SACW | 19 Jul 2004

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire    |  19 July,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1]   Sri Lanka: A Rising in The East (Malathi de Alwis)
[2]   Mujib or Zia? The Distortion of History in Bangladesh (Taj Hashmi)
[3]   India / Sri Lanka and elsewhere: The Others In The State (Nivedita Menon)
[4]   Book Review: Eqbal Ahmad: a voice of conscience (Abbas Rashid)
[5]   India Pakistan Arms Race and Militarisation 
Watch Compilation ((July 14,  2004))

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

[1]


Sunday Island,
July 18 2004

A RISING IN THE EAST

Dr Malathi de Alwis
Senior Research Fellow
International Centre for Ethnic Studies


The East has suddenly re-appeared in the 
cognisance of Colombo, after Karuna's declaration 
of autonomy from the north, in April 2004. For 
the Colombo-based media the only issues worth 
speculating on are who helped Karuna escape to 
Colombo and which LTTE faction is killing whom. 
All the while, completely ignored by the media, 
families wage terrified yet determined battles in 
the East against the latest drive by the Vanni 
group to re-conscript children released by the 
Karuna group. This is a historic moment in the 
struggle of the Tamil populace in the East and it 
is imperative that we in the South not miss the 
opportunity to show our solidarity and support 
these courageous families in every way we can.

While I continue to remain critical of the 
fascist practices of both LTTE factions, I have 
no doubt that this latest configuration of 
resistance has been enabled by Karuna's 
rebellion. Karuna's critique that Prabhakharan, 
and what is now called the LTTE (Vanni group), 
has consistently discriminated against eastern 
LTTE cadres and populace, is a regionalist 
argument  that ironically parallels the broader 
Tamil nationalist argument, most vociferously 
articulated by Prabhakaran and the LTTE for over 
two decades now. That is to say, the LTTE demands 
an autonomous nation-state -eelam-for the Tamil 
populace of Sri Lanka based on the argument that 
the primarily Sinhala and Buddhist Sri Lankan 
state has consistently and systematically 
discriminated against them for many decades. This 
envisioned nation-state of eelam encompasses both 
the northern and eastern provinces on the grounds 
that these regions were the original homelands of 
the Tamil people. Karuna's demands merely extends 
this argument by calling for a bi-furcation of 
the North and East which thus enables the East to 
function independently of the North. Following 
such regionalist logic, it is only a matter of 
time before Tamils in Trincomalee, who argue that 
they are positioned even further down in the 
pecking order from the Tamils in Batticaloa, seek 
autonomy as well.
Karuna's complaint about northern discrimination 
is not a new one or unique to him. During my 
regular visits to the Eastern Province, these 
past five years, I had begun to notice this 
refrain getting louder and louder, the more 
people began to trust me. A weeping widow would 
confide that she did not know whether her son was 
alive or dead because she had not heard from him 
for over five years, ever since he had been sent 
off to the Vanni. "Why couldn't 'they' let him 
serve closer home", she would keep asking, 
"knowing that he is all I have?" Local peace 
activists would be more explicit noting darkly 
that more eastern 'boys' had sacrificed their 
lives for eelam than northern ones. Conversely, a 
northerner who had decided to take up residence 
in the East when faced with the incompetence of 
an easterner would mutter: "these guys would be 
nowhere if we had not come along and started NGOs 
and teaching in their university".
Not surprisingly, Karuna's declaration of 
independence has exacerbated what had previously 
been mere murmurings and rumblings of discontent. 
The populace in the East is split into those who 
are delighted that it has finally been 
articulated in public in such a dramatic and 
defiant manner and those who feel that it has led 
to unnecessary and unfortunate divisions within 
the community and the liberation movement as a 
whole (and of course many a variation between the 
two positions as well).
Besides the intra-LTTE battles and 
assassinations/counter-assassinations that this 
declaration has triggered, northerners also point 
to another significant outcome. Many of them no 
longer feel welcome or safe in the East and some 
have actually been asked to leave the East. It is 
still unclear how many families have actually 
returned to the North as the numbers increase or 
decrease based on which side one seeks to 
support. This is sadly reminiscent of another 
event of more tragic and gargantuan proportions. 
In October 1990, Muslims long domiciled in the 
North were chased out by the LTTE, with barely a 
few hour's notice. The easterners appear as the 
villains in the hegemonic narrative of this 
exodus as well: Such closeness was shared by the 
Tamils and Muslims of the North that LTTE cadre 
from the East had to be brought in to drive out 
the Muslims.
	However, what I consider to be the most 
crucial outcome of Karuna's rebellion, an outcome 
that has been most consistently ignored by those 
in the South unfortunately, is that it also 
provided an unexpected space for parents to vent 
their anger against both LTTE factions, and 
reclaim their children. On April 10th, parents 
who had got word that Karuna was considering 
releasing most of his child combatants (prior to 
a possible battle with the Vanni group), went to 
the Meenaham training camp to claim their 
children. When Karuna's middle-level cadre 
started stalling, a large group of parents, and 
most significantly many mothers, became incensed. 
They set up a road block outside the camp and 
proceeded to beat up some of the LTTE cadre with 
bicycles and whatever else they could get their 
hands on until their children were released.

