SACW | 13-14 Feb 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire   | 13-14 Feb.,  2005
via:  www.sacw.net

[1] India: Toys for Boys - Defence establishment 
demands 40 per cent hike in outlay
[2] India - Demolitions in Bombay :
Police Arrest and Lathi Charge Protesting Slum 
People - Press Statement by National Alliance of 
People's Movements
+ Test of Sample Letter of Protest
[3]  India: On ending the Naga war (Sanjib Baruah)
[4]  India: The Bare Life Of S.A.R GEELANI, Ph.D. (Ananya Vajpeyi)
[5]  India: Letter to the Editor - re the 
shooting of S.A.R Geelani (Mukul Dube)
[6]  India:  RSS rides the tsunami tide (PC Vinoj Kumar)
[7]  India: Disturbing trend - The rioters should be quickly brought to book
[8] Madarsa board chief draws flak on cultural nationalism (Sandipan Sharma)
[9] Final Solution nominated for the UK-based Index on Censorship awards


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

[1]



The Times of India - February 14, 2005
Editorial

TOYS FOR BOYS
DEFENCE ESTABLISHMENT DEMANDS 40 PER CENT HIKE IN OUTLAY

It is that time of the year again. With a couple 
of weeks to go before the Union Budget, the armed 
forces have unveiled an elaborate shopping list. 
They have also started making the usual noises 
about a substantial hike in the defence outlay 
despite the unprecedented 22 per cent increase in 
last year's defence budget. Much of the increase 
demanded by the armed forces will go towards 
buying fancy equipment and servicing existing 
arms contracts. The gizmos on the defence wish 
list include F-16 fighter jets, Scorpene 
submarines and long-range rocket systems. The 
proposal to buy 126 F-16s - at $25 million each - 
over five years will itself cost the exchequer a 
whopping $3 billion. When you add to this the 
payments being made for the expensive equipment 
already purchased, the defence budget takes on 
gargantuan proportions. It's high time that we 
take a hard look at the policy of splurging on 
the latest defence gear in the name of 'national 
security'. We had applauded the government in 
these columns for considering an increase in the 
allocation for rural development. It is time the 
government comes good on that promise by 
curtailing spending on defence equipment. The 
money thus saved can be channelled into 
development projects. While this is sure to raise 
the hackles of the defence establishment and 
policy hawks, the ordinary citizen will be much 
better off.

The rationale for the ever-increasing budget for 
sophisticated weaponry is our hostile neighbours 
in the form of Pakistan and China. New Delhi 
needs to realise that engaging in a pointless 
arms race with Pakistan serves little purpose. So 
long as Pakistan remains under authoritarian 
rule, its defence budget will remain 
disproportionately high. But that does not mean 
India needs to match every 'Ghauri' with an 
'Agni'. India enjoys a considerable edge over 
Pakistan by dint of the sheer size of its armed 
forces. This advantage is unlikely to be lost in 
the near future. In any case, the presence of 
nuclear weapons in both countries makes much of 
the conventional weaponry redundant. As for 
China, New Delhi is much better off trying to 
match Beijing's economic growth than its military 
might. However, the best argument for pulling out 
of an arms race is that social development and 
economic growth are the best defence for any 
nation. Economists such as Amartya Sen have 
repeatedly stressed that rising military 
expenditure imposes substantial opportunity costs 
on government priorities like health and 
education. Despite this, India continues to be 
one of the biggest defence spenders. It is time 
we give up our obsession with guns and make a 
decisive choice in favour of hospitals and 
schools.


______


[2]


National Alliance of People's Movements
Haji Habib Building, Naigaon Cross Road
Dadar (E), Mumbai - 400014
<napm at riseup.net>
-------------------------------------------------------------

PRESS STATEMENT

Mumbai | February 12, 2005

Police Arrest and Lathi Charge Protesting Slum People

Senior Activist including Medha Patkar, Prakash Reddy Held

In a daylong sequence of events, police lathi charged (cane beating) a
gathering of over 1200 people near the Deonar police station today
afternoon. The people were protesting the demolition of their houses in
Rafiq nagar slum area and were demanding the 
release of over 300 people who were arrested 
earlier the day. Most of them were released in 
the afternoon, but nearly 30 people, mainly 
senior activists, were re-arrested.

