SACW #1 | 21 March 2005

sacw aiindex at mnet.fr
Sun Mar 20 18:11:03 CST 2005


South Asia Citizens Wire #1  | 21 March,  2005
via:  www.sacw.net

[Interruption Notice: Please note there will be 
no regular SACW Dispatches between 22  - 25 March 
2005. ]

[1] Pakistan: Remembering Shahla Zia - Mind Behind Movement (Ayesha Khan)
[2]  Indian-American community exerts growing clout back home (Ben Arnoldy)
[3]  India  Interview With Ms. C.K. Janu, Leader 
of Tribals in Kerala (Subhash Gatade)
[4]  Canada:  South Asian Women's Community 
Centre (SAWCC--Montreal) position on the 
recommendation to use religious laws to settle 
family legal matters
[5]  Three Book Reviews:
(i) Review of Christophe Jaffrelot's collection 
'The Sangh Parivar: A Reader' (Dilip Simeon)
(ii) Review of Amitava Kumar's, 'Husband of a 
Fanatic' (Christopher De Bellaigue)
(iii) Review of Sanjib Baruah's, 'Durable Disorder' (Pradip Phanjoubam)
[6]  Announcements:
(i) Meeting In Memory of Comrade Tarkunde (New Delhi, 22 March 2005)
(ii) A public meeting on Govt policies and human 
rights of Asian women in Britain  (London, 23 
March 2005)


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

[1]

News on Sunday - 20 March 2005

MIND BEHIND MOVEMENT

We were so fortunate to have counted Shahla Zia 
among us. Much work remains, and it will be very 
hard indeed to proceed without her in our midst

By Ayesha Khan

The most outstanding citizens of this country 
tend to pass away quietly, without many of us 
even aware of who they are. Just as often, we 
lavish mediocrity with praise and privilege, 
giving the living a false sense of greatness in 
their own lifetime. This is why Shahla Zia has 
passed away in our midst and the country can go 
on as if nothing major had happened. But for the 
women's movement, precisely the opposite is true.

Shahla Zia was a founding member of the Women's 
Action Forum, and a joint director of the Aurat 
Foundation in Islamabad for over a decade. She 
trained as a lawyer in Lahore, and in the early 
years of her career helped to establish AGHS -- 
Asma, Gulrukh, Hina, Shahla -- the legal aid 
organisation for women. She sat on the National 
Inquiry Commission on the Status of Women, led by 
Mr. Justice Nasir Aslam Zahid, and was a major 
contributor to its 1997 report, which led to the 
establishment of the Permanent Commission on the 
Status of Women. Her advocacy work focused on the 
increased political participation of women. She 
lobbied with lawmakers patiently and persistently 
to restore reserved seats for women in our 
elected bodies, and later led efforts to train 
new women entrants into local bodies to be 
effective leaders.

The deeper truth is that Shahla was our mentor in 
the women's movement in Pakistan. She achieved 
that stature not through her public activities, 
but through the manner in which she guided others 
to work together in a group for social change and 
in the unique clarity of her thought. She was 
clear and firm on the principles of the Women's 
Action Forum as it struggled to counter 
discriminatory legislation, attacks from the 
religious right, and derision from an uncommitted 
public. She gave endless hours in meetings and 
discussions groups to explain to us, and remind 
us in times of confusion, what it was we were 
fighting to achieve for this country.

I recall the lengthy internal debate within WAF 
regarding the wording of the WAF Charter and our 
position on the issue of secularism in the early 
1990s. Members were stuck; if we demanded a state 
that was secular did that compromise our belief 
in Islam? Was it possible to reconcile faith and 
politics without compromising the former and 
diminishing women's rightful share in power? Even 
harder, was it possible to have a charter that 
accommodated the belief systems of all women, 
believers and non-believers, and detracted 
nothing from their rights as citizens?

I still have a memo she wrote after a WAF meeting 
on this issue, articulating the fine points of 
why it was correct for WAF to take such a 
controversial stand. She wrote that taking a 
stand in favour of a secular state "does not mean 
that WAF is in any way against Islam, but merely 
that WAF believes that religion is a personal 
matter and not for the State to dictate or 
control." If religion becomes the province of the 
State, she added, "It has always been exploited 
by the State for its own political gains and 
motives, and this has invariably adversely 
affected women, minorities and the poor." In a 
country where the Hudood Ordinances (1979) are 
still in force despite frequent recommendations 
for their repeal, it is instructive to remember 
the benefit of a clear secular approach even a 
decade after Shahla made these notes.

She placed her faith in the Constitution and in a 
legal system that could be turned into a support 
for the poor and marginalised in society if we 
fought for it. The first chapter of the 1997 
Report of the Inquiry Commission puts the case 
simply. "The Constitution is a country's basic 
law. To the extent constitutional rule is 
promoted andbecomes entrenched in a society to 
that extent democratic culture flourishes. And it 
is in a democratic culture that women's rights 
have the best chance of recognition."

Can these arguments be dismissed as rhetoric of 
the westernised elite of Pakistan, the 
coffee-drinking, cigarette-smoking, 
English-speaking women activists accused by their 
detractors of misrepresenting women of this 
country? For that is what opponents of the NGO 
movement have claimed time and again in response 
to activists' demands for women's rights and 
social justice.

Nothing is quite what it seems when viewed from 
such a distance. Shahla was calm, compassionate, 
and soft-spoken. She was devoted to her large 
family, devoid of material greed, and shy of 
social or media attention. She genuinely loved 
the law, and had the patience to study its 
nuances and articulate subtleties that was beyond 
many an enthusiastic activist. And in an 
increasingly hypocritical society, Shahla's 
stature grew because her honesty remained 
undiminished, and her integrity as a friend and 
colleague was never in dispute.