It is this collective act of resistance that 
catalysed the mass release of children from the 
rest of Karuna's training camps, on April 11th. 
Children poured out of these camps in their 
hundreds and thousands, throwing their rifles 
into the jungle, laughing and joking, jumping 
onto buses and cadging lifts from whatever 
vehicles they could stop so that they could get 
home as soon as possible. This was so unexpected 
that humanitarian aid organizations in the East 
are still unclear how many children were actually 
released that day as they were so ill prepared to 
adequately tabulate this magical exodus.
When the LTTE (Vanni group) began capturing 
children who had been released by the LTTE 
(Karuna group) or had surrendered to them, 
another group of parents stormed their camp in 
Kathiravelly, on April 13th, blocking the road 
with logs and branches and abusing senior cadre. 
Ironically, it was the subsequent release of 
children from this camp that earned encomiums for 
the LTTE (Vanni group) from UNICEF and BBC, 
neither group mentioning the pivotal role that 
had been played by parents (see UTHR Bulletin 36 
for a scathing commentary on this lapse). But the 
memory of their heroism continues to strengthen 
the resolve of parents.  One mother who 
recounted, with flashing eyes and dramatic 
gestures, how she flung branches to block the 
road swore: "I will not let my daughter go again 
as long as I have any breath left in this body".
	This is the first time in the history of 
the Tamil liberation struggle that parents have 
stormed LTTE camps, en masse, and been able to 
take possession of their children as well as get 
all the other children released. The fact that 
they actually beat up LTTE cadre is even more 
extraordinary (one severely beaten woman LTTE 
cadre [Karuna group] had been so shaken by this 
encounter that she left the movement soon after). 
What is the reason for this dramatic shift?
For the past several years, Karuna and the 
eastern LTTE cadre had systematically carried out 
the mass conscription of children through 
extortion and force, as has been well documented 
by UTHR. With these horrific memories fresh in 
their minds, the parents were now trying to 
ensure that Karuna would follow through with his 
signal that he was no longer willing to go along 
with the exploitative relationship he shared with 
the northern leadership. In addition, it was 
becoming clear that the two LTTE factions were 
getting ready for a major showdown and the 
parents had no intention of seeing their children 
becoming cannon fodder in a battle for supremacy 
rather than one for the liberation of the Tamil 
people.
	It is this kind of reasoning that has 
also given the parents courage to repeatedly 
ignore the Vanni group's announcements that they 
should attend meetings, and quickly destroy 
personalized letters they have received ordering 
them to hand over their children on specified 
dates (the recent Human Rights Watch statement 
also refers to this). Even those who did attend 
the meetings called by the Vanni group were bold 
enough to assert quite adamantly and in public 
that they do not wish to give their children back 
and nor do their children wish to return to the 
LTTE.
Not surprisingly, such resistance has greatly 
perturbed the Vanni group and they have sought to 
divide and conquer by promising monetary rewards 
to those who are willing to reveal which parents 
are hiding their children and where. Similarly, 
young girls who were quickly married off in the 
hopes of attaining some sort of protection or 
waiver have been asked to return along with their 
husbands (be they LTTE cadre or not) and offered 
Rs. 5000 as a reward for their compliance.
As the Vanni group is gradually decimated in the 
East by the Karuna group's calculated guerrilla 
attacks and assassinations, they have also begun 
to use more violent means to re-conscript such as 
assassinating children who have been sent away to 
safe houses, abducting children on their way to 
school, and re-starting night time visits to 
individual homes -oftentimes burning down homes, 
threatening parents and beating them senseless 
when they have refused to give up their children.
It is clear that the space for resistance that 
had opened up in April 2004 is fast dwindling, in 
the face of this latest onslaught by the Vanni 
group. However, what is heartening is that it is 
also clear that parents are determined to not 
give up hope and continue to seek every means 
possible to retain their children with them. 
Their resolve is further strengthened by the fact 
that they now actually have their children with 
them, to feed and fondle and just feast their 
eyes upon. Previously, the LTTE strategy was to 
dissipate their efforts to reclaim their 
offspring by promising them sporadic 
opportunities of visiting the camps to just catch 
a glimpse of their children or sending money so 
that their children would have a few comforts, 
such as a pillow and mat to sleep on, in the 
training camps.
Parents are mortgaging land and getting into debt 
so that they can send their children off to 
Colombo or India or the Middle East. Others who 
are even more destitute are desperately seeking 
the assistance of any humanitarian or UN agency 
that may be able to offer their children some 
protection. Yet, they also remain aware that 
"whatever piece of paper that is issued to our 
child (noting that the child has been returned 
voluntarily and cannot be re-conscripted) by 
UNICEF will be spat on by the LTTE as soon as 
their [UNICEF's] back is turned." In fact, one 
family which had requested that UNICEF intercede 
on their behalf, at their weekly meetings with 
the LTTE (Vanni group), noted that the 
intimidation had subsequently increased.
Interestingly, the ineffectuality of these 
international organizations seems to be what is 
also spurring these parents to form their own 
little groups, with the help of some extremely 
dedicated and committed local peace activists. 
These groups seek to keep themselves informed of 
which villages and families are being targeted by 
the LTTE (Vanni group), how effective or 
ineffective UNICEF has been in interceding on 
behalf of individual families, and whether they 
can come up with some collective strategies to 
thwart the re-conscription of their children. 
Efforts are also underway to involve the entire 
village so that this strategizing can move beyond 
individual interests and concerns. Or to put it 
another way, the brutalized peasants of the East 
are not 'potatoes in a sack', each family a 
single entity. Nor do these families always need 
to be represented, they can also represent 
themselves, when the need arises.
The formation of groups of families and village 
collectives is a very hopeful sign as all other 
humanitarian efforts have tended to individualize 
children and families. Be it in terms of 
protection, intimidation, rehabilitation, 
re-schooling or vocational training, each child 
is constituted as a separate case. This has also 
led to a lot of friction within village 
communities. Those who bartered away all their 
possessions to the LTTE in order to keep back 
their children or those whose children are still 
languishing in a camp in the Vanni are resentful 
of the undue attention being showered upon the 
recently released child combatants, by NGOs and 
INGOs. The wistful comment of a little boy 
watching a young girl recently released by the 
Karuna group riding a bicycle that had been 
gifted to her by an INGO particularly epitomises 
this disjuncture: "If I had joined the LTTE I 
could have got a bike like that too." This is not 
conducive to producing an environment for 
collective resistance. The kind of 'capacity 
building' we need in this country is the support 
and encouragement of more such collectives for 
that is the only way resistance can be 
strengthened and sustained.


