SACW | 3 Aug 2004

sacw aiindex at mnet.fr
Mon Aug 2 19:39:54 CDT 2004


South Asia Citizens Wire    |  3 August,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Admn Ramdas and IA Rehman among 2004 
Magsaysay Awardees for their work for 
Indo-Pakistan peace
+ Text of award citation + News reports
[2]  Pakistan: Between 'enlightened moderation' 
and jihadi fantasy (Suroosh Irfani)
[3]  Holy Shit: Vatican Fatwa on women is music 
to Hindu, Muslim and Christian right
  - Vatican Letter Denounces 'Lethal Effects' of Feminism
  - Women slam Vatican's "time warp" policies (Philip Pullella)
  - Statement of Frances Kissling, President, Catholics for a Free Choice

[4] India: Drowned and out [ in Harsud ](Medha Patkar)
[5] UK: Islamophobia in all its splendor: A call 
for apology . . . (Iftikhar Malik)
[6] India: Call for assistance to document 
communal threat to syncretic traditions
[7] India: Eye on Gen-Next, RSS may drop its khaki chaddis

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


[1]


2004 RAMON MAGSAYSAY AWARDEES

The Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay 
Award Foundation today announced that this year 
seven individuals from the Philippines, China, 
Thailand, Bangladesh, India and Pakistan will 
receive Asia's most prestigious prize, the Ramon 
Magsaysay Award.

[Among the] The Awardees are:

[. . .]

Abdullah Abu Sayeed, from Bangladesh, founder and 
head of Bishwo Shahitto Kendro or World 
Literature Centre, for Journalism, Literature, 
and Creative Communication Arts. Mr. Sayeed is 
receiving the Award for "his cultivating in the 
youth of Bangladesh a love for literature and its 
humanizing values through exposure to the great 
books of Bengal and the world."

Laxminarayan Ramdas of India and Ibn Abdur Rehman 
of Pakistan, leading advocates in the 
Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and 
Democracy (PIPFPD), for Peace and International 
Understanding. Mr. Ramdas, former chief of his 
country's navy, and Mr. Rehman, a journalist and 
human rights advocate, are being recognized for 
"their reaching across a hostile border to 
nurture a citizen-based consensus for peace 
between Pakistan and India."

[...]

Established in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is 
Asia's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
[...]
  The seven 2004 Magsaysay awardees join 236 other 
laureates who have received Asia's highest honor 
to date. This year's Magsaysay Award winners will 
each receive a certificate, a medallion bearing 
the likeness of the late President, and a cash 
prize. They will be formally conferred the 
Magsaysay Award during the Presentation 
Ceremonies to be held on August 31, 2004 at the 
Cultural Center of the Philippines, to which the 
public is cordially invited.


This year's Magsaysay awardees will also speak in 
a series of public lectures to be held at the 
Ramon Magsaysay Center from August 26 to 
September 1, 2004.
*****

For more information, please contact:
Mrs. Lourdes Mercado-Balbin
RMAF Communications Officer
Telephones: 524-2390; 521-3166 to 85, locals 161 or 180
Email: lmbalbin at rmaf.org.ph

Website: www.rmaf.org.ph


o o o


TEXT OF CITATION

The 1998 Ramon Magsaysay Award for International Understanding

CITATION for Laxminarayan Ramdas and Ibn Abdur Rehman
Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies

31 August 2004, Manila, Philippines

The armed standoff between India and Pakistan has 
endured for more than fifty years, bringing with 
it four outright wars and continuing upheaval. 
Its flashpoint is Kashmir, claimed by both sides. 
But its roots lie in the shocking communal 
violence of Partition in 1947. In the years since 
then, memories of this disturbing event have 
fueled religion-infused nationalism and 
militarism in both countries and kept millions of 
fearful people poised for war. Today both sides 
boast nuclear weapons and the stakes are global. 
The problem seems intractable. But Ibn Abdur 
Rehman of Pakistan and Laxminarayan Ramdas of 
India believe there is hope. As leaders of the 
Pakistan India People's Forum for Peace and 
Democracy, they are building popular support for 
peace on both sides of the border.

Ibn Abdur Rehman, a Punjabi Muslim born in 1930, 
was away at school in 1947 when Partition erupted 
in his home town and his entire family was killed 
by rampaging Sikhs and Hindus. Ramu Ramdas, a 
Hindu from Mumbai, was fourteen at the time. He 
remembers angry mobs threatening his parents for 
protecting a Muslim family. Rehman went on to 
study physics at Government College, Lahore but 
found his vocation in journalism, rising from 
post to post at leading Pakistani publications to 
become chief editor of the Pakistan Times in 
1989. Ramdas became a cadet at the Royal Naval 
College in England and rose from command to 
command until, in 1990, he was named chief of 
India's navy. By 1993, Rehman had left the Times, 
under pressure for criticizing the government, 
and Ramdas had retired and acquired a Pakistani 
son-in-law. As tensions again rose between India 
and Pakistan, both men sought to influence their 
countries to change course. In September 1994, 
Rehman joined twenty-four likeminded Indians and 
Pakistanis in Lahore to open a public dialogue 
for reconciliation and peace. This led to the 
formation of the Pakistan India People's Forum 
for Peace and Democracy. Rehman became founding 
chair of the Pakistan branch. Ramdas was named 
vice-chair of the India branch and became chair 
in 1996. Both men guided the organization until 
2003.

