SACW | 3 Sep 2004

[sacw]

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

[ Interruption notice:
Please note SACW dispatches will remain interrupted during the period 
Sept 4 - Sept 12.  ]


=======

[1]  Sri - Lanka: Draft  Briefing Paper on Women's Rights Bill, Sri Lanka
[2]  India Homophobia rules the roost
- India court rejects gay petition (Ayanjit Sen)
- HC rejects plea to make homosexuality legal
- Blame the Law: Section 377 Drives Gays Into A Twilight Zone (Shaleen Rakesh)
[3] Pakistan: Religious extremism: fringe or mainstream? (Suroosh Irfani)
[4] Book Review: "The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in 
Eastern India
edited by Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta"
[5]  Pakistan India: PIPFPD's 10th anniversary: Indian peace team 
crosses Wagah today
[6] UK: Join the Anti Child-Hejab Campaign Demo (London, 4 September)


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

[1]

Sri - Lanka

Draft
BRIEFING PAPER ON WOMEN'S RIGHTS BILL, SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka ratified CEDAW in 1981 and thereafter in 1993 adopted our 
own Women's Charter, which attempted to go beyond the CEDAW to 
reflect the special needs of women in Sri Lanka. The charter also 
made provision for the establishment of a National Committee for 
Women (NCW) to implement the charter. The NCW comprises of 14 women 
appointed by the President for a period of 4 years and has the power 
to:
1. Receive complaints on gender discrimination and refer such 
complaints to appropriate authorities;
2. Monitor action taken and give publicity to the work carried out above;
3. Evaluate the impact on all legislative and development policies on 
the rights and responsibilities of women;
4. Conduct research to facilitate achieving the objectives of the 
Charter and make recommendations for reform
5. Advise the Minister of Women's Affairs on matters relating to the 
status of women when required by the Minister when the NCW considers 
it necessary.

As the Charter is merely a policy document, and the committee has 
only limited powers, there has been an ongoing debate and discussion 
on converting the Committee to a fully fledged Women's Commission for 
some time now. A bill to provide for the establishment of a National 
Commission on Women was first drafted in 1998 and then amended in 
2002, with no further action being taken. This bill has been 
reformulated by the Ministry of Women's Affairs under the title 
'Women's Rights Bill' and was released for public comment in February 
2004. A Workshop to discuss the bill was also organised by the 
Ministry of Women's Affairs on 30th July 2004.  In its current 
incarnation, the draft 'Women's Rights bill has raised the following 
issues:

Conceptualisation of Bill
The bill is in two parts. Part 1 lays down certain rights of women. 
Part 2 deals with the creation of the Commission and its powers and 
functions.

Bill of Rights
In relation to the Bill of Rights, part 1, Sec. 2 of the bill seeks 
to affirm Article 12 of the  SL Constitution which guarantees the 
right to equality and goes on to enumerate certain rights of women. 
This however is not an exhaustive list, and the inclusion of only 
some rights in the draft bill has been questioned. It seems to create 
a hierarchy of rights, given that the right to gender equality is 
already guaranteed by the constitution, and the Women's Charter 
spells out these rights in detail. (The Charter forms part of the 
Bill as a Schedule at the back). There is consensus on the need to 
rethink the Bill of Rights part. Should it be a part of this Act? If 
so do we need to formulate an exhaustive Bill of Rights or is it 
sufficient to annex the Women's Charter in its present form. Or is 
there a need to amend or add to the Charter as it is now more than 10 
years since it was drafted to see whether we need to incorporate new 
rights into the charter.

The structure;
Part 2 of bill envisages the establishment of a Commission, and two 
other bodies, namely a Gender Advisory Council and a Gender Impact 
Committee to promote, protect and advance women's rights in Sri 
Lanka. In terms of sec. 15 of the Draft bill, the Commission has the 
following powers:
a) to call for reports or invite complaints into and investigate any 
infringement or imminent infringement of women's rights
b) Hear complaints made by third parties in connection with the 
infringement or imminent infringement of women's rights
c) Intervene in any proceedings relating to the infringement or 
imminent infringement of women's rights pending before any court with 
the permission of such court;
d) Study and report on economic conditions and their impact on women
e) Discourage socio-cultural practices harmful to women and girls
f) To issue guidelines in relation to women's rights
g) Formulate affirmative programmes to recognise 'female headed 
households' and the ways of dealing with their specific content.

The major concern in relation to powers has been whether (d) - (g) 
should be moved from this section to a section on objectives, and 
that 15(g) should not be limited to'female headed households'

The bill also envisages the setting up of a Gender Advisory Council 
comprising of 19 members which will be entrusted with the following 
functions:
a) Advice the commission on policies, plans, programmes and projects 
to be included in the National Plan and on the need for legislation 
in relation to the same;
b) Respond to women's issues and refer such matters to the commission;
c) Interact with provincial councils and bodies connected with women's issues
d) Promote women's rights, and
e) Summon officers and obtain information relating to matters 
connected with women's rights.

In addition, the bill also creates a Gender Impact Committee to 
appraise the manner in which prevailing policies, plans and 
programmes of the Government and other agencies affect women.