The people who are under arrest include, Medha Patkar, Prakash Reddy of
Communist Party of India, Raju Bhise of NAPM, 
Vijaya Chauhan, Kalpana Gowda of Asha Ankur, 
Leena Joshi of Apnalaya, Nitin More of Apli 
Mumbai, Shakil Ahmed of Nirbay Bano Andolan and 
others from Rafiq nagar. They are lodged in 
Shivaji nagar as well as Chirag nagar police 
stations.

They are booked under sections 147, 143, 447 which are relate to rioting,
illegal gathering etc.

The police mercilessly beat the people, who were trapped in the gullies,
near Deonar police station. The number of people injured in the lathi
charge in not known at the release of this statement.

Rafiq nagar slum was reclaimed from a marshy land 
in 1996. There were about 800 houses before 
demolition. The police, aided with bulldozers, 
demolished the houses in last December. Since 
then, the people were living in open and make 
shift locations.

Rafiq nagar is only one of the many slums, which was demolished by the
government in the past 2 months. Over 80,000 houses were demolished so far.

National Alliance of People’s Movements condemn 
this undemocratic action of the government and 
demand that all further demolitions must stop
immediately and all arrested persons should be released immediately.
Further, if the government is serious about checking the growth of slums,
stop displacing people and provide facilities in the villages, including
employment - in the hinterlands.

Pervin Jehangir | Maju Varghese  |  Joe Athialy


o o o o

SAMPLE LETTER OF PROTEST BELOW FOR FAXING.


To,
1)      The Prime Minister of India  - Fax : 011 - 23016857 / 23019817
2)      Mrs. Sonia Gandhi - Fax : 011 - 23018651
3)      The Chief Minister of Maharashtra -022 - 23631446
4)      The Deputy Chief Minister, Maharashtra - 022 - 23631505


Dear Sir / Madam,

We are shocked and most perturbed to witness the 
most blatant human rights violations taking place 
in the enlightened and prosperous State of 
Maharashtra, committed by the State itself. I am 
sure that we need not spell out that all forced 
evictions destroy not just the families but also 
the communities, the livelihood of the residents, 
their culture and community life. Women and 
children are the worst affected. A number of 
children have died out in the winter, which has 
been exceptionally severe this year, their 
health, nutrition, security and sense of 
security, are lost for ever. Their education lies 
disturbed, their books lie crushed under the 
might of the bull- dozers sent by the State to 
turn its citizens into refugees in their own 
lands. Their parents take turns sitting guard – 
night and day, over their limited belongings, 
instead of going to work.

The people thus bull dozed, live in slums for 
different reasons. Some are not even slums but 
“gaothans”. Their families have lived there since 
four generations, some since 40 years, the trees 
they have planted are big and bear fruits which 
they offer the visitors, despite the dire straits 
they are in themselves. Originally, Bombay was a 
village of fisher – folk, yet a place like 
Moragaon, a fisher folk's village, was bull- 
dozed and set fire to, destroying documentation 
and spreading terror.

Rafiq Nagar was bull – dozed in December and 
about 1000 families had nowhere to go, so they 
have been sleeping amidst the graves in a 
cemetery. The residents of Rafiq Nagar had 
painfully filled in a " Nala" by their own hard 
labour and made land for their houses. Since 
yesterday, the original slum area is being 
converted into a dumping ground for garbage. When 
people peacefully protested, they were “lathi 
charged”, arrested and locked up!! Even observers 
have been arrested.The police are ensuring that 
the "dirty slum dweller" is replaced permanently 
by Mumbai's " clean garbage ".

The story continues with very limited variations 
and 3 lakh Indian citizens are made homeless by a 
State which prefers to cater to the greed of a 
handful of rich at the expense and total 
destruction of the majority of the Indian 
population.

After coming into power on promises of legalising 
hutments built upto the year 2000, the 
Maharashtra government does not feel at all 
obliged to keep its promise. Infact the Municipal 
authorities have even asked that the people whose 
houses are demolished should be removed from the 
electoral  rolls ! What a wonderful way of making 
sure that no backlash hurts the rulers even in 
the next elections !!!!!