The Forum's chief weapon was dialogue. In a 
series of joint conventions beginning in 1995, it 
drew hundreds of Indians and Pakistanis together 
to promote demilitarization, denuclearization, 
and peace, and to publish resolutions insisting 
upon mutual arms reductions and troop pullbacks; 
an end to cross-border provocations; and a 
"peaceful democratic solution" in Kashmir. 
Meeting alternately in Pakistan and India, the 
conventions have sustained this dialogue for ten 
years as the Forum's base has grown to embrace a 
web of environmental, human rights, trade union, 
and women's rights activists as well as concerned 
citizens from the academe, industry, and the 
professions. During the same years, the Forum 
organized people-to-people delegations of 
lawmakers, diplomats, soldiers, artists, women, 
and students to open friendly talk channels 
between Indians and Pakistanis and to counteract 
propaganda in each country stigmatizing the 
other. It also campaigned for the liberalization 
of travel between the two countries and for the 
revision of hate-filled school textbooks. At 
another level, Forum leaders such as Rehman and 
Ramdas worked behind the scenes with national 
leaders and opinion makers to promote the peace 
agenda. The Forum's mission is not grandiose. "It 
is enough," Rehman says, "to contribute in easing 
the tension between the two countries by 
providing opportunities for people to meet."

For Rehman, the Forum's peace initiative grew 
naturally from his work as one of Pakistan's 
leading human rights advocates and as long time 
director of the internationally esteemed Pakistan 
Human Rights Commission. In this role and also as 
a journalist, Rehman has devoted decades to 
exposing systemic violations of the rights of 
women, children, workers, and minorities in 
Pakistan and to fighting corruption and the abuse 
of power. He has been a champion of democracy as 
a secular ideal in a country where, he says, 
"authoritarianism has been the rule and 
short-lived democratic facades an exception." All 
this at considerable personal risk and sacrifice. 
As for India and Pakistan, he calls upon both 
countries to reject their "pathological obsession 
with the politics of hostility."

Ramdas says, "I entered the armed services as a 
hawk and exited as a dove." His military career 
made him intimately familiar with the limitations 
of military solutions to political problems. This 
led to his role in the Forum. Still, India's 
explosion of a test atomic bomb in May 1998, 
Ramdas says, "was one of the greatest turning 
points in my life." In July he signed a public 
declaration by retired military men declaring 
that "nuclear weapons should be banished from the 
South Asian region, and indeed from the entire 
globe." With his wife, Lalita, he threw himself 
into the anti-nuclear cause, warning Indians and 
Pakistanis alike about their country's unreliable 
"control and command systems" and about the 
naiveté of "nuclear deterrence." Touring and 
speaking extensively, he exhorted everyone to 
guard against the seductiveness of solutions 
"through super-violence."

Ramdas and Rehman both connect the problem of 
peace in the subcontinent to dangerous ideologies 
that associate religion with nationalism and 
patriotism, and to militarism and other 
antidemocratic forces. Rehman rues his own 
country's "absence of genuinely democratic 
institutions." And Ramdas has linked recent 
political trends in India to "the path to 
fascism." Both have been smeared as traitors. But 
they are not moved. It is time to stop the 
belligerent shouting and listen to other voices, 
they say. When it comes to war and peace, Rehman 
likes to say, "I believe the people are a little 
ahead of the governments."

In electing Laxminarayan Ramdas and Ibn Abdur 
Rehman to receive the 2004 Ramon Magsaysay Award 
for Peace and International Understanding, the 
board of trustees recognizes their reaching 
across a hostile border to nurture a 
citizen-based consensus for peace between India 
and Pakistan.


o o o

News Reports

The Hindu - August 03, 2004
MAGSAYSAY AWARD
URL: www.thehindu.com/2004/08/03/stories/2004080306350109.htm

The Daily Star - August 03, 2004
ABDULLAH ABU SAYEED RECEIVES MAGSAYSAY AWARD
URL: www.thedailystar.net/2004/08/03/d40803012222.htm

The News International - August 03, 2004
IA REHMAN GETS MAGSAYSAY AWARD
by Rahimullah Yusufzai
URL: www.jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2004-daily/03-08-2004/main/main10.htm

______



[2]

The Daily Times - August 03, 2004; Op-Ed.

BETWEEN 'ENLIGHTENED MODERATION' AND JIHADI FANTASY
by Suroosh Irfani

The "theological threads" of force and violence 
have gotten so entwined with our everyday life 
that such violence has become virtually 
'naturalised' in our religious imagination. It is 
encouraging to note that an open and critical 
engagement enabled the vast majority to see 
through the distortions of meaning and 
misrepresentation of images attributed to Islam.

