SACW | 9 May 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 9 May,  2005

[1]  Pakistan - Balochistan
- The tribes arise (The Economist)
- Protest against operation in Balochistan held
- Fuel for thought (Asha Amirali)
[2]  Delhi to Multan peace march
- An unfinished march  (Sandeep Pandey)
- Indian delegation to be allowed to hold peace rally in Lahore: District Nazim
- Peace marchers for end to Indo-Pak arms race
[3] Not By Science Alone  (Dipankar Gupta)
[4]  State Support For Hate In Rajasthan - A Gujarat in the making? 
(Editorial, Economic Times)
[5]  Letter to the Editor re Pramod Mahajan's article on Gujarat 
Riots. . . (Mukul Dube)
[6]  An indecent proposal - Rape and marriage  (Pamela Philipose)
[7] Bombay Moves to Push Out the Poor (Rama Lakshmi)


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

[1]


The Economist - May 5th 2005

Baluchistan

The tribes arise
| DERA BUGTI

Can Pakistan tame the restive province?


IN THE Hindu ghetto, a maze of winding alleys and bright-coloured 
temples, Lal Chand sluices water over the dried blood and innards of 
his neighbour. Of 67 people killed in a battle in March between 
tribal militiamen and government troops in Dera Bugti, a small town 
in Pakistan's western province of Baluchistan, around half perished 
when the ghetto was shelled by the government's men. Their target was 
a large white house adjoining the ghetto's walls: the ancestral home 
of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, septuagenarian sardar (tribal lord) of the 
surrounding 5,000 square miles (13,000 sq km) and their 150,000-odd 
residents-and thorn in the flesh of Pakistani governments for half a 
century.

But the government failed to kill Mr Bugti in the fray-which, it 
claims, began when his bearded tribesmen attacked its troops outside 
the town. Nor did its violence end a decades-old dispute with the 
wily and charismatic sardar over the sharing of revenues from local 
gasfields, or ease tensions across Baluchistan, a vast and 
increasingly violent land.

All the same, in the contradictory way of Pakistani politics, the 
government in Islamabad may after decades of occasionally brutal rule 
over the provinces be about to adopt more moderate policies. On May 
3rd, a parliamentary committee headed by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, 
the leader of President Pervez Musharraf's ruling Pakistan Muslim 
League, issued 32 recommendations on how the government should 
address grievances in Baluchistan.

It is Pakistan's poorest province. The committee's recommendations 
include giving Baluchistan's inhabitants a bigger share of gas 
revenues and more jobs in gas exploitation. The committee wants the 
government to pay the province arrears, estimated at 6 billion rupees 
($100m), and to give Baluchis a far bigger part in the building of a 
new deep-water port on the province's coastline, at Gwadar. These 
recommendations, if adopted (for it is by no means certain they will 
be adopted) would signal a big concession from Pakistan's central 
powers, dominated by a mostly Punjabi military elite, to the 
country's unhappy margins. They would also be long strides towards 
ending a conflict that has recently started to cause serious unease 
around the region.

The people of Baluchistan have good reason to resent their 
government-or "Pakistan" as they sneeringly refer to it, as if to a 
foreign country. Eight out of ten lack safe drinking water and nine 
out of ten have no gas. This last rankles especially, given that 
Baluchistan produces most of Pakistan's gas, including about 1 
billion cubic feet (28m cubic metres) per day-roughly 45% of total 
production-from a single gasfield at Sui, on Mr Bugti's estate. The 
neighbouring fief of Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, the most belligerent 
of Baluchistan's sardars, contains oil and coal, but the government 
has not dared to exploit it.