Even at this very moment, more of the homeless 
and their sympathisers, including Medha Patkar, 
Raju Bhise,Prakash Reddy, Leena Joshi, Vijaya 
Chauhan, Kalpana Gowde from various peoples' 
movements and NGO's are being arrested.

* We demand that all further demolitions must stop immediately.
* All arrested persons should be released immediately.
* Remove all the security guards - paid for by 
the builders lobby , from the demolished areas.
* Compensate those whose homes are illegally demolished.
* Stop displacing people in the villages and 
destroying their resource bases if you do not 
want slums in the cities.
* Actively provide facilities in the villages, 
including employment - in the hinterlands.
* In your hurry to turn Mumbai into Shanghai, 
please do not make it into another Tianamen 
Square, Peking !!

It is the concept of “human dignity” that 
distinguishes humanity from the animal world. The 
Supreme Court of India has recognized that the 
Right to Life includes the Right to Food and 
Clothing, Right to Shelter and the Right to 
Livelihood. Deprivation of a single one of these 
leads to a loss of dignity, fundamental freedoms 
as also equality.

Kindly take immediate action and ensure that such 
attrocities never recur in our fair land.


______

[3]


The Statesman, North East Page,
February 12 2005

ON ENDING THE NAGA WAR

By Sanjib Baruah

The following is an excerpt from Sanjib Baruah's 
latest book, Durable Disorder: Understanding the 
Politics of Northeast India, published by Oxford 
University Press, India. The issues discussed are 
essential to understand the context in which the 
Naga peace talks are being held.

Projects of nationhood frequently rely on 
censuses and other modern forms of enumeration 
and classification and a modern technology of 
representation - the map - in order to connect 
territoriality and collective selfhood. The 
notion of territorially rooted collectivities 
living in their supposedly traditional national 
homelands relies on a very different spatial 
discourse than the one of overlapping frontiers 
and hierarchical polities that precedes it.

In North-east India the historical relations 
between hill peoples and the lowland states had 
an especially complex spatial, cultural and 
political dynamic. As a result there is a serious 
collision between competing projects of identity 
assertion today.

The Naga desire for a homeland that would bring 
together all Nagas into one political unit can 
come into being only at the expense of Manipur, 
as well as Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Key to a 
political settlement is the recognition on the 
part of all parties that there is an inherent 
crisis of territoriality in North-east India. 
Such recognition, of course, will have to occur 
within the framework of a process that the Nagas 
can see as reconciliation, among themselves, with 
their neighbours and with the Indian government.

The Naga hills, where a multiplicity of cultural 
forms had historically reigned supreme are best 
seen as, what James C Scott terms, a non-state 
space - an "illegible space" from the perspective 
of the states in the lowlands. The ethnic 
landscape of the hills has always confused 
outsiders - states as well as ethnographers. The 
taxonomies about the hill peoples have been 
almost always wrong, groups identified as 
distinct were later found to be not "uniform, 
coherent, or stable through time". Whether it was 
linguistic practice, dress, rituals, diet or body 
decoration, neat boundary lines had been 
impossible to draw.

Such an unfamiliar and confusing ethnic landscape 
fits well with slash and burn agriculture - the 
common mode of livelihood in these hills - which 
means dispersed and mobile populations that could 
not be captured for corvee labour and military 
service by the labour-starved states of the 
plains; nor could tax-collectors monitor either 
the number of potential subjects or their 
holdings and income.

At the same time the non-state spaces in the 
hills and the state spaces in the lowlands had 
been anything but separate. Indeed the categories 
"hill tribes" and "valley peoples" are leaky 
vessels. People had continually moved from the 
hills to the plains and from the plains to the 
hills.
Since manpower was always in short supply, wars 
in this region were not about territory, but 
about capturing slaves. If wars produced 
movements in either direction, the attractions of 
commerce and what the lowlanders call 
civilisation may have generated a flow of hill 
peoples downwards. On the other hand, the 
extortionist labour demands of the lowland states 
and, the vulnerability of wet-rice cultivation to 
crop failure, epidemics and famines produced 
flight to the hills where there were more 
subsistence alternatives.

