SACW #2 | 6 Nov 2004

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  Dispatch #2 |  6 November,  2004

[1] India: The latest victim (Shiv Visvanathan)
[2] India:  Letter to the Editor (Ammu Abraham)
[3] India: [the new law against ] Communal violence (Editorial, Deccan Herald)
[4] India: The BJP: From tragedy to farce  (Praful Bidwai)
[5] India: BJP Seeks Continued Support of Right-Wing Group (Virendra Kapoor)
[6] India: Top Hindu Hawks May Face Trial for 
Demolition of Mosque (Ranjit Devraj)


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

[1]


The Hindustan Times
November 6, 2004

THE LATEST VICTIM
Shiv Visvanathan

Let me begin autobiographically. Any 
autobiography is a statement of bias, location 
and expectation. It valorises storytelling over 
analysis and attempts to combine both in some 
framework of reflectivity. When the investigation 
into the Gujarat riots shifted to Bombay, I 
sighed with relief. It was a sigh of relief for 
democracy and a salute to the courts and to the 
NGO who had kept an issue alive. The sadness of 
Gujarat was not merely the tragedy of violence, 
it was the sadness of silence, the sadness of a 
story left untold. The witness was allowed to 
complete her story, the law was to proceed with 
its interrogation and between interrogation and 
storytelling, democracy and justice were 
breathing.

When the media reported how the witness, a woman, 
identified the perpetrators in court, one sensed 
the drama of the moment. Justice had reached a 
turning point. When the same media reported that 
the witness had retracted, I realised that 
justice had turned into an unending serial. What 
one confronted was not the professional witness 
who litters our lower courts, but the revolving 
witness, who by changing her mind changes history 
and marks all the characters around her.

When the witness turns hostile, the needle of 
suspicion points in other directions. When Zahira 
Sheikh accused Teesta Setalvad of monitoring, 
sequestering or being indifferent to her, one 
immediately faces three questions. First, one 
confronts the ambiguity of victim as witness. The 
victim becomes marked by the violence of the 
event (the riot), but also by the violence of the 
aftermath. The event which began as rape, murder, 
humiliation, now becomes an opportunity for 
publicity and mobility. It becomes convertible 
into money, to currency beyond the fact of 
compensation.

What adds to this ambiguity is Narendra Modi's 
statement that NGOs should be audited, examined 
and evaluated. A new public space for rumour, 
suspicion and speculation is created. We have the 
entry of a third term: the NGO as middlemen, as 
representative and agent of civil society.

The details seem sordid. The media report that 
Sheikh observes that money was floating into the 
NGO coffers because of her presence. She demands 
a house and money for her bakery in Mumbai. By 
locating herself as source, she also defines 
herself as beneficiary. The question is no longer 
of justice or witness, but of individual 
opportunity.

Expectedly, some NGOs resent the fact that 
Setalvad has monopolised the victim. Like Sheikh, 
they see missed opportunities. Suspicion 
magnifies rumour when one of the perpetrators 
alleges that Setalvad has threatened him. 
Setalvad now appears as a manipulative coercive 
ogre. Strangely, the innocence or laziness of 
rumour in public space seems to confirm some 
modicum of suspicion.

We confront a distressing situation. A crisis of 
the legitimacy of the State, police and party has 
been deftly turned into a crisis of the NGO. We 
have an allegedly wounded state as represented by 
the CM, a confusing witness and an ambiguous NGO. 
There is no mention of Setalvad's courage, 
dedication or professionalism. It's almost as if 
Setalvad and NGOs are on trial. How do we, 
especially those of us who saw activism as a 
testimony and a testament for democratic society, 
confront this?

Let us begin with the obvious as the obvious 
sometimes eludes debate. There are good and bad 
NGOs, like good and bad cops, politicians, 
bureaucrats. Every time we confront a corrupt 
politician, we don't question the possibilities 
of politics. It makes dialogue impossible. 
Secondly, and critically, it is time society and 
politicians realise that there has been - and 
will continue to be - an internal critique among 
NGOs about their current role. The writings of 
Bunker Roy, Aruna Roy, Harsh Sethi and Madhu 
Kishwar testify to this. The quality of critique 
is relentless and the nature of reflection 
profound. One also realises that NGO leaders can 
be more impervious to criticism than any 
political leader.

