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
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