In a province flush with guns-and ruled by them in its most tribal 
parts-insurgency has flickered in almost every decade of Pakistan's 
existence. In the mid-1970s the government sent 80,000 troops to 
crush an uprising of Marri tribesmen and Marxist guerrillas, with 
great bloodshed on both sides. In each of the last two years, around 
100 policemen, soldiers and civilian officials have been murdered, 
and pipelines and railways blown up. In January, the Sui gasfield was 
closed after an attack by gunmen. A little-known group, dominated by 
Marri tribesmen and calling itself the Baluchistan Liberation Army 
(BLA), has often claimed responsibility for these actions. Perusal of 
the province's newspapers suggests that most districts of Baluchistan 
see an insurgent attack every few days.
The foreign hand

Unwittingly, outsiders have stoked the conflict. Thirsting for oil, 
America and India want to build a pipeline through the province, 
running south from the wells of Central Asia, or, in India's case, 
east from Iran. India's dynamic oil minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar-who 
also dreams of a pan-Asian gas grid-has suggested that the second 
pipeline could be completed by 2011. On reaching the coast, the 
Central Asian pipeline would disgorge into supertankers gathered off 
the emerging port at Gwadar. Chinese engineers are building the port 
with an initial loan from China of $200m. As its capacity increases, 
Gwadar will halve the distance between Xinjiang, the westernmost 
province of China, and its nearest accessible port-currently some 
2,000 miles (3,000 km).

Baluchi nationalists, and especially the BLA, take particular 
exception to the emerging port. Last May, three Chinese engineers 
were killed and 11 injured in Gwadar by a car bomb. The nationalists 
consider it another avenue for the government to plunder their 
resources. But more important, with an eye on the teeming slums of 
nearby Karachi, they fear it may draw in millions of outsiders, 
making the Baluchis a minority in their own land.

Under the current system, this increased population would at least 
give the province a bigger slice of the national pie: 37% of the 
budget is divided among Pakistan's provinces on the basis of 
population size, with Punjab taking over half the total, and 
Baluchistan's current population of 6.5m a mere 5%. Mr Hussain's 
parliamentary committee recommends distributing such revenues 
according to need, with the most backward areas receiving most money. 
It also proposes a raft of measures to make the Gwadar development 
more palatable to locals: a majority of jobs in its construction 
would be reserved for them and special scholarships awarded to their 
children. Yet even all this may not placate the nationalists whose 
real fear is of becoming an ethnic minority and so losing their 
influence at the polls.
Conspiracy unlimited

Where the pipelines are concerned, the nationalists appear to be 
gripped by a common delusion that America secretly wants Baluchistan 
to secede from Pakistan, in order to secure the superpower a new 
source of oil. Indeed, the uniformity of the nationalists' expressed 
grievances and conspiracy theories, is striking. Traditionally, the 
government found it easy to use patronage to divide the warring 
tribes. Of late, however, a greater coherence has emerged. Last year, 
the four Baluchi nationalist parties, including three headed by 
sardars, formed an alliance to put their demands to the parliamentary 
commission. Also last year, the Bugti and the Marri ended a 50-year 
feud. No Baluch nationalist seems to condemn the BLA's murderous 
campaign. In his handsome Karachi home, Ataullah Mengal, the third 
senior sardar-and another grand old man-says: "The armed struggle has 
begun, the Chinese engineers have been killed, bomb-blasts are going 
off every day. The cost will be dear, but we are asking for something 
dear and for that we must pay dearly, even with our lives."

Another novelty in the nationalists' campaign is the part played by 
Mr Bugti, in his blood-splattered town. A former minister of interior 
and of defence, Mr Bugti is no separatist. He has long sparred with 
successive governments for money and political influence, and has 
spent nearly a decade in prison. But the status quo has given him 
untrammelled power over his tribe and a fund of gas royalties 
amounting, by one estimate, to 120m rupees a year. Nonetheless, since 
Bugti tribesmen arose against the government in January, to decry the 
rape of a female doctor at the Sui gasfield, he has appeared to adopt 
the nationalist cause. "It's not all about pounds, shillings and 
pence. Man cannot live on bread alone," he told this 
correspondent-"though I'm sure it was not an Englishman who said it."

After shelling its own citizens in Dera Bugti, the government backed 
down. In effect it agreed a truce with Mr Bugti and withdrew some 
troops from his area. Even before considering the parliamentary 
committee's recommendations, in fact, the government had some 
sensible policies on Baluchistan in place. There is a plan to raise a 
25,000-strong Baluchi border force, whose recruits will be subject to 
less stringent educational requirements than normal. Several new army 
bases are also planned for the province. Though unpopular with the 
nationalists, these will boost local businesses.

