SACW | 4 April 2005
sacw
aiindex at mnet.fr
Sun Apr 3 15:10:50 PDT 2005
South Asia Citizens Wire | 4 April, 2005
[Interruption Notice: There will be no SACW
dispatches between April 5 - 8, 2005 !]
[1] Pakistan: Mullah's clash with police on women's race
[2] Pakistan: The debate on madressah enrollment (Omar R. Quraishi)
[3] India: ' What Is Nature? ' (Editorial, The Telegraph)
[4] Letter to the Editor (Mukul Dube)
[5] Book Reviews:
(i) ' Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie '
(ii) ' Translating Desire: The Politics of Gender
and Culture in India, Edited by Brinda Bose '
(III) ' No Woman's Land: Women from Pakistan,
India and Bangladesh write on the Partition of
India.
Edited by Ritu Menon '
(iv) ' My Days in Prison by Iftikhar Gilani '
(v) ' The Vedas, Hinduism, Hindutva '
(vi) ' Fractured lives: Class, caste, gender Edited by Manoranjan Mohanty '
[6] Announcements:
(i) "Namak kay Aansu / Tears of Salt" a Photo
Exhibit on salt pan workers (Ahmedabad, April 6,
2005)
--------------
[1]
Reuters 3 Apr 2005 10:59:05 GMT
PAKISTAN ISLAMISTS CLASH WITH POLICE ON WOMEN'S RACE
ISLAMABAD, April 3 (Reuters) - Pakistani police
lobbed tear gas and fired shots in the air on
Sunday to disperse a violent protest by an
Islamic opposition alliance on the participation
of women with men in a mini-marathon race,
state-run media said.
The clashes erupted in the eastern city of
Gujranwala, 220 km (135 miles) southeast of the
capital Islamabad, after activists of the Islamic
Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance attacked the men
and women contesting the race with batons.
The state-run Pakistan Television said police
fired shots in the air and tear gas, injuring
several people including a lawmaker from the
Islamic grouping.
The angry protestors later torched several cars
and vehicles to fire, the report said.
The clash shows a growing wedge between Islamists
and President Pervez Musharraf, a key ally in the
U.S.-led war on terrorism, who wants to project
Pakistan as a modern and moderate Muslim country.
The Islamists oppose joint the participation of
men and women in sports and other such events.
Musharraf has previously dismissed such
objections.
______
[2]
Dawn - 27 March 2005
The debate on madressah enrolment
By Omar R. Quraishi
A recently released report funded by the World
Bank and co-authored by an assistant professor of
public policy at Harvard University's Kennedy
School of Government has put a very different
perspective on madressah enrolment in Pakistan
than the generally prevalent view.
Titled Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A
Look at the Data, the report by Tahir Andrabi of
Pomona College, Jishnu Das of the World Bank and
(assistant professor) Asim Ijaz Khwaja and
Tristan Zajonc of Harvard University takes a
detailed look at the number of students enrolled
in Pakistani madressahs, examines their accuracy
and comes to the conclusion that the data sharply
contradicts the figures quoted in the press on
just how many students are enrolled in Pakistan.
It says that articles in various international
newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and
the Washington Post, have quoted figures for
madressah enrolment in Pakistan that are much
higher than what seems to be the reality.
'Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan' argues
that the over-exaggeration of the figures is on a
very big scale. It also cites a report on
madressah education by a Brussels-based
think-tank, the International Crisis Group,
saying that its figure of 33 per cent for the
number of students enrolled in seminaries was
quoted in six of eleven articles that appeared in
international newspapers as interest in this
subject grew after September 11, 2001.
The authors of the report say that given the
sensitive nature of this issue, especially the
link between the former Taliban rules of
Afghanistan and seminaries and the current belief
that such institutions are ideal breeding ground
for extremists and terrorists, the issue of
enrollment has surprisingly been given cursory
treatment. Figures have been bandied about with
little or no substantiation and in the absence of
any verifiable data on actual enrolment figures.
"Given the importance placed on the subject by
policy makers in Pakistan and those
internationally, it is troubling that none of the
reports and articles reviewed based their
analysis on publicly available data or
established statistical methodologies.
This paper uses published data sources and a
census of schooling choice to show that existing
estimates are inflated," the report says. The
authors go on to claim that enrolment in
madressahs in Pakistan accounts for "less than
one percent of all enrolment in the country and
there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in
recent years".
To closely examine and try to grasp the estimates
quoted in various newspaper articles and even in
the ICG report, the authors say that when they
examined school choice they could find no
explanation that could fit the data. For example,
one of the reasons cited to explain rising
madressah enrolment is poverty or lack of other
schooling options.
The authors, however, found that the data showed
that among households with at least one child in
a madressah, three-quarters send their "second
(and/or third) child to a public or private
school or both". They say "widely promoted
theories, among them a growing preference for
sending children to schools, simply do not
explain this substantial variation within
households" in Pakistan.
