SACW | 21 Dec2004

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 21 Dec.,  2004
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] Pakistan-Bangladesh-India: Might have beens can yet be (M B Naqvi)
[2] India:  Fighting poverty with arms (Omar Kureishi)
[3] Buying Arms, Talking Peace - India, Pakistan 
in an insecurity trap (Praful Bidwai)
[4] India: Dead end in Punjab (Brad Adams)
[5] India - Announcements :
(i) Ram Puniyani, the well known crusader for secularism gets ACHA Award 2004
(ii) Lecture on Democratic Decentralization in 
India and Minorities by Dr Omar Khalidi (N Delhi, 
Dec 22)
(iii) Beyond Lines Of Control: Performance and 
Politics on the Disputed Borders of Ladakh, India
(Ravina Aggarwal)
(iv) 'Tragedy Of Commons -The Kerala Experience 
in River Linking' by S.P.Ravi, 
C.G.Madhusoodhanan, Dr.A.Latha, S. Unnikrishnan 
and K.H. Amita Bachan

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

[1]

December 15, 2004

MIGHT HAVE BEENS CAN YET BE

Pakistan must opt for open and people friendly borders
after the '71 divide. The countries making up the subcontinent
can form a union yet retain their sovereignties

by M B Naqvi


Mid-December brings memories of 16 December 1971, 
the Pakistan Army's decisive defeat and the birth 
of Bangladesh. Most Pakistanis regard that 
surrender as a disaster and mourn it; the largest 
and strongest Muslim army in Islamic history was 
defeated for the first time. But the 
circumstances of 1971 make it a much larger 
tragedy.

What happened in East Pakistan was a civil war of 
the Pakistan Army's making -- it had taken over 
governance since Oct 7, 1958, it held a free 
election in Dec 1970 and did not accept the 
election results. Instead, it militarily cracked 
down perhaps technically only on the Awami 
League, the spectacular winner. But in practice 
the soldiers, clearly under orders, fired at 
random on all Bengalis without discrimination. A 
civil war ensued. Before too long, India began 
helping the Bengali insurgents, and together they 
routed the Pakistan Army and took the entire 
Bengal command prisoner.

For the Bangladeshis, December '71 was their 
liberation from the yoke of military tyrants. The 
birth of their own new nation state elated their 
spirits particularly after their terrible 
sufferings at the hands of West Pakistani 
soldiers and the numerous atrocities for which no 
one in Islamabad took responsibility or punished 
wrongdoers. It is undisputed that the Bengalis' 
human rights were grossly violated, though there 
may be different estimates about the number of 
murders and rapes. Islamabad disputes the 
numbers, insisting that there couldn't have been 
three million murders or hundreds of thousands of 
rapes. In a memorable interview, Gen. Tikka Khan 
admitted to "only" 30,000 rapes! Islamabad 
refuses to formally apologise to the people of 
Bangladesh even today; it thinks simple regrets 
over the unhappy (but unenunciated) events is 
enough.

But this is to be expected because of the Army's 
continuing and overwhelming influence over 
Pakistan's governance, including during the 
'democratic' interlude of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto 
(1971-77). Bhutto could have begun to end the 
Army's domination on policy-making but didn't. 
Instead, he rehabilitated Army's morale, 
increased their pay and perks, and expanded their 
role by militarily cracking down on Balochistan 
in 1973. His solution to the military's 
domination was to purge a few generals and 
appoint a pliable general to head the Army. He 
paid with his life for his inability to 
distinguish between the jungle of the institution 
with the tree of generals. The Army assumed power 
in 1977. Ten years later they instituted a 
power-sharing formula and made their dominance of 
security, foreign and economic policies 
permanent, notwithstanding the strutting around 
of 'elected' civilians; since 2002, Gen. 
Musharraf has made these trends clearer.

In 1971, the Indians were happy that Pakistan was 
so demonstratively humbled and broken into two. 
They could, and did, proclaim that Mr. Jinnah's 
Two Nation Theory had decisively collapsed. Then 
there were Indira Gandhi's remarks about 
'avenging a thousand years' humiliation', 
reflecting the pith and substance of the 
psychosis that has produced the Hindutva version 
of Indian nationalism. Islamabad replies that the 
Two Nation theory is still valid because 
Bangladesh emerged as an independent state and is 
unlikely to join India. This view has a limited 
justification on two counts.

