SACW | 18 Aug 2004

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire   |  18 August,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1]  Pakistan: Independence Day thoughts  (M B Naqvi)
[2]  Nepalese Supreme Court's Proposed Ban - 
Letter to the Minister of Home Affairs  (Scott 
Long)
[3]  Kashmiris burdened with one more party (Bashir Manzar)
[4]  Bangladesh: Fanatic tempers run high against Ahmadiyyas (Shamim Ashraf)
[5]  India:  Go Arjun, go  (Harish Khare )
[6]  URLs for recent video clip by Anand Patwardhan
[7]  India:  articles  available at the URL: communalism.blogpot.com/
Harsud Lost by  (Angana Chatterji)



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

[1]

The News International - August 18, 2004 | Op-Ed.

INDEPENDENCE DAY THOUGHTS

by M B Naqvi

Fifty-eighth Independence Day has just passed. It 
was a day to see how did we start and where do we 
stand. Most recall the sad setbacks; it has 
become a ritual. One has gone through it umpteen 
times. All assessments of the past show too many 
failures and too few successes. Plus points 
include a question-raising economic development 
and even more controversial "achievement" of 
having nuclear capability. This year let us 
consider the present and its challenges.

Pakistan, as if it was fated, is yet again under 
a one-man dictatorship. The Army remains in full 
control of national affairs and new institutions 
suggesting democracy are deceptive. The ruler has 
declared it is complete and 'real' democracy; 
nothing more need be expected. It is perhaps the 
maximum democracy that a military strongman can 
concede. Is it going to satisfy the 15 crore 
Pakistanis? The answer is blowing in the air 
-events suggest it. Those who do not swallow the 
official spin on events, notice four ongoing 
major struggles or polarisations. The first has 
been caused by the incurable itch of the Army to 
takeover: As soon as a takeover takes place, an 
army of civilian time-servers, sycophants, 
beggars and a portion of th social elites, the 
Khans, Chaudhries, Waders, Pirs etc all, rush to 
welcome the new Saviour and set up a new Muslim 
League to serve him permanently - until the next 
man on a horseback arrives. The rest of the 
populace remains unmoved and ignores the change. 
This division remains mostly dormant, except when 
some spark ignites a prairie fire of protests.

The oldest division was over ideology. Elites 
remain satisfied with Muslim Nationalism, 
invented by Muslim League regimes that love a 
Strong Centre and oppose regional or ethnic 
nationalisms. This invention came after 
successive governments ignored Jinnah's secular 
Pakistani Nationalism. Ethnic nationalists call 
themselves nationalities or sub-nationalisms. 
Four - Sindhi, Baloch, Pathan and Punjabi - 
sub-nationalisms are commonly recognised, though 
two others, viz. MQM's Mohajirs and Seraiki 
speakers, want admission to the nationalities 
club, PONM. This polarisation, for and against 
the Strong Centre, retains its explosive 
potential. It has repeatedly occasioned military 
crackdowns in East Pakistan, Balochistan and 
Sindh; the country lost its eastern wing just 
because of it. Two military actions, one in FATA 
and another in Balochistan, are going on and the 
national horizon is clouded.

There used to be a controversy between democracy 
or modern authoritarianism on one side and 
Islamic State - the latter also named as 
Nizam-i-Mustafa, Nizam-i-Islam or Islamic 
Ideology - on the other. Earlier religious 
leaders used to be satisfied with some Islamic 
Provisions written into the Constitution that 
rightist governments happily wrote; the growing 
volume of Islamic Provisions in each succeeding 
Constitution of 1954, 1956, 1962 and finally 1973 
was required. Somehow Ulema of all sects called 
each Constitution adequately Islamic at the time 
of its promulgation though shortly thereafter 
they always reverted to their variously named 
demands. The Ulema who had expressed voluble 
satisfaction with the new Constitution in 1973 as 
quite Islamic were loudest in demanding 
Nizam-i-Mustafa in 1977.

Today this contradiction has come alive as an 
open war rages between Islamabad and al-Qaeda; 
Taliban and assorted Jihadi organisations, if not 
the main religious parties or MMA assists the 
latter. Original war was between Washington and 
al Qaeda and Taliban combine. Since Pakistan 
betrayed Taliban and joined the American side, 
flag bearers of Militant Islam (Al Qaeda and 
Taliban) are fighting the military-controlled 
Islamabad. Suicide bombing, al Qaeda's signature 
tune, has arrived in Pakistan.

There are polarisations on foreign policy and on 
the economic paradigm. There is another on how to 
create a culture of tolerance and moderation; 
General. Musharraf claims he can create these 
laudable traits in Pakistanis by his speeches and 
employing law enforcement agencies and the 
military. Others demur. In short, the issues of 
foreign policy have largely defined the 
challenges before Pakistan today.

Pakistan's foreign policy has always turned on 
the Kashmir fulcrum: It joined the west in 1953 
for the sake of military aid and support on 
Kashmir in the UN; it went to war with India in 
1947-48, 1965 and 1999 for Kashmir; all 
negotiations with India broke down because India 
refused to do in Kashmir what Pakistan demanded 
in the 1960s, 1970s, 1990s; and the current 
series of talks are again threatened because 
Islamabad still wants tangible progress on 
Kashmir before it will actually make any other 
agreement.

