SACW | 17 Aug 2004

sacw aiindex at mnet.fr
Mon Aug 16 20:00:41 CDT 2004


South Asia Citizens Wire   |  17 August,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1]  Bangladesh:  Bigots to keep laying siege to Ahmadiyya mosques
[2]  India: RSS  and  Gandhi's  Assassination (I.K.Shukla)
[3]  India - Book Launch: Husband of a Fanatic By 
Amitava Kumar (New Delhi, Aug 27)
[4]  India:  Hindutva sharpening its knives
- Rajasthan withdraws ban on trishul
- Rajasthan: 'Trishul diksha' will fan riots, feels CPI (M)
[5]  India: POTA to be abolished but its 
provisions may be incorporated into the Indian 
Penal Code

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

[1]

The Daily Star
August 16, 2004

BIGOTS TO KEEP LAYING SIEGE TO AHMADIYYA MOSQUES
Staff Correspondent
Khatme Nabuwat Andolon Parishad Bangladesh 
(KNAPB) yesterday said they will keep on laying 
siege to Ahmadiyya mosques across the country as 
long as the Ahmadiyyas identify their place of 
worship as a mosque.

KNAPB in a press conference in the city yesterday voiced the vow.

"As the Ahmadiyya community has no right to claim 
themselves to be Muslims then how dare they post 
a signboard reading mosque in front of their 
place of worship," said Abdul Khalique while 
addressing the press conference.
KNAPB leaders once again demanded the government 
declare the Ahmadiyya community non-Muslims 
because they do not accept Prophet Hazrat 
Mohammed (SM) as the last prophet.
KNAPB would make an issue of it in the next 
general election if the government does not meet 
the demand.
The KNAPB leaders said they are suspicious of 
motives of the statement by the Human Rights 
Commission of the UN that expressed concern over 
Ahmadiyya repression in the country.
The United Nations, however, keeps mum when 
Muslims are repressed in Iraq and Palestine, they 
added.
"The government should not take its stance 
against 12 crore Muslims to protect the interest 
of a handful of Kadianis," Khalique told the 
press conference.
He observed it amounts to a gross 
misinterpretation of the Holy Qur'an when the 
Ahmadiyyas identify themselves as Muslims.
KNAPB leaders also claimed that Jamaat-e-Islami, 
a part of the coalition government, who too wants 
Ahmadiyyas to be declared non-Muslims, has 
extended its support to KNAPB in its campaign 
against Ahmadiyyas.
"In 1993, a High Court bench of Justice Abdul 
Jalil and Justice Mohammed Fazlul Karim declared 
Kadianis non-Muslims and 50 Islamic states 
including Saudi Arabia declared Kadianis 
non-Muslims," Khalique said.
Our staff correspondent from Khulna adds: 
Security around the Ahmadiyya mosque in Khulna 
city was tightened as International Khatme 
Nabuwat Movement Bangladesh (IKNMB) stubbornly 
resisted removal of the signboard they posted 
there on Friday night.
IKNMB zealots on Friday night in presence of 
police hung a signboard reading "Khulna Nirala -- 
the Kadiani Upashanalaya" against the original 
signboard that read "Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat, 
Khulna".
They forcibly hung the new signboard what they 
said was to caution the Muslims not to be fooled 
into taking the Ahmadiyya Mosque complex as a 
mosque and offering prayers there.
IKNMB on August 13 agreed not to lay siege to 
Ahmadiyya Mosque Complex at Nirala Residential 
Area and evict Ahmadiyyas on condition that they 
be allowed to change the original signboard, said 
Deputy Commissioner (South) Akbar Ali of Khulna 
Metropolitan Police.
Meanwhile, on Saturday morning the new signboard 
was found missing but later at noon it was again 
seen hanging there.
"We are yet to identify who removed the new 
signboard and who hung it again," said Mosharaf 
Hossain, officer-in-charge of Khulna Police 
Station.
KMP authorities have posted a large number of 
policemen in riot gear at Nirala Residential Area.

______

[2]


RSS  AND  GANDHI'S  ASSASSINATION
I.K.Shukla

Protesting too much becomes the criminal as 
Mourning becomes Electra. It is an age-long norm. 
The protest has to be loud and cyclical, i.e., a 
tirelessly repetitive triteness.
It tricks no one. By this stratagem the criminal 
believes he has absolved himself - not of the 
crime but of its consequences. It absolves him of 
remorse, and it enables him to continue his 
career of crime without being handicapped by any 
moral inhibition. Not being caught – this 
artifice he perfects with passion and precision. 
This is his badge of honor, his feather of 
distinction and glory. Lying, therefore, becomes 
his tool, his necessity, his principle.

Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, right from its 
inception, has boldly gone on lying, and more 
brazen lying by every passing day. It has never 
allowed truth to trump it, or facts to faze it. 
This doggedness has marked its career as a 
phenomenon in Indian polity. Take its much touted 
claim of not being interested in politics, but 
only in culture. I had heard it in the 40s from 
many RSS mouths first hand. This assertion turned 
the truth on its head. It was in fact interested 
not a whit in culture but exclusively in 
politics. This agenda required destruction, not 
fostering, of culture.  Culture, so-called, in 
its lexicon, became both its camouflage, and its 
conspiracy to carry forward its design of 
destroying historic India. It chopped culture to 
a pitiable and puny size for its perverted 
purpose, just as professional beggars on Indian 
streets have their limbs chopped by their owners 
to coax alms from the unwary. RSS chopped the 
minds of the young and impressionable reducing 
them to the size of a mustard seed which would 
permanently keep them shrunk and handicapped, 
unable to think, incapable of quest, retarded for 
ever.

It has massive number of recruits. But it lies 
about them point blank. They all remain 
unrecorded, unregistered in any RSS list. The RSS 
ill affords maintaining any such register. Do 
criminal gangs maintain registers of their 
members? It pretends that it charges no 
membership fee, hence no accounts need be 
maintained. This is another bald lie. What it 
calls Guru Dakshina, is the obligatory and 
sumptuous, consolidated membership fee by another 
name. Mere membership fee, annual or otherwise, 
would never fill RSS coffers to the brim as 
Dakshina does on various festivals of Hindu 
calendar.

Similarly, those who go to kill do not have 
formally or informally to be members or 
affiliates of the RSS. Even when they know they 
are, as the RSS knows they are, they disavow such 
nexus by "resigning". The irony here is 
transparent, a giveaway of their false claims. If 
RSS has no membership, why and what then did they 
resign from? Expedient, isn't it? Liars have to 
be clever but not fairly consistent. Their lies 
stretch to an exponential length.

Murders of political leaders are by and large 
conspiratorial. They are not publicized, nor 
admitted, nor boasted. But telltale signs never 
go unnoticed. They blaze the criminals randomly, 
suddenly. When Vinayak Savarkar (keep Damodar, 
his father, out) blessed Nathu (free Ram from 
being tagged to a seasoned criminal) Godse on the 
point of his farewell to perform the "mission" by 
uttering Yashaswi Bhav (Be famous), he blessed 
the assassination and the assassin.

For not doing any drastic thing, Hindu 
Mahasabha's Savarkar had repeatedly chastised the 
Sangh in the past. It was now time and turn of 
the RSS to rehabilitate itself into his 
affections the only way it could, the only way he 
would: Gandhi's assassination. It is this 
guru-shishya parampara (preceptor and pupil 
tradition) of criminality that is so dear to the 
fiendish fakery called Hindutva and that it 
promotes for its evil project of desecrating and 
demolishing India. It is this cult of murder and 
mayhem that it anoints as culture.

With its fascist and totalitarian antecedents, 
with its history of sabotage, collaboration with 
the enemy and national treason, Sangh is overdue 
for a permanent ban and total elimination from 
the socio-political system of the nation. No 
delay or excuse is admissible. Any 
procrastination in the matter would amount to 
tragic and criminal dereliction of duty costing 
the nation very dearly. Sangh and its various 
synonyms can stay alive and vitiate the 
socio-political atmosphere only at the cost of 
the Constitution.
Unless we wish to witness "Hindu" terrorism 
wrecking and violating the Constitution with 
impunity and impudence day in and day out, it is 
high time it be stamped out. Gujarat was no 
aberration. It was a script prepared with rigor 
and ruthlessness long in advance.

Sweets were distributed by Sanghis and their 
cohorts on Gandhi's assassination all over when 
the nation was shell shocked and stunned into 
mourning a loss so monumental. If it had not been 
privy and/or party to the heinous crime, it had 
no reason for celebrating a national ignominy. 
This act alone shows it to be obstinately 
inimical to the million upon millions of people 
in India and abroad and contemptuous of national 
sentiment and honour.

Rarely have "high value" murderers been brought 
to justice, rarely have the culprits paid any 
price for their misdeeds. And, legally well 
tutored in advance, the assassins and arsonists 
in Gujarat took care to be "mobs", not persons, 
and to destroy all evidence of their carnage. 
Among their advisers was K.K.Shastri, an 
octogenarian, said to be a Mahabharata "scholar". 
He was, among others, aiding and abetting the 
"Hindu" terrorists.