The report's authors say that the data available
on the subject shows that 200,000 students are
enrolled in madressahs full-time, a far cry from
the 33 per cent of total student enrolment as
claimed by the ICG or even a 10 per cent figure
quoted in a recent Los Angeles Times article on
the issue. Expressed as a ratio, the difference
becomes even more stark, the authors say,
pointing out that this means that a mere 0.3 per
cent of all students between the ages of five and
19 are enrolled in a madressah.
However, since the enrolment rate for this age
group is estimated to be 42 per cent, the number
of students enrolled in a madressah expressed as
a proportion of total student enrolment between
the ages of 5-19 rises to 0.7 per cent, which is
still a far cry from the kind of figures quoted
in the international, and sometimes even
national, newspapers. The report also concludes
that there was no evidence of a "dramatic
increase in madressah enrolment in recent years.
All this is in sharp contradiction to published
newspaper reports on the issue, a reason that the
authors cite in their report for undertaking the
study. For example, an article in the Washington
Post in July 2002 said that as many as 1.5
million schoolchildren were enrolled in
madressahs in Pakistan. Even the 9/11 Commission
report quoted the same high and unreliable
figures when it discussed the issue of terrorism
and ways and means to curb it by monitoring
madressahs in countries like Pakistan.
The authors of 'Religious School Enrolment in
Pakistan' further state that even in areas
bordering Afghanistan, where the madressah
enrolment is said to be relatively higher, the
number of children in such institutions is a mere
7.5 per cent of total student enrolment.
In fact, if anything, recent debate and discourse
on the state and quality of education in
Pakistan, the writers of the study argue, has
completely overlooked another important
development: the rapid rise and availability of
mainstream private schools. The report says that
Pakistan's he report does acknowledge that the
country's "educational landscape" has changed
"substantially in the last decade" but points out
that this is due to an "explosion of private
schools", something which it says has been left
out of the debate on education in Pakistan. The
authors do acknowledge that the country's
"educational landscape" has changed
"substantially in the last decade" but point out
that this is due to an "explosion of private
schools", a phenomenon whose impact has both been
largely ignored and underestimated.
The ICG, whose figure of 33 per cent was
questioned by the World Bank-funded Harvard
report, has come out in defence of its work. In
fact, in a statement on its website, the ICG has
accused the Harvard report of "juggling" numbers
to prove its point. It says: "If the findings of
this paper are to be taken at face value, then
Pakistan and the international community have
little cause to worry about an educational sector
that glorifies jihad and indoctrinates Pakistani
children in religious intolerance and extremism."
Clearly, this particular line of defence does not
take away from the fact that the Harvard study is
questioning the enrolment figure and is making a
reasonably good case of putting doubts over the
figures that have been mentioned on this issue in
the media. What the ICG has implied, that there
is a correlation between madressah education and
rising intolerance and extremism, might not be
wrong, but that does not seem to be what the
Harvard report's authors are saying.
The ICG said that the report's main finding, that
madressah enrolment is less than one per cent of
all student enrolment between the ages of five
and 19, is "directly at odds" with the education
ministry's 2003 directory of madressahs, which
says that the number of madressahs has increased
from 6,996 in 2001 to 10,430. It says that
madressah organizations have put the figure at
13,000 with total enrolment between 1.5-1.7
million. This is however not an official
estimate, and the ministry's madressahs directory
does not quote any exact enrolment figure either.
The ICG also quotes the religious affairs
minister to dispute the figure claimed in the
Asim Ijaz Khwaja et al report saying that the
minister had publicly said that madressahs were
imparting education to 1,000,000 children.
However, no substantiation has been provided for
this figure, either by the ICG or by the
religious affairs ministry. In fact, the
government's failure to press ahead with the
madressah registration drive means that official
figures on enrolment and even on the total number
of madressahs might be misleading and inaccurate.
The ICG response also came in the form of
criticism on the sources used by the authors of
the Harvard study. Calling them (the sources)
"questionable", the ICG said that the 1998 census
was "highly controversial", that the household
surveys were "neither designed nor conducted to
elicit data on madressah enrolment" and that the
authors had concentrated on rural areas, assuming
that madressahs were more a rural phenomenon.
As far as the last point is concerned, the ICG
does seem to have a valid objection because much
of the rise in religiosity and with it in
madressah enrolment has been seen in Pakistan's
urban areas, especially the larger cities.
However, the ICG is unable to explain how it came
to the conclusion in its own report on religious
education in Pakistan that up to a third of total
student enrolment in the country was in
madressahs.
Specifically speaking, the Harvard report's
authors say that they looked at articles and
reports: articles in mainstream American and
international newspapers; reports and articles by
American and international scholars affiliated
with international think tanks, institutes, and
the government (including the 9/11 Commission
Report); and studies by Pakistani scholars
working in Pakistan and abroad.
The report says that the sources for all these
reports are either newspaper accounts of police
estimates or interviews with policymakers and
that not a single article tried to "validate
these numbers using established data sources".