We mustn't, however, lose the main point: that 
NGOs have created a new sphere, a zone that's 
still fragile, an area where the vulnerable 
tribal, women, peasant or minority can raise 
their voice. The NGO has sought to raise their 
voice. The NGO has sought to protect voices, 
amplify, represent and preserve them. The NGO has 
been listener, storyteller and representative of 
this new voice that party politics and trade 
unions failed to articulate. This is a major 
contribution to democracy that no cynicism can 
destroy.

Yet the NGO and this space are doubly vulnerable. 
Activism, for all its noise and community, is a 
lonely affair. Second, it is subject to the 
market for funds, either from government or 
international agencies. The consumption of 
activism sometimes determines its style. Third, 
there's an ambiguity in the relationship between 
victim and the NGO. They are bound together and 
both feel that the other owes them an unpayable 
debt. The activists feel that they have protected 
the victim and their memories, while the victim 
feels that activists turn possessive, even 
monopolistic, given the fund- driven nature of 
the NGO market.

The condition in Gujarat makes this even more 
difficult. There are activists like Setalvad and 
Cedric Prakash, Shabnam Hashmi with tacit support 
from the Congress, and finally the shadows of 
Action Aid, who, idealistic and courageous, still 
have to capture the nuances of local politics. 
They need to negotiate locally with the Congress 
and the Sangh parivar in Gujarat. What's 
occurring now is a split between the politics of 
peace (read: stability) and the politics of 
justice. One can read this more poetically as the 
split between the politics of memory and the 
politics of forgetting. At the local level, these 
are complex issues, where ideals and the tactics 
have to forge a compromise. What NGOs do in a 
hurry is to simplify issues. Chess gets confused 
for checkers.

Achyut Yagnik shrewdly observes that by competing 
against each other, NGOs have failed to create 
local coalitions. In fact, they tend to be 
impatient, with the local and the grassroots 
levels accusing them of doing little or nothing. 
Yet, the NGO is right in saying the judiciary at 
the local level did little; that one had to 
appeal to the nation to create the space for 
justice. This inner failure to understand the 
politics makes the NGO vulnerable to the cynicism 
of party politics.

One must insist of the need for the NGOs' courage 
and politics. They are irritants, but necessary. 
To drown them in suspicion or gossip is to 
destroy the politics of democracy in Gujarat. The 
NGO channelises voices in the wilderness to 
communities of protest.

The tragedy of Zahira Sheikh's statement seen in 
tandem with Modi's 'editorial' is that it creates 
a double vulnerability - the vulnerability of the 
victim as a witness and the vulnerability of the 
NGO as listener, community and voice for the 
vulnerable. No accusation of naiveté or 
impropriety can rob them of this achievement. Any 
attempt to do this is foolhardy in the long run. 
Democracy and Gujarat owe them a debt, a debt 
they can only repay through critical hospitality.

______


[2]


5th November 2004, Mumbai

Letter to the Editor:

As an anti-communalist who has been keenly 
following the developments after the Gujarat 
genocide of Muslims, I was really distressed 
first when Zahira Sheikh became a hostile witness 
in the BEST Bakery case in Vadodara. Her 
recantation cast the shadow of doubt on all 
accounts of the genocide in Gujarat.

Many like myself, who are not directly involved 
in the Gujarat 2002 cases felt that the Supreme 
Court order shifting the trials to Mumbai created 
a chance to redeem the faith of the citizenry in 
India's judicial process. The latest turnabout by 
the 'star witness' Zahira and her bizzare 
accusations against Teesta Setalvad and the CJP 
hardly moves one at all.

Because the real victims of the BEST bakery 
attack and burning were not Zahira and her family 
which owned the bakery. The real victims were 
their employees. These youth from poverty 
stricken families, both Muslim and non-Muslim, 
who find a meagre livelihood by attaching 
themselves to bakeries, in Gujarat and elsewhere 
in the country, live and work in miserable 
conditions usually. In the BEST bakery trials 
going on in Mumbai, they are the real 'star' 
witnesses. The decision of the Supreme Court has 
given them the opportunity to speak out bravely 
and to bear witness to the attack on themselves 
and their colleagues who are no more. Most of 
them have spoken most convincingly in court.