Bengali Muslims were in the forefront of the 
Pakistan Movement -- the Muslim League was formed 
in 1906 in Dhaka; it was the Muslim vote in 1946 
election in united Bengal that made Pakistan 
inevitable. To a large extent, the communalism of 
the Indian Muslims' deepened after the 1905 
attempt to divide Bengal failed. This communalism 
became more raucous after the Muslim landlords in 
UP, Bihar and CP were frightened out of their 
wits by the provincial Congress governments' 
rhetoric in 1937, leading to the emergence of the 
hitherto toady Muslim League into a strong 
populist organisation.

To remember 1971 is to remember multiple 
failures. That Bangladesh stays independent 
despite millions of commonalities with India 
represents the huge failure of Indian 
nationalism. It also underlines the basic 
weakness of Bengali nationalism based on language 
and culture, which have proved too weak to 
overcome the Hindu-Muslim communal distinction. 
Above all else, it was a decisive collapse, and 
rejection, of Pakistan's and Muslim League's 
Muslim Nationalism. The Muslims, who under 
Jinnah's leadership, claimed to be a separate 
nation proved unable to keep Pakistan united.

The West Pakistanis' attitude toward their Muslim 
brethren in East Pakistan speaks volumes. While 
Pakistani soldiery - mostly West Pakistanis, 
particularly Punjabi - was engaged in grievously 
violating East Pakistanis' human rights, the 
press, political parties and civil society in 
West Pakistan went into a self-induced amnesia. 
They pretended not to know what was happening in 
East Pakistan. They did have an alibi: the press 
was tightly controlled by military government and 
spoke not the truth. But the transistor 
revolution had happened, and people widely 
listened to other radio stations than those that 
were state-controlled. Yet there were no major 
protest demonstrations or adverse writing. One 
does know of a few journalists who went to jail 
for opposing the military action. But their 
numbers can be counted on the fingers of one 
hand. Except for a few regional nationalists and 
one Muslim Leaguer, the political leaders 
remained silent. There was indeed a silent 
support for military action.

It was the military-dominated West Pakistani 
leadership that convinced East Pakistanis that 
Pakistan would never be a democracy, and would 
remain under the military jackboots and that they 
would continue to exploit Bengal's resources - 
thus leaving the East Pakistanis with no 
alternative but to seek independence. The writer 
believes that the West Pakistani leadership 
consciously wanted to get rid of the troublesome 
Bengalis, especially after the 1965 war with 
India. It was after this that the Bengali 
economists, after a heroic battle in the Planning 
Commission, forced a commitment from the Third 
Plan to transfer the net amount of Rs.100 crore 
annually to East Pakistan to enable it to catch 
up with the western wing. That was the last straw 
for the civil service, which convinced its 
military overlords that Pakistan should dump its 
eastern wing.

How do people change their dearest ideals, and 
what happens when mass hysteria is created and 
taken to a high pitch? Born in the 1920s' and 
educated in the 1930s and 40s, in one's earliest 
recollection the small boy was proud to be an 
Indian, aware of the freedom movement. Toward the 
end of 1930s one became conscious of the 
international war against Fascism. One celebrated 
its denouement and thought UNO was uplifting, 
while a new threat to mankind emerged in the 
shape of the Atomic weapons. One shared the 
excitements of 1947: the bloody partition of 
India, the passing into history of British Indian 
Empire and the achievement of independence.

Through such events one noticed that ardent 
Indian patriots, proud of their Indianness above 
all, could become implacable communalists. The 
demand for Pakistan triggered off an opposition 
in Congress that at the lower levels was not free 
of Hindu communal sentiment. How could both 
Hindus and Muslims engage in genocidal ethnic 
cleansing? As an aside, compare how Canada has 
handled the issue of Quebec's secessionism, twice 
asking it to vote whether it wanted to stay in 
Canada or be independent. Both times, the 
majority of Quebecois voted to remain with 
Canada; the issue never produced a crisis. It is 
surely time to analyse the basic psychoses that 
underlay the Congress-League animosity that led 
to the ghastly happenings of 1946 and 1947.

The early years of independence (1947-1954) saw 
the elation of Muslim nationalism -- followed by 
the Muslim Bengalis' estrangement with their 
co-religionists in West Pakistan. Why? Because 
the West Pakistanis refused to share power with 
them, causing a visible decline in the Bengalis' 
belief in Muslim nationalism and patriotism for 
Pakistan, leading, in 1971 to a civil war between 
'us' and 'them' where once 'we' were one. And 
each side, let us remember, comprised mainly 
Muslims. Just as the Arab states unions in the 
Middle East and Meghreb, all predominantly 
Muslim, could not work or last, so too Islam in 
the subcontinent could not keep the ethnically 
different Muslims united. Who can envisage Iran 
and Turkey uniting into one state or Bengali 
Muslims uniting with, say Indonesians?