The analysis showed that there was quite a vast
range for the enrolment figure - varying between
500,000 and 1.5 million - and that this lack of
inconsistency was sometimes found in the same
newspaper. The newspapers that were examined
included the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune,
Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent,
Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The
Philadelphia Inquirer, The Times and the
Washington Post from the period from January 2001
to June 2004.
The report noted that even a document as
seemingly informed and important for US
policymakers as the report of the 9/11 Commission
made sweeping generalizations on the madressah
enrolment issue by saying that "millions of
families, especially those with little money,
send their children to religious schools, or
madressahs". It also quoted a senior police
official in Karachi as saying that in the city
alone, 200,000 children were studying in 859
madressahs.
Even the claim that "millions of families" send
their children to such schools seems a bit
far-fetched given that the number of household in
the whole country, assuming a conservative
estimate of six people per household, would be in
the region of 25 million. The Harvard report also
links the probable source for the inflated
figures as two articles and the ICG report. The
articles were by Jessica Stern in 2000 in Foreign
Affairs, by Jonathan Singer in 2001 for the
Brookings Institution, and the ICG report
published in 2002. Stern said in her article that
there were between 40,000 and 50,000 madressahs
in Pakistan while Singer put the figure at
45,000, both without quoting a credible source or
any data.
The ICG might be right in its criticism of the
Harvard study in that it seems to overlook the
increasing popularity of madressahs in Pakistan's
urban areas. However, no substantiation is
presented, other than reports collected from
newspaper articles or quoting government or
intelligence officials (all of these are
uncorroborated by any official data), for the
claim that madressah enrolment is what the ICG or
the international press says it is.
It might be rising and it might be linked to the
incidence of intolerance, bigotry and terrorism
in this part of the world, but how many children
are exactly enrolled in madressahs? Any
conclusive or definitive answer to this question
can be given only once the government undertakes
its initially much-publicized and now
much-delayed initiative on the registration of
madressahs in the country.
______
[3]
The Telegraph - April 04, 2005
Editorial: WHAT IS NATURE?
Homosexuality is now part of public discourse in
India. This is largely because of HIV/AIDS. Men
who have sex with men are a high-risk community,
although the national campaign is strangely
reticent about this fact. This link runs the risk
of further stigmatizing an already persecuted
minority. HIV-related focus on male homosexuals
also renders lesbians more invisible than they
have been within the gay activism, which is still
a largely metropolitan phenomenon in India. But
the Supreme Court's latest notice to the Centre
asking it to clarify its stance on what the
Indian Penal Code calls "unnatural" sexual
offences interrogates this entirely pre-modern
and undemocratic status quo. Section 377 of the
IPC [Indian Penal Code] -- which punishes
"intercourse against the order of nature" with
"any man, woman or animal" -- is currently used,
mostly by the police, to abuse, intimidate and
extort homosexual men. And the basis of this
mid-Victorian law -- which fails to imagine the
existence of lesbianism -- is what the Centre has
been asked to clarify, in relation to
contemporary Indian society.
The previous government, quite expectedly, had
answered the court that legalizing homosexuality
would "open the floodgates of delinquent
behaviour", and that Indian society "by and
large" disapproves of homosexuality. Hence,
changing the law would not make sense, and would
only worsen the HIV/AIDS scenario (because of
homosexual "licentiousness"). If this government
replies along similar lines, then that would be a
profoundly regressive moment for modern India.
Legalizing homosexuality is not only imperative
for "sexual health", especially for the
prevention of HIV/AIDS. But it also touches upon
some of the most fundamental principles of human
rights, or equality and justice. To define the
"order of nature" as sex for the purpose of
procreation, and then to criminalize every other
form of sexual activity between consenting adults
carry prudishness to the order of inhuman
oppression. Any country that takes pride in
calling itself a modern democracy ought to find
such injustice unhealthy and unnatural.
______
[4] [Letter to the Editor ]
D-504 Purvasha
Mayur Vihar 1
Delhi 110091
3 April 2005
When prominent people die, they receive praise which can be close to
hysterical; and what is said about them is notably lacking in
objectivity, since that might amount to impermissible criticism. We
saw this phenomenon in our country not so long ago, when P.V.
Narasimha Rao died. It is now being repeated, on a far larger scale,
for Pope John Paul II.
I shall speak here only of what seems a contradiction in terms. The
late Pope is being called a champion of the poor and downtrodden --
and, in the same breath, a defender of orthodoxy and conservatism.
The first description has little meaning by itself, for history has
seen far too many undeserving people anointed with it; but also
applying the second label to the same person takes away from it all
meaning. What, in any religion, do orthodoxy and conservatism mean if
not the maintenance of the existing social order, which is just what
keeps millions poor and downtrodden? No goalie can play for two
opposing teams at once.