Zahira and her family seem concerned mostly about 
their business; her third recantation has 
betrayed these workers, above all. We are all 
hopeful I am sure, that justice will prevail in 
the end and the wisdom of the court will weigh 
the sincerity and consistency of the witnesses 
adequately.

sincerely,

Ammu Abraham


______



[3]

Deccan Herald
November 06, 2004  |   Editorial

COMMUNAL VIOLENCE
The new law against communal violence is futile 
without the political will to back it up

Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil has said that 
the government would soon bring in a model 
comprehensive law to tackle communal violence in 
the country. The UPA's Common Minimum Programme 
had promised a separate comprehensive law on 
communal violence under which investigations 
would be carried out only by Central agencies and 
prosecution by special courts. Mr Patil's 
statement indicates that the government intends 
bringing in legislation to contain communal 
violence.

Some have questioned the need for new legislation 
on the matter. After all, there are several laws 
to take care of such situations. For instance, 
Section 153-A of the Indian Penal Code provides 
for punishment for any act, which is prejudicial 
to the maintenance of harmony between different 
religious, linguistic, or regional groups or 
castes or communities and which disturbs or is 
likely to disturb the public tranquillity. There 
is legislation to tackle the inciting of violence 
and so on.

However, the proposed legislation is being 
described as a step forward. It will be a Central 
enactment. This means that if a state government 
does not take steps to check communal violence, 
the Centre can intervene to do so.

Existing legislation to tackle communal violence 
has failed in the past because of poor 
implementation and a lack of political will. As 
evident in Gujarat in 2002, the attack on 
minorities assumed the immense proportions it did 
because the BJP government in the state along 
with the police force was complicit in the 
violence and refused to take steps to arrest its 
spread. There is no guarantee that the Central 
government would necessarily act to check 
communal violence if the state government is 
reluctant to do so.

The BJP-led government in the centre simply 
looked the other way in the case of Gujarat. The 
Congress was in power at the Centre and in 
Maharashtra in 1992, when communal violence broke 
out after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The 
Centre took no action when the Maharashtra 
government did not act effectively to halt the 
violence.

No communal riot can occur if the government and 
its law and order machinery are determined to 
prevent or arrest the spread of such violence and 
virus The need for keeping the intelligence 
apparatus in a fine fettle and making effective 
use of the input for nipping the trouble in the 
bud is also equally crucial. What is needed is 
political will to prevent the spread of the 
communal virus. The proposed new law could end up 
as just another piece of legislation if the 
government does not back it with effective 
implementation.


______


[4]

Frontline
Nov. 06 - 19, 2004

FROM TRAGEDY TO FARCE
Praful Bidwai

The BJP is so deeply mired in crisis that it has 
fallen back on hardline leader L.K. Advani. This 
proves its second-generation leadership's 
bankruptcy and fractiousness and is a recipe for 
further turbulence and disarray inside the 
Hindutva camp.


IF the Bharatiya Janata Party wanted to prove 
through live action the validity of Marx's 
observation about history repeating itself "first 
as tragedy and second as farce", it could not 
have done it better than by appointing Lal 
Krishna Advani as its president. During his last 
avatar as the party's head (in two phases, from 
1986 to 1990, and from 1993 to 1998), Advani 
prepared the ground for, or presided over, some 
of the grimmest tragedies, including ferocious 
communal violence, that India has witnessed.

Advani's stewardship of the BJP was inseparable 
from a hardening of the Hindutva line, 
hate-driven mobilisation around the Ayodhya issue 
beginning in the mid-1980s, the Ram rath yatra of 
1990, the demolition of the Babri Masjid, and the 
orgy of killing that followed. Aggressive, 
militant Hindutva was also the inspiration behind 
the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 - Independent India's 
worst, and uniquely, brutal state-supported 
butchery of a religious minority.

Now, the same man has returned to head the BJP at 
a time when it stands badly demoralised from, and 
almost totally unreconciled to, the two electoral 
batterings it has suffered in five months. The 
BJP is trying to present this act of panic and 
despair as a rescue-and-rejuvenation operation. 
The incongruity of the drums of BJP apparatchiks 
beating a jubilant beat as the party licks its 
wounds and its cadres futilely fight total 
depression will be lost on nobody.

In the low comedy now being enacted, the hero 
himself barely comprehends what has happened to 
the organisation, which was so confident of 
returning to power that it did not even bother to 
make contingency plans for another eventuality. 
National Democratic Alliance Ministers saw the 
Lok Sabha elections as but a short interregnum; 
they kept old arrangements going in anticipation 
of returning to power.

Advani's explanation as to why the NDA lost in 24 
out of the 28 States, and why the BJP in 
particular performed badly virtually everywhere, 
is simply that the party strayed from its core 
"ideology" and neglected its karyakartas 
(grassroots workers), and that there was a 
"disconnect between good governance and electoral 
victory".