General.Musharraf used to claim in 2001 and 2002 
that he switched sides in Afghanistan in order to 
preserve stances on Kashmir and nuclear weapons, 
thus foregoing much influence in, and friendship 
of, Afghanistan. Highest price paid by Pakistan 
for the sake of Kashmir is in the economic field 
in terms of lost opportunities of development. 
Why? Because it has to run a non-stop arms race 
with a bigger and richer neighbour. This cannot 
be stopped so long as Kashmir issue is not out of 
the way. Society has been militarised, 
democracy's foundations have been seriously 
weakened as a result. The outlook is bleak. 
Poverty and unemployment are creations of present 
policy and the deteriorating law and order cannot 
be improved or recruitment of Jihadis stopped 
without a radical change.

Pak-American relations are, despite close 
cooperation on al Qaeda, full of ugly potential, 
as American press and think tanks frequently 
remind. There is firm and persistent refusal to 
accept Pakistan's nuclear status, on the one 
hand, and the last of AQ Khan's story may not 
have been heard of, on the other. Pakistan's 
close relations with China do not frighten anyone 
today. But if Sino-American ties were to worsen, 
Pakistan can come under pressure. Gwadar port can 
itself become a temptation to the US Navy. There 
is a possible scenario of coming under a 
nutcracker of Indo-US cooperation against China.

Entire future depends on a radical shift in 
Pakistan's Kashmir-centred India policy. 
Strategically, Pakistan must cultivate as close a 
relationship with

India as possible and create durable structures 
of peace, including Indian vested interests in 
preserving friendship with Pakistan. Does that 
require giving up the Kashmiri cause altogether? 
Not necessarily. All it required was what 
Pakistan has already conceded - at least in 
words: it should refrain from infiltrating into 
IHK Pakistani and foreign Jihadist and stop 
gunrunning. If Pakistan were to remember the main 
lesson from 2002 Crisis - that neither side can 
start a war to change any part of status quo and 
that guns cannot liberate Kashmir - the total 
futility of old Kashmir policy becomes manifest. 
Whatever change in Kashmir has to happen, it will 
be due to what Kashmiris themselves managed to do 
to make India change tack. Some change is near 
certain. But Pakistan is not going to be the 
agency of that change.

Now if Kashmir is not to be liberated by 
Pakistan, the latter must recast its foreign 
policy. Also, we must look around in Pakistan and 
notice three main trends: economy's 5 to 6 per 
cent growth is producing more unemployment and 
poverty. That is bad background music for 
deteriorating law and order. The second is the 
growing religious intolerance is creating new 
theatres in Islamabad's war with al Qaeda. The 
latter is getting more recruits more easily, for 
the sources that produce would-be al Qaeda men or 
Jihadist are in full production. No one can say 
Pakistan and the US can win this war with better 
intelligence or policing only; al Qaeda cannot be 
contained without changing society's ambience.

Whatever the extent of Islamabad's present 
military action in South Waziristan and 
Balochistan, objectively Pak forces are again 
fighting regional nationalists; this is clear 
enough in Balochistan but this aspect is not 
absent in NWFP. Remember previous wars against 
regional nationalists in East Pakistan and 
Balochistan. We can forget East Pakistan. India's 
role confused that situation and provided a fig 
leaf to the Army. Does anyone really think that 
Bhutto or Zia won over Baloch nationalists in the 
1973 military action? What legacy has it left 
behind? The gun is no answer to a political 
demand. Let's talk while there is still time.

What policy changes can be expected to take the 
ship out of choppy waters? If Pakistan is not to 
go to war again - and it should accept that 
position - the huge military establishment needs 
to be drastically cut. Arms races need to be 
stopped. A purely defensive force structure - 
small more mobile, well equipped, well trained, 
and more professional and its officer corps 
tightly disciplined - is what we need. Nuclear 
weapons need to be rethought.

Economic development needs three times or more 
funds than it is getting in the public sector for 
infrastructure expansion. We need to evolve a 
Pakistan-specific paradigm of growth with social 
goals spelled out: creation of as many jobs each 
year as to provide for new entrants to labour 
force. A better redistribution of incomes policy 
is needed to counter the trend of rich becoming 
richer and poor poorer. Economic well being of 
the common people should be the specified goal. 
Each Pakistani needs to be made a stakeholder. 
Power must return from the Army Officers Messes 
to the poor and neglected commoners by 
re-establishing the supremacy of the Parliament 
in the first instance.

______



[2]


Human Rights Watch - July 23, 2004

Nepalese Supreme Court's Proposed Ban

LETTER TO THE MINISTER OF HOME AFFAIRS

The Hon. Purna Bahadur Khadka  
Minister of Home Affairs  
Ministry of Home Affairs,  
Singha Durbar, Kathmandu, Nepal  


Dear Minister:  

We are writing to express grave concern over the 
Nepalese Supreme Court's proposed ban on 
activities, including advocacy, by or on behalf 
of lesbians, gay men, transgender people, and men 
who have sex with men. The threatened ban comes 
in the wake of repeated recent allegations of 
police misconduct against these communities. We 
urge your Ministry to respond to the Court's 
recent writ by affirming that the basic freedoms 
of association, expression, and assembly must be 
enjoyed by all without discrimination. To do 
otherwise would be to endorse a flagrant 
violation of fundamental human rights. It would 
also silence those who document and defend 
against human rights abuses, and would send a 
dangerous message to those who perpetrate such 
abuses that they can do so with impunity.