For Pakistan this history is relevant: the 
country comprises several sub-nationalisms, based 
on differing races, languages and cultures. To 
unite them, more than Islamic or other airy-fairy 
rhetoric is needed. The primary condition that 
can enable Pakistan to survive is democracy that 
ladles out power to all groups equally - leading 
to the individual citizen's full share in 
decision-making and enabled to actually enjoy 
their human rights. Pluralistic states survive 
because of sharing power democratically and 
providing a sense of solid wellbeing. Note that 
the USA, Canada and India survive, while USSR did 
not despite initially raising its peoples' living 
standards. A holistic view of human rights is 
therefore the vital requirement.

One is not advocating any formal reunion: either 
between Pakistan and Bangladesh, or between India 
and Bangladesh. Let's retain our borders and our 
national sovereignties. But given that the 1947 
solution did not solve our problems and our three 
states have not delivered much to their people, 
our problems require unified action for actual 
progress. Why can't we open these borders and let 
the people be friends? Why can't we follow the 
Europeans who have kept their sovereignties and 
yet have a Union? South Asia cries out for such a 
solution.

______



[2]

Dawn
January 21, 2004

FIGHTING POVERTY WITH ARMS
By Omar Kureishi

India's arms shopping spree is not so much a 
spree as a binge. India is buying weapons from 
the US, Russia, France, the UK and Israel and 
whoever else who has set up shop in the arms 
bazaar.
The educated guess is that the bill for this will 
be in the vicinity of $95 billion spread over the 
next 15 years. Does India know of some new enemy 
that threatens it? India is a nuclear power as is 
Pakistan and thus there is a balance of terror 
which acts as a deterrent. Neither country would 
commit the monumental folly of an armed conflict.
Who else is in India's neighbourhood? Bangladesh, 
Nepal, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, not even flies in 
the ointment. So it becomes intriguing why a 
country with millions of desperately poor people 
should be spending such colossal sums of money on 
arms, which are for all practical purposes 
worthless.
I want to take the figure of $95 billion and what 
might happen if it was to be invested in the 
social sector over the next 15 years. Let me 
start with HIV/Aids. Globally India is second 
only to South Africa in the number of people 
living with the disease but is likely to overtake 
South Africa so fast is it spreading.
The estimates are horrifying. The UN Population 
Division projects that India's adult HIV 
prevalence will peak at 1.9 per cent in 2019 
(when it will have spent its $95 billion for 
arms).
During 2000-15 the UN projects 12. 3 million AIDS 
deaths and 49.5 million deaths during 2015-50. 
These projections are on the conservative side 
because of the difficulties involved in 
collecting data. The situation could be worse.
Except on special, photo-op occasions such as 
World Aids Day, I have not read of any concern 
shown by Indian leaders for what is a clear and 
present danger that has the making of a national 
calamity. The BJP fought the elections on the 
slogan of Shining India. The Congress promised to 
improve the lives of the people of Rural India.
There was some recognition that the poor of India 
had to be given some stake in the elections. But 
both parties saw India's poverty as an 
abstraction. HIV/Aids did not come in the 
category of poverty. Imagine $95 billion invested 
in saving lives instead of buying arms to kill 
people.
This is not an original thought. For years people 
have been saying that the Third World has no 
business in wasting its scant resources in buying 
arms instead of medicines and more often than not 
the arms are used to kill their own people or, at 
best, making war against an equally poor 
neighbour.
The main beneficiaries of this cock-eyed 
arrangement of priorities are the arms merchants 
and a few in government who get their share of 
kickbacks. Nowhere in the world, not even in the 
United States does the standard of living go up 
by a fraction because a country goes on an arms 
buying binge.
On the contrary is often bankrupted and there is 
no better example than the Soviet Union. We like 
to believe that the misadventure in Afghanistan 
brought about the downfall of the Soviet Union. 
The reality is that it got sucked into an arms 
race with the United States, trying to match it 
gun for gun and it went broke.
But an even more important consideration is that 
most of weapons that are bought (or gifted) are 
never used and they gather dust until they become 
obsolete and are replaced.
There is something else that makes a country 
strong. The United States is the most powerful 
country in the world and militarily stronger than 
the rest of the world combined. Yet its military 
power seems next to useless in the war on terror.
It should have learnt this lesson in Vietnam. 
Military might matters in conventional wars but 
future wars will not be conventional wars. 
Barring a nuclear bomb, the Americans threw 
everything at their enemy in Vietnam. True, they 
killed an awful lot of people, destroyed cities 
and towns, poisoned the village and hamlets with 
Agent Orange but they lost the war.
The same is happening in Iraq. The billions of 
dollars that make up the defence budget is not 
proving particularly helpful in putting down the 
insurgency. No one doubts that the United States 
has might on its side, not just superior force 
but overwhelmingly so.
It demonstrated that in Fallujah where the town 
was destroyed in an effort to flush out the 
insurgents who had long fled just leaving 
innocent men, women and children to bear the 
brunt of the military fury of the world's only 
superpower.
The United States is also the world's most 
powerful economic power and, perhaps, can afford 
its war-machine though surely a day must come 
that it has to acknowledge that it has more than 
enough.
But there's lot of money to be made from the 
defence industry and so the arming of the United 
States will go on because there is no such 
condition as more than enough when it comes to 
making money.
But India is in a different league altogether and 
does not have money to burn. The Congress party 
will have to start making good on the promises it 
made to India's poor. So far there are no 
indications that Pakistan will want to enter into 
an arms race with India.
Perhaps, India is hoping that Pakistan will do 
so. Both Pakistan and India must take poverty 
alleviation beyond the level of rhetoric and 
slogan-mongering. I don't think that the poor of 
the two countries and they number in the 
millions, are fooled any more. Poverty is neither 
their dharma nor their kismet. If a lack of food 
does not kill them, then disease will do so. 
Nehru's "tryst with destiny" sounds not only 
hollow but also a cruel joke.