But another octogenarian, Shri Chunnilal Vaidya, 
a Gandhian and a committed Sarvodaya leader, in a 
booklet SPITTING AT THE SUN, written in 1998 
(Gujarat Lok Samiti, Gandhi Ashram, Ahmedabad - 
380 027) records six out of ten attempts made on 
Gandhi's life. In his preface, A Word or Two, he 
writes:

"I was also aware of the fact that the Bharatiya 
Janata Party had very recently, in  its organ BJP 
TODAY had come out with an article which implied 
that Godse played a tool in the hands of the 
British imperialists. Really, no sane person, not 
to talk of a national party, can own up a heinous 
crime as the one committed by Godse. But, I must 
add, much more will have to be done to clear the 
dust generated till now. [Note how cleverly the 
BJP, in its earlier incarnation as Jan Sangh, and 
in its prime inspiration of Hindu Mahasabha, 
absolves itself from being "a tool in the hands 
of the British imperialists". As a declared 
policy they offered to be collaborators of the 
foreign enemy and throttle the national struggle 
for freedom from the imperialist yoke of John 
Bull.]

I am sorry, there are some insinuations against 
RSS in this small work, and that too in spite of 
the Organization's publicly disowning of the 
perpetrator of the heinous crime. But its 
anti-Muslim and anti-Gandhi mindset are two 
handicaps – one born [innate] and the other 
acquired. These are also denied by it, but its 
followers and their deeds tell a different story 
altogether. I wish I were wrong."

Briefly the six attempts on Gandhi's life by 
those imbued with the spirit of Hindutva's 
communal fascism:

1.	In 1934. Gandhi was on way to a reception 
by Poona Municipality. A bomb was hurled at him 
but it hit the car ahead, and Gandhi was saved. 
The Chief Municipal Officer, a couple of 
constables, and four others were injured.
2.	In 1944, Panchgani. A man with a dagger 
rushed toward him. According to Manishankar 
Purohit, the proprietor of Poona Surati Lodge, 
the assailant was none else but Nathuram 
Godse
B.D.Bhisare Guruji, the ex-Congress MLA 
from Mahabaleshwar and Chief of Satara District 
Central Bank, had snatched away the dagger from 
Godse. Gandhiji soon sent for Godse, but he did 
not turn up![The coward did not want to be 
recognized.]
3.	September 1944. Gandhi was scheduled to 
leave Wardha for Bombay to meet Jinnah.  A group 
from Poona went to Wardha to attack Gandhi and 
sabotage the program. When Gandhi came to know of 
it, he insisted that he would walk along with the 
demonstrators and not board the car until they 
allowed. But before his departure, the police had 
apprehended the group. One of them, G.L.Thatte, 
was detected carrying a dagger, but he told the 
police that he had only intended to tear off the 
tire of the car by which Gandhi was to travel. 
Quite early in the morning Mahatma Gandhi's 
personal secretary, Pyarelal, had also received a 
phone all from the D.C.P. cautioning against any 
probable untoward happening at the hands of the 
demonstrators.
4.	June 1946. Gandhi was traveling to Poona 
by a special train. They had hatched a plot to 
derail the train in the dark that night between 
Neral and Karjat by putting huge stones on the 
rail track. Thanks to the engine driver's 
vigilance and skill the tragedy was averted 
although the engine was damaged
 Later on, 
mentioning this incident in a prayer meeting 
Gandhi said: "So far I have been saved from seven 
attempts on my life. But I am not going to end up 
that way. I hope to live for 125 years". Nathu 
retorted in his journal AGRANI: "But who will let 
you live?" This implies that he had already 
determined to kill Gandhi long before the 
Partition, used as a pretext for what they call 
‘Gandhi-Vadh'.[This is another variant and 
reminiscent of the dictum Vaidiki Himsa Himsa na 
Bhavati. That is, Vedic violence is no violence.]
5.	January 20, 1948. Madanlal Pahwa hurled a 
bomb at Gandhi at the prayer  
  meeting. It missed him, Gandhi continued his prayer unperturbed.
6.	Ten days later Godse assassinated Gandhi 
on the prayer ground
 Over a long span of years 
attempts by Hindu fundamentalists to eliminate 
Gandhi were afoot. All they were looking for was 
the chance to do so; any excuse was good enough 
to assassinate Gandhi, and they spared no pain to 
find or fabricate it.