As you are aware, on July 12, 2004, Nepal's 
Supreme Court issued a writ demanding that the 
Ministry of Home Affairs show cause within 
fifteen days why "open homosexual activities" 
should not be banned. The writ came in response 
to a petition by a private attorney, dated June 
18, requesting a ban on the activities of the 
Blue Diamond Society, a non-governmental 
organization working in the areas of sexual 
health and human rights. The petition accused the 
group of trying to "make homosexual activities 
legal." The petition demanded the organization be 
barred on the grounds that homosexual conduct is 
prohibited by law in Nepal.  

The Blue Diamond Society has engaged in outreach 
around issues of HIV/AIDS and other health 
concerns to communities of men who have sex with 
men and metis (transgender persons). It has also 
documented instances of police violence against 
these communities, called for official 
investigations, and raised public awareness about 
these abuses. These activities have frequently 
subjected the Blue Diamond Society and its 
constituencies to retaliation. Most recently, a 
demonstration organized by the Society on July 5 
to protest recent alleged police abuses against 
metis was disrupted by police while marching 
peacefully from the Bhadrakhali Temple toward 
Singha Durbar to present a petition to the Prime 
Minister. Police reportedly dispersed the group 
violently, beating several of the protesters.  

No express prohibition of adult, consensual 
homosexual conduct exists in Nepalese law. 
Paragraphs 1 and 4 of Part 4, Chapter 16 of 
Nepal's Muluki Ain (National Civil Code) penalize 
"unnatural sex" with up to one year's 
imprisonment. "Unnatural sex" is undefined in the 
Code. Although this law has been used by police 
to justify arrests of men suspected of having sex 
with men and of transgender people, a definition 
of the term that would criminalize consensual 
homosexual conduct between adults would in fact 
stand in violation of international legal 
standards. So, too, would any interpretation of 
the provision that would prohibit the outreach 
and advocacy work of the Blue Diamond Society.  

In the landmark case of Toonen v. Australia, in 
1994, the United Nations Human Rights 
Committee-which interprets and monitors state 
compliance with the International Covenant on 
Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)-held that laws 
criminalizing consensual homosexual conduct 
violate both the right to privacy and protections 
against discrimination in the ICCPR. Articles 2 
and 26 of the ICCPR, to which Nepal acceded in 
1991, recognize that all persons are equal before 
the law and are entitled to protection from 
discrimination on any ground. The Human Rights 
Committee held that "sexual orientation" should 
be understood to be protected against 
discrimination under these provisions.  

Restricting or halting the work of the Blue 
Diamond Society would represent a gross affront 
to the principles of freedom of association, 
assembly, and expression. These principles are 
also enshrined in international legal standards. 
Article 22 of the ICCPR states that "Everyone 
shall have the right to freedom of association 
with others." Article 21 of the ICCPR protects 
the freedom of peaceful assembly. Article 19 of 
the ICCPR protects the "freedom to seek, receive 
and impart information and ideas of all kinds, 
regardless of frontiers, either orally, in 
writing or in print, in the form of art, or 
through any other media."  

Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa's 
twenty-five-point "Commitment Paper" on human 
rights, issued in March 2004, states that 
"Government's main focus will be to protect the 
rights of all the citizens." The freedoms of 
expression and association were affirmed in items 
15 and 16 of the paper. This public reaffirmation 
assisted the government to avoid a resolution at 
the annual session of the U.N. Commission on 
Human Rights condemning Nepal's rights record. If 
the government proceeds with the threat to shut 
down the Blue Diamond Society, it will expose its 
own reiterated commitment to rights protections 
as little more than window-dressing.  

For your Ministry to endorse the banning of the 
Blue Diamond Society's work would send a 
particularly devastating message about the lack 
of security accorded human rights defenders in 
Nepal.  

Article 5 of the U.N. General Assembly's 
"Declaration on Human Rights Defenders" affirms 
that "everyone has the right, individually and in 
association with others Š to meet or assemble 
peacefully," and "to form, join, and participate 
in non-governmental organizations, associations 
or groups." Article 7 affirms the right "to 
develop and to discuss new human rights ideas and 
principles and to advocate for their acceptance." 
Indeed, the Special Representative of the U.N. 
Secretary General on Human Rights Defenders has 
called attention to the "special importance" of 
the work of "human rights groups and those who 
are active on issues of sexuality, especially 
sexual orientation. Š These groups are often very 
vulnerable to prejudice, to marginalization and 
to public repudiation, not only by state forces 
but by other social actors."  

Human Rights Watch therefore calls on you:  

*	To abide by Nepal's international 
obligations and affirm to the Supreme Court that 
there is no cause for banning "open homosexual 
activities" under Nepalese law.  

*	To ensure a full and impartial 
investigation of police abuse against metis, men 
who have sex with men, and members of other 
groups, reported by the Blue Diamond Society or 
other civil society agents.  

*	To discipline any individuals found 
responsible for wrongdoing as a result, and bring 
them to justice if they are discovered to have 
carried out illegal actions.  