______


[3]

The Praful Bidwai Column
December 20, 2004

Buying Arms, Talking Peace
India, Pakistan in an insecurity trap

By Praful Bidwai

It is regrettable that India and Pakistan have 
made so little progress on the worthy proposal, 
now 14 months-old, to launch a bus service 
between the capitals of divided Kashmir. And it 
is equally distressing that they remain stuck in 
a conservative groove while discussing nuclear 
and conventional military confidence-building 
measures (CBMs) which will genuinely reduce the 
threat of a conflict in this volatile and 
now-nuclearised region. While the hitch on the 
first issue concerns the nature of the documents 
to be carried by passengers, the talks on the 
second are marred by a lack of will to take the 
bold steps that are absolutely necessary in the 
South Asian context.

In Islamabad talks last week, India and Pakistan 
complacently declared that Kashmir is no longer a 
nuclear flashpoint. This is a dangerous delusion. 
So long as Kashmir remains a contentious issue, 
it will trigger military rivalry with a nuclear 
escalation potential.

Beyond a point, it is immaterial who deserves the 
blame for this stagnation. Each state has its own 
special concerns, compulsions and anxieties. At 
the end of the day, what matters is whether the 
two succeed or fail to address these concerns and 
allay their fears. The stagnation comes almost a 
year after the Islamabad breakthrough which 
re-started their first serious dialogue since the 
nuclear tests of 1998, punctuated by Kargil and 
the 10 months-long military standoff of 2002. 
Unless the dialogue leads to concrete results, 
India and Pakistan will fail in the eyes of the 
world community to achieve minimal peace or 
stability.

That is bad enough. Even worse, the two 
governments have since launched a huge 
arms-buying spree. India is acquiring 
sophisticated air defence systems, new submarines 
from France and Russia (including a 
nuclear-powered submarine), the Patriot range of 
anti-missile missiles from the US, as well as new 
warplanes and an air-defence ship. India is now 
among the world's three largest arms importers. 
Pakistan is buying more P-3C Orion maritime 
surveillance-cum-submarine-hunter aircraft, six 
Phalanx rapid-fire anti-ship guns, and TOW 
missiles, etc.-worth a big $1.2 billion from the 
US alone.

Washington is encouraging both states to acquire 
new, ever-deadlier weapons. Indeed, selling such 
weaponry to them was the principal function of US 
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfold's recent 
visit to New Delhi and Islamabad. This has 
created rancour and resentment in both the South 
Asian capitals. India's Defence Minister Pranab 
Mukherjee has protested at the arms sales to 
Pakistan. He says the US argument that the sales 
are meant "to contain terrorist groups like 
Al-Qaida and Taliban Š does not standŠ Nobody 
uses F-16 fighter planes and other weapons meant 
for big wars to fight terrorists". He has even 
warned that the arms transfer could "jeopardise" 
the India-Pakistan peace process.
Pakistan retorts that India is being "paranoid"; 
Islamabad's arms acquisition will only "restore 
symmetry and bring stability to the region". As 
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan 
put it, in criticising Pakistan, India is 
"misleading Indian public opinion and 
misinforming the international community." 
According to him, "Pakistan is pursuing a modest 
programme to fill up the gap that emerged during 
the 1990s due to US sanctionsŠ" He also accuses 
India of having a highly ambitious $95 billion 
arms acquisition programme spread over 15 years.