We were so fortunate, and indeed honoured, to 
have counted Shahla Zia among us in Pakistan. We 
are a better people for it, since she taught us 
through her intellect and example. Much work 
remains, and it will be very hard indeed to 
proceed without her in our midst. Yet her 
tremendous composure under pressure, her warmth, 
optimism and patience, remain the best example 
for those who need to continue this struggle for 
generations to come.


______


[2]

The Christian Science Monitor
March 21, 2005

INDIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY EXERTS GROWING CLOUT BACK HOME
As the US's wealthiest ethnic group, it is 
divided over how funds sent abroad are used.
By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

When Nishrin Hussain moved to the United States 
in 1990, she left her parents behind in India. 
But her American life was tragically interrupted 
when her father, a Muslim, was burned alive by a 
Hindu mob during the 2002 riots that shook 
India's Gujarat state.

Since then, she has become a force in Indian 
politics - from her home in Delaware. Like a 
growing number of other Indian-Americans, Ms. 
Hussain is using the considerable power of the 
pocketbook and other forms of political activism 
to influence events half a world away.

NARENDRA MODI: Denied a US visa for his role in riots.
DIVYAKANT SOLANKI/AP


And their efforts can have an impact: Last week 
the US State Department - largely because of the 
protests of Indian Americans - canceled an 
upcoming tour in the United States by Narendra 
Modi, Gujarat's chief minister, for the role he 
played in the riots three years ago.

In one sense, the Indian American community 
reflects the growing clout of many expatriate 
groups in the US. From Mexican-Americans to 
immigrants from the Muslim world, they are 
becoming more aware of their influence back home 
and are trying to capitalize on it. 
Irish-Americans have influenced events in their 
homeland for decades.

But the Indian-American community has gained new 
visibility in recent years as its political - and 
financial - clout has grown. As America's 
wealthiest ethnic group, it is particularly 
divided over allegations that some charities are 
funneling money to sectarian violence like that 
in Gujarat.

"We are seeing increased attention by 
Indian-Americans to how their donations are used, 
particularly in the wake of Sept. 11 and the 
Gujarat events," says Mark Sidel, an expert on 
Indian diaspora at the University of Iowa. "We 
now see the emergence of controversy and of 
watchdog groups of various kinds."

One such group, Sabrang Communications, released 
a bombshell report in late 2002. It alleged that 
the US-based India Development and Relief Fund 
(IDRF) was quietly channeling abroad more than 80 
percent of its discretionary funds to pro-Hindu 
groups. Some of these groups, tied to an Indian 
organization known as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak 
Sangh (RSS), have been accused of fomenting 
sectarianism that has led to violence.

Human Rights Watch and other groups say that the 
RSS was among those "most directly responsible" 
for the Gujarat riots. They also fault Modi for 
doing little to rein in the organized mobs that 
killed more than 2,000 people, mostly Muslims. 
The riots started after Muslims set fire to a 
train full of Hindu activists, killing 58 men, 
women, and children.

Many of the groups that were preparing to protest 
Modi's visit are also tracking Indian-American 
charities that support RSS activities. "The 
people who are sending donations to these groups 
are not aware of where the money is going," says 
Hussain. "And I do fear that after the [2001 
Gujarat] earthquake that some of the money 
collected was geared toward this hatred."

But Ramesh Rao, a professor of communications at 
Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo., says 
the IDRF has been unfairly targeted. At IDRF's 
request, he published a detailed rebuttal to the 
Sabrang report. While not denying that some IDRF 
money may go to groups affiliated with the RSS, 
he says that both the amount and the effect are 
overblown. Mr. Rao calls the Sabrang report a 
political attack by leftists, part of a 
decades-long campaign to vilify the RSS and any 
group directly or indirectly connected with its 
work.

That the US should be center stage for this 
long-running dispute has a lot to do with the 
rising wealth of Indian-Americans.

In a first study of its kind, Devesh Kapur at 
Harvard University found that Indian-Americans 
donated an estimated $150 million in 2004. He 
says they are the most educated ethnic group in 
the US and have the highest median income. "I 
think the real story is how little they give," he 
says.

The way they give is also noteworthy. Sidel says 
that as with other more established ethnic 
groups, Indian-Americans are no longer just 
sending money back to family, but are 
increasingly putting it toward social and 
charitable causes through nongovernmental 
organizations (NGOs) and professional 
associations.

One of the biggest professional groups is the 
Asian American Hotel Owners Association. Modi had 
been invited to the US by AAHOA to speak this 
week at their annual convention in Ft. 
Lauderdale, Fla. Nearly all the group's members, 
who control more than half of America's economy 
lodging, hail from Gujarat.

In a press release sent after the State 
Department revoked Modi's visa, AAHOA said it 
"understood" the government's position and 
reasserted that Modi was invited to speak about 
business opportunities and tourism in Gujarat.

Protest organizers, however, said the trip was an 
effort to raise Modi's profile for an eventual 
bid for prime minister. Modi was not the only 
foreign leader to be snubbed by the US last week.

Breaking with a St. Patrick's Day tradition, 
political leaders did not host Sinn Fein leader 
Gerry Adams. Sinn Fein's militant wing, the Irish 
Republican Army, is embroiled in a murder and 
bank heist scandal. The killing of Robert 
McCartney has touched off concern among 
Irish-Americans, who are a key source of funding 
for Sinn Fein.

