Al Qaeda operatives inside Pakistan
itself. More than 500 Al Qaeda and Taliban members were
captured by Pakistani soldiers and handed over to the United
States. Recognizing Pakistan's contribution, Colin Powell
announced in March 2004 that the United States would designate
the country a major non-NATO ally. Some Pakistanis,
particularly religious conservatives, sympathized with the
goals of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and condemned the Pakistani
government's continued support of the United States.
(Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was murdered in
Karachi in 2002 by terrorists linked to Al Qaeda.) Others,
like my parents' night watchman, saw army operations in the
border regions as drawing innocent Pakistanis into America's
fight against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. America's
invasion of Iraq, treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and
support for the policies of Israel's prime minister Ariel
Sharon have also sparked widespread condemnation in Pakistan.
But although they may not like what America is doing
around the world, most Pakistanis are also increasingly fed
up with the religious militants in their midst. And for good
reason. In recent years, both Sunni and Shiite militants had
grown increasingly assertive, and their violence against fellow
Pakistanis had spiraled out of control.

Fatima Hassan is a young painter and a member of Pakistan's
Shiite minority, which represents about 20 percent
of the population and has been the prime target of some
Sunni militant groups. Encouraged by recent changes in
Pakistan, she decided to return home from the United
States. I went to see her in a modern house in Lahore's upscale
Defense neighborhood where she was working on a
mural of decorative patterns and floral forms. She was
wearing track pants and a T-shirt, and her hands and arms
were splattered with paint. "We just didn't feel secure," she
said of the decade before Musharraf 's takeover. "There was
a period when they were killing Shiite doctors, trying to
scare educated professionals into leaving Pakistan. My
brother-in-law was a doctor, and he was threatened. Some
men came for him at the house, but he wasn't home. After
that, we were petrified whenever he was late coming back
from the hospital. He moved into a hostel for a month so
they couldn't find him."

She crossed her arms and shook her head. "It was really
bad. My brother's friend was killed. Lots of Shiite business
leaders got shot. But things have gotten much better under
Musharraf. The killing has almost stopped. At night, when I
was trying to sleep, I used to be terrified of people coming
to the house. It isn't like that anymore. Thank God."
Although sectarian violence persists--particularly in
Karachi, wracked by recent bombings--government officials
have made stopping it a top priority and begun speaking out
against the ideologies that underpin militant movements.
"Musharraf said on television that none of these militants
should think they have the right to decide what Islam is for
the rest of us," Hassan told me. "It was a good thing to hear
our president say."

NO LESS IMPORTANT than Pakistan's alliance with the
United States has been the shift in its relations with India.
At independence from Britain in 1947, Pakistan, with a
population of 70 million, was partitioned from Hindu-majority
India, with its population of 480 million, as a homeland
for the region's Muslims. The fate of the predominantly
Muslim state of Kashmir (with three million
inhabitants) was left undecided, and the two countries have
been fighting over it ever since. India controls two-thirds
of Kashmir's territory, Pakistan the remainder. But both
countries claim Kashmir in its entirety, with India accusing
Pakistan of supporting an insurgency by Muslim rebels
in the Indian part of Kashmir and Pakistan accusing India
of refusing to obey a 1948 U.N. resolution calling for Kashmir's
people to decide which country they would rather belong
to.

In December 2001, five armed men attacked the Indi-
an Parliament. Claiming that they were Pakistani-backed
militants, India moved more than 500,000 troops to the
border and deployed its nuclear-capable missiles. Pakistan
responded in kind, sending more than 300,000 troops to
the border. For 18 months, the two nuclear powers stood
poised for war. Lahore is only 20 miles from India, and convoys
of trucks rumbled through the city for weeks, delivering
supplies to our soldiers massed along the 1,800-milelong
border. Helicopters flew low overhead, artillery fire
was exchanged to the north and there were rumors that
traffic on the freeway was being stopped so our fighter pilots
could practice landing on it in case an Indian nuclear
strike destroyed our airfields.

But a growing realization that the consequences of nuclear
war were unthinkable, coupled with intense mediation
efforts by the United States and other countries, brought
Pakistan and India back from the brink in May 2003. On a
historic visit by Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee
to Pakistan in January 2004, both he and Pakistani president
Musharraf committed themselves to negotiating their differences,
including the status of Kashmir. The restoration of
commercial air links and an easing of travel restrictions followed
soon after.