There is general agreement among NGO's that this structure is too 
complicated, and merely creates more bureaucracy. There already 
exists in Sri Lanka, a Women's Ministry and a Women's Bureau. The 
opinion was expressed that these institutions will become redundant 
in the face of the structures created by the women's rights bill. The 
functions of the Gender Advisory Council can very well be performed 
by the Gender Commission and the NGO recommendation is that is should 
be taken off completely. But the commission should have the power to 
appoint ad-hoc committees as and when required to perform specific 
functions as in the case of South Africa. It was agreed that the 
Gender Impact Committee could remain to monitor govt. policies, 
plans, and programmes in the way they affect women.

Other issues raised by the draft
1. Composition of the Commission: In terms of sec. 4 of the draft, 
the Commission is to consist of 7 members, 'all of whom shall be 
women'. There is still an ongoing debate on whether the membership 
should be exclusively limited to women.
2. Appointments to the Commission: Appointments to the Commission are 
made by the Minister in Charge of Women's Affairs. As this has 
implications for the independence of the commission, it was agreed 
that the draft should be amended so that appointments are made in the 
same way as for Human Rights Commission, Police Commission etc.

A technical committee is at present sitting to make appropriate 
changes to the bill in terms of the recommendations that were made at 
the meeting with NGO's. Savitri Goonesekere, Mario Gomez and Kumi 
Samuel are members.


______



[2]

BBC News
2 September, 2004, 17:20 GMT 18:20 UK

INDIA COURT REJECTS GAY PETITION
By Ayanjit Sen
BBC corespondent in Delhi

The government says public morals need to be protected

The high court in the Indian capital Delhi has dismissed a legal 
petition that sought to legalise homosexuality.

The petition challenged laws which deem homosexual acts to be 
"unnatural criminal behaviour".
The court ruled that the "validity of a law" cannot be challenged by 
anyone who is "not affected by it".
The petition, filed by a voluntary organisation, argued that it is 
wrong for homosexuality to be a punishable offence in 21st century 
India.

'Delinquent behaviour'

The petition was filed by the HIV and Aids organisation, the Naz Foundation.
It alleged that the police use the law to harass homosexuals.

Indian society, by and large, disapproves of homosexuality
Lawyers for Indian government

Lawyers for the government earlier argued in court that homosexuality 
cannot be legalised in India because society strongly disapproves of 
it.

"Indian society, by and large, disapproves of homosexuality and 
justifies it being treated as a criminal offence even when adults 
indulge in private," said a government lawyer.
The government argued that that the abolition of the law dealing with 
what they termed as "unnatural sex acts" could result in an increase 
in delinquent behaviour.

"While the right to respect for private and family life is 
undisputed, interference by public authority in the interest of 
public safety and protection of health and morals is equally 
permissible.

"This is precisely what the law does," said a government affidavit.

Legal experts are debating the court's ruling that petitions against 
the law cannot be brought by anyone who is "not affected by it".
It is unclear what exactly this phrase means, but some lawyers argue 
that public interest petitions should be filed by affected people 
rather than by organisations representing them.


o o o

  The Times of India  - September 03

HC rejects plea to make homosexuality legal
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 03, 2004 01:10:20 AM ]
NEW DELHI: The high court on Thursday dismissed a PIL that had 
challenged the constitutional validity of Article 377 of the IPC 
which makes homosexuality a punishable offence. Chief Justice B C 
Patel and Justice B D Ahmed dismissed the three-year-old petition, 
saying that as there was no cause of action, a petition could not be 
filed just to test the validity of the legislation.

Last year the Centre had filed its reply. It had opposed saying 
homosexuality cannot be legalised in India as the society disapproves 
of such behaviour.

It mentioned in its affidavit that deletion of the section would open 
the "floodgates of delinquent behaviour" and "would be construed as 
providing unbridled license for the same".

Citing the Law Commission's 42nd report, the Centre claimed that 
since society did not approve of it, it was a strong enough reason to 
justify it as a criminal offence. "The purpose of section 377 is to 
provide a healthy environment in society by criminalising unnatural 
sexual activities against the order of nature," the Centre had said.

It, however, added that the section so far has been invoked against 
only those charged with child abuse. The section has rarely been used 
to punish homosexual behaviour.

Since society and law do not run separately, the government claimed, 
the former reflects the perception of society.

"The public, notably in UK and US have shown tolerance of new sexual 
behaviour, but it is not universally accepted behaviour," the Centre 
had stated.

The petition had been filed by NGO Naz Foundation. It had challenged 
the constitutional validity of the section. It had sought the court's 
direction to declare Section 377 unconstitutional.

The NGO had sought to legalise homosexuality on grounds that due to 
fear of police action, consenting adult males having sexual relations 
were not coming forward to disclose their problems, even though they 
were more prone to HIV infection.



o o o

The Times of India - August 31, 2004

BLAME THE LAW: SECTION 377 DRIVES GAYS INTO A TWILIGHT ZONE
Shaleen Rakesh

It takes a tragedy to make people sit up and take notice. Therefore, 
in the context of Pushkin Chandra's recent murder, it becomes 
imperative to examine the socio-legal situation regarding 
homosexuality in India.

