SACW #1 | 14 Oct 2004
sacw
aiindex at mnet.fr
Wed Oct 13 21:12:53 CDT 2004
South Asia Citizens Wire - Dispatch #1 | 14 October, 2004
via: www.sacw.net
[1] Egypt : God Has 4,000 Loudspeakers; the State Holds Its Ears
[2] Pakistan: Uniformly Hypocritical - MMA opposition to Musharraf (Razi Azmi)
[3] Pakistan: Press Release HRCP condemns Multan outrage
[4] India - Observations re upcoming Maharashtra Elections
- The Battle For Maharashtra - Will BJP be the bigger loser? (Praful Bidwai)
- Beyond Bal Thackeray's beard (J Sri Raman)
[5] India: Land of Gandhi where citizens do not
have right to know and Media is not FREE (Digant
Oza)
[6] India: The International Day of Dalits' Struggle: Call for Solidarity
[7] Call for Papers on Partition and Migration
[8] Books and Book Reviews
[9] Upcoming events :
(i) Film Screening: Anand Patwardhan's "Father, Son, and Holy War"
(UC Berkeley - Oct. 22, 2004)
(ii) Seminar: History of Science and Religious
Fundamentalism (Paris, 23 October 2004)
(iii) 2nd National Convention Coalition for
Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)
(November 26-28, 2004, Jaipur)
--------------
[1] [Relevant material, from outside south asia]
New York Times, October 12, 2004
CAIRO JOURNAL
GOD HAS 4,000 LOUDSPEAKERS; THE STATE HOLDS ITS EARS
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
Amro Marachi/Agence France-Presse--Getty Images
The call to prayer in Cairo is sounded from loudspeakers in minarets.
Mohamed El-Dakhakhny for The New York Times
Sheik Aly, a muezzin at Al Azhar mosque, gave the call the old way.
AIRO - Given the cacophony that afflicts any
Cairo street - the braying donkeys, the
caterwauling vegetable vendors, the constant
honking of car horns - it might seem a
particularly daunting task to single out just one
noise to prosecute as the most offensive.
But the minister of religious endowments recently
did that, more or less, making a somewhat
unlikely decision in these times when many Muslim
faithful believe that their religion is under
assault.
The call to prayer, the minister declared, is out
of control: too loud, too grating, utterly
lacking in beauty or uniform timing, and hence in
dire need of reform. The solution, the evidently
fearless minister decided - harking back to an
answer Egyptian bureaucrats have seized upon
since long before Islam - is to centralize it.
The minister, Mahmoud Hamdi Zaqzouq, announced
that one official call to prayer would be
broadcast live from one central Cairo mosque five
times a day, and that it would be carried
simultaneously by the 4,000-plus mosques and
prayer halls across the capital.
From the ensuing national brouhaha - the outraged
headlines, the scathing editorials, the heated
debates among worshipers - one might gain the
impression that Mr. Zaqzouq was leading an
assault against Islam itself. "Minarets Weep,"
intoned one banner headline, while another
suggested sarcastically that the minister was
less than a good Muslim. "The Call to Prayer
Upsets Minister," it read.
Comedians and intellectuals had a field day. Ali
Salem, one of Egypt's leading playwrights,
envisioned a turbaned, high-tech SWAT team
dispatched across Cairo whenever one mosque or
another inevitably sabotaged the centralized
prayer-call operation.
Not everyone ridiculed the idea, though.
Secular Cairenes endorsed it as a possible means
toward greater government control over all of the
tiny storefront mosques that have often proved a
font of violent, extremist Islam. And Mr. Zaqzouq
insisted that his proposal enjoyed wide
grass-roots popularity.
In the surging religious environment of the last
decade, the multiplication of mosques and prayer
halls is such that any random Cairo street might
house half a dozen, each competing with the
others in volume and staggering the timing of
their call slightly in an effort to stand out.
Particularly at dawn prayers, some mosques blast
not just the roughly dozen sentences of the call
itself, but all of the Koranic verses and actual
prayers intoned by the local imam. When three
different mosques do the same thing, what should
be an announcement lasting at most two minutes
can drag on for 45 minutes, keeping the entire
neighborhood awake.
"There are loudspeakers that shake the world,"
the minister protested. "Everyone hears them.
Every day I receive bitter complaints from people
about the loudspeakers, but when I ask them to
register official complaints, they say they fear
others will accuse them of being infidels."
Opponents, meanwhile, express deep outrage at the
very idea of someone tampering with the tradition
of each mosque having its own muezzin, of
different voices echoing across the city in a
continuous round.
"During the time of the Prophet there used to be
more than one mosque in each town, in each
quarter, and he didn't unify the prayer, so why
do it now?" asked Sheik Mustafa Ali Suliman, who
works as a muezzin in a small mosque amid the
twisting streets of Cairo's medieval quarter.
"There is even a saying by the Prophet Muhammad
that implies that in God's eyes muezzins will
garner special honor and respect on judgment day."
Given the widespread sentiment that no decent
Muslim could ever consider such a change, no
small number of Cairo residents seized on the
obvious alternative: it is a C.I.A. plot, they
muttered, right up there with other American
attacks on Islam, like demanding changes in the
Muslim world's curriculums.
The conspiracy theorists further prophesied that
the centralized system was just a test case for
the real goal: to disseminate a single Friday
Prayer sermon, written, naturally, in Langley,
Va. The outcry reached such a level that the
minister felt obliged to hold an hourlong news
conference to quell the sense, as he put it, that
doomsday was at hand.