*	To eliminate any grounds for ambiguity in 
Nepalese law by repealing the criminalization of 
"unnatural sex" in paragraphs 1 and 4 of Part 14, 
Chapter 16 of Nepal's Code of 1963 (Muluki Ain).  

Thank you for your attention. We look forward to your reply.  

Scott Long  
Director  
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Project  
Human Rights Watch  


Cc: Ministry of Law, Justice, and Parliamentary Affairs  
Singha Durbar  
Kathmandu  
Nepal  


______


[3]

Date: 11 Aug 2004

KASHMIRIS BURDENED WITH ONE MORE PARTY

by Bashir Manzar

Syed Ali Geelani has floated a new party adding 
to the plethora of parties already in circulation 
in Kashmir. Will Kashmir achieve Azadi now? 
Thousands of Kashmiris have died, thousands 
rendered homeless, thousands jailed, thousands of 
orphans and widows, a social catastrophe staring 
at our face, destruction of social institutions. 
While those who lost their loved ones grieve in 
silence - the self styled advocates of this pool 
of sacred sacrifices audaciously bicker; 
battering away the blood that has been spilled. 
Why did they unite and why did they fall apart? 
Was Geelani justified in dividing almost unified 
separatist camp over the issue of proxy 
participation of Peoples Conference (PC) in 2002 
elections? A massive show of strength by Sajad 
Lone, the 'proxy villain' on May 22 this year 
proved beyond doubt that the real PC lay with 
neither of the two Hurriyats. If PC was the cause 
of split, it is no longer in any of the two 
Hurriyats. Then why are they not uniting? Because 
it is the self interest and not PC that has 
divided the separatist camp. May somebody ask 
Geelani that what he had done for Kashmiris 
before, as he says, proxy participation of PC in 
election or even after that? Serious allegations 
were made against him and he is yet to answer.

Mind! There are no holy cows who can issue 
character certificates. Make no mistake. They are 
all the same. A flood of rootless leaders 
sponsored by India and Pakistan and hyper hyped 
by media to prove that they are the real chosen 
ones desperately pushing each other in the mad 
rush for goodies. Ever since these political 
guzzlings graced the political spectrum, 
Kashmiris have seen nothing but death and 
destruction.

And what the other Hurriyat has done? They went 
to talk to New Delhi in what was hyped as 
international event. At the time of talks, unity 
did not cross their minds. Now suddenly the 
chairman of that Hurriyat gets unity pangs and 
resigns in the interests of the Kashmiri nation 
to unite everybody. Is it unity or increased 
violence or an SMS from Riyaz Khokhar that is 
occupying the mind of the leaders of this 
Hurriyat? Mr Ex-Chairman, here are no takers for 
'in the interest of the nation' line. This line 
is stale and least suits the separatist camp. The 
onus of running away from talks lies on Hurriyat 
and not India. Strange - Hurriyat is made for 
Kashmiris. It delivered for India, delivered for 
Pakistan, delivered for Kashmiri leaders but 
never delivered for the people of Kashmir.

May we dare to tell Profesors, Geelanis and 
Mirwaizs that you are not the cause. The cause is 
the thousands of people who laid down their 
lives. Could these 'leaders' pause for a while 
and look back over the death and destruction they 
have presided over. May these leaders be reminded 
of trite dialogues that they all deliver in this 
theatre of death? "We will not betray the 
sacrifices made by the people of Kashmir." Let 
these leaders put their hands on their hearts and 
tell who betrayed the sacrifices. In these 
columns we make a prediction that time is coming 
when active and passive security provided to 
these leaders by India and Pakistan would not be 
able to save them from the wrath of the people.

www.kashmirimages.info

______



[4]

The Daily Star - August 18, 2004 	 

FANATIC TEMPERS RUN HIGH AGAINST AHMADIYYAS
Attack on sect's HQ on Aug 27 planned
Shamim Ashraf

Religious bigots encouraged apparently by the ban 
on Ahmadiyya publications intensified aggression 
to the religious minority sect in a desperate bid 
to force the government to declare the Ahmadiyyas 
non-Muslim.

The religious affairs and home ministries and the 
police shifted the responsibility onto others of 
stopping repression of 1 lakh Ahmadiyyas in 
Bangladesh since October last year.

The Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ), part of the ruling 
alliance, spearheaded the so-called 
anti-Ahmadiyya movement. The government sees a 
few religious bigots as an 'irresistible mass' 
who are pressing their demands, including a ban 
on Islamic terms for Ahmadiyyas and their burial 
at Muslim graveyards and removal of the members 
of the sect from government offices.

Fanatics are set to attack the sect's 
headquarters in Bakshibazar on August 27, 
according to a decision of Aamra Dhakabashi, a 
cultural organisation that threw its weight 
behind other religious outfits.

When the zealots went to drive away Ahmadiyyas 
from their mosques in Patuakhali on May 12, 
Chittagong on May 28 and Khulna on August 13, law 
enforcers led them to hang signboards that 
branded the mosques as 'Kadiani (Ahmadiyya) 
Places of Worship'.

"It (resisting the zealots) is not concern of my 
ministry. The home ministry is to act on this," 
State Minister for Religious Affairs Mosharef 
Hossain Shajahan told The Daily Star.