It's not easy to be gay in our country. There is immense social 
stigma attached to it. Families and friends assume that everyone is 
heterosexual. The abuse starts the moment a young gay person realises 
his desires. He is suddenly confronted with his 'otherness'. He fails 
to see any recognition for his feelings, his instincts and his 
emotions. On the other hand, everything around him says he isn't 
normal, an aberration, someone who went wrong along the way.

It's hard to maintain your self-esteem in the face of such forceful 
opposition. Many gay men succumb to this rampant homophobia. Some 
become depressive, fragile and diffident. Others make choices to 
please others, they get married and repress their real desires for a 
lifetime. Very few are able to stand up to the onslaught and try 
living on their own terms. In a culture, which cannot support 
long-term stable same sex relationships, many of these men live a 
life in which they struggle to steal moments to love each other.

Now, consider this: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code makes it a 
criminal act for two people of the same sex to love each other by 
sharing physical intimacy to express that love. A portion of the 
Section 377 defines "unnatural offences" as "whoever voluntarily has 
carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or 
animal shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for 
a term which may extend up to 10 years and shall be liable to be 
fined". The term "unnatural offences" has been interpreted to include 
sodomy and oral sex.

The section was put into the Indian Penal Code by the British way 
back in the 1868. They introduced this section based on Christian 
morality in all their colonies. The section has since been repealed 
in most countries including Britain itself. India, on the other hand, 
continues to hang on to this ridiculous and outdated colonial legacy. 
What does this section mean for Indian gay people? To begin with, it 
makes criminals out of innocent men and boys. It hits at their 
self-esteem, erodes their self-confidence and mocks their personal 
identity. Section 377 is enough to keep them in the closet.

In addition to such gross violation of human rights, Section 377 
creates an environment which makes gay men extremely vulnerable to 
HIV. There are several reasons for this. The section prevents the 
government from using our education materials, which educate people 
on HIV transmission through homosexual behaviour. Lack of information 
and education means several myths and misconceptions persist. One of 
the biggest myths is that HIV is only transmitted through vaginal sex 
and that anal sex is safe.

Lack of privacy is a big issue for most gay men. Section 377 prevents 
the constitution of legitimate spaces (like marriage), which gives 
same-sex sexual activity a legal sanction. This means many gay men 
have sex in public places where space and time are constraints and 
it's difficult to negotiate safer sex. There are 50 million men who 
have sex with men (MSM), the community is both stigmatised and denied 
relevant safer sex information.

A New Delhi based NGO that works with MSM and gay men, on December 7, 
2001 moved the Delhi high court challenging the constitutional 
validity of Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the Indian Penal 
Code. The matter is still sub-judice. The writ petition argues: 
"Section 377 creates an arbitrary and unreasonable classification 
between natural (penile-vaginal) and unnatural (penile-non-vaginal) 
sexual acts that is violative of Article 14's guarantee of equal 
protection before and under the law. Socio-scientific evidence also 
suggests that the prohibited acts are indeed not 'unnatural'. This 
classification has no rationale as it is culturally accepted that sex 
is not engaged in for procreation alone. Socio-scientific evidence 
has also suggested that the prohibited acts are indeed not 
'unnatural'."

HIV/AIDS outreach workers are constantly harassed in the field by the 
police constables who invoke and misuse Section 377 to prevent HIV 
intervention efforts. The moment a constable on beat, for instance, 
senses that somebody is gay, he feels at liberty to charge him under 
Section 377. This is preposterous because the law criminalises the 
'act' of sodomy, not a person's sexual orientation. However, it is an 
effective ploy to extort money out of innocent people who are too 
afraid to protest. This is despite the fact that many gay men know 
they're on the right side of the law. But the fear of someone 
disclosing their sexual orientation to their family or at their 
workplace deters them from raising their voice.

What makes things worse is that there is no legal or social recourse 
to bring to book the perpetrators of criminal activity against gay 
men. Section 377 is essentially an anti-sodomy law, a sexual act that 
is known to be practised as well by straight people as by gay men. 
Yet nobody ever questions what straight society does behind closed 
doors. So who is this archaic law trying to protect, for what, and 
why?

(The author is a gay rights activist.)


______



[3]

Daily Times - September 3, 2004

HISTORY: RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM: FRINGE OR MAINSTREAM? [Part 2]
Suroosh Irfani