[ Full Text at: www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-8-2004_pg3_2 ]


______


[3]   [Holy Shit: Vaticans latest fatwa is music 
to the ears of Qaids of Hindutva, to Islamists 
and to the Christian Right; they are all in the 
business of keeping women at bay ! ]

Washington Post - August 1, 2004; Page A16

VATICAN LETTER DENOUNCES 'LETHAL EFFECTS' OF FEMINISM
Document Outlines Formula for Man-Woman Relationships

By Daniel Williams and Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Foreign Service

ROME, July 31 -- The Vatican issued a letter 
Saturday attacking the "distortions" and "lethal 
effects" of feminism, which it defined as an 
effort to erase differences between men and women 
-- a goal, the statement said, that undermines 
the "natural two-parent structure" of the family 
and makes "homosexuality and heterosexuality 
virtually equivalent."

The sharp critique was contained in a document 
issued by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a chief 
adviser to Pope John Paul II and head of the 
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the 
department in charge of defining Roman Catholic 
orthodoxy. The 37-page document also outlined the 
Vatican's formula for relationships between men 
and women, calling for "active collaboration 
between the sexes" and rejecting subjugation of 
women.

The statement was the latest Vatican salvo 
against trends it regards as undermining its 
teachings on sexuality and the family. Vatican 
officials have assailed abortion and 
contraception; politicians who support abortion 
through legislation; and legalized same-sex 
unions. The pope approved the document, titled 
"Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on 
the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church 
and the World."

Catholic feminists in the United States said the 
letter presented a caricature of feminism as 
antagonistic toward men and trying to deny any 
difference between the sexes. They said feminism 
seeks equal rights and respect for both genders.

"The demonization of feminism is most 
disturbing," said Frances Kissling, president of 
Catholics for a Free Choice, an advocacy group 
for abortion rights, who said her blood pressure 
"shot up 20 points" when she read the letter.

"It takes extreme positions that may have been 
historically held by five people and casts them 
as if they were held by every woman," Kissling 
said. "The feminism I know is all for 
partnerships and is all for empowering both men 
and women. The feminism I know does not ignore 
the fact that there are sexual differences."

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, a feminist 
theologian at Harvard Divinity School, said the 
document restated positions the Vatican has taken 
many times and that the only surprise was its 
timing. She said church leaders may be feeling 
some urgency to combat same-sex marriage, as well 
as renewed pressure to consider ordaining women 
in response to the worldwide scandal over sexual 
abuse by priests.

"It has some positive things in it, but the 
political function of the document is the same as 
the ones before," Fiorenza said. "It's trying to 
make a theological case, which they're really not 
able to make, against the full equality of women 
in the church."

Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the 
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said 
on Vatican Radio that the aim of the letter was 
to critique two current strands in feminism: one 
that emphasizes "a radical rivalry between the 
sexes" and the other that seeks to "cancel the 
differences between the sexes."

The letter argued that "the obscuring of the 
difference . . . of the sexes has enormous 
consequences," including inspiring ideologies 
that "call into question the family, in its 
natural two-parent structure of mother and 
father, and make homosexuality and 
heterosexuality virtually equivalent, in a new 
model of polymorphous sexuality."

While assaulting what it said were the bases of 
feminist ideology, the letter tried to tackle the 
practical difficulties and inequities that 
feminists also decry. It appeared to attempt to 
strike a balance between a Catholic ideal of 
women raising children at home and the reality 
that many work outside the home.

Women ought not be stigmatized for desiring the 
life of a homemaker, the letter argued. "Indeed, 
a just valuing of the work of women within the 
family is required," it said. Women who choose to 
work in the labor force should be awarded a 
proper schedule and "not have to choose between 
relinquishing their family life or enduring 
continual stress," it said.

The Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the national 
Catholic weekly America, said in an e-mail 
message that "although most American feminists 
would express their ideology differently than the 
Vatican, on the practical level they are on the 
same page (in terms of equality in education, 
politics, workplace) except on abortion and women 
priests." If there are differences, he added, "it 
is probably on the relationship between men and 
women in the family, not in society. . . . For 
the Vatican, the ideal is that a father be paid 
well enough so that a mother can stay home and 
raise the kids."

The letter called for the Catholic Church to take 
advantage of "feminine values" that include 
listening, understanding, caring and 
faithfulness. Although women are banned from the 
priesthood, their role in the church is not "a 
passivity inspired by an outdated conception of 
femininity," the letter maintained.

Almost a third of the letter was devoted to 
biblical declarations about the sexes. "From the 
first moment of their creation, man and woman are 
different, and will remain so for eternity," it 
said. Tracing the story of Adam and Eve, it said 
original sin opened the way to relations between 
man and woman "in which love will frequently be 
debased into pure self-seeking, in a relationship 
which ignores and kills love and replaces it with 
the yoke of domination of one sex over the other."

In the afterlife, the letter stated, men and 
women will continue to be different, but sex will 
come to an end. "The temporal and earthly 
expression of sexuality is transient," it 
declared.