But State Minister for Home Lutfozzaman Babar 
said on Sunday he did not have details about the 
issue and asked the correspondent to contact the 
police.

But Inspector General of Police (IGP) Shahudul 
Haque said: "Police had no option but to allow 
anti-Ahmadiyya groups to hang the signboards as 
several thousands went there."

The Ahmadiyyas follow the same rituals as Sunnis 
who are 90 percent of Bangladeshi Muslims, apart 
from their belief that Imam Mehdi, the last 
messenger of Prophet Muhammad, has already 
arrived to uphold Islam as it was preached 1400 
years ago. But the Sunnis believe Mehdi is yet to 
come.

Trampling Ahmadiyyas' fundamental rights, the 
government on January 8 banned their publications 
for what it said was "objectionable material 
which hurt or might hurt the sentiments of the 
majority Muslim population of Bangladesh".

The same day, the government issued an official 
circular to central, divisional and district 
officers naming 20 Ahmadiyya books, booklets and 
leaflets as banned.

The government tried to justify the ban saying it 
did so to save the Ahmadiyyas from the wrath of 
agitating zealots. "The home ministry suggested 
the ban and I agreed. I feared the situation 
might take a violent turn," Mosharef said.

The order was not published in the official 
gazette until yesterday and Foreign Minister 
Morshed Khan tried to defend the government in a 
BBC Radio interview, saying no gazette 
notification was made.

But the police have reportedly been instructed to 
remove the Ahmadiyya publications in a drive that 
they carried out in parts of the country.

"We cannot go for legal steps against the ban as 
the government is yet to inform us nor did it 
publish the order in official gazette," Ahmadiyya 
spokesman Tareq Mobasher told The Daily Star.

The Islami Shashantantra Andolon, International 
Majlishe Tahaffuze Khatme Nabuwat, International 
Khatme Nabuwat Movement Bangladesh, Hifazate 
Khatme Nabuwat Andolon, Khatme Nabuwat Committee 
Bangladesh and Khatme Nabuwat Andolon Parishad 
Bangladesh (KNAPB) also intensified torture, 
including killing, beating, excommunicating and 
house arrest of the Ahmadiyyas living in 
Bangladesh since 1912.

At least eight people of the community were 
killed in Bangladesh since independence, with a 
preacher murdered in Jessore on October 31 last 
year as the latest victim.

The bigots raided several Ahmadiyya mosques 
across the country, including one in Nakhalpara 
in the capital and seized Ahmadiyya publications.

"We will make it an issue in the next general 
election if the government does not declare the 
Ahmadiyyas non-Muslim," a KNAPB leader threatened 
at a press conference Sunday, claiming that 
Jamaat-e-Islami, a ruling coalition partner, is 
supporting them.

Abdul Awal, missionary of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat 
Bangladesh, told The Daily Star: "The government 
caved in to the bigots, making them stronger."

"This is not what Bangladesh and its constitution 
stands for. It is the total failure of the 
government to uphold citizens' rights," he said.

"We have seen an ugly display of Talibanism over 
the last 11 months," he said, asking all to unite 
against it.

Civil society, political parties, rights 
organisations, including the United Nations Human 
Rights Commission, Amnesty International and US 
State Department called on the government to lift 
the ban, ensure safety of Ahmadiyyas, uphold 
their fundamental rights and try their attackers.

Admitting that the ban restricts Ahmadiyyas' 
fundamental rights, Mosharef said it might have 
prompted the anti-Ahmadiyya groups to move 
further for declaration of Ahmadiyyas non-Muslim.
But he is against lifting the ban and resisting 
zealots from going to Ahmadiyya mosques at this 
moment. "A fanatic group is there to add fuel to 
anti-Ahmadiyya groups' wrath." On the signboards, 
he said, "We may remove them later."

The IGP suggested: "A decision should come from 
the higher authorities and the civil society must 
raise their voice against the anti-Ahmadiyya 
move."


______



[5]

The Hindu - August 18, 2004  |  Op-Ed.

GO ARJUN, GO

by Harish Khare

The RSS-Arjun Singh battle should embolden the 
liberal community to rediscover its voice and its 
faith in Nehruvian values.

THE UNION Human Resource Development Minister, 
Arjun Singh, has intrepidly called the Rashtriya 
Swayamsevak Sangh's bluff. Rather than getting 
cowed down by the RSS' threat of a legal case, 
the Union Minister has virtually told the Nagpur 
brass to take a hike. The onus is now on these 
self-styled desh bhakhts to decide whether they 
want to expose their organisation to what could 
become an exacting judicial scrutiny and a 
prolonged public exposé. The country does need a 
grand trial on the question of culpability of 
those other than Nathuram Godse in Mahatma 
Gandhi's assassination. It would be a wonderful 
tonic for the entire country to learn a little 
about the men, their ideas and infatuations and 
the organisational habits of a group that never 
accepted the Mahatma or his message of secular 
brotherhood. Quite unwittingly, Mr. Singh has 
stumbled upon a stratagem that could help the 
polity rediscover its liberal equilibrium.

Expectedly, the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders 
and their spear-carriers in the media have raised 
questions about Mr. Singh's motives in taking on 
the RSS. The insinuation is that the Minister's 
real target is the Prime Minister, not the Sangh. 
Mr. Singh's reputation perhaps invites these 
kinds of suggestions. However, anyone familiar 
with the current realpolitik power equations of 
the Congress party can easily arrive at two 
simple and obvious inferences.