If such measures were to be reinforced by the adoption of at least 
some of the committee's recommendations, Pakistan's government could 
go a long way towards satisfying the demands of Baluchistan's 
aggrieved people. All the same, when Mr Bugti says that money is not 
the whole answer, he has a point. In Quetta and other towns, the BLA 
has strong support among educated young people. Typically, they are 
not only unemployed but also-since Mr Musharraf launched his coup in 
1999-disenfranchised. At a dubious election in 2001, the president's 
supporters ensured that a coalition of Islamists from the Pushtun 
minority took over the provincial government. Without restoring real 
democracy, Mr Musharraf may find that the gifts he can afford to give 
Baluchistan are never quite enough.

o o o o

The Nation - April 20 2005

PROTEST AGAINST OPERATION IN BALOCHISTAN HELD

By our staff reporter
ISLAMABAD - The Balochistan Solidarity Front Tuesday held a protest 
demonstration outside the Parliament House against what it said is 
the on going operation of state security forces and the kidnapping of 
political workers in Balochistan.
The protestors demanded that Dr Imdad Baloch and other political 
prisoners be released immediately. They vowed to continue supporting 
the Baloch people's genuine struggle for economic, social and 
political freedom.
The Balochistan Solidarity Front, a broad-based alliance of 
progressive political workers and intellectuals protested the on 
going occupation of Balochistan by state security forces, the 
kidnapping of political workers and the subjugation of the Baloch 
people to the nexus of the army, multinational capital and the 
traditional elite.
The protestors included members of the Baloch Students Organisation 
whose chairperson Dr Imdad Baloch was kidnapped in Karachi on March 
25 and his whereabouts are still unknown.
The protestors were holding placards and banners entitled "We want an 
immediate end to military occupation in Balochistan and release of 
all political workers."
Speaking on the occasion, Asha Amirali of the People's Rights 
Movement (PRM) maintained that the government has totally 
misrepresented the existing situation in Balochistan by manipulating 
communication networks.
"In reality the Baloch people are genuinely opposed to the forced 
development being trumpeted by the state whether in the form of 
Gwadar Port, military cantonments or protection of national assets," 
Asha said.
The protestors were of the view that the so-called agreement between 
Nawab Akbar Bugti and the government is yet another public relations 
stunt of the government to water down popular sentiment and also to 
distract people from the fact that security forces are still present 
in large numbers in Dera Bugti and Sui and the people of the area are 
being treated as if they are enemies of the state.
They said that the long-standing structural problems between 
Balochistan and the centre remains unresolved and cannot be addressed 
meaningfully until a fundamental change in the state structure takes 
place. Similarly, only when the state adopts a truly people-oriented 
posture towards the strategic interests of empire will Balochistan be 
freed from the geo-political tussle that is taking place over the 
precious oil and gas of the Central Asian region.
The protestors said that the crisis of the Pakistani state has 
reemerged with great intensity because of the present stand-off in 
Balochistan. 
They said that if the state continues to adopt the aggressive stance 
that it has till now, there is every reason to believe that the 
already floundering federation will be seriously damaged, possibly 
beyond repair.
In particular political victimisation and outright fabrication are 
tactics that completely belie government's claims to be committed to 
a genuinely democratic process, the demonstrators maintained.

o o o o

The News on Sunday - April 24, 2005

FUEL FOR THOUGHT

A delegation of political activists and intellectuals based in 
Islamabad and Lahore visits Balochistan in an attempt to find out the 
causes of current turmoil there

By Asha Amirali

In spite of the recent talks between Nawab Bugti and the government, 
the conflict in Balochistan is set to intensify. Military occupation 
cannot go unchecked in the long run, and Balochs are a fiercely 
independent people who are not likely to tolerate such attacks on 
their rights and resources.

Nawab Akbar Bugti does not represent the Baloch people as a whole, in 
spite of the government's fervent attempts to portray him as such at 
this time. So the question arises: what shape is the Baloch reaction 
taking? Who is leading it? And where will it come to rest?