Suddenly, anxiety gave way to optimism and euphoria. For
the first time in more than a decade, India and Pakistan
agreed to a full tour of Pakistan by the Indian cricket team,
unleashing in March an influx of Indian spectators so huge
that Pakistan had to set up special visa camps in India to accommodate
demand. Journalists, film stars, celebrities and
politicians, including both children of India's late prime minister
Rajiv Gandhi and his wife, Sonia, descended on the five
match venues of Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and
Multan. So did thousands of ordinary cricket fans, swept up
in a sport that, for the fifth of humanity that lives in South
Asia, has an importance, in American terms, roughly equal
to baseball, football and basketball combined.

The series was unlike any sporting event I had ever seen.
In stadiums in all five cities, Pakistanis cheered for the Indian
team and painted the flags of both countries on their
faces; they even launched fireworks to celebrate the Indian
victory in the final and decisive one-day match in Lahore.
Outside the stadiums, Pakistani shopkeepers gave Indian visitors
gifts, and restaurant owners refused to let them pay for
their meals. I did a quick survey in Lahore's Main Market
among several boys who sell paan, a delicacy made of nuts
and fragrant syrup wrapped inside a betel leaf. "We were
happy for the Indians to be here," one named Saleem said.
"Of course we didn't let them pay. We wanted them to know
they were our guests. We are fed up with war. We want
peace." Loudly, the others agreed.

"The massive outpouring of hospitality and affection was
spontaneous and genuine," Ejaz Haider, an editor at the
Daily Times, an English-language newspaper based in Lahore,
told me. "The Indians were taken aback. The image they had
of Pakistan was of a violent, conservative state whose people
hated them. Instead, they had a reception more generous
than anything they could possibly have imagined. I had
Indian journalists telling me that Lahore is cleaner and more
beautiful than any city in India."

For the most part, Pakistanis expected that India's prime
minister Vajpayee, who had made peace with Pakistan both a
personal mission and a plank in his reelection platform, would
continue in power after India's elections, which were held in
April and May. But the stunning defeat of Vajpayee's Bharatiya
Janata Party by the Congress Party, led by Italian-born Sonia
Gandhi, created uncertainty about the future of India-Pakistan
relations. While the Pakistan government welcomed
comments by Gandhi and incoming prime minister Manmohan
Singh that the peace process would continue, many here
speculate that it will suffer, with the Daily Times commenting
that "there may be some unexpected hurdles ahead." But
others pointed out that Gandhi's son and daughter, Rahul, 34,
and Priyanka, 33, had demonstrated their support for peace
by coming to Karachi for the cricket finals, where they had
clearly been thrilled by the reception they received.
what no doubt impressed the Indian visitors, and
what impresses even Pakistanis returning after just a few
years abroad, is a nation emerging from economic stagnation
and years of inaction against the domestic terrorism of religious
militants. The country has won praise from the World
Bank and International Monetary Fund for its economic
turnaround. Pakistan's stock market was among the world's
top performing last year, up 66 percent, and real estate values
are soaring. Although still generated from a tiny base, tax revenues
have jumped 40 percent in the past four years, enabling
the government to spend more on development, especially
on education--a critical investment for Pakistanis
under 19, roughly half of its current population.

A good example of this vibrancy is the creation of many new
private educational institutions. Navid Shahzad, a literature
professor and education consultant, helped found Beaconhouse
National University (BNU) in Lahore. I went to see her in her
office, walking past bulletin boards plastered with announcements
for student plays and concerts and art projects. "Three
things happened in higher education," she told me. "First, the
government finally understood that it did not have the resources
to meet the education needs of the population by itself."
She raised two fingers. "Second, they realized that the
crumbling public education system-and the religious madrassas
[schools] that stepped in to fill the gaps--contributed to the
problems of unemployment and militancy in our society." She
raised a third finger. "Finally, they saw that some private universities
in Pakistan were providing qualitatively superior education
in a way which was financially self-sustaining."

A group of students with backpacks slung over their Tshirts
walked by outside her glass door. "So," she continued,
"after years of being a public-sector fiefdom, things are finally
changing. In the last year, seven or eight private universities
were granted charters in our province alone. BNU
opened five months ago, and we now have 109 students, including
16 international students. We plan to have 2,000
within five years. Our nonprofit foundation already has an
endowment which allows us to give over 30 percent of our
students' financial aid. And even though Pakistan is supposed
to be a dangerous place, I've had no difficulty recruiting
faculty from Britain, South Africa, Germany and the
United States. People hear about what we're doing, and
they're excited to come and teach here."