Religious extremism in Paksitan is a legacy of the theo-geoploitics 
of the Afghan jihad that the US spearheaded against the Soviets 
during the Cold War. Its undoing calls for a jihad no less vital than 
the Cold War. However, the war cannot be won without a battle for the 
hearts and minds of people, both in the 'mainstream' and the 'fringe'
That extremist religious groups had become a security threat in 
Pakistan well before 9/11 is borne out by several incidents. A 
dramatic example was the failed bombing of former prime minister 
Nawaz Sharif's motorcade over Raiwind bridge, on January 3, 1999. 
Nawaz Sharif survived because the bombs exploded prematurely. Four 
years later President Musharraf survived the bombing of a Rawalpindi 
bridge for the opposite reason: the bombs went off 55 seconds after 
Musharraf's motorcade had crossed the bridge.
The three militants detained for the Raiwind bombing were trained in 
Afghanistan. They were members of Lashkar e Jhangvi (LJ), an ultra 
extremist off shoot of Sipahe Sahaba Pakistan (SSP). This party had 
made its appearance in 1985 as a Sunni backlash against Shia activism 
spawned by the Ayatollahs' revolution in Iran. However, by March 
2001, the interior ministry was investigating SSP for planning to 
train 50,000 Pakistanis in Afghanistan's military camps, and using 
this force to turn Pakistan into a Taliban style Sunni state.
LJ's emergence in 1996 reflected the tip of a seething militancy in a 
country that had become home to 'Jihad International Inc', in the 
aftermath of the US-led jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan. 
Riaz Basra, SSP's former information secretary, had created LJ in 
response to the Shia militant outfit, Sipah e Mohammad Pakistan 
(SMP). The sectarian connotation of Basra's outfit was also signalled 
by its name. Haq Nawaz Jhangvi had been an SSP founding father whose 
murder in February 1990 had led to the revenge killing of Sadek 
Ganji, director of the Iranian Cultural Centre in Lahore. Basra was 
arrested for masterminding Ganji's murder, but escaped and based 
himself in Afghanistan. There he trained militants for his anti-Shia 
war. He frequently crossed over to Pakistan for terrorist strikes 
that implicated him in as many as 300 cases - including the burning 
down of Iranian Cultural Centres in Lahore and Multan in 1997.
When nine Iranian diplomats were killed in Mazre Sharif, after the 
Iranian consulate there was stormed by the Taliban militia, Iran held 
Pakistan responsible for it. This also led to the first ever 
anti-Pakistan demonstration in Teheran. (A far cry from popular 
Iranian support for Pakistan during the 1965 war).
While in theory SSP distanced itself from LJ and several Deobandi 
ulema opposed its hyper militancy, the psychological and cultural 
symbiosis of SSP and LJ seemed to overlap with sections of other 
religio-political organisations as well. Haq Nawaz Jhangvi himself 
was a Deobandi cleric and a leader of the Jamiate Ulemai Islam (JUI), 
arguably the largest religio-political movement in the country. 
Indeed, some JUI leaders in the NWFP held JUI as well as SSP offices, 
and "JUI madrassas, mosques and offices were used for SSP 
activities", as noted by Amer Rana in A to Z of Jehadi Organisations 
in Pakistan (Mashal, 2004. pp 208-209). During the 1987 national 
elections, the JUI (Fazl) supported Riaz Basra.
There was more, of course, to SSP's emergence as a radical force 
during the 1980s than just the support of local religious groups, or 
the widely alleged Saudi backing. After all, it surfaced at a time 
when General Zia - buoyed by the US-backed jihad against the Soviets 
in Afghanistan - was bent on breaking Pakistan People's Party's 
secular appeal through religious entities. Given the context, some 
Sunni industrialists of Jhang - the hub of SSP in the Punjab - got on 
SSP bandwagon in their political campaign against Shia rivals.
The upshot of it all was that the SSP emerged as a formidable force 
amidst a plethora of religious parties that were becoming "like 
'monsters' in terms of material resources, fire power, and the 
pressure they could exert on policy matters"(The Herald, May, 2000).
Clearly then, while religious extremism in Pakistan is rooted in 
sectarian violence, it has morphed into a jihadi culture with the 
militarisation of Wahhabi-Deobandi Talibanic Afghanistan on the one 
hand and induction of jihadi outfits in the Kashmiri freedom struggle 
on the other. The convergence of local and cross-border extremism has 
led to a radicalisation of hitherto 'moderate' religious 
sensibilities as well. An example of this is the radicalisation of 
some Barelvi groups - the moderate 'third force' in the 
religio-political Sunni scene.
Feeling hemmed in by Deobandi and Wahhabi hegemony, the Barelvi 
backlash took the form of the Sunni Tehreek - a militant movement 
that surfaced in 1992 for protecting Barelvi mosques and interests 
against the onslaught of the Deobandi SSP and the Wahhabi Lashkar e 
Tayba. Sunni Tehreek's founder, Saeed Qadri was murdered along with 
five of his colleagues in May 2001, but there seemed no let up in the 
Barelvi turn to militancy. Indeed, the largest Barelvi 
religio-political party, the Jamiat e Ulema e Pakistan (JUP) ended up 
doing what its more radical rivals had desisted from: JUP's secretary 
general Sheikh Mir Hamza put down his signatures on Osama bin Laden's 
fatwa of February 23, 1998, calling on Muslims to kill Americans and 
their allies "everywhere". Sheikh Hamza, then, became the only 
religious leader of Pakistan who co-sponsored a fatwa, with Osama bin 
Laden of Al Qaeda and Amyn al Zawahiri of the Jihad group in Egypt, 
that virtually declares a civilisational war on Christians and Jews.
Clearly, then, the danger that religious extremism poses to Pakistan 
today is not only because of the extremist groups per se, but also 
because of a complicit religious culture that underpins the informal 
networking of extremist groups and some mainstream religio-political 
parties in the country and beyond. As with Osama's appeal, such a 
complicit religious culture is not confined to the Tribal Areas. It 
runs through urban areas as well. In this respect, one may recall an 
ad the government carried out in some newspapers in June 2002, 
portraying bin Laden and his Al Qaeda associates as 'religious 
terrorists'. Reacting to the ad on behalf of the MMA (which also 
includes the country's major Shia party), JUI information secretary 
declared at a public rally that "Osama is a hero to the Islamic world 
and the Musharraf government would not get any sympathy by branding 
him a religious terrorist" (The Nation, July 2, 2002). Qazi Hussain 
Ahmed, head of the Jamaat e Islami termed the Osama ad as part of an 
international conspiracy in which "Pakistan's government had sided 
with the Zionists agenda". He went on to argue that "bracketing 
Islamists with terrorists (was) a Zionist conspiracy because Islam is 
fast spreading in Europe and America".
What we have, then, is an overlap of religious subjectivities across 
the 'mainstream', 'extremist' and 'terrorist' categories. This 
subjectivity overlap lies at the heart of the kind of 'clarification' 
that former prime minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain gave last month, 
after some terrorists were reportedly arrested from JI offices. As 
Shujaat Hussain explained, the JI leaders who helped the terrorists 
did not do so because of a party line, but "in their individual 
capacity". No wonder, then, that Al Qaeda operatives seem to have 
little trouble in relocating from South Waziristan to the cities, a 
fact pointed out by President Musharraf during his PTV interview on 
August 16. Moreover, given the endemic roots of a religio-political 
culture - where religion is used as an alibi for political power and 
militancy - religious extremism cannot simply be wished away as a 
"fringe" phenomenon; especially at a time when a symbiosis of 
subjectivities is virtually blurring the boundaries between 
'extremist' and 'mainstream'.
To conclude, over the past fifty years, there's been a radical change 
in the scope and nature of religious extremism and organised 
religious violence in Pakistan. Religious violence has come a long 
way from Hyderabad's Shia-Sunni flare-up in 1950, to a culture war 
against westerners and modernity. Marked by a fusion of local and 
global jihadi fantasy, it is an ongoing legacy of the 
theo-geoploitics of the Afghan jihad that the US spearheaded against 
the Soviets during the Cold War. The undoing of this culture war 
calls for a jihad no less vital than the Cold War. However, such a 
jihad cannot be won without a battle for the hearts and minds of 
people, both in the 'mainstream' and the 'fringe' - especially at a 
moment when the boundaries between western values and US hegemony are 
getting increasingly blurred by a flawed US policy in the Middle East.
Suroosh Irfani is co-director of the Graduate Programme in 
Communication and Cultural Studies at National College of Arts, 
Lahore. This is the concluding part of a two-part series. The first 
part was published on August 27, 2004