The instructions had not, in fact, come from
Washington, he said. Opponents call this
initiative an American one, as if every step of
reform should come through instructions from
abroad, Zaqzouq said dismissively.
.
The most serious religious charge against him was
that centralizing the call to prayer would amount
to 'Bida' the Arabic term for any innovation that
borders on heresy. While Saudi Arabia's Wahhabite
clergymen tend to be the all-star team of bida
police, slapping the label on practices like
giving flowers to hospital patients or using
mobile phones with cameras, declaring something
bida in Egypt is far less common.
The minister was having none of it.
"The real bida is the loudspeaker," Zaqzouq said.
"Islam did just fine without loudspeakers for
1,350 years." Any mosque where the muezzin wanted
to actually climb up into the minaret and sing
out the call to prayer without electronic
amplification would be exempt from the
centralized system, he vowed.
There were also dire predictions that the change
would throw at least 100,000 muezzins out of work
in a country already suffering severe
unemployment. The minister noted that the
proposal was just for Cairo, although the
country's other 26 governorates could follow suit
if they wanted, and that the capital had exactly
827 officially recognized muezzins who could
surely find other useful tasks around each mosque.
Various clerics said they hoped the proposal
would remain under study for years to come and
indeed Salam, the playwright, unearthed a joke
predating the automobile that he said underscored
the timeless nature of the debate.
A Maltese visitor riding a donkey through an
Egyptian village hears beautiful music and asks
his dragoman the source. "That is our call to
prayer, sir," the guide responds, and the Maltese
adopts the Muslim faith on the spot.
By the next prayer time, a few hours later, they
have arrived at a different village where the
muezzin calls out with a particularly ugly,
rasping voice. "Hurry up, hurry up" the dragoman
says, beating the donkey to speed it through the
village. Lest our visitor hear the muezzin and
recant.?
______
[2]
Daily Times
October 14, 2004
UNIFORMLY HYPOCRITICAL
by Razi Azmi | THINKING ALOUD
The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) has announced
that it will launch a movement during Ramazan to
force President Pervez Musharraf to 'give up his
uniform'. So uniformly has the issue of President
Musharraf's uniform dominated the political
discourse in the country recently that a foreign
reader of Pakistani newspapers may be excused for
thinking that it is the main stumbling block in
the nation's march to progress.
Foremost among those insisting that the president
shed his 'uniform' are the religious parties now
united in the MMA, which were zealously
cooperating with President Zia ul Haq for over
ten years, right until the day he blew up in
mid-air wearing his uniform. The Jamaat-i-Islami
had no compunction in joining his martial law
government, yet it is now most vociferous in
demanding that President Musharraf relinquish the
post of chief of army staff. Judging by the
intensity of their demand, one would think that
the Islamist parties have suddenly discovered
that Islam prohibits the holding of the two
offices by the same person!
Whereas General Zia was a religious bigot,
General Musharraf is by all accounts a liberal,
secular-minded leader who would like to put
Pakistan on the path of progress and extricate it
from the stranglehold of fundamentalist and
retrogressive forces, in the manner of Kemal
Ataturk, whom he admires. Which explains why they
are determined to harass and weaken him. But they
need not worry, for except for a few FM radio
stations blaring out a bit of rock music and some
popular talk shows, there is precious little to
show for his five years in power.
In fact, from a strategic perspective, things are
much worse for the liberal-secular forces now
than when Musharraf had taken over in 1999.
Having been driven out of Kabul, the Taliban now
run the government in two of the four provinces
of Pakistan. The NWFP government is steadily
enforcing Taliban-style Islam on the population
and Talibanisation is creeping into the Punjab
University in Lahore, which has now banned female
students from going on educational trips with
male students. Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a Taliban
mentor, sits in the National Assembly as leader
of the opposition. Maulana Samiul Haque's
seminary, among others, graduates new Taliban for
domestic duties as well as export. Qazi Hussain
Ahmed struts about like he controls Pakistan's
political destiny.
The process of the so-called Islamisation of
Pakistan initiated by General Zia with great
gusto over a quarter century ago seems to have
reached a point of no return. Its consequences
range from the ludicrous to the tragic. It allows
the police to arrest Ahmadi brides and
bridegrooms and their parents for the blasphemous
act of printing Assalam-o-Alaikum and Bismillah
ir Rahma ir Rahim on wedding invitations, just
when the wedding guests are arriving. A woman who
becomes pregnant as a result of being raped is
convicted of adultery while the rapist goes
scot-free for lack of four reliable, male
eyewitnesses. Sunnis and Shias are now killing
each other en masse while offering congregational
prayers in mosques. The Islamists' only success,
it seems, has been to dispatch more and more
people to paradise, for all the victims of these
sectarian massacres are assumed to have embraced
martyrdom.
There is near-unanimity among Pakistanis that the
Taliban's archaic laws contravene the spirit of
Islam and should have no place in a modern,
civilised society, yet Musharraf's government
finds itself powerless to break the vice-like
grip of the Islamists. Rather than rally the
mainstream parties and secular forces, such as
PML, PPP and those outside of political parties,
myopic political expediency has made President
Musharraf dependent on minor entities,
opportunists and turncoats. This has forced him
to clutch his uniform for political survival. In
fairness to Musharraf it must be said that PML
and PPP were not averse to making opportunistic
alliances with the fundamentalists in the ten
years when they took turns at government.