Mukul Dube
______
[5]
[BOOK REVIEWS]
(i)
Sunday Herald - 03 April 2005
http://www.sundayherald.com/
Breaking Karachi's barriers
By Colin Waters
One can guess something of Shamsie's opinion of
Pakistani television by the name of the Karachi
TV company that employs her characters: STD.
Shamsie's heroine, Aasmaani, should have taken it
as an omen before taking the job as a quiz-show
researcher and occasional script doctor. She
works on STD's flagship soap, Boond, which
translates as blood, or - more obscurely, though
also perhaps more appropriately - semen.
Shamsie is drawn to mapping the history and
territory of her sprawling hometown - "that
spider-plant city" as she calls it. It is
Karachi, and not necessarily as a microcosm for
Pakistan, that attracts Shamsie. The city is more
cosmopolitan than other regions of the country,
setting up clashes between the moneyed classes
and the poor, and between wrathful tradition and
western temptations. These flashing faultlines
have erupted - previous novel Kartography was
bookended by the city's ethnic riots of the
mid-1980s and 1990s - bringing grief to natives
and material to hungry novelists.
While Shamsie stays with the middle classes that
peopled her previous books, there's less emphasis
on the Austen-esque social comedy that diverted
her there. Aasmaani initially seems callow. "What
was there in the news these days that I could
possibly benefit from knowing?" she thinks. When
she's offered a job as an MP by an old family
friend, she refuses: "The nation can sod off as
far as I'm concerned." This appears in keeping
with her foppish contemporaries, who, for
example, threaten to vote for the growing
religious right, the "fundos", just "to piss off
the Americans", despite her generation's
paradoxical fascination with all things
occidental.
In Karachi, the personal and political intrude
messily upon each other, and the roots of
Aasmaani's off-hand, frequently acidic
personality and unanchored life lie in her
inadvertently politicised past. Aasmaani is the
daughter of "feminist icon" Samina Akram who
disappeared 14 years earlier. The presumption is
that she committed suicide - but you can't say
that to Aasmaani, not unless you wish to be
lashed by her formidable talent for hurtful
honesty, as her father discovers.
Samina left Aasmaani's father months into their
marriage - although already pregnant - to
relaunch her affair with The Poet, a vocal
opponent of Pakistan's tyrannies down the
post-war decades. Samina's reputation was based
on her sisterhood-invoking speeches, not her
behaviour. Her frequent, not to mention craven,
abandonment of her daughter to follow The Poet
into exile strikes the reader - and Aasmaani - as
about as feminist as a Playboy pullout. When The
Poet's corpse was discovered, mashed beyond easy
identification, Samina's devouring grief
culminated in her disappearance.
Whirling through a string of jobs and lovers,
Aasmaani has not fulfilled the promise she showed
in her youth. "Is it that you don't want to be
your mother?" Rabia, her half-sister asks, "or
that you're afraid you'll fail so dismally to
live up to her that you won't even try?"
Aasmaani's sole hope of being understood is a
colleague, Ed, the son of an actress and a
hooligan turned poetry-reading yuppie. Jealous
and possessive of his mother, he's also trying to
step out from her shadow. His boiling moods are
perhaps explained by the fact he landed his job
at STD solely by persuading his mother to leave
retirement to take Boond's starring role. Ed and
Aasmaani's romance is complicated when Ed's
mother begins to receive cryptic notes that she
passes on to Aasmaani. Written in a code known
only by Aasmaani, Samina and The Poet, they
appear to indicate that the death of her "almost
step-father" was a fake and that he's been held a
prisoner these past 16 years by persons unknown.
As a silent caller begins to phone her house, and
conspiracy theories breed in her itchy brain,
Aasmaani begins to believe The Poet is alive, to
the distress of her sceptical relatives. Paranoia
crowds her mind. Indeed, one of Broken Verses'
supplementary aspects shows the effects of
Western paranoia upon the citizenry of the East.
Ed, for example, left his job in New York because
of post-Patriot Act harassment, when he "stopped
being an individual and started being an entire
religion".
But Karachi too is a kingdom of fear, a
"pseudo-democracy", where it doesn't pay to ask
the wrong questions, where theologically-stoked
fear is becoming apocalyptic, but utterly
accepted - to the point Aasmaani observes without
much comment, "a bus which had replica nuclear
missiles attached to its roof at jaunty angles".
Let us hope then that it is only the verses that
remain broken.
-
Broken Verses
By Kamila Shamsie
ISBN 0-7475-8002-2
Published by Bloomsbury.
Distributed in Pakistan by Oxford University
Press, Plot # 38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial
Area, Karachi
www.oup.com.pk
(ii)
Literary Review | The Hindu - April 03, 2005
SEXUAL STUDIES
Ending the conspiracy of silence
`We need to challenge received assumptions, to
challenge the idea that sex is inherently
dangerous and negative.'
THE last couple of decades have witnessed an
explosion across the world of gender studies, in
particular, sexuality studies. India has begun to
feel its strong reverberations. The long
conspiracy of silence (even perhaps silencing),
is now beginning to be challenged in both
academic and popular discourses. The varied
essays in Brinda Bose's collection address
questions about the role of sexuality in
contemporary Indian culture.