And what is BNU teaching? She smiled. "The demand for
people in media, culture and the arts is booming," she said.
"It's driven by the proliferation of television channels, and
now also of radio and newspapers, as well as by a growing
middle class. BNU is training people to meet that demand.
Many of our programs are the first of their kinds in Pakistan:
photojournalism, for example. At public universities they
stopped teaching sculpture because of the Islamic injunction
against idolatry. But here, we teach sculpture. And we teach
many disciplines that marry art and technology and make
new things possible, like sound engineering and computer
visual effects."

Down the hall from Shahzad, in an office shared by four
female faculty members from three different countries, I
met Zahra Khan, a recent graduate of Mount Holyoke College
in South Hadley, Massachusetts, who has starred in a
popular television sitcom here. She was wearing glasses and
a diamond stud in her nose and sat at her desk under a poster
for the Quentin Tarantino film Pulp Fiction. "Music, television
sitcoms, dramatic serials-everything is exploding right
now," she said. "Young people are expressing themselves, and
powerful modern forces are finally taking on the old conservative
ones. It's really exciting to be part of it."

of course, few in Lahore would argue that Pakistan's longoverdue
embrace of television is a panacea for its deep-rooted
problems, as Ahmed Rashid, the internationally best-selling
author of Taliban and Jihad, is only too happy to point out.
Sporting both a beard and a pair of shorts, an unusual combination
here, Rashid led me into his study, a single room entirely
lined with bookshelves and separated from his house in the
Cantonment by a walkway shaded by hanging vines. His electricity
and phone service were both out.

"The problem Pakistan faces right now," he told me, folding
his legs underneath him, "is that our government has a
two-track policy, a kind of institutionalized schizophrenia.
Take the issue of militants," he said, referring to the thousands
of foreigners and Pakistanis engaged in an armed
struggle against the West, against India in Kashmir, or
against those who practice a different form of Islam.
"Musharraf has promised to clamp down on all militants operating
in Pakistan. But in reality, two different things are
going on. The army is trying to eliminate Al Qaeda, foreign
militants who are in Pakistan to fight a global jihad against
America. But the army is not trying to eliminate Pakistani
militants who want to fight India in Kashmir. The army
wants these domestic Kashmiri militant groups to pause
their activities, but it doesn't want to dismantle them yet in
case negotiations with India fail. Unfortunately, Al Qaeda
and our domestic militant groups are deeply embedded in
each other. So the army's policies are pushing in two opposite
directions at the same time."

The lights came back on, and Rashid got up to send a fax,
then gave up in frustration because the phone was still out.
"Many Pakistani militants think Musharraf is a long-term
threat," he went on. "Especially the sectarian groups, the
Sunni extremists who are instigating violence against Shiites.
They've been fingered twice for trying to assassinate Musharraf,"
in two attacks 11 days apart in December 2003. "The
army is trying to distinguish these sectarian groups from the
ones fighting for Kashmir and go after them. But because all
these groups-Al Qaeda, the sectarian groups and the groups
fighting in Kashmir-are interrelated, it's hard to do."

He poured me a cup of tea. "It's the same situation with
Abdul Qadeer Khan and this entire nuclear proliferation
scandal," he told me, referring to the mastermind of Pakistan's
nuclear program who, in January, admitted selling nuclear
secrets to Libya, North Korea and Iran. "Right after
September 11, we should have said, privately perhaps, to the
Americans and the International Atomic Energy Agency,
'Look, we want to come clean. We are guilty of proliferation.
But that's over now, and here's how we're going to assure you
that those days are finished.' The army should have taken responsibility.
Instead, the army waited until we got caught
with our pants down, with Libya and Iran telling the world
that we helped them, and then the army set up A. Q. Khan as
a scapegoat to limit the damage. So now we're in the same
position of cooperating with the Americans and the IAEA,
but only after destroying our own credibility." In particular,
Musharraf 's decision to pardon the once hugely popular
Khan after his confession was widely seen as an attempt to
limit the damage of the scandal.

Rashid also criticizes the undemocratic nature of Musharraf
's government and its antagonism toward the parties of
former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
Rashid's concerns would spill into the news a week later, in
May, when Nawaz Sharif 's brother, Shahbaz, attempted to
return from exile abroad and was immediately deported by
armed security personnel.