This explanation is question-begging: Why should 
there be such a "disconnect", even assuming, as 
BJP leaders later conceded, that the "India 
Shining" campaign was over-pitched? Does Advani 
believe that the voter acted irrationally by not 
recognising the NDA's record of governance and 
punishing it at the hustings? Why should the NDA 
be singled out for punishment? More important, 
the hypothesis detaches governance from the NDA's 
right-wing policies which became deeply unpopular 
because of their harmful impact on people's 
livelihoods and on the quality of democracy. The 
NDA lost both because its government was 
insensitive to India's agrarian crisis, growing 
unemployment and worsening food insecurity, and 
because it was perceived as Machiavellian and 
unacceptably manipulative. The BJP was mauled 
particularly badly in areas where the numerically 
large middle and lower orders of society rejected 
it - because it had nothing to offer to them.

Underlying this electoral performance is 
continued contraction of the social base of the 
BJP and its principal allies - a "structural" 
cause that will prove far more damaging in the 
long run than any temporary ups and downs in 
voting patterns. Such contraction is revealed in 
the recent Maharashtra Assembly elections and the 
byelections in key States too. In most 
byelections - a notable exception being the two 
Assembly seats in Gujarat - the BJP did badly or 
indifferently. In Uttar Pradesh, it lost its 
security deposit in seven out of 11 
constituencies. In the bulk of these contests, it 
finished fourth or fifth.

There has been a serious erosion in the BJP's 
support-base in Uttar Pradesh as the Rajputs, who 
turned towards it in the 1990s, deserted it. 
State unit president Kesari Nath Tripathi admits 
as much. In large parts of the State the BJP's 
core support has been reduced to the Bania caste, 
with some Brahmins thrown in. More generally, in 
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the BJP has lost the 
appreciable support it once garnered among the 
Other Backward Classes especially through the Ram 
Janmabhoomi mobilisation of the 1980s and the 
"rainmaker" role of former Chief Minister Kalyan 
Singh at one time. In Uttar Pradesh, Kalyan Singh 
did for the BJP what nobody else has been able to 
do: combine the appeal of Mandal (OBC politics) 
with kamandal (hardcore Hindutva).

In Bihar too, the BJP piggybacked on "the forward 
march of backwards" through the leadership of 
Sushil Kumar Modi and by allying with the Samata 
Party (stewarded by OBC leader Nitish Kumar, 
himself a Kurmi) and the Janata Dal (United) of 
Sharad Yadav. But that trend is now over.

In the Maharashtra Assembly elections, the BJP 
and its Hindutva ally, Shiv Sena, had a good 
chance to, and were expected to, better their Lok 
Sabha performance. (They won 25 seats against the 
Congress-led Democratic Front's 23.) The D.F. 
government had a poor record of governance, was 
marked by corruption, ineptitude and mishandling 
of drought relief. It changed its Chief Minister 
midstream, and was scarred by the Telgi scam.

The BJP-Sena managed to snatch defeat from the 
jaws of victory, more than just reversing the 
ratio of seats won vis-a-vis the D.F. (119 
against 146). Their combined vote lagged six 
percentage points behind the D.F's. This 
indicates a decisive rejection of the BJP-Sena. 
They were unable to break the hold of smaller 
parties and "independents" (mostly 
Congress-Nationalist Congress Party rebels) who 
together polled 24 per cent of the vote.

An analysis of the vote by social class, caste 
and gender suggests that the D.F. is better 
implanted among the poorer layers of the 
population, and among Dalits, Muslims and 
Adivasis, although the BJP-Sena does have 
significant OBC support (The Hindu, October 24). 
(In Marathwada and Vidharba, the Shiv Sena, for 
instance, emerged in the early 1990s as a major 
force by virtue of becoming an OBC foil to the 
Maratha-dominated Congress-NCP.) However, now 
this OBC base is eroding.

After the Maharashtra debacle, the BJP seems set 
to enter a period of decline, with few 
opportunities to recoup its losses. The next 
round of Assembly elections, due in Bihar, 
Jharkhand and Haryana, could result in a further 
setback to the BJP. In Bihar, Laloo Prasad's 
Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress form a 
formidable combination. The BJP's former ally, 
the Janata Dal(U), is having serious second 
thoughts about joining hands with it. Even with 
an alliance, the BJP camp would find it hard to 
combat the RJD-Congress alliance. Without one, 
the BJP will be badly beaten.