Survival having become Musharraf's primary
concern, his reformist agenda has been consigned
to oblivion. While his troops win battles against
Al Qaeda forces ensconced in the Tribal Areas and
his police ferrets them out from our cities, the
madrassas continue to produce hundreds of jihadis
for every one apprehended or killed. While the
president preaches enlightened moderation to the
world, our textbooks continue to impart lessons
of hate and violence to our youth.
It will be recalled that Musharraf's government
gave free rein to the five terrorists who had
hijacked an Air India plane to Kandahar in 1999,
along with the three militants who were released
from Indian prisons in response to the hijackers'
demand. No matter that the hijackers had stabbed
to death an Indian passenger on his honeymoon
trip. No matter that Pakistani law prescribes the
death penalty for hijacking. They were allowed to
resume their vocation in Pakistan and are now
hunted by Pakistani forces. One cannot allow the
country to be an incubator, a breeding ground and
a safe haven for jihadis and then hope to succeed
in stamping out the scourge of terrorism by
chasing individual militants.
It is often said that the fundamentalists give
too rigid and literal an interpretation of Islam,
that the hate-mongers have "hijacked Islam".
There is no shortage of Muslims who propound a
liberal and progressive version of Islam, which
allows Muslims to peacefully coexist with
followers of other religions, respects women's
rights, treats minorities fairly, and looks
forward rather than backwards. Arguments are put
forth, for instance, that Islam neither
prescribes the burqa nor proscribes music, yet
the fundamentalists are allowed an institutional
monopoly to interpret Islam and to hold sway over
mosques and madrassas, while the liberals limit
themselves to expressing their views in drawing
rooms and in articles and letters in
English-language newspapers.
Is it not time for the liberal and progressive
forces to wrest control over religious
interpretation from these 'hijackers' and become
pro-active rather than remaining reactive? It is
obvious that, lacking institutional and state
support, these individuals - despite being
numerous - feel isolated, overwhelmed and
intimidated before the organised power of the
fundamentalists, who control the mosques and
religious schools, which confer on them a
monopoly over interpretation.
If he is serious about liberating the country
from the grip of fanatical murderers and suicide
maniacs, President Musharraf can and must use the
government's control of television and radio to
promote the moderate, liberal and progressive
interpretation of Islam. The government must
rewrite the curricula and bring madrassas and
mosques under its control. It cannot fight a war
against Al Qaeda and jihadi fundamentalists while
allowing them to preach from the pulpit,
indoctrinate through the classroom and teach
terror and hate in the name of religion.
The fundamentalist forces are determined to force
President Musharraf to shed his army uniform not
because it is incompatible with democracy, which
they denounce as a Western concept, but because
their goal is to weaken him. Once that is
achieved, the central government will be in total
disarray. With Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in
exile, the MMA will be in a strong position to
launch its final bid for power at the centre, or
so they hope.
______
[3]
Text of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) Press Release
HRCP condemns Multan outrage
Multan, 7 October 2004 :
MULTAN: The terrible sectarian terrorist outrage
in Multan today, that has left at least 40 people
dead and many dozens injured, is terrible
testimony to the immense devastation and human
suffering militant violence inflicts.
HRCP denounces the outrage in the strongest
possible terms, and extends its condolences to
all the bereaved families.
HRCP also holds the government must accept
responsibility for the continuing cycle of
violence. There are two reasons for this. In the
first place, the country is paying for its
investment over a considerable period of time in
the training of raw minds and the provision of
arms to unstable young men. Secondly, while
dealing with the symptoms of sectarianism, the
root causes have not been addressed. The
government has made no effort to reclaim and
rehabilitate youth claimed by blood-thirsty
militants, or to better understand why they have
chosen to turn to a life of violence and hatred.
Merely blaming sectarian outfits for the killings
is not enough.
As has been stated many times in the past, it is
obvious the cycle of violence that has shattered
so many families over the past two decades cannot
be ended unless far broader-ranging policies are
put in place. These must address difficult issues
such as educational curriculums, the teaching
offered at the thousands of seminaries in the
country and problems such as unemployment and
poverty, which have played a huge part in the
growing social desperation and frustration among
young people. No purpose can be served by
arresting an odd militant or two, while thousands
others are trained to kill and to maim.
It is clear too that policing alone cannot offer
a solution to the spiraling violence. With the
number of deaths in sectarian killings already
having risen sharply over the past two years, the
threat of more such attacks looms even more
dangerously after the recent incidents in Sialkot
and Multan. There is an increasingly urgent need
to address the immediate threat by building a
wider consensus on possible strategies to achieve
this. Still more crucially, longer-term policies
aimed at rooting out all violent trends and
growing intolerance in society need to be put in
place, to spare future generations the kind of
misery terrorism has inflicted on so many
citizens over the past decades.
Tahir Mohammad Khan Hina Jilani
Chairperson
Secretary-general
______
[4]
[2 Observations just prior to the State Assembly
Elections in Maharashtra, India]
(i)
The Praful Bidwai Column
October 11, 2004
THE BATTLE FOR MAHARASHTRA
WILL BJP BE THE BIGGER LOSER?
By Praful Bidwai
As campaigning for the Maharashtra Assembly
elections nears its end, opinion polls put the
Congress-Nationalist Congress Party Democratic
Front slightly ahead of the Shiv Sena-BJP. While
an Indian Express-NDTV poll gives the DF 132
seats (of a total of 288) in a hung House and the
Sena-BJP 111, a Telegraph-STAR poll gives the DF
a slender majority (148) and its rival 128 seats.