_____



[2]

18 Jul 2004

Mujib or Zia? The Distortion of History in Bangladesh

By Taj Hashmi, York University, Canada
<t_hashmi at yorku.ca>

Since history is always subject to distortion, 
there is hardly anything surprising about what 
the BNP-led government has done with the 
documents of the Liberation War of Bangladesh. It 
has revised sections of the fifteen-volume 
official history of the Freedom Movement (which 
is not free from distortions and lies as well) by 
inserting some absurd information about the 
so-called declaration of independence by Ziaur 
Rahman on March 26th 1971. I personally believe 
that this sort of distortions will eventually be 
flushed out of history not long after the BNP Raj 
is over in due course.

This blatant imbecility of the BNP government 
reminds us of similar revisionist lies and 
concoctions of history made by Awami 
intellectuals and politicians, who have left no 
stone unturned to prove that Sheikh Mujibur 
Rahman was the first to declare independence on 
March 26th after the killing had started around 
11 pm on the 25th. It is claimed that Mujib 
instructed Bengalis to fight back the Pakistani 
marauders to liberate Bangladesh by sending a 
telegram through the EPR on the 26th. Nonsense. 
Pakistani soldiers picked him up around 11pm, 
March 25th. One may raise the question: 'Why on 
earth would Mujib declare independence through a 
telegraphic message instead of writing it down 
with his own hand, duly signed and passed over to 
Tajuddin or some other trusted lieutenants prior 
to his arrest?'

We also heard another Fairy tale told by several 
Awami leaders/intellectuals that during the 
Language Movement of 1952, Sheikh Mujib 'used to 
instruct Bengali language activists outside Dhaka 
Medical College Hospital from his cabin in the 
hospital with slips of paper passed through the 
window (while he was in detention and under 
treatment at DMCH)'. After Badruddin Umar 
lambasted them with solid documents challenging 
the veracity of such an absurd claim as Mujib 
during the Language Movement was in confinement 
NOT at Dhaka Central Jail but at Faridpur jail, 
there has been slight remission in this fever of 
lies and deceit in the Awami camp.

Now, what does one gain by concocting history? 
'Legitimacy' and 'self-confidence' would be the 
answer. Whenever ruling parties, oligarchs and 
dictators feel to strengthen their grip on the 
masses to legitimize and lengthen their regimes, 
they invent history. And sycophants and 
pseudo-intellectuals are always around to help 
them re-write the history. It happened in 
Bangladesh not long after its emergence. Sheikh 
Mujib himself was responsible for serving the 
people pseudo-history with a view to glorifying 
himself and his party. He not only deprived most 
non-Awami freedom fighters (with the exception of 
the pro-Moscow groups) from the undue benefits of 
liberation but also denied their due role in the 
liberation of the country, within one hour of his 
arrival in Dhaka on January 10, 1972. He gave the 
full credit for the liberation to his party and 
indirectly to himself. I was present at that 
meeting where Sheikh Mujib blatantly manufactured 
history in presence of at least a quarter million 
people at the Race Course Maidan.

So, why should there be such a big fuss and 
brouhaha about this silly concoction by the BNP 
oligarchs and their sycophants? Don't they have 
the aspirations to perpetuate their dynasty-the 
crown prince after the Ammajaan? Why not? This 
has become the norm in Bangladesh. Having said 
this, I have no doubt that eventually people will 
flush out both the Awami and BNP versions of 
history. In fact, the ordinary masses do not have 
any time to waste on the debate as to who 
declared Independence. They only care if the 
so-called liberation has actually liberated them 
from hunger, distress and anarchy.

The poor and the lower middle classes in 
Bangladesh are most definitely worse off than 
their counterparts in pre-1971 Bangladesh (East 
Pakistan). A rickshawwalla or a schoolteacher in 
pre-1971, ironically, consumed more calories and 
had better standard of living than their present 
counterparts. In short, what one could buy with 
one taka in 1971, one needs at least 80 taka 
today. Meanwhile, the middle class has almost 
disappeared (along with the middle class 
values)óthanks to the unbridled plunder of the 
nouveau and traditional rich and powerful and the 
hypocritical thugs who promote neo-colonial 
Globalization through NGOs and other exploitative 
means. And consequently the promised utopia of 
Golden Bengalóa socialist, secular welfare 
stateóhas never emerged in East Bengal. The most 
tragic aspect of the saga of Bangladesh is that 
some people are even talking in terms of 'a 
failed state' with reference to Bangladesh. One 
may contradict them by displaying the cars and 
houses of a small section of Bangladeshis and the 
wealth of our bank defaulters, NGOwallas and 
thousands of thugs and godfathers. Nevertheless, 
Bangladesh remains one of the least developed, 
poor and chaotic countries in the Third World. No 
aspect of the prevalent chaos in the country, 
including the distortion of its recent history, 
can be understood in isolation without 
understanding the prevalent political chaos, 
social disorder and economic distress of the vast 
majority of the population.