A week-long trip to Quetta, Sui, and Dera Bugti by a delegation of 
Balochistan Solidarity Front (BSF) -- a broad-based alliance of 
progressive political organisations and intellectuals based in 
Islamabad and Lahore -- attempted to investigate some of these 
questions as well as determine the actual nature and extent of state 
terror being propagated there. The delegation met with various 
political figures, including Nawab Akbar Bugti, and compiled a short 
film entitled 'Negotiating at Gunpoint' which has been screened in 
Islamabad and Lahore.

Balochistan is still the most neglected province of the country, as 
is immediately apparent even in the provincial capital, Quetta. The 
rundown condition of the city's infrastructure speaks for itself -- 
broken roads, ill-equipped hospitals, insufficient schools and 
colleges. It is instructive to note that Quetta only acquired gas 
supply in 1986. Even today, large pockets of the city's population do 
not have access to gas. The cantonment, however, is said to be a 
well-maintained and prosperous area, but the delegation was barred 
from entering it.

In Quetta, anger and resentment are rife. Balochs have a memory that 
runs deep, reaching back to the time of the British. Accession to 
Pakistan in 1948 and the subsequent denial of provincial autonomy by 
the Punjabi-dominated centre have created strong passions against the 
state and military. In order to get a sense of how people were 
thinking about the current state of affairs, the delegation met with 
a varied group of people including political representatives, 
activists, trade unionists, lawyers, journalists, and intellectuals.

The level of political consciousness among these people is strikingly 
high. Balochs are keenly aware of their strategic importance for 
Pakistan and big global players as the tussle over ownership and 
control of oil and gas intensifies. As a gateway to Central Asia, 
home to the world's largest untapped oil reserves, Balochistan will 
perform a critical role in the future. Its 800 kilometre coastline 
makes up two thirds of Pakistan's total coastline, and the 
development of Gwadar port by the Chinese is seen as a bid to gain 
control over the region. The proposed gas pipelines passing through 
Balochistan are also widely understood to be a project of 
multi-national capital that will bring no benefit to the people of 
Balochistan.

The resentment over how Balochistan is being used as an instrument by 
all of these power players is widespread. Many say openly that 
Balochistan is being treated as a colony.

The leader of the opposition in the Balochistan Assembly, Kachkol 
Ali, put it quite clearly: "Pakistan is not a free country. It has 
taken American dollars. It has taken Saudi riyals. It is under the 
influence of China. It has totally surrendered its sovereignty to all 
of these players. In this struggle (over oil and gas), Balochistan's 
role is critical because of its large landmass, its extensive 
coastline and its strategic location."

While one could have guessed what the sentiment in Quetta would be 
even before meeting local residents, the tension and anger in Sui and 
Dera Bugti were many times more palpable. The military buildup in 
both towns is astonishingly disproportionate to the size of local 
population. In flat contradiction of the Interior Minister Aftab 
Sherpao's repeated claims that there is no military operation taking 
place in the area, local people do not hesitate to say that they feel 
as if they are living under military occupation. The few roads 
leading to and from either town are littered with at least three 
armed check posts each. All vehicles are stopped, passengers forced 
to alight and full body searches conducted.

Tanks, rocket launchers, and other heavy weaponry can also be seen 
openly, particularly on the road between Dera Bugti and Sui. In Sui 
itself, armed patrols roam the streets and there is a curfew from 7pm 
onwards. These patrols are equipped with mounted machine guns and 
riot gear. The gas plant can only be observed from a distance, 
fortified as if besieged by the enemy.

Perhaps what is most striking about Sui is a number of gas pipelines 
running everywhere. The irony is immediately apparent: pipeline after 
pipeline amidst exclusively kutcha homes that do not have access to 
the gas carried by these pipelines. Many also do not yet have 
electricity.

The government's position on the current conflict is that vital 
installations are being protected in the name of development and 'the 
greater national interest'. Meanwhile in Dera Bugti, the district 
nazim is under house arrest with three fully-manned checkposts on the 
premises. He related how army officers set up these checkposts under 
the pretext of providing him protection in spite of his refusal. 
Perhaps more tellingly, the nazim, Kazim Bugti, pointed out that his 
district had not received a single penny under the development budget 
for two years. Not surprisingly, he feels he is being targeted 
because of his last name.