But it is not easy to establish that donated 
dollars end up funding violence abroad.

"I don't know if money given to RSS schools leads 
to violence," says Rao. "While one can make that 
causal stretch for political purposes, no good 
social scientist would be willing to do that."

Biju Mathew, a professor at Rider University and 
contributor to the Sabrang report, admits the 
report found no legal smoking gun. But he 
describes as a "relic of the past" the notion 
that to catch someone red-handed "you would mark 
a currency bill and see where it surfaces again."

After Sept. 11, the US released a new set of 
regulations for charitable giving, and 
established a blacklist of groups that finance 
terror. There is anecdotal evidence, supported by 
new research on the Pakistani community by Adil 
Najam at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., that 
Muslim-Americans are shifting their donation 
dollars to local rather than international causes.

Corporations are also changing the way they 
donate. Cisco Systems, Inc. was once a major 
contributor to IDRF through its employee-matching 
program. In May 2003 the company suspended its 
program, a move a spokeswoman said was related to 
uncertainty over the changing federal guidelines. 
IDRF no longer receives matching funds from 
Cisco, or from Oracle.

Despite these losses, IDRF's general funding did 
not drop after the November 2002 report. The 
group's president says IDRF raised $757,000 in 
2003 compared with $702,000 in 2002.

Meanwhile, Nishrin Hussain takes satisfaction 
that Modi cannot come to America. "I am 
delighted," she says.


______


[3]


sacw.net - March 18, 2005

INTERVIEW WITH MS. C.K. JANU, LEADER OF TRIBALS IN KERALA

"NO LAND EVEN FOR BURIAL . . . ANY MEANING IN LIVING ON THIS LAND ? "

Ms C.K. JANU, leader of the tribals of Kerala has 
carved out a niche for herself in the history of 
people's movement in Kerala. Presently she is in 
Delhi as member of a delegation of Five AGMS 
(Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha) members to meet 
Ms.Sonia Gandhi - Chairperson UPA and Chairperson 
of the National Human Rights Commission to bring 
to their notice the hardships faced by the 
adivasis of Kerala. In a recent with Mr Jaison 
Chacko and Mr Subhash Gatade she discusses the 
genesis of the struggle led by her, the role of 
the political parties and her future plans. 
Excerpts of the interview are given below.

Introduction :

It is now history that the 48 day dharana (sit 
in) of hundreds of tribals before the Kerala 
state secretariat led by Ms C.K.Janu for tribal 
land rights compelled the then government led by 
A.K. Antony to go in for compromise with the 
tribals. The immediate provocation for agitation 
of the tribals was the 32 starvation deaths among 
the adivasis. A senior Kerala minister had 
brushed aside these deaths as being caused by 
consumption of illicit liquor. Driven by the 
horror of such mass starvation deaths hundreds of 
tribals stormed the state secretariat and erected 
'refugee huts' before the offices of government. 
The government bowing to the public pressure 
negotiated with the tribals and promised lands to 
the thousands of landless adivasis in a phased 
manner. ( 16 October 2001) It was a sad 
commentary on the state of affairs in India's 
highly contested polity that the two mainstream 
parties who were interchanging seats of power in 
the state were found to be wanting on the 
deprivation faced by the tribals.

Ofcourse the victory of the tribals remained 
shortlived. After the initial euphoria was over 
the Antony government started dilly dallying on 
its promise. This led to another historic action 
by the tribals. Hundreds of tribals alongwith 
their families 'occupied' the Muthanga wildlife 
sanctuary to expose the government's failure to 
honour their commitment to the tribals (January 
2003). Forcible eviction by the police resulted 
in the death of one tribal and injuries to others.

It is significant that the autonomous militant 
intervention for Land Rights by the tribals has 
been able to influence a significant section of 
the intelligentsia also. It was not surprising 
that after the forcible vacation of the Muthanga 
forest range by the police and the loss of human 
life the famous activist-writer Ms Arundhati Roy 
had blasted the state government with her famous 
open letter "You have blood on Your Hands". 
[...] .

Full text at:
http://www.sacw.net/Nation/gatade18032005.html

______


[4]

sacw.net - March 17, 2005

http://www.sacw.net/Wmov/Canada17032005.html

SOUTH ASIAN WOMEN'S COMMUNITY CENTRE 
(SAWCC-MONTREAL, CANADA) POSITION ON THE 
RECOMMENDATION TO USE THE ARBITRATION ACT OF 
ONTARIO TO SETTLE FAMILY LEGAL MATTERS BASED ON 
RELIGIOUS LAWS.

For Montreal panel presentation orgd by FFQ, at UQAM, Thursday 17 March 05

1. The SAWCC has been involved in information 
gathering and discussions on this issue since 
last summer.  Our membership comprises women of 
different religious backgrounds, many of whom are 
observant members of Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, 
Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and 
Zoroastrianism.  At our Annual General Meeting in 
September 2004 we passed a resolution against the 
possible adoption of religion-based forms of 
family law for Muslims in Ontario [as an 
alternative, community-based form of arbitration 
in family law cases]. Our membership of the SAWCC 
also wanted this kind of arbitration to end in 
religious communities where it was already being 
used since 1991.