In Jharkhand, Shibu Soren's "martyrdom" through 
his resignation and arrest will work against the 
BJP. And in Haryana, Bansi Lal's re-entry will 
help the Congress immensely. It seems fairly 
clear that Om Prakash Chautala will not ally with 
the BJP. And in the round that follows in 2006, 
with elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and 
Kerala, the BJP is not even in the running!

The NDA is generally in bad shape throughout the 
country. Advani's reappointment as BJP president 
has produced disquiet in the already demoralised, 
rudderless and increasingly fragmented alliance. 
The very first signals that Advani sent out at 
his press conference and the National Council 
meeting of October 27 were strongly of the 
back-to-the-Hindutva-basics kind: with an 
emphasis on "trademark" issues such as a "grand" 
temple at Ayodhya, "unapologetic" defence of the 
Sangh ideology, attack on Sonia Gandhi's "foreign 
origins", warnings against a "demographic 
invasion by Bangladeshis" and the "baneful" 
influence of the Left, and criticism of "soft" 
and corrupt leaders inside the party.

Even more telling was Advani's very first trip 
out of Delhi on taking over as BJP president - to 
the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh headquarters in 
Nagpur, where he addressed the Vijayadasami 
rally. Going by reports, Advani and 
sarsanghchalak Sudarshan discussed organisational 
matters pertaining to the BJP at length, 
including appointments to key offices.

Advani is clearly steering the BJP towards the 
RSS - not from a position of strength, but of 
weakness, following electoral defeats and the 
inability of the "second-generation" leadership 
to manage the party's affairs. These leaders do 
not lack ambition; they lack a social-political 
base, long-term vision and, above all, political 
strategy. They are intensely competitive 
vis-a-vis one another, align themselves with one 
of the top leaders, and have no compunctions 
about sabotaging their rivals' plans. Someone 
like Uma Bharati, for instance, never accepted M. 
Venkaiah Naidu's authority as party president and 
openly accused him of trying to scuttle her 
Tiranga yatra.

There is growing rivalry between some of these 
leaders: for instance, Pramod Mahajan and Arun 
Jaitley, or Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharati. They 
all have good PR, and are adept at manipulative 
politics and shady deal-making like 
"micro-management" in elections - read, encourage 
your opponent's opponents to split votes through 
caste loyalties, and so on. Such tactics worked 
when the BJP was in the ascendant or had a prior 
advantage over its rivals. They no longer work. 
And no BJP leader has a clue as to what might 
work as a better substitute.

During its ascendant phase, the BJP could rely 
upon its NDA allies and at times use them to 
limit the RSS's influence and attempt to chart 
out a semi-autonomous course for itself. For 
instance, it told that the RSS it could not 
pursue "divisive" agendas like the Ayodhya 
temple, Article 370 and a uniform civil code 
because its allies would not accept that. Now, 
the RSS-BJP balance of power has changed. The BJP 
needs the Sangh desperately to rope in 
karyakartas, garner the larger Parivar's support, 
and do door-to-door campaigning for votes. Yet, 
there is no guarantee that the RSS can rein in 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad firebrands like Ashok 
Singhal from openly opposing and attacking the 
BJP.

Outside the Parivar, the situation is bleak. 
Several BJP allies and partners, including the 
Telugu Desam Party, the Akali Dal, and the 
J.D.(U), are alarmed at the BJP's turn to the 
temple. Some NDA parties - the Trinamul Congress, 
for instance - are in a state of disintegration: 
Many Trinamul MPs are queuing up to join the 
Congress. The once-mighty J.D.(U) and TDP have 
shrunk to a fraction of their size. Even the All 
India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) is 
not quite comfortable with the BJP.

The NDA probably will not survive another 
electoral defeat in a major State. Advani is in 
effect faced with a near-impossible task: of 
reviving a party which no longer has the support 
of a social movement (as the Ram 
Janmabhoomi/anti-Babri Masjid campaign 
undoubtedly was) or the appeal of a growing force 
with whom it might be expedient for anti-Congress 
parties to ally. Six years ago, the BJP was an 
untested entity with the "novelty factor" in its 
favour. Now, it has been tried, tested and found 
wanting.