First, the Arjun Singh of 2004 is not the Arjun 
Singh of 1994-95; today he has very little 
personal following in the party. No one in the 
party thinks of him as a Prime Ministerial 
contender. Whereas in 1991 he could easily walk 
into the Narashima Rao Cabinet as the 
undesignated No. 2, his entry itself into the 
Manmohan Singh Government was a touch and go 
affair. Second, in 1994-1995 when he took on the 
then Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, he could 
entertain the fiction that he had the silent 
consent, if not the connivance, of 10 Janpath. 
Today, there is no scope for him - nor for that 
matter, for anyone else in and out of the 
Congress - to misunderstand or misinterpret Sonia 
Gandhi's total commitment to the Manmohan Singh 
Government's success and longevity.

However, given his many enemies, within and 
outside the Congress, doubts will persist about 
the wisdom of Mr. Arjun Singh's anti-RSS 
pinpricks. He is quite capable of dealing 
competently with his detractors. The only 
worthwhile caveat against the Union Minister that 
needs to be taken note of is the argument that he 
has created a situation whereby the BJP 
leadership would be forced to come to the aid of 
the Jhandewalan gang.

This is too facile an argument. If the BJP 
embraces the RSS, so be it. After all, it is not 
Mr. Singh's or the Congress party's obligation to 
help the BJP leaders extricate themselves from 
the RSS company. Nor, to be precise, do these 
leaders want to liberate themselves from their 
"soul" called the RSS. The Congress certainly 
stands nothing to lose if the so-called 
"moderates" within the BJP were to appear as cut 
from the same RSS cloth as the self-styled 
hardliners. Indeed, the Congress should welcome a 
BJP that is seen as totally tied to the RSS apron 
strings; the middle classes in India would then 
be forced to rethink their ambivalence towards 
the Hindutva party.

However, there is a much larger context to the 
Arjun Singh-RSS battle of nerves. The RSS threat 
of legal action against Mr. Singh is to be seen 
as part of the Sangh Parivar's strategy of 
manufacturing judicial respectability for itself. 
After having questioned for long the judiciary's 
competence to pronounce in "a matter of faith" 
(Lord Rama's birth place), the Sangh Parivar has 
gleefully seized upon the Supreme Court's 
majority judgment in the Hindutva case. The Sangh 
and its ideologues selectively used Justice J.S. 
Verma's words to proclaim the apex court had 
legitimised their definition of Hindutva and its 
core beliefs.

Ever since the Verma judgment, the Sangh Parivar 
has been only too prone to threaten its political 
detractors and rivals with a legal battle. It has 
tried to instil a fear among its critics that 
their opposition to the Parivar would entail the 
additional complication of a legal entanglement. 
It is indeed an irony that an inherently 
anti-democratic group should be able to use the 
legal accoutrements of a liberal Constitution to 
browbeat its critics. The threat against Mr. 
Singh is part of a familiar pattern and it is 
about time someone picked up the RSS' gauntlet. 
The trials relating to the post-Godhra violence 
have exposed the Hindutva brigade to unflattering 
judicial scrutiny, and it would be an act of 
national catharsis if the judiciary at the 
highest level were to undertake a kind of audit 
of the Sangh Parivar's historical role in the 
pre- and post-Partition events.

Building on this spuriously manufactured judicial 
sanction for its Hindutva beliefs, the BJP began 
garnering political respectability for the RSS 
and its agenda. It helped the party win over a 
section of the middle classes; once in power at 
the Centre, the party milked the Kargil 
nationalism to enhance the Hindutva agenda. It 
was even tempted to redefine the basic 
constitutional scheme of things; the National 
Commission to Review the Working of the 
Constitution was a sleight-of-hand attempt to 
create quasi-judicial sanction for a majoritarian 
governing arrangement. The BJP establishment 
proceeded on the assumption that the judiciary 
was no longer averse to granting it its sectarian 
wishes; in particular, after 9/11, the Sangh 
Parivar presumed that it had the global 
understanding and the American nod to indulge in 
its anti-minority reflexes.

The deliberate delusion that the Sangh Parivar 
has the judicial sanction to carry on its 
business needs to be demolished, and the Sangh 
Parivar-Arjun Singh spat might just do that. As 
it is, the ambivalent and the timid in the civil 
and police bureaucracy have already come to terms 
with the essence of the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. 
Even the BJP crowd has lost its aggressive voice.

Look at Narendra Modi. On August 15, 2003, he had 
moved the traditional Independence Day function 
to Patan, the seat of the Solanki dynasty in 
8th-11th Century that lost its glory when Mahmud 
of Ghazni attacked it in 1024; the Chief Minister 
pointedly donned the RSS black cap while hoisting 
the national flag. This year, it was an 
altogether different scene. The Chief Minister 
instructed all his Cabinet Ministers to sport the 
traditional saffa (conventional headgear) and to 
talk of Sardar Patel and development. Mr. Modi 
could hardly run the risk of giving a sectarian 
colour to a secular and democratic rite; nor 
could he dare invite the displeasure of the 
Centre.