2. There are many issues that we considered while 
coming to this conclusion. Some of them are:

i) We are very conscious that opposition can come 
from a racist perspective, especially at this 
historical juncture when Islam is demonized and 
having a Muslim identity makes one immediately 
suspect as a terrorist. We are also aware that a 
sensitivity to feeding racist preconceptions may 
make some reluctant to articulate their concerns.
ii) In a  post 9/11 world where government laws 
and agents of state demonstrate Islamphobia, it 
is curious that official concern for 
'multiculturalism' and 'religious freedom' are 
cited by these same governments when it comes to 
issues that will have a huge impact on women.
iii) It is curious that this kind of arbitration 
is only being used for family law, not criminal 
law. It is dangerous to categorize family matters 
as occupying the private sphere. As women we are 
aware of how the public/private distinction has 
been used to control and oppress us. We won't go 
back there. Anything that involves the rights of 
women are a public concern. The personal is 
political.
iv) In our work over the past quarter century we 
have seen many women being forced by community 
pressure to seek counsel/assistance/ intervention 
from religious figures in temples, gurdwaras, 
mosques -- institutions that uphold patriarchal 
constructs of family and community - These 
interventions often worked to the detriment of 
the women - psychological, emotional  and other 
forms of coercions were brought to bear. In our 
work trying to get justice for the murder of 
Milia Abrar we have seen how community pressure 
worked -- elders warned that this is what happens 
when traditions are flouted and possible 
witnesses were silenced.
v) We recognize that our secular laws are far 
from perfect. Legislative bodies need to 
strengthen laws, for example to protect women 
from male violence -- a man who batters his 
partner gets a rap on the knuckles. If that same 
man were to assault a stranger on the street it 
would be another matter.
AND
Most recently the discussions around same sex 
unions have demonstrated how the reactionary 
outcry from some members of cultural communities 
can be very strident. We do not want to give the 
slimmest opportunity to these kinds of 
individuals to control our lives.


______


[5]     [ THREE BOOK REVIEWS ]


(i) Outlook Magazine - March 28, 2005

REVIEWS
A Mild Engagement
A half-baked reader that ignores Gujarat and 
concentrates only on internal organisation
Dilip Simeon

THE SANGH PARIVAR -- A READER
by Edited Christophe Jaffrelot
Oxford University Press
Pages: 445; Rs 675

	This book belongs to a series on critical 
issues in Indian politics, with 20 articles on 
the RSS and its fronts, including the youth wing, 
women's wing, trade unions, and its federative 
and political organisations. The volume is less a 
'reader' than a compendium of articles gleaned 
from published work, dating mainly from the mid 
to late 1990s. Older extracts are from Anderson 
and Damle's Brotherhood in Saffron (1987), and 
Graham's study of the Jan Sangh (1990).
Only two articles, on the Swadeshi Jagaran Manch 
(Boutron) and the RSS global network (Therwath), 
seem to have been written specifically for this 
volume and carry a contemporary flavour-the 
latter gives readers a brief introduction to the 
extensive financial support for the RSS from NRIs 
located in the western world. Even the editorial 
introduction takes scant notice of the 
ramifications of the 2002 Gujarat pogrom and the 
2004 election. There is an article on ethics but 
it addresses Hindutva's resonance with 
capitalism, rather than raise questions about 
private and public morality, ends and means or 
organised violence.

And there is no index, a glaring omission in a 
long and thematically dense volume.

It is arguable that the chief characteristic of 
the so-called parivar is its paramilitary 
organisation and style, borrowed from the fascist 
movements in Europe of the '20s and '30s. 
Right-wing totalitarianism
and the second world war have had a lasting 
impact upon global politics, but the RSS has 
surely enjoyed the greatest longevity of the 
chauvinist paramilitaries born during the 
troubled '20s. Defined succinctly, its goal is 
the militarisation of civil society and the 
subjugation of secular citizenship to the warrior 
cult. Paradoxically, it is the shadowy zone of 
nationalist militarism that provided the space 
for the osmosis between left and right 
radicalism--Subhas Bose is only the most glaring 
symbol of an uncomfortable reality, rarely spoken 
of. The emergence of a rampaging right wing 
cannot be understood purely in terms of its 
internal organisation and ideas, but must be 
placed within a larger political and structural 
context. The interests, strategies and alliances 
of the Congress, left-wing and regional parties 
is one contingent factor, the iniquitous social 
relations and endemic informality in employment 
(manifested in patriarchy and caste), are 
another. Had it been taken into account, the 
broader context might have yielded insights for 
designing a volume such as this.

This book appears three years after the gruesome 
events of Gujarat in 2002. It would have been 
appropriate to have included recent assessments 
and fresh data on the role of RSS and its fronts 
in the violence, not to mention its own 
statements and interpretations. I have in mind 
the Report of the Concerned Citizen's Tribunal, 
and numerous other citizen's reports that have 
appeared since then. These, and Varadarajan's 
Gujarat: The Making of a Tragedy (2002) contain 
eyewitness accounts, analyses and source material 
that could have been used in some way. The text 
of Prime Minister Vajpayee's speech in Goa is an 
example. Again, it is fairly well-known that 
brutality towards their designated enemies is a 
matter of pride for Hindutva cadre in their 
street-level propaganda. Commissioned case 
studies of rumour, small talk and election speech 
by the Sanghis would have been a valuable 
addition for the book, and made it more of a 
reader.