THIS raises a larger question: Did the BJP grow 
as it did over the last 15 years because it 
touched something deep in the "soul of India", 
and because it successfully combined religious 
identity and politics by forging social 
coalitions of diverse Hindu groups? Or did it 
rise meteorically by capitalising on its 
opponents' weaknesses and gaining from 
circumstances of others' making, including larger 
social and political processes?

This writer has always been inclined to the 
second hypothesis. The BJP inadvertently became 
the greatest beneficiary of the erosion of the 
Nehruvian paradigm and the long-term decline of 
the Congress from the mid-1980s onwards. It also 
gained from the global ascendancy of conservative 
forces following the end of the Cold War. It 
could capitalise further on one specific Indian 
phenomenon of the 1990s - the sway of neoliberal 
policies, the rise of an aggressive, ambitious, 
elite unburdened by Enlightenment values, and the 
growth of belligerent forces of nationalism and 
identity politics.

Now, however, other, more powerful social forces 
have asserted themselves, rooted among the 
plebeian layers of the population, for whom the 
agendas of equity and justice matter more than 
hollow identity politics based on religion or 
ethnicity. The Congress is in revival mode and 
the Centre-Left space in the political spectrum 
has considerably expanded. All this makes for 
further erosion of the BJP and greater turmoil 
within its ranks.

It is doubtful if any BJP leader has the 
analytical equipment or the theoretical framework 
to comprehend this and to devise appropriate 
strategies. Advani certainly has shown no signs 
that he does. He, and his colleagues, are likely 
to fall back upon hackneyed formulas and 
snake-oil remedies, especially Hindutva-inspired 
slogans which evoke little popular response, as 
the repeated recent failures of attempts to 
agitate the temple issue have shown. Tired 
slogans cannot prevent the BJP's long-term decline


______


[5]

Gulf News
November 6, 2004

BJP SEEKS CONTINUED SUPPORT OF RIGHT-WING GROUP
By Virendra Kapoor

Last week saw the rare sight of the opposition's 
seniormost leaders - BJP President L.K. Advani 
and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee - 
paying obeisance to junior apparatchiks at the 
Rashtriya SwayamsewakSangh headquarters.

An hour after the meeting at Keshav Kunj and 
there was no clarity in the ideologically and 
organisationally amorphous Sangh. The right-wing 
RSS has no economic philosophy of its own, though 
given the proximity of a couple of freelance 
dabblers in power politics, of late it had 
allowed itself to be identified with the voodoo 
economics of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch.

But then, the talk of economic direction was just 
a cover. The visit was to ensure their support 
for the BJP so that they could rely on its vast 
cadres as election cannon-fodder. The duo seem 
unaware that even the RSS cadres are upset by the 
BJP's none-too-happy record in power.

Though the RSS leaders did not name names, they 
did talk about the decadent style of living of 
quite a few BJP leaders. Even ordinary RSS 
workers were miffed with the BJP for the manner 
in which its top leaders had allowed their 
immediate relatives to make money under the 
benign shadow of the avuncular Vajpayee.

Spin doctors are an integral part of the Indian 
political scene. Thus it was that people close to 
the saffron 'sadhvi' (ascetic), Uma Bharti, put 
out the story that her refusal to join the 
newly-constituted Advani team was due to the 
appointment of Pramod Mahajan as one of the 
general secretaries.

The truth was that Bharti was keen to go back to 
Madhya Pradesh as chief minister but the BJP 
leadership was unwilling to allow it, given her 
"erratic and temperamental" ways.

However Mahajan's acolytes were quick to counter 
the reports emanating from quarters close to the 
Bharti camp.

They insisted that the real reason why she was 
not accepting Advani's offer of general secretary 
was that she was keen on becoming the Madhya 
Pradesh chief minister.

More on the BJP. It seems Varun Gandhi, the one 
scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family with a sharp 
intellect and a master's degree, was keen on 
being made the general secretary of the BJP.

Advani was approached since Varun believed that 
he would be one up on his cousin, Rahul, if he 
was appointed the general secretary of a national 
party.

Advani did not say no directly. But a couple of 
emissaries were sent to tell Varun that "we in 
the BJP do not function that way". His time would 
come but he will have to serve the party in some 
other capacity for a couple of years.

Varun was found a place in the BJP national 
executive, though there was no dearth of 
old-timers who questioned his nomination at an 
age when he was not old enough to even contest a 
parliamentary seat.