Cooperman reported from Washington.


o  o  o

Source: www.reuters.co.uk/
WOMEN SLAM VATICAN'S "TIME WARP" POLICIES
Sun 1 August, 2004 13:48

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Women have reacted with 
anger and amusement to a Vatican document on 
feminism, with some saying the Catholic Church is 
run by men who live in a time warp and want to 
keep women in their place.

The document, issued on Saturday, said modern 
feminism's fight for power and gender equality 
was undermining the traditional concept of family 
and creating a climate where gay marriages are 
seen as acceptable.

Frances Kissling, president of the U.S.-based 
Catholics for a Free Choice, said she thought she 
had "passed through a time warp" when she read 
the document.

"I thought for sure I was the 1960s and Archie 
Bunker had been appointed theologian to the 
Pope," she said, referring to the character in an 
old American TV series whose bigoted views 
included opposition to any form of women's rights.

In a 37-page document "On the Collaboration of 
Men and Women in the Church and in the World", 
the Vatican said women should be respected and 
have equal rights in the workplace, but 
differences between the sexes must be recognised 
and exalted.

The document, which re-stated Catholic Church 
positions, including the ban on female priests, 
said that many women felt they had to be 
"adversaries of men" in order to be themselves.

It criticised feminism's attempt to erase gender 
differences, saying it had inspired ideologies 
questioning the traditional family structure of a 
mother and a father and making homosexuality and 
heterosexuality virtually equivalent.

"Such observations could only be made by men who 
have no significant relationships with women and 
no knowledge of the enormous positive changes the 
women's rights movement has meant for both men 
and women," Kissling said.

YESTERDAY'S WORLD?

Emma Bonino, a former European commissioner and 
current member of the European parliament, said 
the Vatican was writing about a world that she 
said no longer exists.

"This letter could easily have been written by an 
imam of al-Azhar," she said referring to Sunni 
Islam's most respected institution of religious 
learning in Cairo.

"To be fair to the Catholic Church, no religion 
is a great friend of women," she told the 
Corriere della Sera newspaper. "They pay you a 
lot of compliments but when push comes to shove 
they ask you to stay in your place: wife, nurse, 
mother and grandmother."

The document said that although motherhood is a 
"key element of women's identity," women should 
not be considered from the sole perspective of 
procreation.

It said women who choose to be full-time mothers 
should not be stigmatised and it appealed to 
governments to make it easier for mothers to hold 
outside jobs without "relinquishing their family 
life".

Some women suggested that the Vatican was taking 
a patronising attitude that it would not take 
towards men.

"Everyone knows that men and women are different 
and the feminist movement has always held this 
view," said Chiara Saraceno, a professor of 
sociology at the University of Turin.

"What continues to shock me is this teaching 
attitude that is always directed at women and 
never at men," she told the leftist newspaper 
L'Unita. t of the world is increasingly moving 
towards acceptance, reported The Washington Post.


o o o

Vatican not a Credible Source on Women
As Vatican prepares to release statement on feminism,
CFFC questions its exclusion of women from leadership in church

Statement of Frances Kissling, President, Catholics for a Free Choice.

For Immediate Release
July 30, 2004

WASHINGTON, DC-A new Vatican document on women to 
be released on Saturday, July 31, is unlikely to 
position the Vatican as a credible or objective 
source of information, analysis, or support for 
women's rights. "Letter to the Bishops of the 
Catholic Church on Collaboration between Men and 
Women in the Church and in the World" surfaces as 
the world's women begin their preparations for a 
ten-year analysis of the UN women's conference 
held in Beijing in 1995. At this conference, the 
Vatican was seen as a source of disinformation 
and as an obstacle to international policy that 
improves women's lives. Early reports indicate 
that the document rehashes the same false charges 
and stereotypes about feminism, including the 
charge that feminism is hostile to men. The 
reality is that it is the Vatican that is hostile 
to women's full inclusion in the church itself. 
Until the Vatican addresses its own exclusion of 
women from leadership, it is hard to believe 
anyone will take seriously its views on women.

--statement ends--



______



[4]

The Hindustan Times - August 2, 2004: Pg 10: Edit » Story


DROWNED AND OUT
by Medha Patkar

Harsud is no more. This 700-year-old town, now 
besieged by the Narmada Sagar Project (NSP), was 
where in September 1989, 35,000 people raised the 
slogan, "We want development, not destruction!" 
They had warned the nation of the massive human 
and environmental devastation that projects such 
as the large dams on the Narmada held in store. 
Now at the very site of that popular uprising for 
human and sane development, one can witness the 
most tragic scenes of broken homes, fleeing 
families and an ancient town turned prematurely 
to ruins.

If you move through the streets of Harsud today, 
heaps of rubble greet you with dust yet to 
settle. One can't believe that all this could 
happen within a fortnight, in violation of the 
law, human rights and a society's conscience. 
It's an illegal move, but more than that, a 
cruelly conceived conspiracy by the State to push 
the giant dam project ahead without concern for 
the people living there or what they would do 
after being displaced. People were made to 
dismantle their own houses, overseen by the rapid 
action forces marching inside the crowded 
township.