Rashid checked his fax machine again. It was still not
working, so he called out to his driver and asked him to take
the fax to the bazaar to be sent off. "At the end of the day,"
he said, after the driver had left, "the schizophrenic nature
of our government-hunting some militants but protecting
others, admitting proliferation but passing the blame, liberalizing
the economy but destroying the two mainstream political
parties--is tied up with Pakistan's search for its own
identity. We need to decide which way we want to go. The
fundamentalists don't have mass support, but they're very
vocal. It's time for the rest of civil society--for businesspeople,
traders, teachers, professionals, intellectuals-to find its
voice. There is mass support for peace with India, and economic
development, and an end to militancy. But the question
is: Are we at that tipping point where mass support can
finally change our policies?"

AFTER MY MEETING WITH RASHID, I decided not to take
the most direct route home. Instead, I drove down Mall Road,
with its old, shady trees, many planted by the British before
Pakistan's independence. The divider was lush green, with
thick beds of orange flowers on long, elegant stems. I passed a
white mosque near my grandfather's former house. The
mosque had been small when I was a child, barely more than a
room. Now its minarets and glossy green dome jutted into the
sky, festooned with flags pulled taut by a stiff breeze-signs,
perhaps, that a religious assembly would soon take place.

I turned left along the canal. Weeping willows along its
banks dragged the tips of their branches through the water.
The road had been improved lately, modern underpasses
transforming it into a quick-moving artery for traffic through
the city. At intersections, billboards with attractive young
women and men advertised clothes, cars, credit cards, ice
cream. On one billboard was a splattering of dark paint
where someone with conservative views and good aim had
tried to obliterate a particularly fetching female face.

I remembered my mother telling me about a local production
of The Phantom of the Opera she had seen. A woman
wearing Western-style trousers and a shirt, but also a head
scarf, had introduced the show. "At first," my mother told me,
"I thought it was silly. Why bother with a conservative head
scarf if you are going to put on those tightfitting clothes? But
then I listened to her speak, and she was confident and spoke
well. So I thought, if it makes her feel more comfortable to
wear a head scarf, then fine. The important thing is that she
was well educated and free to speak her mind."

As the city of Lahore, and Pakistan as a whole, leaves behind
two decades of repression and violent intimidation by
religious militants, more and more people are finding their
voices. And much of what they have to say reflects a longing
for peace and progress. Even if overshadowed in the news by
the explosions of bombs, Pakistan's other explosions-of
music, media and mass culture--are powerful and growing
sources of hope.

[Footnote: MOHSIN HAMID's first novel, Moth Smoke, was a finalist for
the PEN/Hemingway Award. ED KASHI photographed New York
City's and San Francisco's ports in the January issue of
Smithsonian.]

_____



[2]


The Indian Express
July 15, 2004

WILL RESERVATION BENEFIT THE MUSLIMS IN INDIA?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta

The Andhra government's move to provide five per cent job 
reservations for Muslims will harm rather than serve them

The Andhra Pradesh government's announcement of a five percent job 
reservation for Muslims is treading down a dangerous legal and 
political path. The full integration of Muslims into India's public 
life, and the expansion of opportunities for them ought to be the 
endeavour of public policy. But reservations of the kind just 
announced are not an effective means of achieving the desired 
objective. It could be potentially counter productive.

Anyone concerned with the future of Indian democracy ought to concede 
that the alienation of Muslims from India's public institutions and 
their economic marginalisation should be matters of grave concern. 
Targeting Muslims for simply being who they are has become commonly 
legitimised. The state on many occasions has openly condoned 
discriminatory treatment towards them in matters of securing justice.

The space for an autonomous Muslim politics has been almost 
non-existent, caught between political parties that ominously target 
them, and political parties that cynically use them. And Muslim 
politics has not been well served by its leaders, who have been 
reluctant to democratise institutions relevant to Muslims. All of 
these forces have combined to ensure that Muslims, rather than being 
integrated as equal citizens, unencumbered by the weight of their 
identities, are constantly put in the position of being a supplicant 
minority. Millions of ordinary Muslims have paid the price for this 
myopia.

This context has to serve as a background for any discussion of the 
issue of Muslim reservations. The majority has to recognise that 
integrating Muslims and expanding opportunities for them is an 
important political task. It would be height of folly to ignore it. 
On the other hand, we ought to be careful not to enact policies that 
are either empty political gestures, or have the potential for 
producing harm.