That said, Sangh Parivar contains a great deal of 
information on the activity of the RSS and its 
fronts in post-1947 India. Tanika Sarkar's essays 
on the gender predicament of the parivar are 
informed and insightful. She has also contributed 
one of three very cogent articles on education. 
There are two valuable, though slightly dated, 
articles on the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh by Kiran 
Saxena and Jaffrelot. Two short extracts from 
Manjari Katju's study of the VHP introduce the 
reader to an important activity of the RSS. The 
editor also has a contribution on the VHP that 
highlights its psychology of imitation, which he 
names 'strategic mimetism'. He is keenly aware of 
the parivar's strategic use of symbols and icons. 
But his analytical stance is diffident: "The 
components of this nebulae are more autonomous 
than one may think at a glance", "the RSS complex 
hardly form a family". Yet, their "tensions must 
not be over-emphasised", and publicising internal 
differentiation could also be a "well thought out 
strategy for attracting support". The BJP may 
emerge as the dominant party of the Centre, and 
then again, it might not. His own extensive 
researches (not to mention the 2002 events) could 
have led him to more definitive conclusions. 
Despite its flaws, Sangh Parivar is a useful 
collection for students of political conservatism.


o o o o

(ii)

New York Times - March 20, 2005

'Husband of a Fanatic': Sleeping With the Enemy
By Christopher De Bellaigue

A DECADE ago, when I was living in India, a 
Jewish American woman described for me a Hindu 
boy who had enrolled in Hebrew lessons she was 
giving to members of Bombay's tiny Jewish 
community. When she had asked why he should join 
a class for Jews, he had replied, ''We share an 
enemy.'' I told the story to a group of Indian 
friends I knew were worried by India's growing 
communal discord. I expected them to shake their 
heads solemnly. Instead, they burst out laughing.

In ''Husband of a Fanatic,'' his challenging and 
at times eloquent rumination on Hindu-Muslim 
tensions in India and its diaspora, Amitava Kumar 
often summons the dark humor that South Asian 
secularists use to combat their sense that the 
battle is not going their way. He opens with his 
encounter with Jagdish Barotia, a member of the 
militant group Hindu Unity, who immigrated to the 
United States over 30 years ago and whose 
violence of feeling is absurd, even pitiful, 
because he is doomed to live among Muslims in a 
multiracial part of Queens. Kumar lets Barotia's 
grossness stand unadorned and thereby lampoons 
it. ''On the phone,'' Kumar recalls, ''he had 
called me a haraami, which means 'bastard' in 
Hindi, and, after clarifying that he didn't mean 
this abuse only for me as a person but for 
everyone else who was like me, he had also called 
me a kutta, a dog.''

Soon enough, we learn the reason for Barotia's 
contempt; Kumar, an Indian Hindu who is a 
professor of English at Pennsylvania State 
University, has married Mona, a Pakistani Muslim. 
When they married, he says, he wallowed in a 
''tepid tide'' of altruism and ''felt good about 
myself for marrying 'the enemy.' '' To understand 
the wider significance of his commitment as well 
as his own ''complicities and contradictions,'' 
he embarks on a tour of Hindu-Muslim strife and 
recalls wars between India and Pakistan -- 
''Hindu-Muslim riots fought with tanks and 
fighter planes.''

At its best, Kumar's reportage has the immediacy 
and respectful attention to detail of a 
well-turned Granta essay (it is no surprise to 
see Ian Jack, Granta's editor, cited in the 
acknowledgments). Picking his way through lives 
distorted or destroyed by hatred, Kumar 
alleviates his own -- and the reader's -- gloom 
by drawing attention to the fanatics' mordant 
eccentricities. In the Indian state of Uttar 
Pradesh, where Hindu nationalist cadres called 
kar-sevaks destroyed the Babri mosque in 1992, 
Kumar discovers that children now learn math by 
answering questions like, ''If it takes four 
kar-sevaks to demolish one mosque, how many does 
it take to demolish 20?'' He is dismayed that the 
nationalists have succeeded in making millions of 
Hindus feel embattled in a country where they 
form an overwhelming majority. But he is 
painfully aware that he himself is the 
anachronism, one of a dwindling band clinging to 
the secular ideals of India's first prime 
minister, Jawarharlal Nehru.

Kumar acknowledges his feeling of unease when he 
is among the devout, Hindu or Muslim: their 
language is an alien tongue for him. Nehru 
gleaned many of his beliefs from his days as a 
student in England. One senses the imprint of 
America's tradition of intellectual tolerance and 
its culture of candor on Kumar, especially when 
he discusses his own bogus conversion to Islam -- 
bogus, because he long ago abandoned the remnants 
of his adolescent Hindu faith, and has adopted 
Islam only for the purposes of appeasing the 
Pakistani authorities, who do not recognize 
marriages between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Kumar's quest takes him from America to South 
Africa -- where he is heartened by examples of 
cooperation between Hindus and Muslims against 
apartheid -- but it is to Pakistan and India that 
he returns to confront his estrangement not only 
from the Hindu nationalists but also from Indian 
society as a whole. In his last chapter, 
dominated by his inquiry into police brutality in 
his native state of Bihar, he is discomfited by 
many of the people he speaks to, perpetrators and 
victims alike. They have sized him up as rich and 
well connected, and their confessions turn to 
supplications -- for money, for a passage to 
America, for husbands for their daughters, for a 
government vending license. Kumar writes of an 
encounter with a blind man and his two daughters: 
''I resent being bullied by their father, but I 
also feel pity for the two. I take out some money 
from my wallet. . . . As I shut the door, I hear 
the loud, demanding voice behind me. 'How much is 
it -- how much did he give?' ''

And so, the door slams and Kumar leaves us with 
much but not one important thing, a proper 
introduction to the cause of all this 
soul-searching. Who, we want to know, is Mona? 
Kumar barely refers to his wife. The ''fanatic'' 
remains elusive, an ironic allusion in the title 
of a book that never quite answers the questions 
that it poses, and only intermittently lives up 
to the promise of its opening pages.