Though the expression and representation of
desire in Indian culture is ancient (the
Kamasutra is not its only proof), in the
present-day political reality, we are being
pressurised to believe that desire is a dirty
word. This collection of essays implies that it
is time to consider why.
The articulation of female sexual desires remains
completely contained within a larger patriarchal
terrain, in which the right-wingers forcibly
create a nexus between morality and patriotic
fervour for a "traditional" culture that we are
told that we are fast losing.
Challenging received notions
In her very useful Introduction, Bose posits the
significant question: "how do we distinguish
between `good' and `bad' sexuality, between
promiscuity and sexual freedom, between sexism
and decency?" To merely apply received moral and
ethical criteria is not enough. We need to
challenge received assumptions, to challenge the
idea that sex is inherently dangerous and
negative. Ratna Kapur points out that the laws
governing prostitution penalise women who are
sexually outside marriage; these lead to similar
notions of chastity being used to judge women
following a failed marriage, even to the point of
dismissing a woman's allegations of rape. Kapur
insists quite rightly, that in the context of
sexual speech, there has been too much censorship
and far too little latitude for women to pursue
their own sexual speech.
Denial of rights, ignorance, rejection is "only
the beginning of dialogue, rather than the end."
This belief has led to Bose's collection of 12
essays and one short story. Perhaps as the editor
herself admits, Translating Desire covers a
spectrum almost far too vast in its sweep of
contemporary Indian culture. Interestingly, the
essays come from a variety of perspectives -
cultural, literacy, sociological,
anthropological, legal, creative - yet they share
a common infusion of feminist politics. Bose's
six categories range from a reading of
masculinist Hindutva (P.K. Vijayan) to a
remarkably written analysis of food as a vehicle
of female desire (Anjana Sharma). Ratna Kapur
reads between the lines of the cultural politics
of a lesbian agnipariksha for middle-class
sisters-in-law in the movie, "Fire" which caused
such frenzied and widespread reactions. She
points that in pre-colonial India there is more
than enough evidence of the existence of several
complex discourses around same-sex love, rich
metaphorical traditions of representing it, and
even more significant, the use in more than one
language of names, terms, and codes to
distinguish homoerotic love and those inclined,
proving beyond a doubt that this category was not
the invention of 19th-Century sexologists, as
Foucault claims. In Mahayana Buddhism, claims
Vanita, a Kalyanmitra or or compassionate friend
is one who instructs, and in the dharma, both men
and women play this role. Vanita examines ancient
texts such as the Kamasutra, Manusmriti, the
Arthashastra, even medical texts like the Charaka
Samhita and Sushruta Samhita. Her carefully
researched conclusion then, is that 20th Century
categories like "heterosexual", "homosexual' and
"bi-sexual" are equally flawed and reductionist.
In a particularly beautifully written short
story, Sherry Simon has captured in fiction the
delicate nuances of love in time of translation.
"Translators can easily get lost when they stay
away too long, when they try to learn too much
about a world on the other side of their language
borders", says Simon with much truth.
One of the most enjoyable essays in this
collection is that by Dolores Chew. She looks at
the politics of feminity from the point of a
class which has suffered rejection and unjust
categorisation: the Anglo-Indian woman.
Promiscuity and sexual availability have been
most facilely ascribed to her. Whatever the
historical origins of such a situation, the
injustice is apparent. Chew explores questions of
identity and representation, employing elements
that derive from the interstices of race, gender,
and marginality, using the vast storehouse of
novels written in the 20th Century. In fact, she
points out, the woman serves the dual function of
representing her sex, as well as providing a
metaphor for the colonised object; in the case of
the Anglo-Indian woman, this gets amplified many
times over.
Udaya Kumar, Karen Gabriel and Srimati Basu
consider the perception that the female body has
been too often invested with much of the
responsibility for harbouring sexual desire.
Sex may be "a beautiful thing" in an ideal
society, but it has hardly remained so in
interaction with a confused society and culture.
The silver lining, of course, is that desire has
finally become a speaking subject.
Translating Desire: The Politics of Gender and
Culture in India, edited by Brinda Bose, Katha,
New Delhi, p.311, Rs.295.
Usha Hemmadi
(iii)
The Tribune - March 20, 2005
Rupture and recovery
Rumina Sethi
No Woman's Land:
Women from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh write on the Partition of India.
Ed. Ritu Menon. Women Unlimited, New Delhi. Pages 202. Rs 300.
The last decade has brought us face to face with
our hitherto hidden history with the many books
on Partition: the two volumes of Pangs of
Partition by S. Settar and Indira Baptista Gupta,
Translating Partition by Ravikant and Tarun K.
Saint, Inventing Boundaries by Mushirul Hasan and
The Partitions of Memory by Suvir Kaul. In an
earlier joint venture, Kamla Bhasin and Ritu
Menon state in Borders and Boundaries that there
has been no feminist historiography of the
Partition of India.