They were offered a meagre compensation for their 
houses: Rs 25,000 cash (ultimately found to be 
part of the compensation that was due anyway) and 
assurances that everything would be provided at 
the resettlement site, New Harsud. But the 
intimidation tactics worked, and the people 
didn't just vacate their houses, but also 
demolished them - many even paying labourers Rs 
100 a day to do so.

Harsud is still bustling, full of labourers and 
their supervisors, some shopkeepers, and a 
handful of houses such as that of Surendra 
Khandelwal, one of the few who have refused to 
leave. Others such as Nanibai and other landless 
labourers' families in Ward No. 9 are left out of 
the project-affected list altogether. Meanwhile, 
at least 32 shopkeepers find no place in the 
rehabilitation policy. And they can't simply run 
away as there is nowhere to go.

There are hundreds of visitors, common people 
from all over coming to witness this destruction 
of a town. There are contractors and 
transporters, police and some remaining owners 
recovering their possessions and planning for the 
demolition. Yet, all this bustle can't hide the 
cries of women and children, old and young, many 
of whom are now on the streets. They catch people 
like myself or any politician who happens to pass 
by, showing their notices and asking for help. 
Many who have already shifted out come back 
everyday and stay for hours, despite knowing that 
they are already homeless, sleeping in the 
verandahs of their relatives' houses or in sheds.

The Narmada Sagar, one of the 30 major dams on 
the Narmada and one of the two gigantic dams, is 
supposed to submerge 254 villages. Of these, 176 
have already been affected, and 29 more will be 
affected before the monsoon ends. It is a project 
that was approved by the ministry of environment 
and forests (MOEF) and the Planning Commission, 
subject to the conditions of the Narmada Water 
Disputes Tribunal Award (NWDTA). The NWDTA, 
compliance with which is supposed to be monitored 
by the Narmada Control Authority (NCA), requires 
that rehabilitation of affected families be done 
at least six months prior to submergence. All 
landowners losing 25 per cent or more of their 
landholding are promised replacement land.

And yet, the approximately 22,000 population of 
Harsud was 'asked' to leave without completing 
the land acquisition process. Many are yet to 
even get cash compensation. Complaints abound of 
names missing from the official lists, while 
major sons of property owners (to be considered 
as separate families) are not yet included. To 
top it all, the resettlement site is not even 
ready with the minimum of amenities. Meanwhile, 
the monitoring authorities are not in the 
picture, as the NCA has been purposely kept out 
of rehabilitation monitoring so as to give a free 
hand to the dam builders.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Narmada 
Sagar project is the role played by the statutory 
company, Narmada Hydroelectric Development 
Corporation Ltd. (NHDC). With its unlimited power 
over construction, impact assessment and 
compensation, it has proved to be criminal and 
corrupt in all of these roles. The decision to 
raise the height of NSP to 245 metres a year 
ahead of schedule without resettling the affected 
people indicates the ruthlessness that 
accompanies such corporatisation of the State. 
While the NVDA has also always been callous, the 
NHDC is even more arrogant and abrasive.

So village after village goes under water, with 
families becoming bankrupt. With their rights to 
life and livelihood being thrown into the 
dustbin, they - many of them being Dalits and 
adivasis - stand as a testament to the bankruptcy 
of the law itself. Unfortunately, the judiciary 
has failed to stand up to protect these citizens. 
Thousands of families face the same fate of being 
declared Non-existent Resident Indians. They are 
being displaced by water and erased on paper.

All of this is justified in the name of power: 
huge targets for electricity supply based on 
consumption indicators dictated by western 
standards. Under this vision of energy-intensive 
technological development, equity and 
sustainability are hardly conceived of as a 
priority even by those who are sensitive to the 
social and environmental losses. In addition to 
the human toll, 40,000 hectares of forest with 
rare flora and fauna have been clear-felled for 
Narmada Sagar while about 20,000 hectares were 
cut for Sardar Sarovar. Compensatory 
afforestation is nothing but a joke here. Crores 
are spent on it and only corruption has thrived.

The Sardar Sarovar Dam is as disastrous as the 
Narmada Sagar. It is more known due to the 19 
years of struggle. The people of Harsud and its 
hinterland have not been a part of the resistance 
undertaken by the people from Manibeli in 
Maharashtra to Nimad in MP. Yet, while this 
struggle has achieved many gains, the fight 
continues in the face of inadequate 
rehabilitation.

The Madhya Pradesh government, in particular, has 
most flagrantly dodged its legal responsibility 
to give land as an alternative source of 
livelihood to people displaced by the SSP. 
(Rehabilitation is also far from complete and 
adequate in Maharashtra and Gujarat.) Not one 
family has been allotted land in MP. If the 
government was serious about rehabilitation, it 
would have prepared a master plan with details of 
land to resettle as stipulated by NWDTA, project 
clearances, the Planning Commission and Supreme 
Court judgments. But, it has failed to do this.