______


[4]


EPW - August 21, 2004 | Book Review

Partition and Its Meanings

------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India
edited by Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta;
published by Stree, Kolkata 2003;
pp 272, Rs 500.


Himani Bannerji

The last two decades have seen the emergence of two topics of 
research and curricular additions in institutions of higher learning 
in many parts of the world: migration (coerced and voluntary) and 
refugees. Numerous 'centres', 'institutes' and 'schools of studies' 
have been set up for this purpose. Research reports, books and 
articles on them not only have implications for academic work but 
also for national and international politics, policies and 
non-governmental organisations set up for advocacy and 
administration. If we look back to approximate the time when these 
phenomena acquired such prominent disciplinarian, administrative and 
ideological turns, we could begin by pointing to the dissolution of 
the Soviet Union and European communist countries, followed by the 
rise of ethnic nationalisms and genocidal wars. The civil wars 
involving ethnic nationalism and genocides in Africa, the escalation 
of the same type of violence in Sri Lanka, various military forays of 
the US in west Asia, Afghanistan and Sudan, as well as Israel's 
relentless repression of the Palestinians also played large parts. 
These moments resulted in the movement of human populations around 
the world on a massive scale. They involve both the violence of 
displacement and resettlement. To further widen the purview of 
migration and refugee studies we have to include activist responses, 
both at organisational and intellectual levels, of anti-corporate 
anti-globalisation movements. Nationalisms and nation states have 
also become related topics of investigation and criticism. The issues 
of migration and refugees have raised questions regarding national 
borders and boundaries while resisting the virulence of racism 
especially fostered by the fallout effect of the September 11, 2001 
attack on the World Trade Centre.