In the words of Joan Kelly, women's history has a
dual goal: to restore women to history and to
restore our history to women. Since the
historical archive has so little to offer in
terms of women's experience, a greater emphasis
on gender is undeniably a great asset.
Menon's purpose in this book is to examine
memories of Partition from the perspective of
women from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, their
trauma and dislocation, particularly the way it
affects their functioning today. She has put
together women's narratives from these three
nations to explore the holocaust of 1947 as well
as their subsequent lives.
In the past few years, women have tried to
explore the political dimension of their personal
lives and bridged the gap between the two.
Anything that women might do is thus validated as
political.
Appropriate examples are available in Sara
Suleri's essay Excellent Things in Women, an
excerpt from Meatless Days, in which the
political events of Pakistan keep breathless pace
with Suleri's family saga. The persona of
Suleri's Dadi exists beyond the
nation-in-the-making as, being the female head of
the household, she overrides the patrocentric
formation of Pakistan with her sheer grit and
indifference.
While those like Dadi saw through unseeing eyes,
the conscience of writers and poets led them to
write like never before. Josh, Sardar Jafri,
Majaz and Majrooh protested as the land was split
into two. In an impassioned defense of Sadat
Hassan Manto, Ismat Chugtai proclaims that
communal literature is not time-bound, but
enduring in its quality.
The early pieces about the experience of
Partition in Pakistan set the pace for the
stories of Basanti and Sumati, who narrate the
trauma of the Partition of Bengal in Two Women,
One Family, Divided Nations. Meghna Guhathakurta
recounts the violence after 1947 when her
grandmother's family, fearing for their lives,
was vivisected when some of them went to live in
Calcutta. Sumati's son and daughter-in-law,
Basanti, remained in Dhaka, where her son was
eventually killed for being an "Indian agent" in
1971.
On Basanti's interrogation of the cause of his
death, the hospital authorities declared that he
had died of pneumonia: "This was the first
indication that our history was being
systematically erased. I felt that if we left,
the truth would never come out."
Bengal was spared the enormity and dread of the
violence of Punjab. I remember the stories
narrated by my own mother, who, along with her
sisters and brother, left her home and parents
behind in Lahore to hazardously reach Amritsar in
August 1947. Every summer when the family would
get together, there would be a reopening of
wounds, which had left an everlasting stamp on
them. That they would never return to their
ancestral home was a fact they could never
reconcile with.
"They figured they would soon be back" is the
sentiment echoed by Ritu Menon, as she shifts
focus from Pakistan and Bangladesh to the
partitioned Punjab in Border Crossings:
Travelling Without a Destination. While
recounting the border crossing of her own family,
Menon evokes a sense of frontiers not traversed
because of being emotionally connected with the
land left behind: "We had to remind ourselves
that we 'belonged' to two different countries
now."
Yet the two nations and their statesmen
constantly remind the public that they are
separate, distinct, opposed. The ritual enactment
of guards at the Wagah crossing is "designed to
communicate maximum hostility". The way in which
they march, which is virtually a kicking action,
and stamp and stride, is nothing short of a
simulated war, intended to be a constant reminder
of aggression.
Despite the strict observance of this ceremony
vaunting high nationalism, it is public opinion
that has transcended historical animosity as
exhibited in the friendship and brotherhood of
the recent months. Nowhere is it more evident
than in the spirit of Punjabiat demonstrated in
the last few days in Mohali and Chandigarh, which
exemplifies a true sense of border crossing.
Political dialogue has finally yielded to
amicable action. Indeed, the collection of
essays, in its own way, irrefutably reaffirms the
commitment to hope and transformation. Discourses
of difference and otherness stand subsumed into a
new reciprocity that has brought to an end
oppositional stances. Let us hope this bonhomie
is not a flash in the pan and the two nations can
finally break out of the stranglehold of history.
(iv)
My Days in Prison
By Iftikhar Gilani
Published by Penguin Books India
1 April 2005, 168pp
ISBN: 0143031554
http://www.penguinbooksindia.com
A shocking story of trial, temerity and triumph
On 9 June 2002, at 4.30 a.m., Iftikhar Gilani, a
journalist with Kashmir Times, was roused from
sleep by loud knocks at the door. Groggily he
opened it to find a posse of policemen, some
armed, carrying an authorization to search his
house. Within minutes, they were turning his
small flat inside out. Little did Gilani realize
then that by the end of the day he would be in
police custody. His supposed crime: providing
information to Pakistan's ISI (Inter Services
Intelligence) on the deployment of armed forces
in Jammu and Kashmir. The punishment: fourteen
years in jail. My Days in Prison is Iftikhar
Gilani's chilling account of the nightmare that
followed.