While SSP rehabilitation may be a step up from 
what's happening in Harsud, this is little 
consolation. While some have been lured by 
(insufficient) cash payments, thousands of others 
have not. They assert their rights, not just to 
rehabilitation, but also to the very question of 
the project. If they had not done this over the 
course of the past two decades, they would have 
had the same fate as the families ousted from the 
Bargi and Tawa dams in the Narmada valley or 
Jaikwadi in Godavari. Because of their struggles, 
11,000 SSP-affected families have been given 
sites with land and amenities. Yet, this can't be 
celebrated when there are over 40,000 others left 
to fend for themselves. They are still on the 
banks of the Narmada and they haven't yet 
demolished their houses.

Amidst this season of destruction, with the 
Sardar Sarovar and Narmada Sagar dams 
immiserating thousands of families, it is 
necessary that Indians stand up and respond to 
these injustices.

_____



[5]  [Islamophobia in the UK Press ]

Hello There,

A chap called "Will" Cummins--originally Harry 
Cummins--has published four serialised pieces on 
Islam and Muslims in the July issues of the 
Sunday Telegraph. Many people are deeply and 
rightly upset over his immensely Islamophobic 
observations such as: Muslims, like dogs, share 
common characteristics, or let us get them before 
they get us, and so on. Thanks to Marina Hyde of 
the Guardian Diary, now we know that the  chap is 
in fact the Press Officer at the British Council 
in London. Institutional racism is nothing new 
but the BC are certainly nervous given their 
altruistic profile all over the world. They were 
hiding behind all sorts of flimsy terms but he is 
twice confirmed by the Guardian. In fact, Marina 
Hyde, as a protest, sat outside their offices in 
Great Portland Street on Friday having her 
breakfast. I have sent letters to the Sunday 
Telegraph's editor (Dominic Lawson--Nigel 
Lawson's son and don't forget Lady Black's daily 
diatribe against Arabs. She is an open advocate 
of the expansionist Zionism), to the British 
Council's David Green and certainly to Ms Hyde. I 
understand both the MAB and MCB have also sent 
similar letters to them. I am appending my emails 
herewith for your information, which you may like 
to bring into the notice of your members.
Thanks and all the best.
Iftikhar.

1-
From: Iftikhar Malik
Sent: Fri 30/07/2004 09:56
To: dominic.lawson at telegraph.co.uk
Cc: Iftikhar Malik (ihm50 at yahoo.com)
Subject: Will (Harry) Cummins: Telegraph must disown racist elements


Dear Mr. Lawson,
It is certainly shocking and deeply annoying to 
see a respectable paper like yours allowing 
itself to be used for such a poisonous and 
hateful propaganda against Muslims/Islam on a 
regular basis, contributed by otherwise timid and 
sick people like Will (Harry) Cummins. The 
tirades from Lady Black and several of her ilk 
were already enough without warranting the need 
for more Islamophobes like Cummins. By giving him 
regular space for his malignant and racist ideas, 
you have not only allowed yourself to be used as 
an instrument of injustice and hate but have 
equally become a partner as well. For a paper of 
your stature it is too unbecoming and certainly 
strengthens the view that specific powerful 
lobbies are out there to malign Islam simply to 
whitewash what is being done in West Asia. The 
honourable thing for the paper and the editor 
would be to publish a front-page apology and to 
come out with an open policy statement of intent 
on the serious issues of Islamophobia. I guess 
professionally and morally you owe these two 
obligations to the nation. The rest I leave to 
your conscience.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Regards,
Sincerely,
Professor Iftikhar H. Malik
FRHisS
22 Worcester Place
Oxford OX1 2JW.

2-
marina.hyde at guardian.co.uk

Dear Ms Hyde,
Congratulations on your persistence and 
investigative journalism in exposing the source 
of these hateful columns in the Telegraph spewing 
poison about Islam. People like Will (Harry) 
Cummins abound but are basically timid as they 
have to hide behind smokescreens. The Telegraph 
and the British Council must apologise to the 
nation at large and must eradicate all the 
malignant, infectious and highly diseased racist 
elements from within. Otherwise, we will be 
well-placed to believe that these self-professing 
citadels of honesty, integrity and harmony are 
the willing instruments for Islamophobia.

Best regards.
Sincerely,
Professor Iftikhar H. Malik
FRHisS
22 Worcester Place
Oxford OX1 2JW.
ihm50 at yahoo.com

3-

30 July 2004.

Mr. David Green
The British Council
LONDON c/o Email.