Mr Mukherjee is right to say that weapons like 
the Orion and F-16 or anti-tank missiles are 
meant "for big wars and not to fight terrorism. 
Nobody uses F-16s to fight terrorism". But that's 
hardly the point. The new deadly toys are a 
reward for Pakistan's invaluable assistance to 
the US in fighting al-Qaeda in and around 
Afghanistan. Similarly, Washington has rewarded 
India for its "strategic partnership": first by 
approving the sale of the US-Israeli "Green Pine" 
radar and an associated air defence system, and 
then by offering top-of-the-range weapons such as 
the Patriot-II missile interceptor which is 
reportedly effective against low-flying aircraft, 
as well as other conventional materiel.

Two transformations are visible here. During the 
Cold War-particularly between the mid-1950s and 
mid-1960s, and then again in the 1980s-, the 
India-Pakistan arms race was fuelled by rival 
powers: respectively, the USSR and the US. Today, 
the same power drives the engine of that race: 
the US. India and Pakistan both vie for its 
attention and favours. In the process, both 
sustain, and in the long run intensify, their 
rivalry.

Second, the US is far from even-handed in its 
treatment of India and Pakistan. In one phase, it 
tilts towards one; in another, towards the other. 
A pro-Pakistan tilt took place, for instance, 
during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 
the 1980s. In 2000, following President Clinton's 
South Asia visit, this tilt was reversed. 
Washington also consciously plays one rival off 
against the other by offering different things to 
them.

In the 1980s, Washington sold F-16s to Pakistan 
on an exclusive basis. But in the early 1990s, it 
imposed restrictions under the Pressler 
Amendment, etc. Then, after 2000, it warmed up to 
India and offered it "strategic partnership" plus 
a role in Ballistic Missile Defence. But a few 
months ago, it suddenly designated Pakistan a 
Major non-Nato Ally. For all its rhetoric about 
India's worthy democracy and the country's great 
"potential", the US does not support India's 
candidature for permanent membership of the UN 
Security Council.

Now, Washington is dangling different carrots 
before the two states. President Bush has again 
described Pakistan as a "frontline state" which 
is successfully fighting al-Qaeda and other 
terrorist groups and called General Pervez 
Musharraf "a world leader". Washington is even 
more effusive in describing India as an "emerging 
power, a regional power and a world power with 
which we want a growing relationship".

US ambassador to India David Mulford says 
Washington is eager to increase its military 
market in India. "We would like to be a bigger 
supplier of military equipmentŠ" Mr Mulford says 
Pakistan does not fall in the same category as 
India. "It is important to view these 
relationships each in their own context. Š It is 
very important to de-hyphenate the relationshipŠ" 
However, the relationship does remain strongly 
hyphenated-not least because of Washington.
Washington practises double standards based on 
short-term considerations. Such double standards 
come naturally to a Superpower. India and 
Pakistan realise and resent this. Regrettably, 
they have both fallen a victim to it. All this 
would be relatively unimportant if it did not 
have strategic consequences. But it does. The 
India-Pakistan rivalry is exacerbated by 
Washington's policies and moves, with their 
profoundly destabilising and harmful 
consequences. In particular, the US's conduct can 
vitiate the present climate of goodwill and put a 
spoke in the India-Pakistan peace process. 

It is not just hypocritical, but downright 
foolhardy, for Washington both to supply new 
weapons to India and Pakistan, and then expect 
them to negotiate an authentic peace.  The logic 
of the first process-arms race, escalation of 
military preparations, and increased hostility-is 
sharply different from the logic of dialogue, 
reconciliation and peace.

It is even more unrealistic and foolish of India 
and Pakistan to imagine they can continue to arm 
themselves to the teeth against each other out of 
insecuity, and at the same time, become 
self-assured and secure. The hawks told us this 
would happen in the 1960s, 1970s and 
1980s-through the conventional rearmament route. 
It didn't. The sale of F-16 warplanes to Pakistan 
probably featured on the front pages of Indian 
newspapers on an average of 200 days out of 365 
days in the year during the 1980s as a major bone 
of contention. But the contention didn't end when 
the planes' spares stopped reaching Pakistan.

Then, said our Right-wing experts, nuclear 
weapons would provide "strategic balance" and 
stability. They didn't. India and Pakistan went 
to war within a year of their nuclear tests! 
Unless they reach a durable peace, conflict could 
break out yet again-with a definite nuclear 
escalation potential. 