The Manipuri protest of 2001 served to bring to 
light the history of the region's "strange 
multiplicity" and the tensions between the 
spatial discourse that had historically enabled 
the hill peoples and lowland states of the region 
to coexist and the spatial discourse of exclusive 
territorially rooted collectivities that frame 
today's politics of recognition.

It is doubtful if secret bilateral meetings 
between the Government of India and the rebel 
leaders will produce a solution. Manipur surely 
has as serious a stake as any in the Naga 
conflict. If it is not a part of the way the Naga 
conflict is conventionally mapped, it is a 
function of how most observers have got 
accustomed to India's centralised style of 
governing and deciding the fate of this frontier 
region. At the same time it cannot be argued that 
the Naga talks can be suddenly expanded to 
include Manipur as a stakeholder. Before anything 
like that can happen, all parties would have to 
come to terms with the limits of the territorial 
discourse in North-east India that the collision 
between the Naga and Manipuri projects of 
recognition underscores.

In North-east India we have come to the end of 
the road of territorial reorganisation of states. 
We need an alternative institutional imagination. 
A source of fresh ideas may be an entirely 
different political discourse than that of making 
and breaking states.

The principle of the right to self-determination 
of indigenous peoples under international law, 
for instance, has led to concepts like separate 
polities within shared territories, which have 
been tried in societies where relations between 
settlers and indigenous peoples are based on 
treaties between a government and particular 
indigenous nations.
Even if these parties had vastly asymmetric power 
relations when these treaties were signed, and 
for a long time such treaties did not protect 
these peoples against assimilative policies and 
practices, in recent years they have provided the 
basis for challenging the foundational myths of 
the national communities created by settler 
communities. But most significantly, slowly but 
steadily they are modifying the architecture of 
federalism in countries like Australia, Canada 
and the USA. The "native" peoples have been able 
to claim a place in the federal table alongside 
states.

Given the history of the past five decades, it 
would be too much to expect the Naga conflict to 
suddenly end on a whimper of some vague promise 
of cultural autonomy. A proposal that might have 
the power to capture the Naga imagination at the 
moment might take the Burmese government into 
confidence and bring the Nagas of Burma into the 
picture as well. This can be the first step 
towards a comprehensive dialogue that includes 
Nagas as well as the other stakeholders to 
consider an arrangement that crosses both 
transnational and inter-state borders which 
recognises Naga identity, alongside both the 
sovereignty of India and Burma and the 
territorially embodied identities of states like 
Manipur and Assam. Without such a significant 
shifting of gears, it is unlikely that the 
seven-year old Naga peace process can overcome 
the formidable obstacles it currently faces to 
end one of world's most protracted and tragic 
armed conflicts.

______


[4]  [The below article was carried in the 12 
February edition of SACW, but it has formatting 
errors   > a clean version is being posted again]

o o o

THE BARE LIFE OF S.A.R GEELANI, Ph.D.
by Ananya Vajpeyi

Once again, Syed Abdul Rahman Geelani meets, 
before his time, in an only half-unexpected 
fashion, his old friend Death. The good 
professor, having been sent home after the 
reversal of a death-sentence, was shot at five 
times outside his lawyer's residence on the night 
of February 08, 2004. For over three years now, 
there has been a massive legal and civic campaign 
to assert his innocence and protest his wrongful 
implication in a conspiracy to blow-up the 
Parliament House on December 13, 2001. But even 
on the verge of acquittal by the highest court of 
the land, the right to live, and to live freely 
and safely under the rule of law, has eluded this 
hapless individual.

Geelani was suspected of being part of a plot to 
attack the Indian legislature for reasons that 
had nothing to do with his overt or covert 
political activity: he was of Kashmiri origin and 
in contact with relatives still living in the 
Valley, he was a Muslim in the regime of a 
BJP-led coalition government, and he taught 
Arabic at a college in Delhi. Once he had been 
arrested under the draconian Prevention of 
Terrorism Act (POTA), every effort was made to 
frame him as a terrorist. He was tortured in 
police custody, treated as fair game by hostile 
fellow-prisoners, pronounced guilty in a media 
trial that was based on prejudice rather than 
truth, and given the death-penalty. His release 
at the last minute came as the result of a 
powerful case fought relentlessly by his legal 
team, under the leadership of, among others, 
Nandita Haksar, who has made it her mission to 
defend the human rights and civil liberties of 
those falsely accused of being enemies of the 
state. Shattered by custodial abuse, but 
nevertheless eloquent in his call for justice and 
his defence of democracy, Geelani walked free 
only to have bullets pumped into his stomach a 
few months later.