The case for reservations for Muslims is however weak on many 
grounds. They are economically more marginalised and 
under-represented in public services. But the most effective solution 
to this is not reservations. It is their inclusion in all schemes 
that are aimed at expanding opportunities for citizens: education and 
so forth. On this front the state needs to give a credible commitment.

There is a real opportunity cost to a public discourse obsessed by 
reservation. We have become attuned to thinking of the well being of 
marginalised communities only on one dimension. But we know that is 
downright false to claim that reservations are genuine anti-poverty 
programmes. Reservations is not an act of commitment by the state to 
the cause of Muslims, it is a cover up for its failures to address 
their needs. Second, it is often argued that Muslims were being 
discriminated against under current reservation provisions. Muslims 
from oppressed castes, whose status did not really alter on account 
of being Muslim, were being arbitrarily denied the benefits of 
reservation. Was this not a form of religious discrimination?

This argument is also disingenuous in two respects. First, it is a 
reductio ad absurdum of our reservations policy, not an argument in 
its favour. The same argument could be applied on behalf of poor 
Brahmins or Rajputs. Are they not being excluded simply on account of 
their caste? Second, the Mandal commission had made provisions for 
some reservations for backward Muslim castes. Various states have 
been directed to implement these provisions. What it had objected to 
was declaring Muslims as a whole a backward community, enjoying the 
same status as Scheduled Castes or Tribes.

What is insidious about the Andhra legislation is that is going down 
the path of reifying a single Muslim interest, irrespective of caste, 
class and regional differences. Many prominent Muslims have been 
arguing, with considerable merit, that an understanding of Muslim 
society should involve an acknowledgment of its complex and various 
sociology and history. Classifying the Muslims qua community as 
backward is another step in abridging this complexity. It is giving 
succour to those who deploy "Muslim" as a reified category to target 
them. Finally, great poverty and economic deprivation amongst the 
Muslims needs to be addressed. But the rationale for reservations for 
Scheduled Castes and Scheduled tribes was entirely different. It was 
based on a particular experience of oppression and discrimination. It 
would make a mockery of our history, if we put the two forms of 
marginalisation in roughly the same category, and suggested the same 
remedies for both.

What the Muslims need most of all is defeating the ideologies of hate 
that have made them more vulnerable over the last decade or so. 
Hindutva was, in part, made possible by Congress' footloose 
interpretation of secularism. On this view secularism meant 
generating a political dynamic whereby religious groups would jostle 
with state for benefits qua religious communities.

This was a secularism of political expediency, not a secularism of 
principle. It created an ugly politics, where different religious 
groups would measure their standing by how many concessions they had 
mange to wrest from the state qua religious groups. Rather than 
making religious identities irrelevant for politics and public 
policies, it opened up space for them even more insistently. Anybody 
familiar with our recent history ought to understand that this 
reification of religious identities and their intrusion into public 
policy is a recipe for disaster. It is wishful thinking to suppose 
that enacting reservations for Muslims qua Muslims, will not unleash 
a politics of that kind again. We will all start measuring what a 
government does, not by the general provisions it makes for the 
common good, but by the benefits it targets towards particular 
communities. Anyone familiar with recent Indian history ought to be 
disturbed by this scenario, for its biggest beneficiaries are going 
to be the votaries of Hindutva.

It could be argued that the fear of Hindutva cannot be allowed to 
hold desirable policies to ransom. There is some truth to this, but 
risking a politics of religious competition of the kind Congress 
subject us to for two decades, better have a compelling moral and 
political justification. Reservations for Muslims have no such 
justification. It will not help them economically. It might 
marginally increase their representation in the state, but unleash a 
process that alienates them from politics further. It is against the 
rather wise consensus of our founding fathers that the history of 
Muslims and Dalits cannot be equated. And it is against norms of 
fairness, for it will only underscore the deprivation of those who 
are poor but don't fall under any category of reservations. The 
Congress is once again playing politics on a delicate matter and will 
put in jeopardy the interests of those it is pretending to help.

The author is Visiting Professor of Government at Harvard University

______



[3]  [Mullahs Fling Mud at Seculars . . . ]

The Indian Express
July 15, 2004

JAVED AKHTAR FACES THE MUSIC OVER TRIPLE TALAQ
How can a person who gave talaq to Honey Irani fight against talaq, 
asks Urdu Times

MD Wajihuddin

MUMBAI, JULY 14: The triple talaq issue just got personal. The 
second-biggest Urdu newspaper in Mumbai, Urdu Times, has taken on 
poet-scriptwriter Javed Akhtar, questioning his credibility in the 
protest against triple talaq.