India and Pakistan have tried to talk peace 
without taking their foot off the nuclear 
accelerator or even halting the conventional arms 
race. This too suits a hawkish prescription based 
on the utmost cynicism. Indian ultraconservatives 
believe that the US's "coddling" of Pakistan to 
the point of it becoming, as one of them puts it, 
a US "protectorate", is a good thing. It will 
keep Pakistan on its "best behaviour"; by 
contrast, "whenever American interest flagged Š 
[the] Pakistanis have run riot". Besides, argue 
these cynics, a close military sales relationship 
between Washington and Islamabad will help New 
Delhi demand "parity" or "fairness"-new, yet more 
lethal weapons from Washington, in keeping with 
India's "emerging" position.

This logic is fatally flawed: seeking "balance" 
through new armaments leads to the creation and 
widening of imbalances. These in turn furnish an 
argument for "balance" through yet more tilting 
of the scales. Such tilt in one direction, 
followed by a tilt in the other, violates the 
ends of fairness and justice-and peace. If you 
want peace, you must wage peace, not war. It 
would be suicidal for Indian and Pakistani 
policy-makers and opinion-shapers to forget this 
great lesson of the 20th century.-end-

______


[4]


Deccan Chronicle
December 20, 2004

DEAD END IN PUNJAB
By Brad Adams

The story of history's losers is usually buried 
under layers of dirt, shovelled courtesy of the 
winners. At the bottom of these layers are 
individuals who opposed those in power. Lying 
next to them are people aligned with or 
sympathetic to the losers. Since the middle of 
the 20th century, social archaeologists have 
identified many losers by another name: "human 
rights" victims, eliminated by governments or 
their armed opponents. The nomenclature of human 
rights has had a salutary impact. It has 
posthumously turned forgotten or even scorned 
"losers" into individuals with flesh and bone and 
thoughts worthy of remembrance.

Perversely, rights-abusing governments sometimes 
benefit from the accretion of victims. In the 
rush to protect today's (and tomorrow's) victims, 
yesterday's are often de-prioritised, forgotten, 
even cast aside. This is now the plight of 
India's Sikhs. In the early Eighties, armed 
separatist groups demanded an independent State 
of Khalistan.

To destroy the movement, security forces were 
given a free hand, leading to the worst kinds of 
abuse. India, grappling with new battles in 
Kashmir and the North-east and coping with 
religious conflict leading to the Mumbai riots of 
1992-1993 and the Gujarat pogrom in 2002, has 
largely forgotten the crimes in Punjab. Each of 
these problems has piled a new layer of dirt on 
the long-standing and still simmering problem of 
the Sikhs.

The Punjab violence peaked in June, 1984 when 
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sent the Indian Army 
and paramilitary forces into the most sacred of 
Sikh sites, the Golden Temple in Amritsar. 
Huddled with hundreds of Sikh militants were 
thousands of civilians, many of them pilgrims who 
thought they were safe in a place considered an 
unthinkable target. A brutal battle left nearly a 
hundred Indian security personnel dead. 
Independent estimates suggest that thousands, 
mostly civilians, perished. Some were reportedly 
found with their hands bound and bullets in their 
heads.

The attack on the Golden Temple soon cost Indira 
Gandhi her life. On October 31, 1984, she was 
killed by two of her Sikh bodyguards. Blaming all 
Sikhs instead of the individuals who pulled the 
triggers, members of Gandhi's Cong-ress party 
organised pogroms against Sikhs in Delhi. In a 
rebuke to the party's spiritual founder, Mahatma 
Gandhi, thousands were killed. Children were 
found beheaded. Seven government-appointed 
commissions have investigated these attacks, but 
all have either coated the layers of dirt with 
whitewash or been met with official stonewalling 
and obstruction.

Victim groups, lawyers, and activists have long 
alleged State complicity in the violence. For 
three days, the police failed to act as gangs 
carrying weapons and kerosene roamed the streets, 
exhorting non-Sikhs to kill Sikhs and loot and 
burn their properties. Reacting to the 
assassination, Rajiv Gandhi, however, appeared to 
bless the ensuing pogrom, saying, "When a big 
tree falls, the earth is bound to shake."

For the next 10 years, politically active Sikhs 
in Punjab, and those who stood up for victims and 
their families, were targeted for murder, 
disappearance, and arrest by the security forces. 
Violence and intimidation have continued at a 
lower level since, but a recent visit to Amritsar 
made it clear just how widespread the fear and 
anguish continue to be.  Many Sikhs there 
continue to talk of fear of the police and 
security forces and of receiving threats, often 
speaking in the low voices of human rights 
victims in too many parts of the world.