What is the meaning of the person of S.A.R 
Geelani in the political life of our nation? Who 
is this man, and why does death stalk him in the 
guise of an antagonistic and ruthless state? Does 
his nightmarish encounter with the 
criminal-justice system and with police power 
reveal to us, in the most alarming way possible, 
our own exposure as citizens of India, to 
violence at the hands of the very forces that are 
supposed to guard our life and guarantee our 
liberty? What is at stake for all of us, every 
single person the member of some minority or 
other, in the life and death of this young 
academic, the father of two small children, a 
teacher of language and literature, an inhabitant 
of the city of Delhi - this man who is ordinary 
in every way, and yet singled-out for 
extermination?

The contemporary Italian philosopher, Giorgio 
Agamben has written in a manner that is both 
intellectually persuasive and ethically pressing, 
about a figure found in ancient Roman law called 
the homo sacer. This is a man who is the most 
vulnerable denizen of the political community, 
because his absolute vulnerability is the 
condition for the absolute power of the ruler. 
The homo sacer is placed under a ban - that is to 
say, he is banished from the company of other 
men, and at the same time abandoned by the legal 
and juridical order. This state of banishment and 
abandonment renders the life of the homo sacer 
less than the politically-defined and 
legally-protected life of a citizen: he is 
reduced to what Agamben calls "bare life" or 
"naked life". In this state, which lies outside 
the realms of both politics and the law, the homo 
sacer may be killed, without any entailment in 
the form of punishment or reward, by anyone who 
wishes. The killing of this person is neither a 
crime (for no law is broken), nor a sacrifice 
(for no ritual is fulfilled). The ban excludes 
him from both human law, which governs the sphere 
of political activity, and divine law, which 
governs the sphere of religious activity. The 
life of the homo sacer is less than a life; 
consequently, it can be extinguished with 
impunity and without celebration.
     
	Agamben delves deep into the political 
and philosophical treatises of ancient Rome to 
understand this strange figure because he finds, 
within the murderous space of the Nazi 
concentration camp, the same utter abandonment / 
banishment that does not make sense in the 
inclusive framework of modern citizenship. The 
denizen of a camp is not only less than a 
citizen, but s/he has no recourse to man or God, 
to human help or divine intervention. The life of 
a camp-inmate has no legal or scared value 
attached to it - it can be ended without any 
pretence of due process, and equally without any 
justification as to the ritual purposes of such 
killing. In a camp a human being's life is 
precisely and only his potential to be killed. 
This is why Hitler could speak of the 
extermination of Jews "as lice". Thus every 
person in Auschwitz, according to Agamben, is a 
homo sacer: neither a criminal, nor a sacrificial 
victim, and yet consigned to death. The sovereign 
power of the Nazi state is predicated on the 
reduction of the Jew to bare life. Primo Levi, 
the Holocaust survivor, described his fellows in 
the Nazi lager as though they were the living 
dead. 

	Consider this startling fact: S.A.R 
Geelani is the homo sacer of the Indian state, 
which seeks to bolster its fragile sovereignty by 
sequestering this man, chosen at random, from 
every discourse of law, justice, politics or 
religion, and killing him, plain and simple, 
because it can. If the state cannot kill him 
(because the judiciary curbs the absolute power 
of the state even as Geelani is stepping up to 
the hangman's noose), then it turns out that 
actually anyone can kill him, because he is 
marked by the fatal ban: here is one who is cast 
away from the community of men and evicted from 
the shelter of the law; to take the life of this 
man does not amount to homicide. Why has Geelani 
become a dead man walking? He has not committed 
any crime. He has no discernible political 
ambition vis-à-vis his home state and its 
problems with India - the furthest he has gone 
taking any kind of public stand has been in 
speaking out against atrocities in Kashmir, as a 
human rights activist. He was not chosen by any 
Pakistani jihadi group to be their martyr, nor 
was he designated by any separatist outfit to be 
their suicide bomber in the December 13 attack. 
He has never sought to identify himself as a 
Muslim in any politically meaningful way 
whatsoever, leave aside by asserting his 
religious identity in a manner that might be 
reasonably construed as a challenge, an affront, 
an offence or a threat to a secular nation. He 
does not represent any terrorist organization, 
Indian or foreign, nor has he lent himself as a 
mouthpiece to any political party in this country.