Petty politics can play havoc with one's 
perspective. On learning that the monthly 
newspaper bill of Jaswant Singh, Leader of the 
Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, was about Rs14,000 
(Dh1,200) as against only about Rs2,000 (Dh165) 
for his Congress predecessor, Manmohan Singh, a 
senior minister in the UPA Government sought to 
'plant' the story on a friendly journalist.

The idea was to show the BJP leader in poor light 
until it was pointed out to him that Jaswant 
Singh could well list his eclectic reading 
interests and his broad mental horizon by 
releasing the copies of the itemised bill. 
Included in the charge are certain foreign 
publications well known for their cerebral 
approach to world affairs. The bill is paid by 
the Rajya Sabha Secretariat.

The buzz in the BJP circles is that the 
right-wing columnist, Swapan Dasgupta, unofficial 
adviser-cum-speechwriter of Advani, was to be 
appointed one of the secretaries.

But Advani chickened out at the last minute due 
to the unconcealed hostility of the small but 
loud Vajpayee establishment which has not been 
allowed to forget the slight it had first felt 
when in a rather candid phrase Dasgupta had 
ascribed in print some of the questionable 
actions of the NDA Government to the 'dining 
table caucus' around the then prime minister.

Sudheendra Kulkarni, who was in the media set-up 
of the Vajpayee PMO, has been accommodated as a 
secretary of the BJP precisely because he has 
been at pains to keep both the Advani and 
Vajpayee camps in good humour.


______


[6]

Inter Press Service - Nov 5, 2004

TOP HINDU HAWKS MAY FACE TRIAL FOR DEMOLITION OF MOSQUE
Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Nov 5 (IPS) - The top leadership of 
the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could 
stand trial for the December 1992 demolition of 
the medieval Babri Masjid mosque, which propelled 
the right wing, pro-Hindu party to national power 
but deeply polarised the country's two main 
religious communities - the Hindus and Muslims.
A bench of the Allahabad High Court, which has 
jurisdiction over northern Uttar Pradesh, home of 
the demolished mosque, issued fresh notices on 
Tuesday to 21 BJP leaders including former deputy 
prime minister Lal Krishan Advani - whose party 
was shockingly defeated in the May parliamentary 
elections by the avowedly secular Congress party.
Another prominent pro-Hindu leader who faces 
possible trial is Bal Thackeray, supremo of the 
militant Shiv Sena (Shiva's Army) which partnered 
the BJP in the keenly fought provincial elections 
in western Maharashtra state last month but lost 
to a coalition led by the Congress party in what 
is seen as a secular wave sweeping through the 
country.
''This is a major development and a step towards 
making accountable those responsible for an act 
of arson which unleashed so much communal trauma 
on the country,'' Purushottam Agarwal, political 
analyst and professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru 
University (JNU) told IPS.
A special court hearing the cases had dropped 
proceedings against the BJP leaders in May 21, 
2001 amidst charges of political pressure. 
Although the Central Bureau of Investigation 
(CBI) made a revised petition in the following 
month, it had to await changes at the helm before 
it could be considered by the courts.
This week's notices issued by Justice M.A. Khan 
of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court, 
included several former BJP ministers who had led 
mobs in the demolition of the tri-domed Babri 
Masjid on Dec 6, 1992. Names in the notices 
included Murli Manohar Joshi who held the human 
resources development portfolio in the last 
government and Uma Bharti, till recently chief 
minister of central Madhya Pradesh state.
Last month, the Lucknow bench, to in order to 
ascertain culpability, ordered special screenings 
of videotapes which clearly implicated Advani, 
Joshi and Bharti in the demolitions.
But prominent lawyer and BJP spokesman, Arun 
Jaitley dismissed the development as a 
''procedural matter'' and one to which his party 
would rebut in a legal response.
Jaitley claimed that the fact that the case was 
still tenable was proof that his party had not 
interfered with legal proceedings while it was in 
power, as alleged by its political opponents and 
human rights activists.
Nonetheless, Shabnam Hashmi, who leads the 
well-known rights group ANHAD was not convinced.
''What can you expect when the leading people 
accused in the demolition case hold such high 
posts as that of deputy prime minister?'' he 
asked.
The BJP's discomfiture comes at a time when 
Advani, its current president, has indicated 
plans to revive the party's fortunes. He wants 
the party to return to its fundamentalist roots 
and is advocating a previously shelved project to 
build a Hindu temple on the exact spot in Uttar 
Pradesh's Ayodhya town where the Babri Masjid 
mosque once stood.
That project has been stymied by a Supreme Court 
stay order on construction activity.
Hindu fundamentalists believe that iconoclastic 
Muslim invaders built the Babri Masjid over the 
remains of a Hindu temple that once marked the 
exact spot where the warrior deity Rama was born.
Although there is no historical or archaeological 
evidence to prove that claim, the BJP campaign to 
restore the temple, which was personally led by 
Advani, resulted in huge political dividends 
accruing to the party.
Recent statements by Advani that the BJP would 
have taken up the temple building issue if it had 
been returned to power has drawn loud protests 
from its two main regional allies, the Telugu 
Desam Party (TDP) in southern Andhra Pradesh and 
the Janata Dal United (JDU) in eastern Bihar 
state.
Both the TDP and the JDU have blamed the party's 
overt pro-Hindu communalism for the utter rout of 
the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in 
the last elections and have threatened to 
withdraw from the coalition if the BJP persists 
with its temple-building agenda.
''It is natural for allies like the JDU and the 
TDP to be alarmed at the prospect of the BJP once 
again embarking on a project which smacks of 
political immaturity and is certain to lead to 
further violence and communal strife,'' said 
Aggarwal.
But the political analyst said the BJP was in 
serious crisis after its electoral debacles and 
was now in a delicate situation where it had to 
balance the interest of its regional allies 
against those of hard-line Hindu groups which 
support it like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) 
or World Hindu Forum. The VHP, which has been in 
the vanguard of the movement to build a Ram 
temple at the Ayodhya site has warned the BJP not 
to take its continued support for granted.
Its firebrand leader, Ashok Singhal, one of those 
who were issued notices on Tuesday by the Lucknow 
bench, has expressed dissatisfaction with 
Advani's leadership of the BJP and said he 
expected a change soon.
In the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri 
Masjid, several provinces were hit by bouts of 
rioting, the worst of them in the western port 
city of Mumbai once famed for its cosmopolitan 
outlook and its prosperous Muslim trading 
community.
But the worst violence related to the Babri 
Masjid issues occurred in western Gujarat state 
in 2002 after Hindu pilgrims returning by train 
from a pilgrimage to Ayodhya clashed with Muslims 
living around Godhra railway station resulting in 
a an entire carriage going up in flames and 
immolating 58 passengers.
What followed was an anti-Muslim pogrom in the 
state that resulted in the deaths of more than 
2,000 people and the destruction of property 
owned by the community in such cities as Baroda 
and Ahmedabad.
Political analysts like Aggarwal have attributed 
the electoral rout of the BJP six months ago to 
the sole failure of former prime minister Atal 
Bihari Vajpayee to act in time to contain the 
pogrom or to sack the man widely held responsible 
for it, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. 
(END/2004)