However, the beauty of the vicious and diabolic 
elite's (Awami, BNP, Jamaat and others) 
nefariously malevolent game lies in its art of 
hiding the reality by diverting the real issues 
with non-issues like religion, patriotism, 'pro' 
and 'anti' liberation etc. In Marxian parlance, 
the bourgeois elite often hegemonizes mass 
consciousness by certain 'false consciousness' 
through pseudo-ideologies or wrong ideologies for 
the sake of power. What has been going on in 
Bangladesh is that the rival elites (Awami, BNP, 
Jamaati and others) have been trying to 
hegemonize mass consciousness with doses of 
'false consciousness' in the names of 
'Liberation', 'Bengali' or 'Bangladeshi' 
Nationalism, 'Islam' and what not! Unless we talk 
about the real issues, discarding the gibberish 
once for all, there is no way out of the 
quagmire. While bank defaulters, tax evaders, 
corrupt officials, ministers, NGOwallas and their 
petty associates (the lumpen intellectuals) and 
godfathers reign supreme and where men like 
Ershad, Ghulam Azam go scot-free (and considered 
respectable by many), there is no point crusading 
against concoction of history. These futile 
debates, whether from within Bangladesh or from a 
safe distance from abroad, will not do anything 
substantial for the countryó I mean the non-elite 
masses. If you really mean business, then hit 
hard the political-business-professional elite, 
which unfortunately includes the bulk of the 
civil society, university teachers, poets and 
writers. There is a rat race for quick and easy 
money, out of survival instincts, greed and 
prevalent lawlessness. The whole nation seems to 
be under a collective schizophreniaóbusy fighting 
the windmill in a quixotic manner.

Now, to turn to the question, 'how we can 
effectively protest such a despicable act 
[doctoring history]', my suggestion is that 
instead of being selective we must address all 
the previous concoctions of our history made by 
both the 'pro-' and 'anti-liberation' people and 
by the 'genuine' and 'pseudo freedom fighters' in 
the last thirty odd years. Let me catalogue some 
of the concoctions and distortions of our history:

'Three million Bengalis were killed during the 
nine months of the struggle' (i.e. Pakistanis 
killed more than 10,000 people per day! What 
happened to the skeletons, especially 3000,000 
skulls? In Cambodia around half a million were 
killed during 1975 and 1979 and their skulls are 
on display. It is noteworthy that during the last 
21 years of Tamil-Sinhalese civil war in Sri 
Lanka, around 50,000 got killed. And the 
corresponding figure in Indian held Kashmir 
during the last 55 years' of conflict is around 
92,000.)
There has been a concerted effort by the Awamis 
to prove Sheikh Mujib as the sole architect of 
the Six-Point-Programme while we know that 
several Bengali intellectuals and bureaucrats 
were the real proponents of the famous 
'Two-Economy-Theory' and the Six-Points.
Both Mujib and his followers shamelessly 
distorted history by denying the truth behind the 
Agartala Conspiracy Case. Since Ayub Khan out of 
vengeance and stupidity implicated Mujib in the 
Conspiracy to dismember Pakistan with Indian help 
(while he was in detention from 1966 to 1969), 
Mujib had every right to deny his involvement in 
the Conspiracy because he had no involvement in 
it. But denying Agartala altogether smacks of 
one's meanness (lest Shamsur Rahman Khan, CSP, 
Commander Muazzam Hussain, Sergeant Zahurul Haque 
and others overshadow Mujib and other Awami 
leaders!), even after the Liberation. What a 
shame that one of the 37 co-accused in the 
Agartala Case, Muhammad Abdul Aziz of Bhola, who 
was a soldier in the Pakistan Army's elite SSG 
Commando regiment, is languishing under poverty. 
No Agartala convict (released in 1969) got any 
state award, land, pension or even simple 
recognition, most ironically, neither from the 
Mujib nor Hasina governments. Denying the valiant 
heroes of Agartala their due is far worse than 
concocting the history vis-ý-vis who declared 
independence.
Neither Mujib nor his associates ever recognized 
the fact that during Mujib's detention (1966-69) 
several student leaders under the leadership of 
Sirajul Alam Khan first organized the Bengal 
Liberation Front with some of my very close 
friends (We used to visit Sirajul Alam Khan [then 
clean shaven] at the then Iqbal Hall of Dhaka 
University (Room No. 143) as students of Dhaka 
College in 1965). No body ever recognized the 
fact that it was Sirajul Alam Khan and his 
associates who first coined the slogan 'Jai 
Bangla'. It is also a fact that Mujib objected to 
the slogan. In March 1969, when the slogan first 
appeared at the main entrance of a Paltan Maidan 
meeting of the Awami League on a black and white 
banner, he had strong reservations about 'Jai 
Bangla'. But eventually the students prevailed.
Who designed the first national flag of 
Bangladesh? Why no body in the Awami camp 
recognizes the fact that it was not Mujib but 
some of the co-accused in the Agartala Case who 
designed the green, red and golden flag of 
Bangladesh (and so goes the official Pakistani 
allegation against the Conspirators-I have got 
the original document).
Why nobody tells us that A.S.M. Abdur Rab and his 
associates from Dhaka University first raised the 
green-red-golden flag on March 2nd at DU Arts 
Building and later handed it in to Mujib at his 
Dhanmondi residence? Had Agartala been 
fabricated, why was there striking similarities 
between what the Pakistanis had 'invented' and 
the actual flag that appeared on March 2nd, 1971?
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT DISTORTION OF THE LIBERATION 
WAR IS REGARDING WHO ACTUALLY FIRST DECLARED 
INDEPENDENCE. THE FACT IS THAT LONG BEFORE MUJIB 
AND ZIA, THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE SPONTANEOUSLY CAME 
OUT ON THE STREET AROUND 1 PM ON MARCH 1ST 
IMMEDIATELY AFTER YAHYA KHAN'S INFAMOUS DECISION 
TO PROROGUE THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SESSION 
SUPPOSED TO MEET ON MARCH 25TH. THERE WERE TWO 
SLOGANS RAISED BY THE DEMONSTRATORS: 'BIR BANGALI 
ASTRO DHARO, BANGLADESH SWADHIN KARO' AND 'CHHAI 
DAFA NA EK DAFA? EK DAFA-EK DAFA'. I WAS AN EYE 
WITNESS TO THIS DEMONSTRATION AROUND DHAKA 
UNIVERSITY AND ELSEWHERE IN THE CITY. THIS MEANS, 
BENGALIS DECLARED INDEPENDENCE ON MARCH 1. AND I 
THINK MARCH 1ST SHOULD HAVE BEEN DECLARED AS OUR 
INDEPENDENCE DAY (THEN WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED 
TO THOSE WHO ëDECLARED' IT ON MARCH 26TH AND 27TH 
RESPECTIVELY?).
How many Bangladeshis are aware of the fact that 
Mujib publicly declared 'Jai Pakistan' after 'Jai 
Bangla' in several public meetings. I attended 
one such mammoth meeting at the Race Course 
Maidan on January 4th 1971. I could not attend 
the famous March 7th meeting at Race Course where 
Mujib is said to have uttered 'Jai Pakistan', 
later deleted by his followers who had gone much 
ahead of him towards the path of complete 
liberation.
Despite the popular versions of the story that 
Mujib declared independence on March 7th and 
26th, solid documents tell us an altogether 
different story. On March 25th Mujib told 
journalists that his talks with Yahya Khan were 
'constructive' and 'fruitful'. This may be 
verified through newspapers.
According to the US State papers, released in 
1999, Mujib sought US intervention in early March 
so that Yahya Khan could be forced to transfer 
power to Awami League, installing Mujib as the 
Prime Minister of Pakistan. He urged Boster, the 
US consul general in Dhaka (later the first US 
ambassador to Bangladesh), to do something in 
this regard otherwise he (Mujib) apprehended the 
leftists within Awami League (those who later 
formed the JSD under Major Jalil and Abdur Rab 
with the blessings of Sirajul Alam Khan) would 
kill him and install a communist Bangladesh (I 
have already used this document in an article, 
'BangladeshóHistory', in the Encyclopedia of 
Modern Asia, Berkshire Publishers, New York 2003).
Another distortion of Bangladesh history lays in 
the false claims about Awami League leaders' and 
intellectuals' 'dreams' about independent 
Bangladesh 'dreamt' as early as 1948! Kabir 
Chowdhury, Sufia Kamal, Showkat Usman, Rafiqul 
Islam (Bengali Prof, DU) and several politicians 
are the leading 'dreamers'. It is an irony that 
those who admired Jinnah, Pakistan, Ayub Khan, 
Monem Khan and Ayub's 'Basic Democracy' (and 
there are documentary evidences to prove my 
assertion) later claimed to be 'freedom fighters' 
long before the actual fighting started in 1971.
The late Sufia Kamal wrote at least three poems 
in admiration of Jinnah (one of her poems was in 
our school text) where she admired Jinnah as 
'Mahan Neta' (the Great Leader). There is no harm 
in praising Jinnah in the 1940s even Mujib did 
so. But what amounts to distortion of history is 
the convenient deletion of such poems from the 
complete works of Sufia Kamal. Whoever has done 
so has distorted the history of our literature.
Do you know that National Professor Kabir 
Chowdhury publicly touched Ayub's Governor Monem 
Khan's feet in 1965 at Mymensingh Circuit House? 
If not, read retired CSP P.A. Nazir's 
autobiography. While Nazir was the DC of 
Mymensingh, Chowdhury was the principal of Ananda 
Mohan College. According to Nazir (and among 
others, famous Bengali writer, Prof A.K.Fazlul 
Haque, Bengali Dept. DU) Chowdhury wanted to meet 
Monem Khan. Accrordingly an interview was 
arranged and that in front of hundreds of local 
people, Kabir Chowdhury bent and touched Monem 
Khan's feet (qadam busi) telling the Governor 
that as the principal of the college he would ban 
all anti-government student politics. Since Kabir 
Chowdhury has not publicly contradicted 
P.A.Nazir, we should not question the veracity of 
the claim. Anyway, what happened soon afterwards 
was that Kabir Chowdhury was promoted as the 
director of National Institute of Public 
Administration (NIPA) and 'lived happily ever 
after'. Later on, he became the DG of 
pro-Ayub/pro-Pakistan Bureau of National 
Reconstruction (BNR), which promoted Pakistani 
Nationalism and Integration of the two wings of 
the country and published 'Pakistani/Islamic' 
trash books and booklets. But what we hear from 
his post-independence statements is that he had 
been actively promoting Bengali nationalism since 
1948.
Another stalwart of Bengali literature was my 
teacher, Showkat Usman. In the 1960s he regularly 
contributed to the pro-Ayub Khan Bengali weekly, 
Pak Jamhuriyat (Pakistani Democracy). He even 
toured whole Pakistan with Ayub Khan in a special 
train to promote Pakistani nationalism. This 
history has been erased and what we hear is that 
Showkat Usman since the 1940s opposed Pakistan. 
What a distortion of history!
Professor Rafiqul Islam of Dhaka University 
(Bengali) along with the late Prof Nurul Momen 
(Law Dept, DU, who also wrote several Bengali 
plays) used to conduct an avowedly anti-Hindu and 
anti-Indian radio programme after the 1965 War 
called 'Hing Ting Chhat'. Later on we hear that 
he also dreamt of Bangladesh throughout the 
Pakistani period! To him, Sheikh Hasina was his 
'best student' during his entire teaching career 
at DU.
I give another example of distortion of our 
history. Captain Mansur Ali (one of the 
unfortunate victims of the jail massacre in 
November 1975) was an able, educated Awami League 
leader with strong principles and commitment to 
Sheikh Mujib, unlike most of his colleagues in 
the Mujib cabinet who joined Khondkar Mushtaque 
cabinet after August 1975. In the latest edition 
of the Banglapedia we find that Mansur Ali was 
known with the prefix of 'Captain' as he was an 
honorary captain of the Bengal Regiment in 1948. 
What a blatant lie! In fact, Mansur Ali was the 
captain of the Muslim National Guard (an offshoot 
of the Muslim League) while he was a student at 
the Aligarh Muslim University in the 1940s. The 
author of the article on Mansur Ali, for the 
obvious reason, concealed the fact lest people 
trace the Captain's Muslim League connections.