The RSS threat against Mr. Arjun Singh is the 
last roll of the dice in the hope of recouping, 
through a judicial verdict, its lost fortunes. It 
is about time there was a discussion of the RSS 
and its role in the affairs of the BJP and, by 
extension, in the national arena. Its claim to 
being a nationalist organisation does not absolve 
the outfit of the obligations of transparency and 
accountability. A grand trial would add a new 
chapter to our national education; here is a 
group of people that claims a right to interfere 
in how the BJP behaves in and out of power - even 
foists a Deputy Prime Minister on the country - 
and yet has escaped a scrutiny of its 
extra-constitutional role. It is about time.

More than judicially putting the Sangh Parivar in 
its place, the RSS-Arjun Singh battle should 
embolden the liberal community to rediscover its 
voice and its faith in Nehruvian values. It is a 
different matter that the Congress party itself 
is guilty of jettisoning many of Nehru's liberal 
instincts. That does not mean that the RSS' 
claims and pretensions cannot be challenged. And 
in any case, the battle for Nehru's idea of India 
cannot be left to be fought only by the Congress. 
Mr. Singh has become just an accidental soldier 
in a battle that was long overdue.




______



[6]

Op-ed, Asian Age, August 18, 2004

HARSUD LOST

by Angana Chatterji

They stood there, the guards, and ordered me to 
tear down my home. It felt like my bones were 
breaking.
Sunder Bai, Harsud, 2004


Long ago, in a time of hope, on September 28, 
1989, I was in Harsud at the rally of 30,000. 
"Kohi nahin hate ga, bandh nahin banega (no one 
will move, the dam will not be built)" had 
reverberated across the Narmada Valley as village 
upon village committed to resistance against 
destructive development promulgated by large 
dams. Almost 15 years later, I travelled to 
Harsud to witness the rape of cultures and 
histories, memories and futures, as people are 
forced into destitution. On August 3 and 4, 
hundreds from 10 villages, a town and seven 
resettlement colonies registered their grievances 
at public hearings. Chenera, Harsud, Bhavarali, 
Chikli, Jhinghad, Ambakhal, Barud, Kala Patha, 
Balladi, Khudia Mal, Purni, Bangarda, Jhabgaon, 
Jalwa, Dabri, Borkhedakala, Bedani, Borkheda. 
And, those from Gulas, Abhera, Jabgaon, Nagpur, 
places that are no more, chronicled in the 
register of dead settlements from which the 
Narmada Sagar dam draws its life force.

The Narmada Sagar (formally the Indira Sagar 
Pariyojana), a multipurpose project, has been in 
construction for decades. It is one of the 30 
large dams on the Narmada River as it passes 
through the states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra 
and Gujarat. The Narmada watershed is home to 20 
million peasants and adivasi people whose 
subsistence is critically linked to land, forests 
and water. At 262.19 metres, the Narmada Sagar is 
located in east Nimar in Madhya Pradesh. It will 
submerge 249 villages, displace 30,739 families, 
91,348 hectares of land, 41,444 of which are 
forests, to yield 1,000 MW of electricity and 
irrigate 123,000 hectares of land, a third of 
which is already irrigated. The resettlement and 
rehabilitation policy, shaped especially by the 
Narmada Water Disputes Tribunal Award, includes a 
land for land clause. In its present and 
inadequate form, resettlement and rehabilitation 
provisions are being violated systematically.

Over the last few months, bulldozers razed homes 
across Khandwa as belongings were dragged out and 
mangled. State apparatuses are precise in their 
execution of forcible displacement. Adivasi and 
peasant lives are under siege in the Narmada 
Valley, their annexation into maldevelopment 
justified as necessary to national advancement. 
"We are like waste to the government. You do not 
rehabilitate waste, you bury it. Our town and 
souls are being buried. We have appealed to the 
government, to the courts, to the country. Our 
pleas are thrown away. We are left to decay," 
says Atma Ram. "If we protest, the police beat 
us. They threaten us, our families," states a 
youth activist.

Harsud, the 700-year-old town, was broken on July 
1, 2004. Yet, all its citizens refuse to leave. 
Some believe that the town will not submerge for 
another year or two. "Where will we go?" asks 
Laloo Bhai. "We have lived here for generations. 
Here I am somebody. When something happens, 
people come and stand by us. Elsewhere, we are 
nothing." The town is partly vacated, partly 
living.

Chanera, a resettlement site, orders rows of 
houses amidst desolation, a prison complex, a 
place of exile. No water, electricity, roads, 
sewers, bazaars. A temporary school with absent 
teachers. A swing stands in a hollowed out yard 
in front. Children play, seeking to forget. A 
home has imploded into itself, crumbling under 
the leaden skies. A makeshift shelter of a few 
rectangular tin sheets and saris stretched into 
fragile walls threatens to collapse at the hint 
of rain. "I was divorced through talaq," says 
Chhoti Bibi, "but authorities have refused me 
compensation." We met a young woman, her husband 
died caught in the electrical wires outside their 
home. The authorities have refused to accept 
responsibility for his death.