But an Aaj Tak-ORG-Marg survey forecasts a
convincing majority (165-175) for the
Congress-NCP and only 95-105 seats for the
Sena-BJP.
In Maharashtra, pollsters could prove even more
unreliable than elsewhere. There are any number
of rebel candidates fighting the official
nominees of the major parties; the contest is
unevenly divided across regions, in which
Vidarbha's 66 constituencies could play an
important "swing" role; and Ms Mayawati's Bahujan
Samaj Party has emerged a significant player even
as the Republican Party factions traditionally
supported by the Dalits face serious
fragmentation and marginalisation. The greatest
uncertainty arises from the internal revolts
brewing in all the four big parties.
Perhaps the greatest churning is taking place
inside the Congress, which split five years ago,
leading to the NCP's creation. The Congress/NCP
both remain plagued by multiple crises. Scores of
former Congress/NCP candidates who stood second
in the 1999 Assembly elections now aspire to a
ticket. (Some probably will win the elections.)
Some 110 Congress rebels and 60 NCP rebels are
reportedly contesting against their parties'
official candidates. Bandkhors (rebels) are
spoiling the party for the NCP, and to an extent,
the BJP too.
However, the greatest-and newest-loser from the
ubiquitous phenomenon of "rebellion" in
Maharashtra will be the Shiv Sena. This is
because in the Sena's leadership succession
battle, Mr Bal Thackeray has sided with his son
Uddhav against his nephew Raj, who is far and
away the more capable and better-known organiser.
The Raj Thackeray faction will work against
official candidates and damage their chances.
Uddhav's elevation has also put off Messrs
Narayan Rane and Manohar Joshi, both former Chief
Ministers, who (especially, Mr Rane) can claim a
political base. Mr Rane feels especially cheated
because his government was prematurely dissolved
in 1999 as a result of the BJP's insistence on an
early Assembly election. In the past, the Sena
supremo would resolve internal differences
through his network of patronage. But big cracks
are now visible in that network because of his
son's new role as working president.
Another new factor will shape the Maharashtra
electoral contest. That is Big Money. Following
the Election Commission's orders, about 200
candidates have declared assets worth Rs one
crore to Rs 100 crores! Of these, as many as 54
candidates are not even registered as income-tax
payees-a terrible comment on their probity. In
addition, there are hundreds of candidates (of a
total of 2,678) who are no longer bound to any
party leaders through campaign-finance
arrangements. They act more as individual
political entrepreneurs. This too complicates
matters.
The issue of separate statehood for Vidarbha
(which was earlier part of the Central Provinces
and Berar) will influence the elections. The
statehood demand is growing. Vidarbha admittedly
has a "development backlog" thanks to the
non-fulfilment of promises made at the time of
its merger into Maharashtra. The Congress is
divided over the demand. The BJP is inclined to
support it, but its ally (the Sena) vehemently
opposes it. The BSP alone strongly advocates
separate statehood. This could help it win many
votes in the region where 20 percent of the
population is Dalit (or Adivasi) and another 40
percent is OBC.
In the last Lok Sabha elections, the
fast-expanding BSP caused a loss of nine seats to
the Congress-NCP in Maharashtra. This time
around, it could affect about 50 Assembly seats.
Large sections of Dalit youth are disillusioned
with the constantly warring RPI factions
organised around individuals like Messrs Ramdas
Athavale, Prakash Ambedkar, R.S. Gavai and
Jogendra Kavade, which ally with this or that
party as a subordinate force. Many youth are
attracted to Ms Mayawati's strategy of an
independent, exclusive Dalit party, which seeks
to tilt the balance of power.
Amidst this political mosaic, the Congress-NCP is
working up a high-energy campaign, in which it
has a distinct advantage over its rival. Mr Atal
Behari Vajpayee and Mr Bal Thackeray were too ill
to campaign for the BJP-Sena except in the very
last phase. Mr Advani is no substitute for them.
Nor are BJP top state leaders Pramod Mahajan and
Gopinath Munde. By contrast, Ms Sonia Gandhi has
been attracting huge crowds. Along with Mr Sharad
Pawar, her canvassing will certainly make a
difference to the election.
The real question is, Will vigorous campaigning
help overcome the DF's anti-incumbency burden?
This burden is real. The Front has failed to
provide even remotely decent governance and has
changed Chief Ministers midstream. Mr Sushilkumar
Shinde, no resolute leader himself, hasn't
improved matters much.
The Congress-NCP could, in a worst-case scenario,
lose the Maharashtra elections-although the
Sena-BJP is unlikely to get a thumping majority.
(It might form a shaky government by allying with
the unreliable BSP and independents, etc.) A
defeat in Maharashtra will represent a
significant setback for the Congress and the UPA
in general. But it's unlikely to be a grave,
leave alone fatal, setback. Soon after
Maharashtra, Assembly elections are due in Bihar,
Jharkhand and Haryana, which the BJP and its
allies are likely to lose. This will have a more
decisive influence on the national trend.
The NDA faces a likely rout in Bihar, where the
Janata Dal (United), which once had 30-odd MPs,
is fragmented and badly depleted. The JD(U)
performed disastrously in the last Lok Sabha
elections. All its Central ministers lost,
barring Mr George Fernandes and Mr Nitish Kumar
(who scraped through). The JD(U)-BJP are no match
for the RJD-Congress.