I am not going to dwell on this issue any 
further. What I am trying here is to point out 
that Bangladesh history (and for that matter that 
of India and Pakistan) is full of concoctions, 
lies, distortions and half-truths. And that fact 
is always stranger than fiction. While we have so 
many other unresolved socio-economic and 
political problems, let us not digress the main 
issues for the sake of a phony debate as to who 
declared our independence. It was neither Mujib 
nor Zia but the people declared independence. And 
there would have been a Bangladesh without the 
presence and participation of the Bengal 
Regiment, EPR and police. A civilian upsurge has 
been hijacked by the military. Hence almost all 
the gallantry awards went to members of the armed 
forces. Half educated majors were overnight 
promoted into major generals and later into the 
sole spokesman of the Bengalis. What a disgrace! 
Let us talk about the exigences economic, social 
and political problems of Bangladesh. Meanwhile 
we condemn all genres of revisionist writings on 
our history by members of both the Awami and BNP 
camps.

_____



[3]

The Telegraph
July 18, 2004

THE OTHERS IN THE STATE
- A nation-state must wipe out rival nations within, potential or actual
Nivedita Menon
The author is reader in political science, Delhi University

Caught in their war
Nation-states have a logic of their own. So 
insidiously is this logic purveyed through the 
state's institutions that it becomes common 
sense, particularly among the educated. 
Perspectives that differ from this common sense 
are then easily seen as signs of illiteracy, or 
more dangerously, treachery.

A woman employed for housework by a Pakistani 
living for a while in Delhi could never quite 
understand where her employer was from. "Bahar 
se?" she would ask, "Amreeka se?" No, would come 
the patient reply: from outside, yes, but not 
from America, from Pakistan. Where is that? Well, 
you know that "here" is Bharat? India? Hindustan? 
And yet again, the bewildered response - "Yahan 
matlab Dilli?" Here, meaning Delhi?

Illiteracy and ignorance, of course. She seemed 
to have escaped even the common sense that 
demonizes Pakistan. Had she gone to school, had 
she been a migrant from another part of the 
country, she would have had some notion of 
India-that-is-Bharat. But that is precisely the 
point: the recognition of the Nation, the feeling 
of belonging to it, must be learnt. It must, as 
Benedict Anderson famously put it, be "imagined". 
Which is not to say that the Nation is imaginary, 
in the sense of unreal, but rather, that it has 
to be imagined, conjured up, called into being by 
a vast political project operating at many levels 
- the Nation is not simply that land-mass lying 
in the ocean, an easily recognizable object.

This imagining excludes as many groups as it 
includes, and when they in turn, fail to 
recognize the nation, it is they who are the 
traitors. I remember overhearing a snatch of 
horrified conversation between students of Delhi 
University - "You know, Naga students say 'India' 
for 'Delhi' whenever they leave Nagaland." The 
horror is - we consider Nagaland to be part of 
India, but they don't consider themselves to be 
part of us. How generous and inclusive our 
nationalism, how separatist and exclusionary 
theirs. Consider the conflation here between Us 
and India, and the division between the territory 
and the people. The territory that is Nagaland is 
an "integral part" of India, but the Naga people 
can be Indians only under stringent conditions - 
not on their terms, but on ours. Nagaland is 
ours, but not the Naga people, not if they insist 
on being Naga.