In "new Harsud" there is no employment. The 
wealthy have moved away to Indore, Bhopal, 
Udaipur. The resettlement camp is populated by 
the economically disenfranchised, making it easy 
for the authorities to dismiss their concerns. 
"What shall I do? I received Rs 25,000 and no 
land. I was forced out of Harsud. My adult sons 
were listed as minors. I showed authorities 
ration cards, voter identification. They ignored 
us. I was a mazdoor. In Harsud I paid Rs 300 
rent. Here I pay Rs 700. I have been using the 
compensation money to live. It will run out very 
soon. After that?" asks a mother of three.

A Hindutva organisation has posted a sign, 
promising relief. The Sangh Parivar seeks to 
repeat their performance in Gujarat (after the 
earthquake in 2001) and Orissa (post cyclone in 
1999). There, relief work undertaken in a 
sectarian manner by Parivar organisations 
provided the soldiers of Hindutva with a foothold 
through which to exploit disaster to foster a 
politics of hate.

The violence of the everyday experienced by 
people defies comprehension. Brutality 
infiltrates into the imagination of the 
acceptable, as oppression lives through the 
state's mistreatment of the poor, made intense by 
hierarchies of caste, tribe, religion and gender. 
Beyond Harsud, surrounding villages are 
devastated. In Jhinghad, people were informed 
that the village would partially submerge. Half 
its residents were ordered out. In the other 
half, hand pumps were wrecked, even as residents 
were told that they are not going to drown. Why 
then were public services destroyed and 
disrupted? We stop at Bangarda. "I am landless, 
so they said they are not responsible," says a 
Gond adivasi elder, his body taut with despair. 
"My sons are far away, I am old and very poor. My 
wife passed away. They have given me nothing." 
Faces etched with anger and sadness. Who bears 
responsibility for the multitudes a nation 
renders invisible?

In the absence of a movement that unifies 
resistance, people are wary of each other. 
Chittaroopa Palit and Alok Agarwal of the Narmada 
Bachao Andolan travel from village through 
devastated village, day after long day, seeking 
to collectivise the struggle. "Hum sabh ek hein 
(we are all one)" echoes as we leave Kala Patha. 
"The struggle for justice is about the right to 
life," Chittaroopa says. The right to life here 
is linked intimately to the right to land. 
Relations to land shape knowledge, dignity, 
income, ways of being. Land is critical to the 
capacity of these cultures to endure.

Authorities celebrate that the Narmada Sagar will 
be completed ahead of schedule, in 2004 rather 
than 2005, even as the conditions prescribed for 
resettlement and rehabilitation have been 
dishonoured, along with the prerequisite that the 
state provide a minimum of 2 hectares of 
irrigated land to those landed. Cash compensation 
- Rs 40,000 for non-irrigated, Rs 60,000 for 
irrigated land - is inadequate. Women are not 
listed as co-title holders. The landless are not 
provided land as displacement leaves them bereft 
of livelihood resources. Seasonal migrants are 
often excluded. Submerged land owned by the 
government has not been assessed for livelihood 
resources that it provided the disenfranchised. 
Terror inflicted through deracination.

"The Narmada gave us life. They have turned her 
against us," grieves Parbati Bai. Rehabilitation 
for the 85 villages partially and fully 
submerged, and the 32 scheduled for submergence 
in 2004, the people charge, must ensure that the 
displaced are provided compensation in accordance 
with the Land Acquisition Act and the Narmada 
Award. The remaining 132 villages must be 
rehabilitated prior to the completion of the dam, 
even if it requires halting construction.

Beyond Purni the land is engulfed by the 
reservoir, an infinite stretch of gloomy water 
beneath which lies the Atlantis of the Narmada 
Valley. Daunting questions of cultural survival 
and self-determination of adivasi and peasant 
peoples persist. Narmada Sagar exemplifies the 
violence of nation-making in India today. 
Unnecessary social suffering dispensed by 
national dreams and global capital distributed 
among peoples, cultures, flora, fauna, birds, 
trees, animals. One thousand more dams are 
promised us, even as freedom remains distant for 
350 million of India's poorest citizens. Shall we 
ask them what this means to their lives?


* Angana Chatterji is associate professor of 
social and cultural anthropology at the 
California Institute of Integral Studies


______


[7]

Below are the URLs of a recent video clip by Anand Patwardhan.
this is related to the Iraq war and is connected to a talk
that he presented at the World Bank.

URL: 
www.streamload.com/Deliver/Deliver.asp?cxInstID=14084796&nodeID=32325986&returnPage=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Estreamload%2Ecom%2FNodes%2FNode%2Easp%3FcxInstID%3D14084796%26nodeID%3D78750567

URL: www.streamload.com/images_you_didnt_see/images_you_didnt_see_video_hi
ghres_download.zip

More on his website www.patwardhan.com

______


[7]

[Full text of the below articles and more is 
available at the URL: communalism.blogspot.com/ ]


Back to Basics: CABE Examines Social, Cultural Basis of Education
Anil Sadgopal (The Times of India - August 18, 2004  |  Op-Ed.)

Indian Army's new Enfield rifle [ Instructions re 
Secularism in the Indian Army ]
by Abhijit Bhattacharyya (The Pioneer - August 18, 2004 | Op-Ed.)

Former intelligence top cop blows Modi's cover
Leena Misra (The Times of India - August 18, 2004)

Armour for victims Gujarat
Basant Rawat  (The Telegraph - August 18, 2004)

______


[7]




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