This slim booklet includes nuggets of historical 
facts debunking the popular myths. Adverting to 
the Lucknow Pact of 1916 Vaidya writes: "Gandhi 
was a new entrant in the public life of the 
country. He had no share [part] in the Lucknow 
negotiations. Who were the leaders then? Annie 
Besant, Lokmanya Tilak, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. 
Justifying the pact [which gave Muslims 
representation in proportion to their 
population], Tilak observed:
Some eminent people accuse us of attaching far 
greater importance to the Mohamedans. I would go 
to the extent of saying personally I would have 
no objection if self-rule were granted to the 
Muslims alone. If the Rajputs also get a similar 
right, I won't mind. Nor would I object to this 
right being given to the most backward classes 
among the Hindus. This statement of mine reflects 
the national spirit of all India. When you are 
struggling against the third force, above 
everything else, all you need is your own unity – 
communal and political and ideological. (Bipin 
Chandra, et al. Bharat Ka Swatantrata Sangharsh, 
14th Reprint, 1997, p.120.)

It is salutary to recall Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel 
who wrote in his letter of July 18, 1948 to Dr 
Shyama Prasad Mukherjee:

"There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme 
section of Hindu Mahasabha was           involved 
in the conspiracy. The activities of the RSS 
constituted a clear threat to the existence of 
Government and State." [So too now the activities 
of RSS have constituted, more starkly, a blazing 
threat to the nation as evinced in Gujarat and 
umpteen other places. ]

He wrote on 11 September 1948 to the Sarsangh Chalak of RSS:

"The speeches of the Sangh leaders are poisonous. 
It is a result of the venom that Mahatma Gandhi 
has been assassinated. The followers of the Sangh 
have celebrated Gandhiji's assassination by 
distributing sweets." [Neither have Sanghis 
eschewed their venom, nor have their leaders 
stopped speaking far more poisonously ever since. 
Hence, the present and clear danger they pose to 
national security and national honor urgently 
impels slapping a ban on their various outfits. 
They can be suffered only at the cost of India's 
survival.]

Another perfidy perpetrated on the nation by the 
acolytes of Savarkar was his portrait hung in the 
parliament. No nation had ever honored a renegade 
so blatantly. Savarkar, with his repeated pleas 
for forgiveness and mercy, with his contemptible 
offers of loyalty and service to the British 
empire, should have been erased from the nation's 
collective memory. Instead, he was obtrusively 
burnt into it. Insulting the memory of martyrs 
and patriots who did not compromise with the 
alien-White-Christian-imperialist invader and 
despoiler, Advani named the Andamans Cellular 
Jail after a cringing, groveling cretin like 
Savarkar. It was Savarkar who had given the prime 
call for the division of India along communal 
lines, long before Jinnah. Instead of denouncing 
him for this breach, his camp followers and 
mini-Savarkars made him, an abomination, into 
their icon. He will ever remain an archetypal 
figure of cowardice, national betrayal, and 
Hinduist disgrace.

Savarkar had said in the 1937 session of Hindu Mahasabha at Ahmedabad:

India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian 
and homogenous nation, but on the contrary, there 
are two nations in the main: the Hindus and the 
Muslims


And on 15 Aug.1943 he repeated himself:
I have no quarrel with Mr. Jinnah's two-nation 
theory. We, the Hindus, are a nation by 
ourselves; and it is a historical fact that the 
Hindus and Muslims are two nations.

Sanghis lie when they deny the hinduist drive and 
Savarkar's role as an ace architect of India's 
Partition. The other big lie embedded here is 
Hinduists' three-fold false claim: 1. that they 
represent all Hindus or their interests; 2. that 
Hindus are a homogenous entity, not Homo 
Hierarchus; and 3. that the minority of Hinduists 
(Poona-based Brahmins) are Hindus, the majority, 
who lack any vision of politics except  that 
rooted in communal divisions.

It is to erase this bleak record of Hinduist 
blemish and anti-national shame that BJP stymied 
and smothered in every way it could the 
publication of Toward Freedom, edited by such 
eminent scholars and historians as Sumit Sarkar, 
K.N.Panikkar etc., as a major  project of ICHR. 
The Hinduists of Sanghi cult, committed to 
violence and vivisection, and soaked in hatred, 
want their treason erased and forgotten. Instead, 
they would have generations of Indians learn that 
Moonje- Hedgewar- Golwalkar- Savarkar were our 
national leaders! Having wallowed in lies and 
crimes for decades, the pseudo-Hindus look 
glaringly akin to a professional mafia. They have 
to be excised from the system, like a malignant 
cancer, to keep it wholesome.

RSS and its cohort have thrived on lies and 
lethality. India, lacerated by them, has bled 
long and massively. The pattern of its denials 
and lies is inherent to its character. But it 
would not get away with its responsibility and 
role in Gandhi's assassination. It knows more 
than its opponents that it was involved in a 
serious and sustained manner in the most grisly 
crime of the century. Crying hoarse its innocence 
in the matter will not wash. Why? Because it was 
proud of its evil deed as a mission it 
successfully and signally accomplished. In such 
crimes no one, not even a tyro, would leave an 
incriminating trail. Plausible deniability, 
contrived as a lame recourse, is sheer casuistry, 
but it is not an escape hatch, nor a stain 
remover.