Overnight Gilani was turned from a career
journalist to a confirmed spy. He was thrown into
Tihar Jail and vilified in news reports. With his
journalistic objectivity intact, Gilani narrates
the horrors he was subjected to-he was confined
to the high-security ward, beaten till he bled,
made to clean filthy toilets with his shirt and
then forced to wear the same shirt again ...
Eventually, in January 2003, the government
withdrew the case in the wake of vociferous
protests by civil rights activists and media
personalities, and Gilani was a free man again.
But his story demonstrates how important it is to
uphold the rule of law and how easily an
irresponsible few can misuse the draconian laws
to their own ends. Most of all, he points out
that, while he could prove his innocence, the
right to justice and personal liberty cannot be
compromised in a democracy. As Gilani
convincingly shows, this was not his fight alone.
'Iftikhar Gilani's harrowing experience reveals
in a flash the deep-rooted prejudice against
Kashmir and Kashmiris among the so-called elite
in Delhi, persons running institutions which are
supposed to be fair, and reveals also the deep
commitment to human rights in many sections of
Indian society in academia as well as in the
media.' -- A.G. Noorani, lawyer and columnist
(v)
The Telegraph - March 31, 2005
Students & religion: a question of answers
Sudeshna Banerjee
Nabanita Dev Sen at the book launch at Basanti
Devi College. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya;
(below) the illustration that created the furore
It was a book launch. At least it started out that way.
The Vedas, Hinduism, Hindutva, the work of three
historians at the Centre for Historical Studies
of JNU, was to be released at Basanti Devi
College. The discussion that followed drew a full
house -- of students.
The book was written with twin objectives.
"Hindus have no organisation, so neither do they
form any community-centric beliefs. This is why
even educated Hindus know so little about the
religion," argued Kunal Chakrabarti, one of the
three authors. The need to inform the curious has
been precipitated by, what Romila Thapar calls in
the foreword to the book, "the political
mobilisation of substantial dimension which,
under the label of Hindutva, has claimed that the
Hindus are a nation, and as the indigenous people
of India have primacy in citizenship". "It is
important to analyse why information is being
distorted," Chakrabarti added.
Once Nabanita Dev Sen released the book, the
panel was open to questions. Copies of the book
had already been distributed among schools, and
students desirous of raising questions had
submitted names.
It started with the illustrations -- cartoons,
that in the words of illustrator Soumik Nandy
Majumdar, talked the language of laughter and
worked as a parallel text, supplementing the
commentary or making independent comments.
"Why is devraj Indra shown to sport goggles?" was
the second question of the afternoon. As the
illustrator started to speak, he was cut short by
a more pointed query -- which Purana or Veda
describes the god in sunglasses?
The panelists turned to literature and lore --
Parashuram's Jabali, Monoranjan Bhattacharya's
Ram-Ravana series, a conversation between super
sleuth Byomkesh and Ajit in Saradindu
Bandyopadhyay, describing Indra as a debauch and
a drunkard. "This is a mark of affection, not
ridicule," Tania Sarkar, another of the authors,
tried to reason.
Then came a volley -- Why do you ridicule only
the Hindu deities? Why has Prophet Mohammed been
sketched faceless, as is the stipulation? Did you
not dare to touch upon aspects like polygamy?
A sole student voice, throbbing with emotion,
rose in protest, as a defender of her faith.
"Do not touch us if you dare not touch them,"
seemed to be the message from the majority.
A non-student member of the audience played
peace-keeper, pointing out that reforms have to
come from within a community.
Before reforms, opinions have to be formed and
voices educated. For that, someone has to answer
a lot of questions, outside the classroom.
(vi)
The Telegraph - March 11, 2005
CRACKS ON THE WALL
Fractured lives:
Class, caste, gender
Edited by Manoranjan Mohanty,
Sage, Rs 650
Contemporary Indian society is characterized by a
growing democratic consciousness which is
challenging the hegemony of economic forces,
patriarchy and Brahminism. The editor, Manoranjan
Mohanty, has put together contributions of
scholars who are actively engaged with social and
political discourses in modern India in this
engaging collection. The three broad themes in
this book pertain to the notions of class, caste
and gender inequality.
Anand Chakravarty, in his essay, analyses the
agrarian class structure in Bihar, which remains
divided on caste lines. The higher castes have
access to material and political resources which
helps them dominate the other groups.
Lower-ranking castes are subject to both caste
and class exploitation and form the landless
agricultural sections.
The other essayists in this volume include
Prabhat Patnaik, C. P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati
Ghosh who have studied the reactions of Indian
capitalists to neo-liberal economic reforms. They
find it interesting that Indian capital, which
was obviously a beneficiary of the license-permit
raj, went along with economic liberalization.
According to the authors, one reason for the
change of perception among Indian capitalists was
the sluggish growth of the domestic market after
the mid-Sixties. Indian capitalists wanted to
break into export markets, while the prospects of
export remained bleak, and collaboration with
metropolitan capital remained a soft option.
The book also contains an article by M. N.