In part that is because Kumar the professor has 
an unfortunate way of intruding on Kumar the 
reporter. Thus he unnecessarily supplements his 
own neat description of Hindu political symbolism 
with the (borrowed) observation that televised 
Hindu epics had created ''a shared symbolic 
lexicon around which political forces could 
mobilize communal praxis.''

We learn much more when Kumar is describing small 
things impenetrable to outsiders, like the 
pungency of a communal slogan, the paradoxes and 
passions of South Asian cricket and the nuances 
of an Urdu story. Under the kitchen sink of his 
parents' home, one memorable childhood vignette 
runs, there was ''a dirty glass and, beside it, a 
ceramic plate that was white with small pink 
flowers,'' reserved for a tubercular uncle. ''The 
only other occasion when the plate and glass were 
taken out was when a Muslim driver who sometimes 
ate at our house needed to be fed.''


Christopher de Bellaigue is the author of ''In 
the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of 
Iran.''


HUSBAND OF A FANATIC
A Personal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate.
By Amitava Kumar
301 pp. The New Press. $24.95.


o o o o


(iii)


Economic and Political Weekly, Book Review
March 5, 2005

Debating Statehood

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of North-East India
by Sanjib Baruah;
OUP,
New Delhi, 2005;
pp xi+265, Rs 495.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pradip Phanjoubam

This recent book by Sanjib Baruah is a departure 
from available literature on the problems of 
Indias north-east. This is not surprising 
considering most previous works were either 
written by former administrators or other 
professionals who by training and loyalty looked 
at the north-east as an aberration from 
mainstream life and politics. Baruahs is an 
attempt to present the problems raw and honestly. 
The book is refreshingly bereft of the 
patronising sympathy so familiar with writings on 
the subject. The narrative is a curious mix of an 
overview by a detached observer and a sensitive 
introspection of one who has a stake in the 
issues involved. Baruahs career background 
perhaps is the explanation. He is an Assamese, 
who teaches political studies at New Yorks, Bard 
College, on lien now as a senior fellow at the 
Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change, 
Guwahati.

The book is argumentative, and although the 
prescriptions are debatable while being 
thought-provoking, the diagnosis is convincing. 
Baruah achieves this by his ability to seamlessly 
sew together information, personal experience, 
impressions, available theories and journalistic 
reportage to illustrate his own incisive 
insights. Unmistakable also is the influence of 
some immensely well endowed libraries as well as 
the disciplined reading and scholarship that have 
gone into the writing of the book. The book is 
for this reason, also very much a digest of 
current and past theories and thoughts on the 
subjects of identity, ethnicity, conflict, 
development, etc, and their related problems. 
Baruah negotiates these ideas and builds up the 
pitch of the debate until he is able to establish 
his points powerfully and with clarity. He is 
thus able to articulate certain deeply embedded 
but often nebulous anxieties of the communities 
in the north-east, which would help immensely in 
correcting past perspectives and 
misrepresentations. Durable Disorder attempts, 
rather successfully, to establish why the usual 
attribution of the problems of the north-east to 
vested interests, corruption, underdevelopment, 
etc, are pathetically inadequate, for the causes 
of the problems are much more fundamental in 
nature. The wrong diagnoses have also led to 
disastrously wrong responses.

Chapter Outline

The book has 10 chapters. Each looks at a 
different aspect of the north-east and adds to 
the central argument  that of the inadequacy of 
interpreting the problems from the perspective of 
national security alone. This standpoint, Baruah 
implies is what has led to the unenviable trap of 
what he calls durable disorder in which hopes of 
a lasting solution is allowed to recede too far, 
leaving only as the sole administrative objective 
the intent of not allowing these troubles to blow 
up into unmanageable crises.

The first chapter outlines the subject and the 
authors strategy to tackle it. The unveiling of 
the north-east agenda begins from the next 
section titled: Governance Structure, Formal and 
Informal. By far this section hits hardest at the 
Indian establishment and its north-east policy 
priorities. While it is meant to hurt, what is 
missing is the usual bitterness and annoying self 
pity. This is achieved by well-rounded 
intellectual arguments supported appropriately by 
data. The section has two chapters, one called 
Nationalising Space: Cosmetic Federalism and the 
Politics of Development and the other Generals as 
Governors.

In one, Baruah tackles the messy and 
controversial issue of immigration. While most 
writers and analysts have concentrated on the 
pull factors that attract immigrants in large 
scale from neighbouring countries as well as from 
other parts of India into the sparsely populated 
poor region threatening to radically overturn the 
demographic balance, Baruah also points out the 
more systematic push factors prompted by the 
Indian nations need to nationalise space. This 
involves tuning local population towards the 
national outlook as well as physically filling 
the poorly charted spaces with nation-bearing 
populations. While this agenda has not been 
pursued as aggressively as China has done, partly 
because in the case of India there is no single 
nation-bearing population, Baruah argues that the 
distinction between ethnic groups marked as 
indigenous to the region and those that are 
marked as immigrants from the rest of the 
subcontinent, has remained quite significant in 
the politics of north-east India. Extending state 
institutions with a developmental agenda 
therefore has had political functions Baruah 
underscores. It is significant that the 
developmental trajectory in the region is 
controlled solely by New Delhi, as most 
development projects in the region are financed, 
planned and designed in New Delhi, or in central 
organisations located in the region. The 
philosophy behind the North-East Council (NEC), 
comes up for some harsh criticism.