In this current environment of burgeoning refugee and migration 
studies involving relatively recent events, one tends to lose sight 
of other past moments of violence involving the formation of nation 
states and ethnic genocides which have altered histories, politics 
and cultures in large parts of the world. By this, I mean the two 
events in 1947 and 1948 when two of the largest forced migrations in 
the world occurred whose dangerous consequences are still unfolding. 
These events of epical and tragic proportions happened in south Asia 
and in west Asia. The independence of India in 1947 was marked by the 
partition of the subcontinent and transfer of populations on the 
basis of two major religions - Hinduism and Islam - spelling out 
unprecedented violence, expulsion and exodus. 1948 saw the expulsion 
of Palestinians in the cause of a Zionist Israel. The Palestinians 
currently constitute the largest group of displaced persons 
internationally with no right to return, and in the Indian context, 
the state of Pakistan again subdivided into another nation state of 
Bangladesh, involving massive violence and displacement. It is 
against both these current and past social-political contexts that we 
have to assess The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in 
Eastern India, a book that focuses our attention on the Indian 
Partition of 1947 and retrieves memories, histories and documents 
pertaining to its impact in the eastern zone of Bengal, broken into 
Indian West Bengal and East Pakistan. The perspective of this text is 
multidisciplinary and based on an awareness of gender, class and 
community. It draws our attention to the region specific nature of 
historical and political events and experiences, pointing out 
similarities and differences between the single blow experience of 
western India involving a terrible carnage and exodus, and that of 
Bengal, slow and persistent - beginning with violent riots in 
Noakhali and Calcutta 1946. Its attention to the east is distinctive 
because the other notable non-fictional texts on the partition of 
India concentrate on western India, mainly emphasising the tragedy of 
Punjab. In the context of Bengal this is a pioneering social 
scientific and critical cultural theories' attempt in going beyond 
cultural (especially fictional and film) accounts and representations 
of the partition. It explores, analyses and also describes 
experiences and implications of this composite moment. The anthology 
contains different sections consisting of a general introduction, 
analysis and interviews and reminiscences, creative and literary 
texts, documents and evidences. Though it originates outside of an 
academic compulsion and has a wide outreach, it will also be 
extremely useful in classrooms or in research projects. Along with 
the volumes written on western India this anthology removes a cover 
of silence and becomes a valuable addition to the existing 
international documentational, analytical and descriptive literature 
on migration and refugees.

Regarding the issue of silence, we might ask why there has been 
little archiving, cultural and sociological analysis of these most 
horrific experiences of the subcontinent, especially when the same 
partition has generated such a wealth of cultural output in 
literature, theatre and film? In answering this question we 
have to reckon not only with the relative absence of non-fictional - 
social-scientific and historical - material on the Bengal partition, 
but also with the relatively recent and small amount of research and 
analysis on the western Indian experience.

'Trauma' to 'Triumph'

An important clue to the answer to this question may be found in the 
way the editors of The Trauma and the Triumph, Jasodhara Bagchi and 
Subhoranjan Dasgupta, have conceptualised the experiences of 
partition, riot, migration and resettlement in terms of the notion of 
'trauma'. The content of this volume - fictional, experiential, 
analytical and documentary - actually spells out this trauma as well 
as provides ways of coming to grips with it. It is a process of 
recovery from this trauma of which this volume itself forms a part. 
The notion of trauma brings attention to the fact that it is the 
nature of trauma that it cannot be accessed in an objective form in 
its earlier stages, while being pervasively, saturatedly present in 
the social subjects' consciousness and unconsciousness. Trauma is 
more than events. It constitutes an overall life-world or a habitus, 
rather than an event in time with a beginning, middle and end. One is 
in the possession of one's trauma, not the possessor of it. Thus the 
revisiting of defining traumatic moments is full of post-traumatic 
stress resonance, a fact testified to by the interviewers. Trauma, in 
the first instance, is rarely accessible as an academic or 
sociologically investigative venture. Its first stage of projection 
after the impact is literary/cultural, where the experience is made 
meaningful by repeated re-enactment - often with the use of iconic or 
archetypical images. Ritwick Ghatak's films, numerous Bengali short 
stories and novels, and the general life pattern of urban West Bengal 
gave an aesthetic form to this first stage of trauma experience and 
recovery. But as life keeps on happening, years pass, the refugees 
begin to shape themselves and their own world in the new environment. 
They and their beholders, both sympathetic or otherwise, move from 
fixation of violence to volition - they start organising 
neighbourhoods, some structures based on daily needs. The achievement 
of this volume is that it compiles these aspects and contains the 
complexity of these processes and stages. The individual interviews, 
life in 'the colonies' that Rachel Weber speaks of, lives of 
resettlement that Meenakshi Sen and others depict, all speak to them. 
They not only show an ability to survive, but to do so successfully - 
which the editors call 'triumph'. Success here not only means social 
mobility or material prosperity for individuals, but a restructuring 
of the overall social environment that contains the displaced people. 
They move from being passive victims into agents for change.