But there are straws in the wind, and even dead 
leaves lying about or fluttering in the wind, 
tell a tale.  They cannot be silenced.

16Aug.04



______


[3]

BOOK LAUNCH: HUSBAND OF A FANATIC
By Amitava Kumar
Date/Time: 27 August, 7.00 p.m.
Venue: British Council [New Delhi]

In the summer of 1999, while the Kargil War was 
being fought, Amitava Kumar married a Pakistani 
Muslim. That event led to a process of discovery 
that made Kumar examine the relationship not only 
between India and Pakistan but also between 
Hindus and Muslims inside India. The result is 
this fiercely personal essay on the idea of the 
enemy.

Written with complete honesty and with no claims 
to journalistic detachment, this book chronicles 
the complicity that binds the writer to the 
rioter. Unlike both the fundamentalists and the 
secularists, Kumar finds-- or makes --utterly 
human those whom he opposes. More than a 
travelogue which takes the reader to Wagah, 
Patna, Bhagalpur, Karachi, Kashmir and even 
Johannesburg, this book, then, becomes a portrait 
of the people the author meets in these places, 
people dealing with the consequences of the 
politics of faith.

With a writer's eye for detail, Kumar has drawn a 
map of violence. Informed more by a traveller's 
sense of observation than a safe, academic 
moralism, Husband of a Fanatic refuses to 
monumentalise suffering. I-nstead, it presents 
tragedy as ordinary, and hence, more difficult to 
accept easily. In a village beside the Ganges 
near Bhagalpur, in a psychiatric ward in 
Srinagar, in a classroom in Ahmedabad - 
everywhere that the author goes, the reader is 
compelled to accompany him on a journey to the 
heart of hatred.

About the author

Amitava Kumar was born in Ara, in Bihar and grew 
up in Patna, famous for its poverty, corruption 
and delicious mangoes. Kumar's writings on the 
experience of migration, as well as his poetry 
and criticism, have been widely published in 
India and abroad. He is a professor of English at 
Pennsylvania State University. Kumar has also 
written the script for a prize-winning 
documentary film. His earlier books, Passport 
Photos and Bombay-London-New York, were published 
by Penguin Books India in 2000 and 2002. Amitava 
Kumar serves on the editorial board of several 
publications and co-edits the web-journal 
Politics and Culture. He is also an editor of 
several anthologies, including World Bank 
Literature (2002) and Away: The Indian Writer as 
an Expatriate (2003).

The book will be launched at the British Council 
on 27 August. There will be a discussion on the 
theme of open and accountable democracy, 
focussing on the notions of secularism and 
multiculturalism, preceding the launch.

For more information please contact Shipra Ogra 
at shipra.ogra at in.britishcouncil.org

o o o


Husband of A Fanatic
By Amitava Kumar

Published by Penguin Books India
Price: Rs 295.00
ISBN: 0143031899
Edition: Paperback
Format: B | 356 pages | 356 pages
Classification: Non Fiction
Published: 8/1/2004
http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/books/BookDetail.asp?ID=5664


______



[4]

The Hindu - August 17, 2004

RAJASTHAN WITHDRAWS BAN ON TRISHUL
JAIPUR, AUG. 16. The Bharatiya Janata Party 
Government in Rajasthan today lifted the ban on 
trishuls imposed by the previous Congress 
dispensation last year. [...]

URL: www.thehindu.com/2004/08/17/stories/2004081705421100.htm

o o o

The Hindu - August 17, 2004
URL: www.thehindu.com/2004/08/17/stories/2004081711730500.htm

RAJASTHAN: 'TRISHUL DIKSHA' WILL FAN RIOTS, FEELS CPI (M)
By Our Special Correspondent
JAIPUR, AUG. 16. The Communist Party of India 
(Marxist) has expressed concern over the 
resumption of "trishul diksha''(trident 
distribution) programme by the Vishwa Hindu 
Parishad and the Bajrang Dal in Rajasthan. "This 
is preparing ground for communal riots in the 
State,'' the State Secretariat of the CPI(M) 
alleged in a statement here today.

"The patronage of the Bharatiya Janata Party 
Government in the State is providing a fillip to 
the activities of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak 
Sangh, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal and the Shiv 
Sena,'' Ravindra Shukla, the member of the State 
Secretariat said. On the last Saturday alone, in 
various "trishul diksha'' programmes, as many as 
359 were distributed in Rajasthan, it was pointed 
out.