In contrast to the Congress, a defeat in
Maharashtra will mean a heavy loss for the
BJP-NDA. A power struggle has already broken out
in the BJP, driven by competition for succession
to the first-rung leadership. As Mr Advani
recently indicated in a BBC interview, neither he
nor Mr Vajpayee will probably head any future BJP
government at the Centre-assuming it forms one.
This has spurred the "second-generation"
aspirants-all of them ambitious men and women-to
stake out their territories and position
themselves for a fierce battle with one another.
They include Messrs M. Venkaiah Naidu, Pramod
Mahajan, Arun Jaitly, Rajnath Singh, and Ms Uma
Bharati and Sushma Swaraj. None of them has a
well-defined independent social base or
constituency.
Their factional alignments with one another
became apparent during Ms Bharati's Tiranga
Yatra, following her arrest in the Hubli idgah
maidan case. The party president seized the
opportunity provided by a court warrant to get
rid of Ms Bharati from the Madhya Pradesh Chief
Ministership and did his utmost to marginalise
her yatra, in which no major BJP leader
participated right till the end (when an
embarrassed Mr Vajpayee was called in).
Mr Mahajan, for his own reasons, despises Ms
Bharati. He has assigned her only five
campaigning days in Maharashtra, with 15
meetings, while Ms Swaraj has been allotted seven
days and 28 meetings. Mr Advani will address 12
rallies and Mr Naidu 15. Mr Mahajan's rival, Mr
Jaitley, will only get to address five meetings.
But Mr Mahajan will speak in 71 places, and his
brother-in-law Munde in 60! This means the power
struggle will sharpen no matter how the BJP
performs at the hustings. If it does well, Mr
Naidu, Mr Jaitley and Ms Bharati will sulk. If it
does poorly, Mr Mahajan will be blamed and
isolated.
Today, no top BJP leader can moderate and resolve
such internal power rivalries. Mr Vajpayee seems
to have lost both the acumen and the political
prestige needed to do so. Mr Advani seems to be
in a state of disbelief and denial about the Lok
Sabha results. The RSS has stepped into this
vacuum with its pet theory-which not many BJP
leaders can convincingly refute-namely, that the
electoral rout of April/May was caused by the
party's deviation from Hindutva.
Besides its own leaders, the RSS-VHP too are
pushing the BJP towards a harder line-a reborn
Jana Sangh obsessed with raucous, sectarian
Hindu-communalism, and narrowly upper caste-
based, which doesn't even try to build a broad
social base involving groups like the OBCs and
Dalits.
The BJP's Jana Sanghisation is a recipe for its
contraction into a parochial, special-interest
party, or a pressure-group. This contraction is
likely to get greatly accelerated before the
Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and other
states, and then in the Lok Sabha polls. The BJP
has lost much of its ground support in UP and
Bihar, and suffered massive electoral erosion in
25 out of India's 28 states. A defeat in
Maharashtra, India's second largest state, will
prove especially costly. It will greatly erode
the chances of the BJP's revival even in a future
period of Congress decline. In Maharashtra, the
stakes are much higher for the BJP than the
Congress. And the dice are loaded against it.-end-
o o o o o
(ii)
The Daily Times
October 14, 2004
BEYOND BAL THACKERAY'S BEARD
by J Sri Raman | HUM HINDUSTANI
Thackeray broke the silence of the far right.
Addressing a public rally in Mumbai, he reverted
to his favourite subject of the peril of Muslim
population growth and the diabolically-plotted
demographic invasion from Bangladesh. Thence he
proceeded to a castigation -not for the first
time - of Congress leaders as eunuchs (hijre) for
following 'a woman and, that too, a foreign one'
"Had Cleopatra's nose been shorter", said Blaise
Pascal, "the whole face of the world would have
been different." Will the beard of Shiv Sena (SS)
leader Bal Thackeray change the face of India?
Or at least Maharashtra, the State where he is
the 'Supremo', according to his flock that adores
Italy's Commando Supremo Benito Mussolini as much
as it abhors Sonia Gandhi of Italian origin?
As you read these lines, the voters in India's
most industrialised state would have answered
these questions. To judge by much of the
campaigning for the Maharashtra Assembly
elections of October 13, and of its media
coverage, the fate of this fuehrer's facial hair
had made issues of ideology and politics almost
irrelevant.
For those who came in late, Thackeray hit the
headlines once again some time ago by appearing
unshaven before the media and announcing that he
would not shave off his beard until and unless
the SS-BJP alliance won the elections and
returned to power in the state. He did not say he
was emulating the example of his avowed idol,
Chhatrapati Shivaji, the anti-Mughal Maratha
warrior, with hi-flowing beard.
The 'Supremo', however, laughed off apprehensions
of the opposite kind. "No, no, I am not changing
my religion", he was reported to have assured
some alarmed followers. He did once joke that he
had actually nicked himself while shaving and had
put away the razor for some days. Political
considerations, however, prevailed, and the beard
was soon back, campaigning for the far-right.
Frivolous and trivial as all this may seem, the
subject helped everyone involved in the
elections. The irrelevance of issues helped the
opposing alliance of the Congress and the
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), which was not
exactly dying to air its ideological differences
with the SS-BJP camp, though it waxes eloquent
about them at a safe distance from elections. It
helped much of the mainstream media, which was
happier projecting ideology as irrelevant to all
political conflicts. It also helped the SS-BJP
alliance.