What Geelani does represent, unfortunately for 
him, is the capacity inherent in all of us to be 
killed - not just by the powers-that-be, but by 
anyone who decides to take the law into his own 
hands - the moment the armour of citizenship 
falls away from us. Back in 2001, in the 
immediate aftermath of 9/11 public paranoia ran 
high, and the Parliament attack was promptly 
dubbed "12/13". Yet even at that time, the danger 
to our Parliament - and to the free and fair 
nation it supposedly stands for - came not from 
some plot that Geelani might have hatched (but in 
fact did not hatch) with others out to undermine 
Indian democracy, but rather, from the state's 
own zeal to get Geelani, at whatever cost, 
regardless of his innocence. Today it is not 
possible or desirable to speculate about who made 
an outright attempt on Geelani's life during the 
shoot-out near Ms Haksar's South Delhi residence. 
The point is not that this or that individual or 
agency tried to assassinate him, but rather, that 
through the deplorable sequence of events that 
has befallen this man over last 3 years, he 
effectively has been rendered less than a 
citizen, and deprived of his fundamental rights, 
his legal protections, and his proper place in 
the body politic. What we need to understand so 
urgently is that if Geelani is grievously wounded 
(no matter who aimed the barrel of a gun at him), 
it is our freedom that lies bleeding at the door. 
This time he has barely escaped with his life, 
but the message is loud and clear: if we are not 
careful about the state of our freedom, then we 
will be reduced to bare life.

And that is only a gunshot away from death.     

Ananya Vajpeyi is with the Centre for Law and 
Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

______



[5]    LETTER TO THE EDITOR RE: SHOOTING OF MR. S.A.R. GEELANI

D-504 Purvasha
Mayur Vihar 1
Delhi 110091

13 February 2005

There are some questions in my mind related to the shooting of
Mr. S.A.R. Geelani.

1. Nandita Haksar told me, several months ago, that at the time there
were always policemen outside her house. I cannot recall exactly, but
it is my impression that she spoke of a regular picket. Were no
policemen present when Mr. Geelani was shot? If there were none, how
long ago did they cease to be a fixture there?

2. No one can reach AIIMS Casualty without passing the police post at
the inner gate. Police personnel are generally present also within
Casualty. They are there because it is their job to record everything
which might be a Medico-Legal Case. Yet they complain that the doctors
delayed telling them about Mr. Geelani by a half hour.

3. In hospitals, doctors alone have the authority to determine when a
patient may have visitors. Yet, as Mr. Ram Jethmalani told the Supreme
Court, it was the police who prevented Mr. Geelani's wife from seeing
him on the night on which he was shot.

4. When a gun-shot injury is sustained in the absence of witnesses, the
only realistic option is to examine a bullet to try to identify the
weapon from which it was fired. Mr. Geelani's intestines are said to
have been perforated at several places, and he was also injured in a
shoulder. The surgical procedures performed will necessarily have
involved a careful search for all sources of bleeding. Yet it seems
that none of the three bullets was removed from his body. Were they not
noticed? Or was it decided that leaving them in place was crucial to
Mr. Geelani's or someone else's survival?

5. Three bullets in Mr. Geelani, five spent cartridge cases near his
car. While the arithmetic eludes me, I suggest that it is unlikely that
the cases were ejected from a revolver. It is of course well known that
every firing pin leaves a distinctive mark and that the calibre of a
spent case is easily seen.

6. Following from the above, I find myself wondering who are the people
who have easy access to fire-arms which leave unidentifiable marks on
bullets and cartridge cases.