Dear Mr. David Green,
As reported by Guardian today and yesterday, Mr. 
"Will" Cummins is the press officer at the 
British Council, an organisation purported to 
further academic and artistic sharing. As an 
organ of public diplomacy it is meant to spread a 
good image of Britain everywhere. Of course, it 
is funded by our money--the tax payers. But given 
the malignant, poisonous and immensely 
Islamophobic views of Mr. Cummins, I am afraid, 
million of people like me have been disappointed 
in the British Council. I guess the Council must 
ensure that it, in fact, implements fairness, 
transparency and justice in its own structures 
before reaching out the wider world. In one of my 
books, I have done half of a chapter on you work 
but must say that after reading these columns I 
am deeply worried. I hope it is just a solitary 
case but only the time will tell. We must face 
the fact that the institutional racism is a sad 
reality across a wider spectrum and there must be 
holistic efforts to eradicate it. The places of 
higher education and public diplomacy, as many 
reports continue to suggest, are infected by this 
serious malaise and people like you holding 
important positions should ensure that they are 
fair and above board. It seriously compromises 
your image as an organ of the British public 
diplomacy and I am afraid just hiding behind an 
unclear denial or a non-committal apology would 
not help a reputable organisation like the 
Council. Sacking a person and then coming out 
with a routine pious statement is no solution 
either. It is a serious matter and must be 
confronted bravely and all the skeletons hidden 
in the closets, if there are any, must be brought 
out in the public arena.
I hope that the British Council will rise to its 
challenge and if Mr. Cummins is not your 
employee, then you must openly disown it and if 
he is and, like a lousy rat, hides behind flimsy 
curtains or within the institutional labyrinths, 
he and his ilk, be fully exposed and held 
accountable through proper legal procedures. The 
Council must ensure that such sickening events do 
not recur and instead it reflects a transparent, 
exemplary--not patronising--and forward-looking 
attitude through its various trajectories and 
outreach.
Best regards,
Sincerely,
Iftikhar
-Professor Iftikhar H. Malik
FRHisS
22 Worcester Place
Oxford OX1 2JW.
ihm50 at yahoo.com

o o o

[The hateful articles appeared in the Sunday 
Telegraph (London) on 4, 11, 18 & 25 July 2004. 
The last in the series is posted below.]

The Sunday Telegraph - 25th July 2004
URL: www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/07/25/do2504.xml

Muslims are a threat to our way of life
By Will Cummins
(Filed: 25/07/2004)

In 1748, the novelist Horace Walpole had cause to 
draw attention, in a letter, to the outrageous 
behaviour in France of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the 
exiled leader of 1745's failed Jacobite revolt. 
Prince Charles Edward Stuart was terrorising 
Louis XV - the rebellion's mentor, on whom 
Charles relied for everything - with endless 
threats and the most insolent demands. Walpole 
could not help remarking on the narrowness of 
Britain's escape.

"What a mercy," he wrote to the Duke of 
Newcastle, the then Prime Minister, "that we had 
not him here!" If, said Walpole, the Pretender 
was prepared to bully the government of France, 
even though he was entirely in its power, what 
would he have done with a British government 
under his control?

And what, I have been asking in recent articles, 
would Islam's equally insouciant "exiles" in 
Britain do with a UK government in their power? 
Indications from the Leicester South and 
Birmingham Hodge Hill by-elections were not 
encouraging.

Konrad Henlein, the Nazi leader of the Sudeten 
Germans - whose cynical attitude to liberal, 
democratic, minority-friendly inter-war 
Czechoslovakia offers a metaphor for what we face 
- once observed: "We must always demand so much 
that we are never satisfied." He wouldn't have 
got very far in Leicester South, where the idea 
of refusing Muslim voters any part of their 
global Jihadi agenda was so distant from the 
candidates' minds that they couldn't even wait to 
be asked.

However, my fellow Telegraph writer Jenny 
McCartney is plagued by a very different anxiety. 
She is deeply concerned for, not because of, 
Britain's burgeoning Muslim population. It is the 
persecuted Jews of the Third Reich, not its 
Nazis, to whom we should compare this notoriously 
gifted, useful and self-effacing group, she has 
written in her column of July 18.

Jenny sees in the revulsion for Islam displayed 
by the British National Party an echo of the 
anti-Semitism to which hideous German 
publications like Der Sturmer gave vent. Though 
why she has to ransack back numbers of hoary 
Fascist tradesheets when almost every mainstream 
Muslim paper in the world today is full of 
loathsome anti-Jewish rants and images isn't 
clear.

"In the miserable event" of "an al-Qaeda attack 
in Britain", she wrote last week - which repeated 
warnings from our Government have termed 
inevitable - "there is little doubt in my mind 
that assaults on peaceful, law-abiding British 
Muslims would increase".

Well, it's good to know that, as the rest of us 
hug our bottles of Evian in the irradiated ruins, 
mourning thousands of dead, Jenny will be lying 
awake at night worrying that someone might drop a 
dog poo through the letterbox of her local balti 
house. Such outrages, she warns, will be "fanned 
by an increasingly hysterical rhetoric - already 
in place - that encourages non-Muslim Britons to 
see each and every Muslim citizen as a threat". 
Whose rhetoric is that exactly?

The Guardian newspaper is the Bible - perhaps one 
should say the Koran? - of Islamo-fascist 
Britain. However, it has recently been lending 
its opinion pages to one Fuad Nahdi, a leading 
Islamic "moderate" who publishes Q-News, a 
magazine for young UK Muslims. When two British 
Muslims launched a suicide attack in Israel, this 
is what he wrote in The Guardian of May 2, 2003: 
"I am not surprised by news of Britain's first 
suicide bombers. What, however, I find 
astonishing is that it took place in Tel Aviv, 
not Manchester." He goes on to say, "We should 
brace ourselves for the forthcoming intifada on 
the streets of Birmingham and Detroit."