Thackeray and the SS were eager not to unduly
embarrass the Election Commission (EC). He even
promised to comply with its directive not to
raise religious issues, though he taunted it with
the query: "Is not Ayodhya a religious issue?"
The BJP preferred to go back to its policy and
practice of keeping such issues "on the back
burner" whenever it went for an alliance. As an
all-India party, it had differences even with the
SS that combines religious and regional
chauvinisms - with Thackeray for throwing not
only Bangladeshi immigrants out of India but also
'outsiders' out of metropolitan Mumbai.
The effort by the contending alliances - through
almost the entire campaign - has been to appear
almost the same. The manifestos made the same
promises, mainly free power to farmers and a
Shivaji memorial. Both avoided taking a stand on
the demand for a Vidarbha state to be carved out
of Maharashtra. And both were silent on Hindutva
issues, as controversies of communal-fascist
creation are called in an outrageous affront to
the peace-loving majority of the Indian people.
Both the camps were silent on these issues,
however, for different reasons. The SS-BJP
silence was tactical. The Congress-NCP silence
was just timid.
Both broke the silence on October 11, the last
day of public campaigning. Congress president
Sonia Gandhi broke it for her camp during her
'road show' through Mumbai, when she called upon
the voters to defeat "the communal forces" that
"talked of Indian traditions but destroyed our
culture". None else from her party or alliance,
however, took on the SS-BJP combine in similar
terms. None, not even Gandhi, told Thackeray that
Ayodhya was not indeed a religious issue but only
a pseudo-religious one of cynically political
motivation.
The 'Supremo' himself broke the silence for the
far right, and how. Addressing a public rally in
Mumbai, he reverted to his favourite subject of
the peril of Muslim population growth and the
diabolically-plotted demographic invasion from
Bangladesh. Thence he proceeded to a castigation
- not for the first time - of Congress leaders as
eunuchs (hijre) for following "a woman and, that
too, a foreign one".
I have been looking for a reaction of disapproval
to these remarks from the Congress, the NCP, any
other party (even of the Left), the EC, the
media, or any organisation of women. I have found
none. Transvestites, of course, don't talk back
to Thackerays.
The way fascist exhibitionism of such crudity and
cruelty has come to be accepted as part of
political discourse is truly frightening. So is
the fact that, regardless of manifestos and such
other statements that no party really means, the
SS-BJP combine continued its communal agitprop as
its unofficial campaign, run by other members of
the parivar (the far right 'family'). This took
several forms ranging from an agitation by the
Bajarang Dal against cow slaughter to
distribution of tridents (trishul) and literature
calling on Hindus to make a Babri Masjid of Afzal
Khan's tomb in the state.
After the last general election lost by he
BJP-led alliance, Thackeray had attributed the
loss to what he saw as insufficient use of the
Hindutva plank. This should sound a warning.
We don't know what the Maharashtra elections will
do to his beard. Whatever the result, however, it
can only bode ill for the state and the country.
Unless, of course, forces opposed to
Thackeray-type fascism take it on frontally and
with ideological frankness.
______
[5]
LAND OF GANDHI WHERE CITIZENS DO NOT HAVE RIGHT TO KNOW AND MEDIA IS NOT FREE
Digant Oza
Gandhi bhaktas (devotees) of Gandhinagar,
Gujarat, had to be content with performing the
annual ritual of garlanding the Mahatma's statue
on his birthday from outside the closed iron
gates of the Secretariat, because their entry
into the compound was prohibited due to
"Security" reasons, according to Laljibhai Wadia,
secretary general of Swaichhik Seva Sanstha, a
NGO. The ban was imposed by the state government,
which on 2nd October exhorted the people through
advertisements to follow the path of Mahatma
Gandhi.
This is one of the several paradoxes the Gujarat
of Gandhi is facing today. The citizens have lost
the voice of dissent, and are silent in the face
of the injustices meted out to civil society in
the name of pride of Gujarat. Citizens of
Gandhi's Gujarat do not have the right to know.
The press is not free.
From Gujarat's perspective, this conference could
not have been held at a more appropriate time. We
have just left behind October 2, the third after
the communal holocaust in Gujarat, but one is
just not able to put behind the paradox that the
Mahatma hailed from this part of the country.
This is not to refer to Gandhiji's principle of
non-violence and tolerance in the context of the
2002 violence in Gujarat, but in the larger
scenario in Gujarat where any dissent is quickly
described as an insult to Gujarat and, by
implication, anti-national.
It was Gandhi who taught Gujarat and the country
to dissent, and have the courage to stand up for
it. It was from here that major national
movements took shape, and caught the imagination
of an entire generation. It was the courageous
journalist in Gandhi (of "Harijanbandhu" and
"Young India") who pioneered the campaign for the
freedom of the press. He stood for these rights
when our fellow countrymen were considered to be
the white man's burden, and the dream of a free
India was nowhere in sight. [...]
[FULL TEXT AT:
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2004/10/land-of-gandhi-where-citizens-do-not.html
]
______
[6]
THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF DALITS' STRUGGLE: CALL FOR SOLIDARITY
5th December is the International Day of Dalit
Struggle – the World Dignity Day. The hopes and
struggles of Indian Dalits, and Dignity as a
universal human concern, are the axis on which
Dalits, Adivasis, unorganised workers,
minorities, other marginals and their
organisations have come together for the first
time in the recent past. Nine Dalit
organisations, peoples’ organisations and
movement groups from different parts of the
country have jointly called for a Peoples’
Dignity Rally on 5th December at Ramlila Grounds
in Delhi.