Akhtar is the head of Muslims for Secular Democracy (MSD), which 
proposed in a July 2 press conference that the All India Muslim 
Personal Law Board change the rules of talaq.

  As the practice stands, a man may divorce his wife instantly by 
uttering ''talaq'' three times. The MSD instead urged the board to 
follow the Holy Quran, which says that talaq should be pronounced 
over a period of three menstrual cycles.

Calling him a munafiq (infidel), the newspaper has delved into 
Akhtar's marital life. A July 11 story is entitled: ''How can a 
person who gave talaq to Honey Irani fight against talaq?''

The acerbic essay questions Akhtar's credibility, saying: ''You don't 
consider yourself to be a Muslim, and therefore have no right to 
interfere in the affairs of the AIMPLB.'' Akhtar says, the newspaper 
is using abusive language instead of creating an informed debate on 
the issue.

But the editors stand by their reports. ''Javed humiliated the AIMPLB 
in his press conference. He has no right to criticise such a body of 
eminent ulema. We have done stories with the utmost responsibility,'' 
says Saeed Hameed, features editor of the Urdu Times.

Backing the newspaper's attack is the AIMPLB. ''We agree with what 
the paper is writing. Javed should keep his hands off the issue,'' 
says Haroon Mozawalla, a member of the AIMPLB.

The MSD plans legal action against the daily. ''The reports are not 
only in bad taste, they are also inflammatory and provocative,'' 
protests Javed Anand, the MSD's general secretary. The Urdu Times has 
faced charges of inciting public disharmony in the past. In 1996, the 
Press Council of India issued strictures against it for inciting its 
readers and creating disharmony.

Akhtarspeak

''One could have ignored it, had it been just a personal attack. The 
rhetorical tone of the stories may create disharmony. The MSD held 
conferences in cities across the country, talking to predominantly 
Muslim crowds. There was an overwhelming support and agreement.''

______



[4]

The Christian Science Monitor, July 16, 2004

INDIA CONSIDERS HISTORIC REWRITE
Allies of the new Congress government call for revisions of school 
textbooks currently oriented toward Hindu values.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW DELHI - In the past five years, Indian schoolchildren of all 
faiths have learned quite a bit about the culture of the Hindu 
majority.

With the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party in charge, history 
textbooks were rewritten to extol the virtues of Indian kings like 
Shivaji and the Mauriyan and Vijayanagar empires. Hindu values were 
openly promoted in school, and ancient subjects like Hindu astrology, 
Ayurvedic medicine, and even the system of mental calculations known 
as Vedic mathematics were taught alongside more modern subjects such 
as astronomy, chemistry, and accounting.

Last week, the allies of the newly elected Congress government, the 
Communist Party of India, called for yet another rewrite of Indian 
history, this time with a broader view of India's many cultures 
instead of focusing on the religion of the majority.

The root of this historical conflict runs deep into the very 
definition of India itself. Is India essentially a secular country, 
where many religions and cultures coexist and blend? Or is India a 
nation formed on Hindu values, where non-Hindu religions must conform 
to Hindu values and traditions? It is this core question has 
unwittingly turned Indian schoolrooms into a cultural battleground.

"If these academics did things in a quiet manner, it would be better 
so that you don't arouse latent emotions," says Dipankar Gupta, an 
anthropologist at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. "Most 
people in India believe in what the RSS (a militant pro-Hindu group) 
wanted to put into the textbooks, so if you say that is wrong, it 
wouldn't go down so well."

"From an educational point of view, it's pointless" to change 
textbooks in the middle of the year, Mr. Gupta adds. "Students 
basically learn these things to pass the exams. They won't be 
confused by a change in curriculum," he says, and they won't bother 
thinking much about it after the exams, either.

But most historians welcome these changes - indeed some change was 
almost inevitable. The BJP-promoted textbooks were full of factual 
errors, according to a panel of historians, and they diminished the 
impact of nearly a millennium of Islamic and British conquerors.

"The old textbooks were full of errors of fact, which children don't 
deserve to be made to read," says Barun De, a historian from the 
Maulana Azad Institute of Asian Studies in Calcutta, who wrote a 
scathing report of the BJP's textbooks in 2000. "No government 
ideology should be imposed on children."