Srinivas who writes that domination on caste
lines increased after independence. The provision
of constitutional safeguards to the backward
sections of the population gave a new lease of
life to caste formations, says Srinivas. In a
similar vein, Rajni Kothari argues that the
essential challenge of modernity lies not in the
destruction of tradition but in the
traditionalization of modernity itself. In the
context of caste and politics, this means that
secular elements in the caste system would be
strengthened at the expense of obscurantism,
while the new dimensions of a secular, demo
cratic body politic would themselves become
enduring parts of India's value system. Kancha
Ilaiah perceives the problem from another angle.
He feels that unless the history of anti-caste
movements is written by the organic
intelligentsia of a given movement, such a
history would not be able to do justice to
subaltern voices.
While addressing the issue of gender inequality,
Uma Chakravarti argues that discrimination on the
basis of caste and gender were the organizing
principles of the Brahminical social order. Neera
Desai and Maithreyi Krishnaraj point out that the
emergence of a women's movement against
patriarchal exploitation and inequality augurs
well for the future of Indian women. Ilina Sen,
however, cautions that the Indian women's
movement has an elitist character unlike the
Chipko or anti-price movements which were
mass-based. Jean Dréze and Amartya Sen, in their
essay, explain India's poor sex ratio on the
persisting inequities between men and women in
the country.
The essays in this book deal with a wide range of
issues - rural and urban power structures, as
well as the exploitation of oppressed social
classes. In the process, the noted contributors
have provided useful insights about new
developments in the social, political and
economic sectors in post-independent India.
SUHRITA SAHA
______
[6] [Announcements: ]
(i)
Dear Friend
While the mainstream political parties of India
engaging themselves either in "Celebrating" the
history or washing away the contemporary
happenings with Gangajal the plight of the
saltpan Workers going bad to worst. Who was dear
to Gandhi while marching to Dandi for salt
satyagrah that is "Chek Chevada No Manas" (the
man standing at the end of Last Row ) has to buy
salt at more and more higher price. It is time to
know the bitter truth of SALT.
Agaria Hitrakshak March (platform to save
interests of salt worker) is honestly and
sincerely making small but effective efforts in
the direction would venture one more step with a
photo-exhibition on the earthshaking historical
day 6th April, culminating day of "Gandhi's epoch
Dandi March. The invitation by the Manch is
attached. Kindly send messages of solidarity to
encourage the salt workers on the following
address :-
Harinesh Pandya
Agariya Heetrakshak Manch
C/o JANPATH
B-3, sahajanand towers, jivraj park, vejalpur road,
Ahmedabad - Gujarat -India
Pin: 38001
Email:janpath1ad1 at wilnetonline.net
janpath1ad1 at rediffmail.com
janpath1ad1 at sancharnet.in
AGARIYA HEET RAKSHAK MUNCH
(c/o Janpath, B-3, Sahajanand Tower, Jivaraj
Park, Vejalpur Rd., Ahmedabad 380051)
COME ONEŠCOME ALL Š
75 years ago Gandhiji and his followers walked
from Sabarmati Ashram to a sleeping town of Dandi
in South GujaratŠŠostensibly to protest against
the unjustifiable levy of tax on saltŠŠ. by
defying the law of the British rule in
IndiaŠ..every step of that march brought the
mighty British empire closer to its doomŠŠ
And how?..ŠŠ.
The non violent march of a few scores of people
spread over 24 days awakened the entire Indian
Subcontinent to the reality of its foreign
subjugation and shook the British
empireŠŠGandhiji used his symbolism with a
telling effect for the larger good of large
number of peopleŠ.. And history is its witnessŠ..
Where does the reenactment of that great march lead us today?
"Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun
and the sea"Š. So said PythagorasŠ
But it is only the blood, sweat and tears of
saltpan workers that extract salt from the
parentageŠ..
On this opportune occasion, we would like to draw
your kind attention to the poor plight of saltpan
workers, the worst victims of the chain of salt
production, distribution and consumption, as it
exists todayŠŠ
We invite you to the programme "Namak kay Aansu /
Tears of Salt" comprising a Photo Exhibition on
the subject of the salt pan workers explored
through the eyes of Shri Ambu Patel*, on
Wednesday, April 6, 2005.
Programme Details:
Event: Inauguration of the photo exhibition at
10 a.m. on the footpath of Sabarmati Ashram. The
exhibition would be held for the whole day.
*(Shri Ambu Patel is a self taught photo
journalist who is yet to own a camera. He hails
from a family of salt pan workers, i.e.Agariyas)
Harinesh Pandya Dr. Viren
Doshi Devjibhai Dhamecha
Prashant Raval Falguni
Jadeja Beenaben Trivedi
Rameshbhai Mankodi Bhimdev Vala
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/
Sister initiatives :
South Asia Counter Information Project : snipurl.com/sacip
South Asians Against Nukes: www.s-asians-against-nukes.org
Communalism Watch: communalism.blogspot.com/
DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.
More information about the Sacw
mailing list