Mukul Dube

_______

[6]

Tehelka.com

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main10.asp?filename=Ne012905RSS_Rides.asp

RSS RIDES THE TSUNAMI TIDE

PC Vinoj Kumar
Chennai

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) are making inroads 
into the tsunami-hit coastal belt of Tamil Nadu, 
riding the goodwill generated by their relief 
work in the region.

The RSS, which has got the government's go-ahead 
to build 1,200 sheds for victims in Keechankuppam 
in Nagapattinam district, sees this as an 
opportunity to penetrate the coastal villages, 
which are strongholds of the Dravidian parties. 
Enthusiastic cadres, mostly from non-coastal 
areas, are planning to stay and help in 
rehabilitation. In Velankanni, RSS workers from 
Coimbatore said they were staying back for 
'follow-up' work. "It was the RSS that first 
started removing dead bodies. We are going to 
stay here till normalcy returns," says Kathir, a 
swayamsevak.

According to Govinda, a pracharak pramukh, the 
RSS has set up 15 nodal centres to coordinate 
relief in 215 villages. It has also identified 12 
villages for rehabilitation. The RSS has even 
asked the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch to conduct a 
socio-economic survey of the villages. "It is 
going to take a long time for the fishermen to 
get back to fishing. We are looking at the 
possibility of suggesting alternative sources of 
income," says Govinda.

Ekal Vidyalaya, the VHP front that provides 
education in tribal areas, has targeted 
Cuddalore. "We are working in 12 villages with 
the help of around 150 volunteers," says K. 
Jagadeesan, state organiser of Ekal Vidyalaya.

In Devanampattinam, actor Vivek Oberoi is the 
rallying point for VHP cadres. Vivek's spiritual 
guru Swami Chidanand Saraswati of the Parmarth 
Niketan Ashram, Rishikesh, is reportedly close to 
the VHP. His young American disciple, Sadhvi 
Bhagwati, said her guru had nothing to do with 
the VHP but "we love Sadhvi Rithambara." When 
asked if she had heard the inflammatory speeches 
of the VHP leader, she said, "We are into 
spirituality, not politics." Vivek's father, 
Suresh Oberoi, a BJP member, is also in 
Devanampattinam. Both had campaigned for Atal 
Behari Vajpayee during the Lok Sabha polls.

Vivek, however, denies politics in his relief 
efforts. "Several organisations have come to help 
us, including the Red Cross, Christian Aid 
Foundation, and Christian Medical College. I am 
not even aware that the VHP is participating. If 
they are there, it's good. It is Project Hope. 
Every NGO or group that wants to assist us is 
welcome," he says.

Meanwhile, other parties are keeping an eye on 
Sangh's activities. "Every organisation is 
welcome to render help during calamities. But we 
will ensure the communal forces do not implement 
their agenda by using the tragedy," says K. 
Mahendran, CPM MLA, and state DYFI president.

______

[7]

Deccan Herald
February 12, 2005

SECOND EDIT
Disturbing trend
The rioters should be quickly brought to book

The outbreak of violence in Nagamangala town in 
Mandya district is a disturbing development. As 
of now, the police seem to have brought the 
situation under control, and they should ensure 
that the trouble does not erupt again in 
Nagamangala or elsewhere. The miscreants who 
defaced the idol of a grama devathe in a temple 
and threw it on the road should be identified and 
brought to book. A proper inquiry should be held 
to bring to light the circumstances leading to 
the eruption of trouble in the town. 
Trouble-makers and agents provocateurs often 
create situations to inflame the passions of 
people and take advantage of them.

After the trouble broke out, rioters of both 
Hindu and Muslim communities went on a rampage in 
the town. A number of people were injured and 
property worth crores of rupees was destroyed. 
Two farmers working in a field were also not 
spared. The police were forced to fire five 
rounds in the air, lob tear-gas shells and 
lathi-charge the rioters.

Mr Chaluvaraya Swamy, the minister in charge of 
Mandya district, has accused vested interests of 
hatching a conspiracy to disturb peace in the 
district, and vowed to bring the Nagamangala 
criminals to book. Such statements are often made 
by authorities after communal riots but the 
guilty are seldom brought to book. It is only 
hoped the minister concerned and the government, 
who swear by secularism, are serious this time. 
In a communally surcharged atmosphere, rumour 
mills work overtime. The ruling parties in the 
State and the Opposition should employ all their 
leaders and workers to spike rumours and maintain 
peace. The district authorities can hold meetings 
of community leaders to ensure that there is a 
return to normalcy.