By taking back the cases registered against those 
involved in communal riots in the past, the State 
Government had only given a signal to the 
elements which were out to create religious 
discord, Mr.Shukla charged. The VHP programme, as 
per its own claim, was to distribute 30 lakh 
tridents in the country, he noted.

The CPI(M) Secretariat noted with concern the 
statements of the Social Welfare Minister, Madan 
Dilawar, supporting the trident distributions and 
demanding the withdrawal of cases registered in 
April 2003 against the VHP leader, Pravin 
Togadia, by the then Gehlot Government under the 
amended Arms Act. "Such utterances coming from a 
Minister emboldened the communal elements,'' it 
observed.

The CPI(M) appealed to all the Left, secular and 
democratic forces to remain alert against the 
conspiracies of the communal elements.

Meanwhile, reports said that the Rajasthan 
Government on Monday issued orders for the repeal 
of the amended Arms Act, which had brought single 
or multi-bladed sharp edged weapons under its 
purview through a notification on April 8, 2003.

______



[5]

POTA TO BE ABOLISHED BUT ITS PROVISIONS MAY BE INCORPORATED
INTO THE INDIAN PENAL CODE. MISUSE OF TADA CONTINUES

Left parties' leaders and prominent citizens called upon
Parliament and Government to repeal POTA, withdraw all cases
of TADA and POTA with retrospective effect remitting
sentences against those convicted under these laws, and
slammed Bihar govt. for not withdrawing TADA charges against
the agricultural labourers of Jehanabad

In the aftermath of statewide agitation raging in several
parts of Bihar for the withdrawal of TADA cases imposed on a
score of political activists and leaders as well as poor
agrarian labourers in Jehanabad district of the state, a
timely Convention was held in Delhi on 6 August. Political
leaders from a broad spectrum of the Left and prominent
citizens from all walks of life including jurists, advocates,
human rights activists, academicians, writers, journalists,
and students joined this convention and called for a
nationwide movement against murder of democracy at the hands
of black laws like TADA and POTA. They called upon Parliament
and government to repeal POTA, withdraw all cases of TADA and
POTA with retrospective effect remitting sentences against
those convicted under these laws. They also  slammed the
Bihar govt. for not withdrawing TADA charges against CPI(ML)
activists and agricultural labourers of Jehanabad. The
Convention was organised by Forum For Democratic Initiative.

The Convention also decided to meet the President of India
and the Prime Minister in this regard. It passed several
resolutions including the one which demanded repeal of the
notorious Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958. [This
notorious Act is creating havoc in the life of the people of
Manipur and other North-Eastern states. Entire Manipur is now
up in arms against this Act.]

The Convention was chaired by eminent human rights activist
Kuldeep Nayyar and addressed by a host of political leaders
and prominent citizens of Delhi including CPI(ML) General
Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPI(M) MP Dipankar
Mukherjee, Forward Bloc leader Devrajan, RSP MP Abani Roy,
CPI leader Atul Anjan, Justice Rajendra Sachar, writer and
activist Arundhati Roy, Editor of 'Mainstream' Sumit
Chakravarty, Supreme Court lawyers Nandita Haksar and
Prashant Bhushan, Associate Editor of EPW Gautam Navlakha,
Prof. Kamal Mitra Chenoy from JNU, Prof. Tripta Wahi and
Prof. SAR Geelani from DU and the representative of Manipur
Students' Association, Delhi. The Convention was conducted by
Radhika Menon, Convener of the FDI.

CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya hailed the
rural poor of Bihar and the people of Manipur who had paid
with their blood, their liberty and their lives to make laws
like TADA, POTA, AFSPA a national issue. He recalled how in
1988, it was sustained struggles that had made the police
firing on labourers in Arwal a national issue, and today it
was Manorama Devi's murder and the protests that follow it,
which had forced the horrors of AFSPA onto the consciousness
of the nation. He said that the democratic forces in the
country, who had made POTA an issue in the elections, were
now being taken for granted. He proposed that the Convention
resolve to take a delegation to meet the President and PM on
the issue. He appealed the house to send a team to see the
situation in Jehanabad first hand. He stressed the need for a
mass movement to exert pressure on the govt., and called upon
people to participate in the People's Tribunal on TADA to be
held on August 12 at Patna. CPI(M) MP Dipankar Mukherjee,
Forward Block leader  Devrajan, CPI leader Atul Anjan, and
RSP MP Abani Roy expressed solidarity with the struggles
against black laws. Abani Roy questioned the definition of
terrorism, saying even Bhagat Singh was branded a terrorist
by colonialists, and today workers and poor peasants were
being booked under "Terrorist Laws". He appealed to
strengthen the forces fighting against these laws and to go
for a vigorous struggle unitedly.