50,000 Dalits of all religious and sub-caste
backgrounds, minorities, forest people,
unorganised workers and women from Uttar Pradesh,
Uttaranchal, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh,
Rajasthan and Delhi in northern India; Tamil
Nadu, Pondicherry, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra
Pradesh in southern India; Orissa, Bihar and
Jharkhand in eastern India; and Gujarat,
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra in
western and central India will participate in
this Rally.
The Rally demands the right to reservation in the
private sector, comprehensive legislation to
protect the interests of unorganised workers and
artisans, especially the weavers, and the
implementation of comprehensive land and agrarian
reforms. The Rally also demands that the State
and the governments immediately stop the eviction
of the forest people from the forest lands, and
slum dwellers from their habitations, and accord
a Scheduled Caste status to the Dalits among the
Muslims and the Christians. The sufferings and
miseries of farmers, artisans, weavers, displaced
people, unemployed youth and victims of communal
riots and sectarian violence must be urgently and
thoroughly addressed.
‘Rights’ are the core of dignity and dignified
living. Right to work, right to livelihood, right
to food, right to health and education, women’s
right to agricultural land, peoples’ right to
natural resources – these all should be protected
and expanded in myriad ways.
From 4th to 6th December, various participating
organisations of the Peoples’ Dignity Rally and
the World Dignity Forum will organise a series of
programmes to emphasise their demands and their
dignity: on 4th December, the All India Pasmanda
Muslim Mahaz will be organising a Dalit Muslim
Mahapanchayat, to assert the rights of Dalits
among the Muslims and to prepare a plan of action
for the political inclusion of Dalit Muslims. Lok
Shakti Sangathan of Bihar will organise the
Musahar Maang Diwas (Demands Day) on 6th
December, and will raise their voices for
socio-political inclusion, dignity in occupation
and land, and water rights of their community,
which stands among the lowest even within the
Dalits. Lok Shakti Abhiyan of Orissa will be
holding its meeting on 6th December on livelihood
rights of the indigenous people of Orissa in the
context of globalisation. On the same day itself,
the World Dignity Forum will hold a dialogue on
Peoples’ Dignity, i.e. ‘Lok Samman par Samvaad’,
where common men and women, grassroot activists
and local citizens from the underbelly of the
country, from all backgrounds and genders will
articulate as to what dignity means to them. In
this process, a ‘Peoples’ Charter of Dignity’
will be chalked out.
Social Movement International Network/World
Assembly of Social Movements has given a call to
observe 5th December as the World Dignity Day, in
solidarity with the Peoples’ Dignity Rally in
Delhi. Thus, there will be worldwide actions on
5th December. In UK, USA, and other countries of
Europe, Africa and Latin America, there will be
several solidarity programmes for the dignity and
social inclusion of dalits, tribals and other
marginals of India and Asia.
Various social movements and mass organizations
of the world assembled at the World Social Forum
2004, Mumbai, India. After the World Social
Forum, Dalit organizations, organizations of
workers, women, Adivasis, Muslims, and other
marginals, and mass movements of India came
together to discuss strategies and plans for
action against social exclusion, neo-liberal
policies and religious fundamentalisms. The World
Dignity Forum, a forum against casteism, racism,
other forms of discriminations and exclusions,
that roots itself amidst the Indian Dalits and
Dalit organizations and which was officially
launched in the World Social Forum 2004,
channelised this process. All elaborated a common
action agenda. 5th December -- the Day of
Peoples’ Dignity Rally in Delhi -- is an
important part of this common agenda.
In another sense, this also signifies an
important paradigmatic shift. The World Dignity
Forum and the Peoples’ Dignity Rally try to
evolve a coherent peoples’ agenda, in which a
single goal is achieved only with the coming
together of the other. This interconnected
imperative -- Dalits with Dalit Muslims, forest
people with unorganised labourers, unorganised
labourers with tribals, tribals with Dalits --
poses new challenges for our institutions and our
governance.
The 1980s and 90s saw the emergence of many
alliances and fronts in our country around
specific themes and issues. The politics of the
Asian Social Forum and the World Social Forum
have provided an opportunity for these many
alliances and fronts to know each other, and
share their experiences. However, in the new
political reality of today, working for better
labour legislation, or for reservation, or for
community ownership on resources, or for social
security -- each by itself, functioning in an
autonomous domain – is not sufficient. Dalit and
tribal groups need to come together with
environment groups. Environment groups need to
support actions necessary to advance various
labour and health policies and agendas, which if
designed effectively, will inevitably advance the
environment agenda. On the other hand, labour and
health groups need to support actions necessary
to advance the environment agenda, which without
doubt will benefit the health agenda. Groups
supporting poverty reduction should encourage
both health and environment agendas as integral
to their own. Environment, labour and health
groups should buttress the poverty reduction
agenda. Education is a key to all three of these
agendas, as is gender equality. 'Networks of
Networks' is the need of the times, and if the
Peoples’ Dignity Rally leads us to this one goal
in our present-day activism, then India will
surely be a much better place to live in for
millions of the poor and the marginalised.