Hopefully, Nagamangala will be back to normal in 
a day or two. The prohibitory order clamped on 
the town till February 14 should however run its 
course so that rioters do not regroup and create 
further trouble. Anyway, the government offices 
in the town are working as usual and work related 
to the gram panchayat elections is going on. The 
government should compensate those who lost their 
shops, vehicles and other property in the riots 
on Thursday.

_______

[8]

The Indian Express
February 11, 2005

Madarsa board chief draws flak on cultural nationalism
Sandipan Sharma

JAIPUR, FEBRUARY 10: With the ''blessings'' of 
the RSS, the Rajasthan Madarsa Board chief is 
organising an all-India conclave in Jaipur on 
Saturday to teach Muslims the tenets of 
''cultural nationalism''.

While Board chairman M.A. Ansari is gung-ho about 
the two-day event, Islamic organisations are up 
in arms calling the conclave an attempt by the 
RSS to saffronise their institutions with help 
from their puppets.

Top RSS functionaries, including K. Sudershan, 
and ''Muslim intellectuals'' are expected to 
address the gathering. The event is being touted 
as an attempt to stir an all-India movement of 
''nationalistic'' Muslims.

Ansari said the agenda is simple: Hindu-Muslim 
unity. ''We want Muslims to give up their current 
mindset and understand the realities of a 
multicultural India.''

And his catchphrase? ''Agar Bharatiya hain to 
wafadaar to hona hi padega (If we are Indians, we 
have to be loyal).'' While his critics are not 
too concerned about these shibboleths, two other 
points on the agenda have ignited their fury: 
Vande Mataram and cows. In an invitation 
circulated throughout India, the organisers have 
expressed their desire to ensure Vande Mataram 
echoes throughout the country; and that cows are 
protected zealously.

Mohammed Qayoom Akhtar, secretary of the Milli 
Council, said the organisers of the event want to 
force the RSS agenda on them. ''They have 
hijacked the Madrassa Board to meddle with our 
beliefs,'' he said.

''This is just a facade. The entire machinery of 
the Board is being misused for the event. Even 
the madarsa teachers have been forced to 
participate,'' Milli Council member Shaukat 
Qureshi said.


______



[9]

  FINAL SOLUTION HAS JUST BEEN NOMINATED FOR THE 
PRESTIGIOUS UK-BASED INDEX ON CENSORSHIP AWARDS. 
[...]

<http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2005/1/index-on-censorship-free-expression-awards-2.shtml>URL:
www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2005/1/index-on-censorship-free-expression-awards-2.shtml

[,,,]

[The Documentary film] Final Solution is a study 
of the politics of hate. Set in Gujarat during 
the period Feb/March 2002 - July 2003, the film 
graphically documents the changing face of 
right-wing politics in India through a study of 
the 2002 genocide of Moslems in Gujarat. The film 
documents the Assembly elections held in Gujarat 
in late 2002 and records in detail the 
exploitation of the Godhra incident (in which 58 
Hindus were burnt alive) by the right-wing 
propaganda machinery for electoral gains. It 
studies the situation after the storm and its 
impact on Hindus and Moslems - ghettoisation in 
cities and villages, segregation in schools, the 
call for economic boycott of Moslems and 
continuing acts of violence more than a year 
after the carnage. Final Solution is anti-hate/ 
violence as "those who forget history are 
condemned to relive it".

Final Solution was banned in India by the censor 
board for several months. The ban was recently 
lifted after a sustained campaign (an online 
petition, hundreds of protest screenings 
countrywide, multi-city signature campaigns and 
dozens of letters to the Government sent by 
audiences directly).A Pirate-and-Circulate 
campaign was conducted in protest against the ban 
(Get-a-free-copy-only-if-you-promise-to-pirate-and-make-5-copies) 
and over 15,000 free Video CDs of the film were 
distributed in India.
[...]

Address : PO Box 12023, Azad Nagar post office, Mumbai - 400053, India


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