Improbable and courageous leaders have emerged, 
such as Paramjit Kaur Khalra, whose husband, 
Jaswant Singh Khalra, exposed the secret and 
illegal cremation of thousands of bodies in 
Punjab officially labelled as "unidentified or 
unclaimed". The killers certainly knew their 
identities; they were "unclaimed" because their 
bodies were cremated before family members ever 
knew they were missing. Yet, about 65 per cent of 
the persons illegally killed and cremated by the 
Punjab police have yet to be formally 
"identified".

So widespread was the practice that Jaswant Singh 
Khalra uncovered it by tracking the purchases of 
wood (he learnt that it takes 300 kilogramme to 
burn a single body) by the security services. He 
found that in just three crematoria in Amritsar 
district - one of the 13 districts in Punjab - 
thousands of unidentified people had been 
illegally cremated.

What Jaswant Singh Khalra learnt cost him his 
life. In September 1995, he was abducted in broad 
daylight in front of his house and later killed. 
His killers have been identified but have not 
been prosecuted. Impunity reigns over Punjab, to 
the point that former Punjab police chief K P S 
Gill has had the temerity to publicly demand that 
laws be passed to grant immunity to police 
officers or their crimes in recognition of their 
"service to the State".

For progress to be made, Congress will have to 
stop just pointing fingers at the BJP for its 
stoking of communal violence and deal with the 
skeletons in its own closet. Most of the killing 
and disappearances took place under Indira Gandhi 
and successor Congress governments. Some of those 
allegedly responsible for the violence in Delhi 
in 1984 were elected to Parliament in May's 
elections. Some are now ministers.

But groups like the Association of Families of 
the Disappeared in Punjab, the Committee for 
Inform-ation and Initiative on Punjab, the 
Committee for Coordination on Disappe-arances in 
Punjab (publisher of the seminal Reduced to 
Ashes, The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab, 
www.safhr.org), and Ensaaf (www.ensaaf.org), 
which just released Twenty Years of Impunity: The 
November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India, have 
refused to allow the issue to be buried.

It is largely due to their efforts that recently 
the National Human Rights Commission ordered 
compensation of Rs 2.5 lakh each for the families 
of 109 people who were killed in the custody of 
Punjab Police between 1984 and 1994. This could 
be the beginning of a proper accounting, although 
the families consider this too little, too late, 
and the State has made no admission of 
responsibility.

Justice will have failed unless the officials 
involved in such violations are vigorously and 
transparently prosecuted in a clear message that 
India does not tolerate human rights violations 
or excuse it because the perpetrators claim to be 
patriotic enough to break the law for national 
security.  The best and only way for Congress to 
overcome its record of human rights abuses in 
Punjab and Delhi is to embrace the rule of law as 
the vehicle for accountability and 
reconciliation. But a genuine reconciliation 
requires a willingness to admit errors and 
rectify them.

Only a conscious exercise of political will on 
the part of the new government of Prime Minister 
Manmohan Singh - seemingly a serious and 
principled politician - can bring about justice 
for the Sikhs.

Otherwise, discussions about the carnage in 
Gujarat and the need to take action against BJP 
leaders risk being seen as a partisan ploy, 
divorced from a genuine commitment to the rule of 
law and the imperative of re-establishing the 
secular credentials of the State. And it is worth 
contemplating the possibility that success in 
Punjab may open new windows for peace and 
reconciliation in other areas of conflict still 
visible in the dirt, such as Kashmir, Manipur and 
Nagaland.

(The writer is the executive director, Asia Division, Human Rights Watch)


______


[5]  ANNOUNCEMENTS:

(i)

Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA)
www.asiapeace.org    & 
<http://www.indiapakistanpeace.org>www.indiapakistanpeace.org
4410 Verda Lane NE, Keizer, OR 97303
Executive Director: Pritam K. Rohila, Ph.D.

ACHA Awards 2004

Dear Prof. Puniyani:

I am pleased to inform you that ACHA Board of 
Directors, in their meeting held at Wilsonville, 
OR, yesterday, November 18, 2004, have decided to 
select you as one of the recipients of ACHA Star 
Award. Congratulations!

The award ceremony will be held at 5:00 p.m., on 
Saturday, December 4, 2004, at Comfort Suites 
Hotel, 1477 NE 183rd Ave, Gresham, OR.  Your 
physical presence at the ceremony is not 
required. Instead, we will contact you by phone. 
Please send me the best phone number for us to 
reach you.

It is difficult to determine exact time for our 
call. But it is estimated to be between 7:30 and 
8:30 a.m. Pakistan/India Standard Time.

You will have two to three minutes for a brief 
acceptance speech by phone. We will amplify it 
for our audience. But since it is hard sometimes 
to comprehend things said over the phone. It 
would be best, if you can email us your 
acceptance speech ahead of time, so that we can 
have transparencies made. We will project it on 
the screen, so that the members of the audience 
can read it while you are speaking over the phone.