Speaking at the Convention writer Arundhati Roy said India
was showing the world how terrorism laws can be used. For the
US 'War against Terror' is nothing but a bogey to justify
imperialist aggression. In their view, "terrorism" is defined
to mean people resisting colonial occupation. All over the
world, poverty too is conflated with "terrorism". The machine
of neoliberal capitalism imposes one law after another to
suppress those who resist it. To view these laws as
mere "human rights violations" is to wish away their
political implications. The machine that assaults the poor,
the colonised and the minority nationalities cannot be
reduced to 'Bush' or 'BJP'. What is called for is a movement
against the system itself.

Addressing the Convention, eminent jurist Rajinder Sachar
said that the fact that the UPA government has failed to
repeal POTA yet, and is instead speaking of retaining some of
its clauses is an instance of 'hypocrisy in politics'.
Supreme Court lawyers Prashant Bhushan and Nandita Haksar
cautioned against divorcing struggle against such laws from
politics.
Ms. Haksar said that even if POTA is repealed or TADA cases
withdrawn, it does not guarantee that political establishment
will allow the democratic voices to be raised in people's
interests. As talks of repealing POTA are under way, there
are apprehensions that the anti-people provisions of this law
be included in the Indian Penal Code itself to eliminate any
need for the establishment to enact a separate law as
draconian as POTA. Moreover, our police and law and order
machinery is equally able to undermine democracy even without
such laws. They emphasised the bias inherent in our criminal
jurisprudence, whereby the white-collar criminals roam under
bail, and cases are withdrawn with witnesses being bought
off, while the people's activists and the poor are implicated
in false cases and have to fight legal battles for years.

Gautam Navlakha, Associate Editor EPW, pointed out that
leaders of landlord armies which massacre dalit poor are
never convicted under "Terror Laws", whereas even lapsed laws
like TADA are invoked  to sentence dalit landless labourers
to life imprisonment and even death. Clearly, he said, the
issue is not merely of 'civil liberties' but one of politics -
  since such laws clearly had the political intention of
snuffing out specific movements. The judicial procedure also
needs to be scrutinised thoroughly as even in Supreme Court a
verdict is issued by the three-judge bench though one of them
explicitly says the facts put up before the court as evidence
by the state are 'appalling'.
Prof. Kamal Mitra Chenoy and Tripta Wahi pointed out that the
ruling classes always brand class struggles as "anti-
national", and uses "national security" as an excuse to crush
dissent.

DU lecturer SAR Geelani spoke of systematic shrinkage of
democratic space in India, saying that India could be
considered "free" only if it was truly democratic. He said
laws like TADA, POTA, AFSPA were a threat to each citizen,
not just Kashmiris, Manipuris or the dalit poor of Andhra and
Bihar.

Speaking at the convention Sumit Chakravarty, editor
of 'Mainstream',  emphasised the real anti-people character
of the laws like TADA and POTA by asking how many terrorists
had actually been booked under these laws, which had in fact
been targeted at democratic struggles, poor tribals and
peasant activists. He expressed his solidarity with the
struggle of the CPI(ML) for the release of 14 convicted under
TADA and 17 others who are facing TADA cases though the Act
is now not in existence. He questioned the UPA govt. for it
agrees to repeal POTA but has said nothing whether it will be
with retrospective effect or not. By enacting black laws,
they intend to make the people of the nation more and more
insecure, he said.

CPI(ML) leader from Jehanabad Mahanand presented a detailed
account of repression of agri. labourers by the feudal-kulak-
criminal-police nexus enjoying protection of the state
government that led to the conviction for life for 14
activists of the CPI(ML) while 17 are still facing charges
under TADA in the district court of Jehanabad. He spoke of
the Arwal TADA case of 1988, in which a dispute over the
harvest of singhada pond was the excuse for imposing TADA on
innocent citizens arrested at random (including 2 children
aged 13 and 14) as well as local leaders of agrarian and
democratic struggles. The main accused in this case, who
along with 13 others has been sentenced to life imprisonment
by a TADA court, is Shah Chand, founding secretary of
Inquilabi Muslim Conference, and a former mukhiya whose work
to introduce innovations in canal irrigation and development
work free from corruption was hailed by the official quarters
as the "Chand Model". Shah Chand and 13 others are in jail
today, the Supreme Court having upheld the TADA court
judgement in which the possession of easily available Marxist
and Kisan Sabha literature is the only 'evidence' cited.
In another case from Jehanabad, 17 agricultural labourers
face trial under TADA. They found themselves charged under
TADA in 1989 when they complained to a labour inspector of a
wage dispute. Amazingly, the "social justice" government of
RJD, a key ally of the UPA, has chosen to open the TADA cases
against the likes of Shankar Mehtar, a sweeper, Vijay Paswan
and other dalit labourers, whose only crime was that of
protesting against the public humiliations and paltry wages
imposed by feudal landlords- a shame in independent India.
Notably the TADA case (in the selfsame district of Bihar)
against a notorious chieftain of the 'Sawarn Liberation
Front' (an upper caste private army), Ramadhar Singh, stands
withdrawn.