Ashok Bharti, Mukul Sharma, Ali Anwar, Ashok
Choudhary, Subhash Bhatnagar, Prafulla Samantara,
Sana Das, P. Chennaiah, Deepak Bharti, Vinod Raina
on behalf of
World Dignity Forum, National Conference of Dalit
Organisations, All India Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz,
National Forum for Forest People and Forest
Workers, National Campaign Committee for
Construction Workers, Andhra Pradesh Vritudarulu
Vyavasayu Union, Lok Shakti Abhiyan, Lok Shakti
Sangathan, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti
______
[7]
Call for Papers on PARTITION AND MIGRATION
Papers are solicited for a book that seeks to
connect the different facets of partition
violence to histories of migration and relocation
within and across the nation-states of India and
Pakistan as well as to the West. For many
survivors, the partition of 1947 remains the
defining moment of trauma that marks their lives
and memories. In recent years, historians,
activists, and literary scholars have recovered
stories of survivors of partition violence in
order to understand its human side and the
multiple dimensions of the ways in which the
"partitioned subject" reconstituted him/herself
in relation to the violence. This book seeks to
complicate such stories in order to examine the
ways in which forms of violence arising from the
conflicts between "homeland" and the nation
states' regulatory practices concerning issues of
domicile, nationality, citizenship, ethnicity and
language impacted the process of migration
itself. How do such forms of violence mediate the
afterlives of migrants in places that are marked
by new pressures of differences, hopes and
possibilities? What do they speak about the
failures of nation and home? How do the
mediations of gender account for the failures and
possibilities of their new homes and nations? The
aim of this book is to bring together essays that
explore the ways in which representational forms
such as literature, film, media, theatre,
testimonies and oral histories negotiate these
and other related questions. The book will also
examine the interventions that such
representations may make in existing opinion on
the subject.
Please submit proposals (250-300 words) for
essays, along with a title, by November 15th,
2004 to Nandi Bhatia and Anjali Gera (e-mail
addresses given below).
Anjali Gera
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Technology
Kharagpur 721 302
Nandi Bhatia
University of Western Ontario
Canada
Email: agera_99 at yahoo.com, nbhatia2 at uwo.ca
______
[8] [Book reviews and Books ]
a) Novel Look at Gandhi's Affections
Tale of Icon's Relationship With British Woman Has India Talking
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 12, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25361-2004Oct11.html
b)
Books with a Difference: Six books/booklets from
Dr Shamshul Islam on communalism and casteism
released recently.
Know the RSS (Pages 40, Price Rs 20.00)
Undoing India: the RSS way (Pages88, Price Rs50.00) and
Shudras in Manu’s India (Pages 80, Price Rs 50.00) (all in English)
and
RSS ko pahchane, (Pages 32, Price Rs 15.00)
RSS ki rastra Vinash Yatra (Pages 80, Price Rs 30.00) and
Manu ke Bharat me Shudra (Pages 70, Price Rs 30.00) (all in Hindi)
These books/booklets unveil mysteries, presents
unknown documents from RSS literature, bringing
light into the dark, shocking and deplorable
episodes of the newest Hindutva icons.
Dr Shamsul Islam teaches political sience at
Satyawati College, Delhi University. He is a well
known authority on communal politics, religious
fundamentalism, human rights, street theatre,
Dalit and gender issues. He writes in leading
publications of English, Hindi and Urdu.
Publisher of the above said books/booklets is
Books for Change, C-75, South Extension II, New Delhi-110 049
Mobile: 9810841159 Contact Person: MANIMALA
______
[9] [Upcoming Events:]
(i)
Anand Patwardhan's documentary film "Father, Son, and Holy War"
to be screened at UC Berkeley's PF on Friday, Oct. 22, 2004
(ii)
History of Science and Religious Fundamentalism
Saturday, October 23 , Room 169, REHSEIS [*]
9:30 am - 18:00 pm
Organized by Rehseis (A. Keller) and MSH
09:30 : A. Keller et K. Chemla (REHSEIS)
Introduction
10:00 - 11:15 : M. Nanda (Science and Religion Fellow, Templeton Foundation)
Making Science Sacred: How Postmodernism Aids Hindu Nationalism
Pause
11:30-12:45 : S Irfan HABIB (Nistads, New-Delhi)
Science and Islam from pluralism to religious essentialism
Lunch
14h15-15h30 : Pervez Hoodboy (Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
Returning Science to Islam - The Rocky Road Ahead
Pause
15h45-17h00 : Everett Mendelsohn (Harvard University)
Fundamental Religion, Scientific Research -
Confronting the Stem Cell Controversies
17h00 : Discussion
During this workshop we will explore how
religious fundamentalisms have, in the last
twenty years, produced narratives in history of
science. These texts highlight the political
dimension of discourses on science's history.
They also shed a light on fundamentalists'
outlook on science, modernity and history. By
inviting scholars to present different specific
field works on this theme, dealing with
Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu
fundamentalists' discourses on science and its
history, we hope to produce a better
understanding of the diversity and popularity of
these narratives.
[*] Rehseis
CNRS- Université Paris VII
UMR 7596
Centre Javelot
2 place Jussieu
Paris Cedex 05
75256
(iii)
Nuclear Free Future World
Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)
2nd National Convention
November 26-28, 2004, Jaipur [India]
Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP)
Website: www.cndpindia.org
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
Sister initiatives :
South Asia Counter Information Project : snipurl.com/sacip
South Asians Against Nukes: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org
Communalism Watch: communalism.blogspot.com/
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necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
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