I will deliver the award to you personally, when 
I visit India and Pakistan December 27 through 
January 8, as a part of a Peace and Goodwill 
Delegation of Nonresident Indians and Pakistanis 
from UK, USA and Canada.

Best wishes,

Pritam

______

(ii)

Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi
Cordially invites you to attend the

Lecture
on Democratic Decentralization in India and the
Minorities: Looking Back, Look Forward
by Dr Omar Khalidi
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA

Date & Time: December 22, 2004 at 3:00 p.m.

______

(iii)

Duke University Press has just published a title that will surely interest
South Asia Citizens Web readers:

BEYOND LINES OF CONTROL: Performance and Politics on the Disputed Borders
of Ladakh, India
by Ravina Aggarwal
Paperback ISBN: 0-8223-3414-3

By placing cultural performances and political movements in Ladakh center
stage, Ravina Aggarwal rewrites the standard plot of nation and border
along the Line of Control, the disputed border between Pakistan and India.
Aggarwal brings the insights of performance studies and the growing field
of the anthropology of international borders to bear on her extensive
fieldwork in Ladakh.

For more information about the book visit
http://www.dukeupress.edu/books.php3?isbn=8223-3414-3



_____


(iv)

BOOK LAUNCH ON RIVER LINKING EXPERIENCES OF KERALA

Dear Friends,

We happily announce that the book named, 'TRAGEDY OF COMMONS-The Kerala
Experience in River Linking', an outcome of two years of study, authored by
five researchers (S.P.Ravi, C.G.Madhusoodhanan, Dr.A.Latha, S. Unnikrishnan
and K.H. Amita Bachan) under the River Research Centre, Kerala is out from
the press.  South Asia Network on Dams Rivers and People (SANDRP), Delhi and
River Research Centre, C/O Chalakudy River Protection Samithi, Thrissur has
published the book jointly.

We cordially inform and invite all to the launch of the book at G.
Auditorium, Kochi (near Maharajah's College grounds) on the 20th December
2004 at 10 am by Sri.V.M.Sudheeran Ex M.P. Sri.K.P.Rajendran, the Opposition
Party leader in Kerala Assembly and Smt. Savithri Lakshmanan, MLA, Chalakudy
constituency, will also attend the book launch.

The main contents of the book include,

·     Kerala experiences in River Linking through detailed case study of the
famous and complex Parambikulam Aliyar Project (PAP), involving ten dams and
three rivers projected as a 'success story' in inter state river water
sharing by the GOI Task Force on River Linking.
·     Inherent flaws in the PAP Treaty, the violations therein, the impacts
on the rivers and their tributaries and socio economic and environmental
impacts with colour maps and photographs and figures.
·     Brief description of other river diversions involving Kerala; the
century old Mullaperiyar Project and Bhavani river diversions.
·     Details and possible impacts of the proposed 16th Peninsular Link, the
Pamba-Achnakoil-Vaippar link involving the diversion of Pamba and Achankoil
Rivers of Kerala.
·     Critical analysis of projected benefits and possible impacts of
proposed Inter Linking of Rivers Project.
·     Implications for the National River Linking Project against the
background of Kerala experiences
·     The PAP Agreement as Appendix.

The 160-page book is priced at Rs. 120/- only.

To get a copy of the book please send a DD/money order for Rs. 120/-in favor
of A.Latha, payable at State Bank of Travancore, Thrissur, Kerala in the
address, A.Latha, River Research Centre, Karthika, Ollur.P.O. Thrissur,
Kerala-680306.
Ph-91-0487-2353021, e -mail- chalakudyriver at rediffmail.com

Copies of the book are also available with Himanshu Thakkar, SANDRP, C/O
86-D, AD Block, Shalimar Bagh, New Delhi-110088.
Ph-91-011-27484654, e mail- cwaterp at vsnl.com.

For getting a copy of the book from SANDRP, DD/money order for Rs 120/- in
favor of YUVA, payable at Mumbai, maybe sent to SANDRP Delhi address.

Inside India, Rs 20/- may be added for postage and packing in all cases.

For those friends residing outside India, please send the DD inclusive of
the postage charges for Rs 200/- for South Asia and US D 12/- for outside
South Asia.

Please circulate.
Looking forward to your response and encouragement,

Warm regards,
A. Latha, River Research Centre, Kerala
And
Himanshu Thakkar, South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, Delhi


Chalakudy Puzha Samrakshana Samithi
Karthika, Manalattil
Ollur.P.O
Thrissur 680306
Kerala,
India
Ph: +91-487-2353021
chalakudyriver at rediffmail.com


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

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