What Mr. De and other historians found in the BJP's textbooks was a 
narrative that relied heavily on "traditional thought and mythology 
up to the first millennium, and then the second millennium was a 
retrogression and a perversion because of foreign conquests from the 
West."

While he has no desire to diminish the merits of Indian history 
before the arrival of Western conquerors, he adds, "I would like to 
see a multiplex character of India to be represented, as it used to 
be in our history. But that multiplicity was whittled down and the 
Hindu side emphasized. This is an attempt to bring in chauvinism, and 
one of the more fundamentalist elements of religion."

Not so, says Devenanda Swarup, a former professor of history at Delhi 
University. Mr. Swarup says that it is the Congress Party that is 
taking an ideological view of history, promoting a Marxist view that 
diminishes the importance of India's founding culture, Hinduism.

"This is an exercise which may launch a struggle for the national 
ethos of the country, and Marxist ideology, which has been outdated, 
cannot withstand it," says Swarup. "Every country tries to inculcate 
its values to children, a spirit of patriotism, a concept of unity, 
and higher moral values. But these people," he says, speaking of 
left-leaning historians, "they want to talk about the struggle of 
revolution."

Unless the Congress bucks the pressure of its Communist allies, 
Swarup warns, "there is a possibility of this becoming a major 
campaign of struggle." The leftist academics "have no following, 
their whole influence is the news media. All organized forces will 
participate, from parents, from students, from different groups that 
are dedicated to the Indian nation."

Meanwhile, the new government is sending mixed signals on whether it 
wants to take on this fight so early in its reign. Communist Party 
officials, who support the Congress government within parliament but 
are not members of the governing coalition, are pushing for immediate 
removal of BJP-sponsored textbooks. But Congress government spokesman 
Salman Khursheed told journalists last week that the Congress Party 
is working on a different time frame.

"If the Left agrees with some of the steps we take, that's 
wonderful," he told the Kerala-based magazine The Week. "But it 
should be remembered that we are believers, while they are not. Our 
ideal is Mahatma Gandhi, who was into religion; theirs is Karl Marx."

o o o


Indian Express, July 16, 2004
[ URL: www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=51149 ]

'HISTORY OF INDIA CAN'T BE HISTORY OF NORTH INDIA'
Of 89 pages, not even 9 on peninsular India: HRD panel on NCERT book
Diptosh Majumdar

NEW DELHI, JULY 15: So long, ''saffronisation'' was the cliche used 
in the criticism of the NDA regime's history textbooks. But the panel 
of scholars appointed by the new HRD Ministry has come out with a 
stinging indictment that accuses the writers of being parochial-with 
a strong ''north India'' bias. So much so that it has ''nothing to 
offer'' to CBSE students in over 1,000 schools in the four states of 
south India.

In fact, the report, submitted to the HRD Ministry by Professors S 
Settar, J S Grewal and Barun De, is relatively milder in its attack 
on the issue of ''saffron bias'' or factual errors than on this issue.

  The report, obtained by The Indian Express, singles out the section 
on ancient India:

* ''One of the major drawbacks of this text is the lopsided treatment 
of ancient Indian history...Ancient India is identified with the 
Indo-Gangetic Zone. The events of the rest of the country-the entire 
peninsula, the north-east and parts of extreme east-are more or less 
viewed as of no relevance by those who prepared this syllabus.''

* Evidence: Of the 89 pages devoted to the study of Ancient History 
of India, not even nine full pages are spared for the history of 
peninsular India. ''Tamil Nadu and Karnataka together have preserved 
a corpus of over 50,000 inscriptions, but not even a passing 
reference is made to this enviable wealth, even where the sources of 
history are discussed.''

* The panel contrasts this with the reality: An estimated 1,050 CBSE 
schools teach this course (and follow this text) in the four states 
of South India and two union territories (Kerala: 489, Andhra 
Pradesh: 350, Tamilnadu : 150, Karnataka: 35; Lakshadweep: 10 and 
Andaman: 15).

''To all these students, the text has nothing to offer about the land 
in which they are born and brought up, and also in which the majority 
of them spend the rest of their lives. As long as history is imposed 
from above, in this manner, without involving the scholarship of the 
rest of the country, the history of India is bound to be a 
meaningless exercise.''

* Factual errors and distortions are also listed in the report. For 
example, in the Medieval India Section for Class XI, the panel says: 
''Kabir appears very briefly in this book...Only one sentence is 
devoted to him: 'The nirguna school was best represented by Kabir 
considered the spiritual preceptor of all subsequent north Indian 
panths.''