I learnt recently from a friend working on 
textbook revision in Leh, that for decades, 
schoolchildren of Leh have read textbooks using 
images that make no sense to them - flora and 
fauna not local to the region, for example. But 
what I found most striking was that generations 
of Ladakhis have read the same textbooks used all 
over the country, that say: "The Himalayas lie to 
the North of us." Really? Not if you are in 
Ladakh. Check out a basic tourist guide. How 
could any Ladakhi have felt part of that "us"?

So, should we work towards a more inclusive 
nationalism? But to whom does that pronoun "we" 
refer? Can Ladakhis or Nagas ever say, referring 
to the rest of India, "we" should include "them"? 
That proud "we" can only be occupied by dominant, 
mainstream groups within the nation. Hence, We 
won the test match, We have the bomb. But never 
We are about to be drowned, any day now, by the 
Indira Sagar dam on the Narmada. The first "we" 
is eleven men, the second "we" a tiny state 
elite, the third "not-we" thousands of 
inhabitants of twenty-five villages in Harsud. 
But no, numbers don't count.

The point then, is not about inclusion. The point 
is to question the very legitimacy of the 
nation-state as the arbiter of inclusion, of 
identity. To question the barbed-wire borders, 
the ethnic cleansing, the National Interest, the 
"illegal" immigrants, why shouldn't people simply 
move to wherever there is work? After all, there 
are no barbed wires for capital, not any more. At 
Wagah, on the border between India and Pakistan, 
at sundown you can witness the sad spectacle of 
nation-states producing identity. The "Beating 
the Retreat" ceremony enacted daily is a 
dramatized performance of hostility. The drill is 
a series of choreographed moves of aggression, 
and this performance is wildly applauded by the 
audience onboth sides, with shouts of Pakistan 
murdabad or otherwise, as appropriate. (One 
evening at Wagah would certainly sort out the 
domestic worker I referred to earlier. An 
effective crash course on what yahan means).

Once upon a time, when nation-states emerged, in 
the 19th century in Europe and in the 20th in 
Asia and Africa, they bore the electric charge of 
opposition to empires. Once settled in however, 
each nation proceeded to obliterate rival nations 
within, both potential and actual. The process of 
creating the French citizen, the historian Eugen 
Weber tells us, was no less violent than 
colonialism. Nation-states can only be 
authoritarian.

These reflections were set off by being in Sri 
Lanka. The country is experiencing, ironically, a 
cease-fire between the state and the Liberation 
Tigers of Tamil Eelam, while a new war has 
started between the LTTE and the breakaway Karuna 
faction in the East. Having physically eliminated 
all internal voices of dissent, the LTTE claims 
to be the sole representative of the Tamil 
people, but Karuna speaks for Eastern Tamils. 
Many in the East support him, since Jaffna Tamils 
dominate every institution in the east. Of 
course, the LTTE condemns this as "regionalism" - 
once the "Tamil Nation" has been formed, other 
voices within are, by that logic, traitorous.

But the immediate issue for Tamils today is the 
forcible conscription of children and young 
adults into the LTTE army, in effect to be used 
as cannon fodder in the factional war. Desperate 
parents are preparing to resist, in pockets, in a 
hopeless act of defiance. Some years ago, several 
parents committed suicide, helpless in protecting 
their children. In the disarray caused by 
Karuna's revolt, parents all over the East went 
in thousands to the camps to force the release of 
their children, most of whom have been there for 
two years or more, both boys and girls. Because 
of the confusion caused by Karuna's revolt, the 
camps were opened up, and for days the roads were 
flooded with children streaming home, carrying 
little bundles, hopping into buses, hitching 
rides. However, re-recruitment by the LTTE has 
begun, resisting parents have been beaten up, 
people working with them have received death 
threats.

But that is what states do. The next government 
of the United States of America, whether Democrat 
or Republican, is expected to bring in a bill for 
compulsory army service for all adults. During 
Vietnam, young men had to go to jail or into 
voluntary exile not to have to learn to kill and 
be killed. The LTTE is a quasi-state in the north 
and east of Sri Lanka. Fascist? Authoritarian? 
Anti-people? Hey, it's only doing what states do.

Is there no difference then, between fascist 
states and liberal democratic states? Yes, there 
is, and personally, I would much rather live in 
one than the other. I just wonder though, whether 
the villagers of Harsud, choosing death over 
being uprooted from their homes in the National 
Interest, and rehabilitation into urban slums and 
unemployment, are so much better off than the 
desperate Tamil parents in Sri Lanka.


_____



[4]