Social scientist Yogendra Yadav, journalist Anil Chamadia,
writer Pankaj Bisht, and poet Pankaj Singh also participated
in the convention.

Kuldeep Nayyar concluded by calling for a movement against
the state machinations which brand the movements of the poor
and marginalised as "terrorism". He appealed to the leaders
of the Left parties supporting the govt. to exert much more
pressure on the UPA govt. for repealing POTA and TADA. He
also expressed his feelings saying that if the govt. does not
pay any serious attention they should resign from the Co-
ordination Committee of the UPA in protest against the
continued use of such draconian laws.
The Convention adopted resolutions against anti-national,
anti-democratic draconian laws and ended with resolve to
intensify the movement against them.

RESOLUTIONS
(Adopted at the Citizens' Convention Against TADA, POTA held
in New Delhi on 6 August 2004)
It is with great concern that we note that nine years after
TADA was allowed to lapse the state is still using it to
crush political dissent and democratic protest. It is
shocking that this draconian law is still in use while most
political parties have agreed that its successor, POTA,
should be repealed.
In the case of the Bhadasi village of Arwal Police Station
(Bihar) 14 well known CPI(ML) activists, including Shah
Chand, Dr Jagdish Yadav, Churaman Bhagat and Arun Bharati,
who have struggled against social inequalities, police
repression and feudal terror of the landlords, were charged
and punished under TADA in the trial conducted in August 2003
by the sessions court of Jehanabad. In April 2004, the
Supreme too upheld this verdict treating peasant leaders as
terrorists and peasant association manuals as terrorist
literature. This case clearly indicates nine years after TADA
was allowed to lapse, the draconian law is still being used
as a tool for political victimisation.
Two other TADA trials are also going on in Jehanabad, in the
Mehandia thana case no 1/90, 17 agrarian labourers are being
tried under TADA, by the same Jehanabad court. The case has
its origins in a wage strike of agricultural labourers in
Belsar panchayat of Kaler block in 1989, when they complained
to the Labour Inspector against the Panchayat Mukhia, Vijay
Narain Sharma. The Mukhia, who is now with the Ranveer Sena,
implicated the labourers on concocted charges of making an
attempt on his life! In another case no. 108/89 under Kako
P.S. of Jehanabad district, as many as fifty-two agricultural
labourers and poor peasants are being victimised under TADA.
We find it particularly galling that in a district notorious
for police repression and massacres of the oppressed rural
poor, TADA has not been applied against any guilty police
official or feudal oppressor. In the only one case in which
TADA was invoked against a feudal oppressor (Ramadhar Singh
alias Diamond, founder of the notorious Sunlight Sena and
prime accused in Sawanbigha massacre of 21.09.91 in which six
dalit agricultural labourers were killed) it was withdrawn
soon after. On the other hand as many as 16 TADA cases have
been slapped on CPI(ML) activists in the district.
We find that laws like POTA and TADA erase the vital
difference between democratic protest and terrorism and must
therefore necessarily be repealed. As persons concerned about
human rights violations and political intimidation of
activists of democratic movement  we feel that draconian laws
like TADA and POTA can have no place in a democracy.
  We also condemn the recent incident of rape and murder of a
woman in Manipur by the armed forces' personnel. This is a
glaring example of one more such repressive and
discriminatory Acts, the "Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act
1958" which is widely being used by the armed forces as a
licence to abuse, rape and even murder of womenfolk, raids
and tortures of common people and to suppress democratic
movements particularly in the north-east and other bordering
states.
Hence we demand that :
*	The parliament repeals POTA.
*	The union government ensures that all cases under
TADA or POTA are summarily withdrawn.
*	The union government ensures unconditional and
immediate release of all social and political activists
detained under POTA and TADA.
*	The Bihar government withdraws the cases filed under
TADA and ensures the release of the 14 persons sentenced to
life imprisonment, in the Bhadasi case of Arwal as well as of
4 dalits sentenced to death under TADA in the Bara case.
*	The "Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958" is
withdrawn with immediate effect from Manipur and other
affected states.

[...].

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

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 
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