The war with China in 1962 as well as rebellions 
by the Nagas followed by many others, made the 
agenda of nationalising space all the more 
urgent. As a direct result, the state of Nagaland 
was created in 1963, hoping to end the Naga war 
by creating stakeholders in the pan-Indian 
disposition. With this Baruah writes, state 
creation in India became de-linked from the 
question of either fiscal viability or of 
compatibility with the constitutional 
architecture of the pan-Indian polity. He calls 
this the first step in a cosmetic federal 
regional order. Yet, Baruah argues, the creation 
of mini states, completely dependent on New Delhi 
for their finances, and thus vulnerable to New 
Delhis direct involvement in their affairs on a 
daily basis, fitted very well with Indias 
national security goals in the region.

In the next chapter, Generals as Governors Baruah 
pushes the argument of a security concerns-driven 
agenda in the north-east even further. He talks 
of a parallel government, not referring to the 
clandestine administrations run by militant 
organisations alone, but the one run by the 
central government in the states through its 
agents, the governors. It is hardly a 
coincidence, he says, that the men appointed as 
governors of these states are usually retired 
army generals and intelligence officers. The 
result is a de facto parallel political system, 
somewhat autonomous of the formal democratically 
elected government structure. Since in Indias 
weak federal structure, the centre through the 
governors can easily dismiss elected governments 
in states, the apparatus becomes an important 
tool to facilitate direct control by New Delhi of 
action in the north-east. A mistrust of the state 
governments for their possible nexus with 
militants which in a way becomes somewhat 
inevitable as the politicians have to share a 
good deal of their constituencies as well as 
concerns with the militants  makes New Delhi put 
a premium on the need for the autonomy of the 
parallel governance structure.

Baruah laments the compromises on democratic 
responses towards the problems in the region. Not 
so much in the belief that such responses would 
bring Indian democracy crashing down, but because 
in the long run it would have systematically 
activated and enlarged the worst in people. The 
truth in this prediction is there for all to 
witness in the disappearance of the rule of law, 
not just in the hands of the insurgents, but 
equally, by legitimate institutions of the 
democratic establishment. Baruah calls this 
phenomenon diminished democracy, the title of 
another chapter. The questionable and brutal 
counter-insurgency strategy that created the 
SULFA (surrendered ULFA) in Assam, or the pardon 
accorded outside the provisions of the law to 
surrendered insurgents including those accused of 
serious felonies during their underground days, 
are also cited as example of this compromise in a 
later chapter.

Baruahs economy of words makes it unnecessary for 
him to give too much space to repetitive 
narration of the now familiar histories of 
insurgencies. He rushes through them but without 
seriously missing out on their salient features, 
leaving him ample time and energy for discourses 
on the driving forces behind them.

Identity and Homeland

However, on the question of ethnic identity and 
the ethnic homeland question, Baruah seems to be 
on unsure ground. His explanation of the 
problematic nature of non-state communities 
coming out of isolation and beginning to aspire 
to be states, as in the case of the Nagas, is 
less than adequate. On the question of the 
expanding identity of the Nagas which has seen 
the embracing of communities with closer 
linguistic and anthropological ties with other 
ethnic groups, his sympathy are clearly with the 
former saying in matters of identity the only 
thing that should matter is how a group wishes to 
be known... The problem arises, when this 
expanding identity is tied to territory. The 
newly born state consciousness can come into 
direct collision with existing historical states. 
Baruah does acknowledge this but with no effort 
or intent to elaborate: the goal of creating a 
single political unit out of all Naga-inhabited 
areas puts the Naga project of nationhood in 
collision course with a parallel Manipur project. 
For some reasons, in dealing with this issue, he 
is also rather silent about the Kukis, who share 
virtually the same homeland with the Nagas. This 
appears as a big lacunae considering notions of 
exclusive ethnic homelands was the primary cause 
of the bloody Kuki-Naga conflict in the mid-1990s.

Baruah does, however, bring up the issue again in 
a later chapter, Citizens and Denizens, but the 
discussion becomes more abstract and devoid of 
the urgency demanded. Here he is talking of the 
provisions of the Sixth Schedule of the Indian 
Constitution drawn up for the administration of 
minority tribal areas in the north-east which 
creates the closest thing to exclusive ethnic 
homelands. Within these tribal enclaves where 
tribal customary laws prevail, non tribal 
domiciles, and even tribals of other ethnic 
stock, end up deprived of many democratic rights, 
including that of exercising their franchise. 
Baruah suggests experimenting with a regime of 
dual citizenship aimed at shifting what has come 
to be an ethnic issue to a civic one.

The book has three chapters on Assam and the 
genesis of sub-nationalism in the state. This 
event does not coincide with the birth of the 
ULFA. He traces the roots of the Assamese 
sub-nationalism to British colonial land reform 
policies, and then to the cosmetic federalism of 
independent India. One of the chief anxieties of 
the Assamese, (Baruah qualifies this term on 
account of the fundamentally heterogeneous 
Assamese society and of the Bodos and other 
tribal groups unwillingness to be referred as 
such) has been immigration of outsiders into 
Assam.

At the time of Partition, leaders of the Assam 
Congress had expressed their wish that fewer 
refugees be resettled in Assam and asserted that 
the prerogatives in matters of citizenship and 
immigration should rest with the state. 
Jawaharlal Nehru had sarcastically remarked in a 
letter to then chief minister of Assam, Gopi Nath 
Bordoloi, I suppose one of these days we might be 
asked for the independence of Assam. For the same 
reason, the home minister Sadar Vallabhbhai Patel 
called Bordolois successor Bisnuram Medhi, 
parochial. The idea of Assams independence did 
not remain a joke for long, Baruah notes. In the 
constituent assembly, Assams proposal for a 
federation with strong autonomous states did not 
succeed. But this locally felt need was again the 
driving force behind the Assam Agitation of the 
1970s and 1980s, and so too behind the ULFAs 
militancy. ULFAs ideas are located in a political 
discourse that has occupied centre-stage in 
Assamese civil society for more than half a 
century, Barua notes, concluding that it is not 
surprising despite military defeats ULFA still 
lives on.