The Daily Times
July 17, 2004 

EQBAL AHMAD: A VOICE OF CONSCIENCE
Abbas Rashid

For content, style and lucidity the late Eqbal 
Ahmad's essays and articles on a wide range of 
issues are difficult to match. For someone who 
wrote with such erudition and verve it is curious 
indeed that he did not author in his lifetime a 
single book. Outside his country, particularly in 
the United States where he had initially gone for 
higher studies, Eqbal was well known for his 
opposition to the Vietnam War. He achieved a 
different kind of fame or notoriety, depending on 
which side of the fence you were, when he was 
arrested along with the Berrigan brothers in 1971 
on the charge of conspiring to kidnap Henry 
Kissinger. He was released soon, thereafter, when 
the court found the charge to be without 
substance.
In Pakistan, however, he remained a not 
particularly well-known figure till he started 
contributing a weekly column to the Dawn 
newspaper. And what he wrote was seldom of 
transitory interest or relevance. We should be 
grateful, therefore, to Dohra Ahmad, Iftikhar 
Ahmad and Zia Mian for compiling many of his 
columns and essays in a book published by OUP: 
Between Past and Future: Selected essays on South 
Asia. A foreword by Pervez Hoodbhoy is a 
sensitive look at Eqbal Ahmad and the issues that 
he engaged with, underlining the quality and 
astuteness of his analysis. It is well 
complemented by the editors' introduction to the 
contents of the book which are for the most part 
focused on the dynamics of Pakistan's internal 
crises and the nature and implications of its 
external engagements, particularly with its 
neighbours - India, Afghanistan and Iran - on one 
hand and the US on the other.
In a closely argued piece on the multiple crises 
confronting the Third world Eqbal posits the rise 
of relativism, optimism and rationalism against 
the crises of legitimacy, de-colonisation, 
democracy, development, distribution and 
integration. And the need for a political elite 
to respond to these in ways that are meaningful 
and creative. As his subsequent articles make 
clear this obviously is a tall order for the 
Pakistani elite, with the military, bureaucracy 
and political leadership having failed to grasp 
the nature of the crises let alone respond to 
these meaningfully. It is apt that the very first 
piece on Pakistan has Eqbal commenting on a 
directive by the University Grants Commission 
that per usual practice lays down strict and 
narrow guidelines for prospective writers: "I do 
not know of any country's educational system that 
so explicitly subordinates knowledge to politics. 
Teaching and writing of history, always in 
jeopardy in Pakistan, has now passed from 
historians to hacks. They have invented a history 
that historians, of whom only a handful are left 
in Pakistan, shall not recognise. The 
Quaid-i-Azam is among their first victims: he 
underwent a metamorphosis becoming a man of 
orthodox religious views who sought the creation 
of a theocratic state and the Ulema, who with 
rare exceptions had opposed Jinnah and the 
Pakistan movement, emerged as heroes and founding 
fathers of Pakistan."
Eqbal was not unmindful of what was happening 
across the border, either. On a visit to India in 
1990, he writes of being "overwhelmed by the 
sheer volume of invented, poisonous history". But 
he is all praise for those eminent Indian 
historians who have consistently debunked the 
revivalist version of history. When he alluded to 
them while talking to a BJP ideologue the 
response was "Inn historians ke liye Hindustan 
mein koi asthan naheen hai" (These historians 
have no place in Hindustan). Doubtless, Eqbal 
would have been pleased at the exit of the BJP in 
the recent elections.
In another piece he looks at the related issue of 
'Islamisation' under Zia-ul-Haq and points out 
that when a state claims a theocratic mission, it 
is bound to provoke conflicts over whose model 
shall prevail. And in the context of the current 
debate over curriculum we may want to consider 
what Eqbal had to say on the issue: "The 
curriculum of Islamiyat, a compulsory subject in 
our schools and colleges, is almost entirely 
devoid of a sense of piety (taqwa), spiritualism 
(roohaniyat), or mysticism (tasawuf). At best, it 
is cast in terms of ritualistic formalism. At 
worst, it reduces Islam to a penal code, and its 
history to a series of violent episodes."
In his article "Letter to a Pakistani Diplomat" 
that first appeared in the New York Review of 
Books, Eqbal responded to protests by officials 
against his highly critical statement to the New 
York Times that followed the army action in East 
Pakistan on March 25, 1971. First, he wrote, he 
had no natural sympathy either for the Bangladesh 
movement or Shiekh Mujibur Rahman who impressed 
him as being a limited man. Second, he pointed 
out that he himself was originally from Bihar and 
most of his people had migrated to East Pakistan 
and many were killed in the period preceding the 
military's intervention. But, he said, the only 
viable course for West Pakistanis was to insist 
on the immediate termination of martial law, 
convening of the duly elected National Assembly 
and a commitment that the majority decision of 
that assembly shall be binding on all. Eqbal 
spelt out the principles underlying his position 
in these words: "I know that I shall be condemned 
for my position. For someone who is facing a 
serious trial in America, it is not easy to 
confront one's own government. Yet it is not 
possible for me to oppose American crimes in 
Southeast Asia or Indian occupation of Kashmir 
while accepting the crimes my government is 
committing against the people of East Pakistan. 
Although I mourn the death of Biharis by Bengali 
vigilantes, and condemn the irresponsibilities of 
the Awami League, I am not willing to equate 
their actions with that of the government and the 
criminal acts of an organised professional army." 
It would be useful to keep in mind that many 
similarly refuse to accept such an equation when 
it comes to the Israeli army and the Palestinians 
or the Kashmiris' struggle against the Indian 
army. But few amongst us paid heed to what Eqbal 
wrote in those fateful days about what was 
happening in East Pakistan, soon to become 
Bangladesh.
Among other outstanding analytical pieces in the 
book that remain highly relevant in our current 
circumstances there are those that relate to the 
roots and nature of violence in Pakistan, the 
Kashmir issue, India and Pakistan's decision to 
go nuclear, and of course the tracing of the 
contours of political Islam as a backdrop to the 
instrumentalist use of religion in the context of 
state as well as society.
Abbas Rashid is a freelance journalist and 
political analyst whose career has included 
editorial positions in various Pakistani 
newspapers


______



[5]

INDIA PAKISTAN ARMS RACE AND MILITARISATION WATCH Compilation No. 144
(July 14,  2004)
URL: groups.yahoo.com/group/IPARMW/message/155




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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
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