Mr Nahdi, who arrived in Britain from Kenya in 
1983, is comparing himself and his fellow Muslims 
here to the Palestinians conducting the second 
intifada against Israel. In Muslim folklore, the 
Palestinians are a native people disposessed by 
Zionist invaders. Mr Nahdi seems not to have 
grasped that, in Britain, he and the rest of the 
faithful are the "Jewish settlers", we, the 
usurped Palestinians. If anybody is going to 
mount an intifada against the invader, it will be 
us.

Jenny writes that those who are afraid of Islam 
ignore the diversity of the religion, which 
replicates that of Christianity itself. 
Christianity too, she writes, has its extremists. 
To which one might, like St Paul, say, "and what 
has Christ to do with Baal?" All Muslims, like 
all dogs, share certain characteristics. A dog is 
not the same animal as a cat just because both 
species are comprised of different breeds. An 
extreme Christian believes that the Garden of 
Eden really existed; an extreme Muslim flies 
planes into buildings - there's a big difference.

If, for instance, Muslims meet with defeats in 
the Balkans (a fact which Jenny finds deeply 
disturbing), it will certainly not have been for 
want of trying. It is more a tribute to their 
incompetence than their humanity. As the Tunisian 
intellectual Abdelwahab Meddeb points out in his 
recent book La maladie de l'Islam, Muslims' 
defeats are a symptom, not a cause, of Muslim 
decline.

When his children became "a thwart, disnatured 
torment to us all", the scales fell even from 
King Lear's eyes. But "Jenny Wren" McCartney 
wishes Britain to feed the cuckoo in its nest 
because that's what wrens have always done. 
Doesn't she think that cuckoo looks, and behaves, 
a little like the "detested kite" to which Lear 
compared Goneril?

______


[6]

Date: Tue, 03 Aug 2004 01:34:12 +0530
From: "Shiv Kumar" <journoshiv at yahoo.co.in>


Dear Mr. K[ . . .],

I am Shiv Kumar, Special Correspondent, The Tribune based in Mumbai.

I am interested in applying for the National Media Fellowships 2004-05 to
study the threat posed by communal polarization to syncretic traditions in
India. Of specific focus are shrines that have become zones of conflict
between multiple communities. I would like to go 
beyond the shrines of Bhojshala and Babu Budan 
and look at smaller shrines that are slowly 
falling prey to contestations.

Would it be possible for you to circulate my 
request via your mailing lists so that people who 
have information on this can get in touch with me 
quickly?

My contact: journoshiv at yahoo.co.in

Shiv Kumar


______



[7]

The Times of India - August 02, 2004 | Editorial

SHORT-CIRCUITED
EYE ON GEN-NEXT, RSS MAY DROP ITS KHAKI CHADDIS

Clothing matters. The RSS brass seems convinced. 
The Sangh plans to shed its trademark khaki 
shorts for more trendy outfits. If things move as 
reports suggest, the knickerwalla may soon attend 
the shakha in white trousers, or even jeans. The 
starched white shirt could make way for T-shirts. 
News is awaited on the black topi and the danda . 
Also, on the discussion table is permission for 
senior swayamsevaks to get married. The shorts 
have a history that dates back to the 
pre-Independence days when K B Hedgewar set up 
the Sangh to instil in the 'timid' Hindu society 
the cohesion and discipline of the 'invaders' who 
had established their political and cultural 
hegemony over India. The paramilitary style it 
adopted parodied the law enforcers of the day - 
the oversized shorts were borrowed from the 
colonial police. Now, the chalaks want to check 
out a new uniform; they suspect that their 
sartorial backwardness is one of the reasons for 
Gen-Next's lack of interest in the RSS. Stagnant 
numbers in shakhas have been ascribed by many, 
including insiders, to the Sangh's refusal to 
change with times. RSS bosses in Nagpur now 
realise that austerity and celibacy have few 
takers in today's world of designer politics.

But is politics all about clothing? The Sangh 
seems to have stagnated because few are willing 
to risk their time and thought for agendas that 
refuse to recognise the plurality of the Indian 
experience. RSS politics revolves around the fear 
of the Other. In the immediate political context 
of Partition, divisive ideologies found 
supporters. With the passage of time and the 
emergence of lumpen Hindutva outfits like the 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal - which 
service hate without placing a premium on 
austerity - the RSS has lost its USP. Dropping 
its shorts will hardly enable the organisation 
widen its support base. The RSS's problem is not 
the chaddi but its chintan . Its political face, 
the BJP, managed to occupy office only after it 
agreed to shelve exclusivist agendas. Even 
Narendra Modi was reminded by the electorate that 
politics cannot be the prerogative of a communal 
ideology. The idea of India seeks a politics of 
pluralism and an ideology of accommodation. The 
Sangh needs to rethink its relevance and ideology 
rather than its dress code. Or else, as in the 
fable, Gen-Next will see through the emperor's 
new clothes.

o o o

[More on the above at the URL: communalism.blogspot.com ]

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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South 
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at:  bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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