The concluding chapter, Beyond Durable Disorder 
is the most prescriptive. But the solution sought 
is unconventional and distinguishes itself from 
the security-driven approach that pivots around 
success in counter insurgency strategies. Baruah 
recommends a little deconstruction of the 
hardened notion of the nation state so that 
national boundaries are softened, if not opened, 
and natural economic and geographic zones are 
given a fresh leash of life. Taking the cue from 
Keniche Ohame who proposed that the idea of 
region state to replace nation state, that has 
become dysfunctional in the modern era, Baruah 
writes: when the natural economic region is 
allowed to emerge without the constraints of 
national boundaries, the locational advantages 
and disadvantages are necessarily very different 
from those in a situation when border effects are 
in full force. Indias new Look East policy, as 
well as the ongoing efforts for a rapprochement 
with China, are steps in the right direction, the 
book concludes.

If not for the recommendations, then for the 
richness of ideas it throws up,Durable Disorder 
definitely will serve as an invaluable companion 
for serious scholars of the north-east and for 
policy-makers.


______


[6]     [Announcements: ]

(i)

INDIAN RENAISSANCE INSTITUTE
& INDIAN RADICAL HUMANIST ASSOCIATION
A-12, Neeti Bagh, New Delhi-110049.
Dt.17th March,2005.

MEETING IN MEMORY OF COMRADE TARKUNDE

  Dear friend,

Comrade Tarkunde had left us on 22nd 
March,2004. In view of his death anniversary, 
Indian Renaissance Institute and Indian Radical 
Humanist Association have organized a meeting  to 
remember him.

  Time & Date: 5 PM,  Tuesday, 22nd March,2005
  Venue  : Dy. Chairmanís Hall, Constitution club, Rafi Marg, New Delhi-1.

           The participants will deliberate  how 
to promote  and strengthen the ideals  which were 
dear to him and for which he struggled.

You are invited to participate.

  N.D.Pancholi
Secretary
  Indian Rnaissance Institute


o o o o

(ii)

NEW LABOUR POLICIES VIOLATING BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS

Three key sets of government policies are 
seriously affecting the human rights of Asian 
women in Britain

-       The Supporting People Programme which 
threatens the continued running of refuges for 
Asian women

-       The Two Year Immigration Rule which is 
sending women back to violence and often death in 
'honour killings' in India, Pakistan and 
Bangladesh

-       The cut backs in legal services which 
have serious implications for women facing 
domestic violence.

A public meeting organised by Asian Women Unite 
will examine these policies and possible ways 
forward.

6.30pm Wednesday 23rd March 2005, Conway Hall, 
Red Lion Square, London WC1, nearest tube: Holborn

  SPEAKERS INCLUDE: Shamshad Hussain (Imkaan); 
Hannana Siddiqui  (Southall Black Sisters); 
Ranjit Kaur (Rights of Women)

The Supporting People Policy

Shamshad Hussain will speak about the effects of 
the Supporting People Policy which despite its 
name, is (as Imkaan's research shows) threatening 
the very survival of Asian Women's refuges. 
According to Shamshad Hussain,   'Although 
presented by New Labour as an opportunity for 
refuge providers, the policy is pushing the 
sector back twenty five years to a time when 
Asian women had to defend the case for having 
specialist refuges to meet the specific needs of 
Asian women. At the same time by cutting funding 
in crucial areas such as outreach work it will 
effectively ignore many women facing domestic 
violence'.

The Two Year Immigration Rule

Hannana Siddiqui  will speak about  Black women's 
groups’ campaigns against the Two Year Rule led 
by Southall Black Sisters. The rule she says is 
'inherently racist and sexist' - under the 
British government's Two Year Immigration Rule, 
women from abroad who enter or stay in this 
country on the basis of marriage or a 
relationship with a British citizen or someone 
settled in Britain are subject to a 'probationary 
period' of two years. If the marriage breaks down 
within this period the spouse from abroad is 
liable to be deported’.

  The probationary period reinforces the imbalance 
of power within marriages -- the threat of 
deportation can be used as a powerful weapon to 
force women to remain in a relationship against 
their will. Hannana Siddiqui will examine how the 
law affects women's actual experiences

Can justice be done when Legal Aid is denied?

Ranjit Kaur  will be examining the deepening 
crisis in public funding (legal aid) and the 
implications of this for Black and Minority Women 
particularly those who experience domestic 
violence.  

The government's recent paper 'A New Focus for 
Civil Legal Aid' proposes to change the criteria 
for applying for public funding (legal aid) and 
exclude so-called 'low priority' cases, these 
include the drafting and filing of divorce papers 
or judicial separation papers. Ranjit Kaur says 
'This will disqualify even more Black and 
Minority Women from public funding and strengthen 
the very oppressive forces which Asian women are 
struggling against'.

The meeting will be attended by women from all 
over the UK many of whom have been personally 
affected by these government policies.

  Details: asianwomenunite at hotmail.com

Asian Women Unite! is an umbrella group of all 
the main Asian women’s organisations in Britain




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

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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