______


[5]

The Times of India
November 6, 2004
Pass riots film without cuts, HC tells censors

MUMBAI: Upholding the freedom of speech and 
expression, the Bombay high court on Friday 
directed the censor board to certify the feature 
film Chand Bujh Gaya , set in the backdrop of the 
2002 communal riots in Gujarat, without any cuts. 
One of the characters in the film apparently 
resembled Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi.

The film, produced by Faaiz Anwar, weaves the 
story of a young couple-a Hindu boy and a Muslim 
girl- whose friendship and lives are torn asunder 
in the riots. Anwar's application for a censor 
certificate in September 2003 met with a refusal 
from the board, which feared that the film 
contained scenes capable of igniting communal 
passions.

But the high court bench comprising Chief Justice 
Dalveer Bhandari and Justice D Y Chandrachud held 
the board's decision as legally unsustainable. 
The judges said that "no democracy can 
countenance a lid on suppression of events in 
society".

Revisions and deletions made in the film after 
the censor board's initial objection to a few 
scenes did not satisfy the board, which wanted to 
exercise its scissors once again. P A Sebastian, 
counsel for the producer who approached the court 
against the arbitrary and unreasonable demands of 
the board, said any further deletions would 
weaken the film and dilute the message of 
communal harmony.

The producer's appeal before the film 
certification appellate tribunal against the 
censor board's decision was also unsuccessful.

The tribunal felt that the film contained 
characters which are "easily identifiable with 
real-life personalities".

But after viewing the film, the judges noted that 
the court had the right to intervene when the 
constitutional right guaranteeing freedom of 
speech and expression was being breached. In this 
case, the censor board was indeed contravening 
such rights, the court said.



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

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/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.