The panel says: ''Complete silence is thus maintained over his 
(Kabir's) profession (weaver) and Muslim origin, his rejection of 
both Hinduism and Islam, his denunciation of the caste disabilities 
and ritual and his popular vibrant verses. Ravidas, the great Dalit 
saint, and Sain, the barber, both disciples of Kabir, and giving vent 
to similar idea, are totally ignored. The omission of such a vital 
aspect of our cultural heritage is clearly part of (Meenakshi) Jain's 
(author) design to exclude all integrative or critical elements from 
our history.''

* Modern History: Brahmo Samaj is referred to as the Brahmo Sabha; 
Devendranath Tagore who is actually the father of Rabindranath is 
mentioned as the grandfather.

* Chapter 11 of the Class XII text book, authored by Satish Chandra 
Mittal, suggests that Muslim politics during the freedom struggle was 
always separatist in nature. There is no mention of the fact 
Badruddin Tyabji and Maulana Azad did become presidents of the Indian 
National Congress. But the emphasis appears to be on Khilafat 
movement.

The HRD Ministry has already announced that the Class X textbooks 
need not be changed because the ''history'' portion is negligible. 
And it is looking at the feasibility of the six alternative books 
suggested by the panel. Their publishers: Frank Bros and Co, New 
Delhi; Holy Faith International, New Delhi; Bharati Bhavan, Patna; 
Oxford India; Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Co Ltd and Madhuban 
Educational Books (Vikas New Delhi).

o o o

[Related Material]

Indian Express, July 16, 2004
[URL: www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=33835 ]

UNDER MULAYAM NOSE, TEXTBOOK FINDS TEMPLE UNDER BABRI MOSQUE
Amit Sharma



______




[5]


FILMS FOR FREEDOM, BANGALORE

   Presents

   FILMS FOR FREEDOM
   A 'Say No to Censorship' Festival

   From 29th July to 1st August
   at the JSS Auditorium, Jayanagar, Bangalore

   Details available at www.collectivechaos.org/fff

  Donor passes of Rs. 99/- for the festival will be available at
   All KC Das outlets
   All Casa Piccola Outlets
   Classic Foods, Jayanagar 9th Block
   Nagasri Book House, Jayanagar 4th Block Complex

   In our effort to maintain the independent character of this Festival, we
believe that we can raise support for our endeavour from individuals and
organizations like you, who fully endorse the need for a lively, committed
and active documentary film movement.
   *You could make a donation of Rs. 1000 to Films for Freedom, towards a VIP
pass.
   *You could sponsor special printing of stills and posters of landmark
Indian documentary films in the Festival brochure
   Write to us at filmsforfreedom at yahoo.com

   Films for Freedom, Bangalore is an inevitable response to Vikalp-Films for
Freedom, Mumbai. We are a coalition of individuals who have come together to
make the Films for Freedom Festival happen in Bangalore.

   The group first rallied together in a signature campaign to support
documentary filmmakers all over India, in their campaign against censorship.
After the success of Vikalp, Mumbai, we knew that the campaign had to be
furthered.  For us, Vikalp is a successful demonstration of a collective
strength, which upheld our right to fearless speech. Particularly in these
times when liberal and secular spaces of our civil society are being usurped
and communalised.

   Through a select package of films from Vikalp, we would like to carry the
spirit of Vikalp further, in a celebration of collective memory. From July
29 to August 1, 2004, invited filmmakers will present a selection of 28
films representing different genres and showcasing diverse preoccupations of
the Indian Documentary Film The festival will also include daily panel
discussions on freedom of expression.

   After the festival we will curate smaller packages of films from the
festival and take them around to colleges and institutions. The attempt is
to infuse the spirit of the documentary film in both the larger festival
audience and smaller groups of people. Do let us know if you are interested.

   The Films For Freedom Festival is being organized by filmmakers and
artists along with Pedestrian Pictures, a media activist organization,
Alternative Law Forum, an organization working on legal rights and issues
related to law, Samvada, an organization working with youth and Collective
Chaos, a film society.

   Bangalore has periodically witnessed spontaneous outbursts of civil rights
consciousness. This is our first step in organizing a big festival to
further this public concern about freedom of expression through a collective
spirit. We hope to take this forward and attempt to make it an annual event.
   --------------------------------------------------------------------------
   Contact : Surabhi - 9845446784, Sushma - 9844274469, Dipu-9845909431


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

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