What is interesting about this anthology is how in showing the 
trajectory from 'trauma' to 'triumph' it challenges the univocal 
language of the partition being only that of tragedy and 
victimisation of Bengal. It displays courage born from the 
epistemological standpoint of women, attentive to the quotidian 
'everyday/every night' lives, to speak about a triumph of agency for 
women and society ensuing from the catastrophic events. We begin to 
understand that, moving as Ritwik Ghatak's films 'Megha Dhaka Tara' 
and 'Subarnarekha', for example, are, they don't tell half the story. 
Their expressive voice contains a patriarchal elite tone. In them and 
in numerous short stories, novels, poems and other films, the world 
before the partition of Bengal has a pre-lapsarian quality. This 
tragedy is never held up to the query of issues of property/class and 
gender pre-existing the partition and the migration. A univocal 
tragic vision of male experience of trauma is projected through 
patriarchal moral regulation of women and the family. Classically, as 
trauma, it freezes time, arrests the dynamism and contradiction of 
experiences and subject formation and agencies. It is a rigid mode 
and condemned to repetition. 'The Partition' becomes solely an icon 
of destruction, an ideological moment, both a signal of degeneration 
and estrangement and an occlusive veil. Hence in 'Subarnarekha' the 
encounter with the lost sister is invoked in terms of prostitution 
and results in her almost ritual murder by the brother and his 
suicide. It captures an amazing moment of anomie, of inversion, of 
the death of the moral. Beauty, life itself, is drowned in madness 
and horror with no redemptive horizon in sight. In 'Megha Dhaka 
Tara', (a section of the script is excerpted in the book), another 
powerful film on the everyday life in the refugee colony, the working 
sister Nita's life is conceived as a tragedy, not a triumph through 
the transgression of gender roles or extension of social space and 
presence. There is in these films, and in other cultural productions, 
a desperate, frenzied tone of moral crisis. 'Jukti, Takka, Gappa', 
Ghatak's last film about another catastrophe accompanying the birth 
of Bangladesh, is mitigated by images of woman power, however this 
woman power does not arise in everyday life, but needs a 
religious/mythological source in the fusion of women's power with 
that of the goddess Durga. The interviews and the literary 
expressions in this volume hold these tragic visions, and freedom is 
uttered in an 'idiom of loss', but as Jasodhara Bagchi and others 
point out, it is also uttered in activity, self-discovery, social and 
political participation.

The sociological and analytical articles in this anthology make us 
realise that this combination of tragedy with moral panic in 
projecting the partition may be both a crisis of patriarchy and 
property among high caste/class Hindus of Bengal. The joke that all 
East Bengali refugees claim that they are displaced landlords may be 
less a myth than an exaggerated truth. Articles, documents and 
reminiscences in this volume tell us about the loss of considerable 
land and other property, about professional incomes of middle class 
Hindus who were 'forced' to migrate. They speak to the disruption of 
social lives of semi- or petty-bourgeois feudalism prevailing in both 
rural and urban educated Hindu families in east Bengal. We often hear 
of 'our tenants', the Muslims, either attacking or protecting 'us', 
while the cities contain professional, usually elderly males, who 
sent their women folk to India to save their honour/chastity and 
remained in East Pakistan to secure substantial income. Some 
articles, for example Meghna Guha Thakurta's, speak of the myth of 
the Muslim rapist and the circulation of rumours of rape. In fact she 
defines 'violence' in terms of fear generated by rumours on this and 
other accounts. As the interviewees or the rehabilitation workers of 
the earlier times report, they did not actually meet middle class 
women who were raped, or at least owned up to it for reasons of 
familial patriarchy and caste/class status - for fear of social 
ostracism and disgrace.

This anthology shows us that the identity crisis and sense of loss 
which are felt upon any violent displacement are further weighted by 
the loss of class. The dire poverty and the loss of control over 
subsistence and social space were expressed as a primordial sense of 
'fall'. It is this 'fall' which is archetypically imaged in the 
tropes of 'rape', 'honour' and 'chastity'. In Barnita Bagchi's 
excellent translation of Santosh Ghosh's story "Hoina" we see how 
these themes can play out in the male psyche and women's critical 
response to them. The change of female roles, their emergence as 
breadwinners, as part of the labour force and political parties, 
further signified the mood of a world turned upside down. It dealt a 
strong blow to the social feudalism of patriarchy, to a conservative, 
essentially male, worldview, though partially shared by women. The 
contribution of this volume is that it provides us with this clarity 
while in no way denying the pain, the loss, the bewilderment of 
women, men and children trapped in the vicious grip of ethnic 
nationalism, an integral strand of India's anti-colonialism.  [,,,]

Full Text at 
http://www.epw.org.in/showArticles.php?root=2004&leaf=08&filename=7586&filetype=html

______


[5]

Daily Times - September 03, 2004
 
PIPFPD's 10TH ANNIVERSARY: INDIAN PEACE TEAM CROSSES WAGAH TODAY

* 3-day festivities include forum's convention, dramas and shows
By Waqar Gillani

LAHORE: An Indian delegation of peace activists, social workers and 
artistes will cross the border at Wagah today (Friday) to participate 
in the 10th anniversary of the Pakistan-India Peoples Forum for Peace 
and Democracy (PIPFPD) from September 3 to 5.
PIPFPD activists from both countries will participate in the 
celebrations titled 'Peace and democracy now' and Pakistani PIPFPD 
activists have started reaching Lahore.
They will accord a warm welcome to the Indian delegation at Wagah 
today. A PIPFPD national convention is also scheduled as part of the 
celebrations. The Indian delegation will consist of representative of 
the Indian chapter of the PIPFPD from over 19 cities.
The PIPFPD central general secretary and founding member, Anees 
Haroon, told Daily Times on Thursday that the event will help 
Pakistan and India promote peace and democracy. Ms Haroon said the 
forum was set up in September 1994 in Lahore with 15 members from 
Pakistan and nine from India.
She said thousands of people had become PIPFPD members and the forum 
was becoming more popular in remote areas.
Ms Haroon said both PIPFPD chapters had prepared the programme for 
its 10th anniversary festivities in a meeting held recently.
"The objectives of the PIPFPD are to spread peace at the grass roots 
level, promote bilateral relations, friendship and trade, help 
governments to resolve major issues peacefully, strive for easier 
communication and visa policies and strengthen interpersonal 
contacts." She said the forum had flourished in the last 10 years, 
but much was yet to be done to achieve the ultimate goal of peace.
Ms Haroon said though there are more than 1,000 Pakistani PIPFPD 
members, India had more PIPFPD members than Pakistan. She said the 
forum had opened its branches in all the major Pakistani cities.
She said more than 350 PIPFPD members are likely to participate in 
the national convention. Ms Haroon said the Pakistani embassy in 
India had reportedly issued more than 70 visas and Asad Ali Khan, 
classical artist, LK Pandat, Tappan Bose, Gotaum Naulakaha, Mr and 
Mrs Admiral (r) Ram Das and Susheel Dharan are likely to come. She 
said the forum had invited four former Indian prime ministers, 
including IK Gugral, but they could not make it.
A cultural evening has been planned for Friday while the national 
convention would start on Saturday. Peace songs and the general 
secretary's report and discussions on the reports filed by the 
provincial bodies of the forum are on the convention's agenda.
A cultural programme, featuring peace plays, will be held on Saturday 
afternoon while Indian artists would perform classical dance in the 
evening. A cultural programme by gypsy children is planned for 
Sunday, the concluding day. A plenary session, resolutions and 
recommendations will be part of the concluding ceremony, which will 
be followed by a press conference.


______


[6]

JOIN THE ANTI CHILD-HEJAB CAMPAIGN

Outside the French Embassy

Knightsbridge Road, London

[September 4]
12:00pm-2:00pm
(Knightsbridge tube station)

September 4 must be recognised as an International Anti Child-Hejab 
Solidarity Day rather than a pro-hejab solidarity day. On this day - 
coinciding with the return to school for the autumn term - while 
Islamists gather in London to protest the French government's ban on 
the hejab in public institutions and schools and defend the veiling 
of children, we gather to unequivocally defend children's rights and 
secularism.

The child-hejab ban has nothing to do with religious intolerance as 
they say. The question of freedom of religious clothing and religion 
concerns adults (even if their 'choice' often comes with threats, 
intimidation and force). The veiling of children is a different 
issue. Society is duty-bound to protect children against the 
transgressions of religion and religious groups on their rights. 
Preventing children from enjoying their social and civil rights such 
as education, amusement, and participation in social activities must 
be prohibited. The hejab has a devastating impact on the minds and 
lives of girls who are isolated and singled out, cannot swim and mix 
freely with their classmates, be active and playful.

Child-hejab is a mobile prison. Child-hejab is a form of child abuse.

'Society is duty-bound to provide fair and equal living conditions 
for children, their growth and development, and their active 
participation in social life. Anybody who should try to block the 
normal social life of a child, exactly like those who would want to 
physically violate a child according to their own culture, religion, 
or personal or collective complexes, should be confronted with the 
firm barrier of the law and the serious reaction of society. No nine 
year old girl chooses to be married, sexually mutilated, serve as 
house maid and cook for the male members of the family, and be 
deprived of exercise, education, and play. The child grows up in the 
family and in society according to established customs, traditions, 
and regulations, and automatically learns to accept these ideas and 
customs as the norms of life. To speak of the choice of the Islamic 
veil by the child herself is a ridiculous joke.' (Mansoor Hekmat, In 
Defence of the Prohibition of the Islamic Veil for Children, 
www.m-hekmat.com)

A ban of religious symbols in schools and public institutions is also 
crucial in defending secularism and the separation of religion from 
the state. Freedom of religion is a private affair and not to be 
imposed on the society at large. Asking that it remain private is not 
in any way a form of religious intolerance!

The Islamic movement is deceptively using rights language to promote 
the veiling of children in Europe and violate children's rights. We 
reiterate that it is this very movement that has taken French 
journalists hostage and threatened them with decapitation in response 
to the French ban. Wherever it has power, it reveals its true face. 
In countries like Iran where Islamic laws are the rule, this movement 
is symbolic of rights violations and the apartheid of this century - 
sexual apartheid. 

The Pro-hejab campaign says defending the hejab is a defence of 
'freedom' human rights and civil liberties'. In fact it is just the 
opposite. Only opposing them and child veiling can one truly defend 
freedom, rights and liberties. This is our task.

For more information, contact: Organisation for Women's Liberation, 
P.O. Box 636, Wembley, London HA9 9GQ, UK; Tel: 07789801250; E-mail: 
azadizan at yahoo.com; Website: www.azadizan.com


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

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