Meeting Nawab Akbar Bugti was particularly intriguing under the 
prevailing circumstances. He spoke eloquently about the systematic 
subjugation of Balochs, their tribal society, Punjab's hijacking of 
the state apparatus, and development. He asked one question 
repeatedly: 'Who controls our fate? If it is us, then all is well. 
But if it is the Punjabis, or anyone else, then the conflict will 
never end'.

Two days after the delegation met with Bugti in his compound, 70 
people were killed and the compound was badly damaged by heavy 
shelling and firing. In retrospect it is difficult to postulate 
whether Bugti is likely to do today what he did in 1972 by striking a 
deal with the state while thousands of Balochs sacrificed their 
lives. But perhaps the position of one sardar or nawab is no longer 
the question. It is clear that the deep-seated feeling of 
marginalisation in Balochs can and will survive even the opportunism 
of a symbolic figurehead. While there is no well-organised political 
movement transcending tribal loyalties, Baloch people's reactions 
will be difficult to contain given the state's continuing 
belligerence.



_______


[2]   [Delhi to Multan peace march]

Tehelka - May 07, 2005

AN UNFINISHED MARCH

Is the Indo-Pak peace process irreversible? If so, why is the Delhi 
to Multan peace march being blocked, asks Sandeep Pandey

[Photo] Waiting for Friendship: the writer (centre) with other marchers

The Delhi to Multan India Pakistan Peace March, scheduled between 
March 23 and May 11, 2005, met a roadblock on April 18, 2005, when it 
reached the Wagah border. None of the Indian marchers were given 
visas to cross over. Earlier, the Pakistani marchers also had trouble 
in coming over to India. First, for 10 days, the Indian government 
delayed giving visas to the marchers; then the interior ministry of 
Pakistan did not allow the marchers permission to cross the Wagah 
border for another 13 days. It was only after one of the persons 
keenly following the developments, Saeeda Diep, whose commitment to 
the cause of India-Pakistan friendship is magnanimous, pressured the 
interior minister of Pakistan that the permission was granted.

It is funny that visas and clearances are not given easily using 
security concerns until pulls are applied. But when it comes to 
actually giving permission no procedures are strictly followed. When 
the pressure builds up for taking decisions, even a proper scrutiny 
is not done. For example, a list of 21 prospective marchers from 
Pakistan that was submitted by us was finally approved by the 
ministry of external affairs and communicated to the Indian High 
Commission in Islamabad for granting visas. Inadvertently, a name was 
repeated in this list and passport details of two members were 
missing. Consequently, nine Pakistani marchers - Saeeda Diep, Aslam 
Khwaja, a freelance writer from Karachi, Mahar Safdar Ali and 
Muhammad Akbar of Anjuman Asiaye Awam, Ghulam Hussain, who works on 
labour issues in Hyderabad, Sind, Lalee, a freed bonded labourer, 
Nayyar Habib, Rafia Bano, a councillor from Layya, and Mitho Khan - 
were finally able to join the march on April 14, 2005, at the banks 
of river Beas.

Sublime, river Beas: we went down in the waters on the bank and 
resolved that water, land and human beings are one and we do not 
recognise any artificial boundaries dividing nature or humanity. It 
was an emotional moment for all of us; tears were flowing down the 
cheeks of many of the marchers from both sides. The Pakistani 
marchers walked with us for the last five days of the peace march. 
The police were conspicuous by their absence. That the government did 
not feel the need to have the police accompany the marchers, while 
nine Pakistanis were walking with us, is a good sign. It points to 
the fact that normalcy is returning.

We waited at the border for two days in the hope that we would get 
our visas and be able to cross the border along with our Pakistani 
friends. However, after two days, when we saw no sign of visas, we 
decided to let the Pakistani marchers go ahead. The Pakistani 
marchers are now waiting in Lahore for their Indian friends to join 
them. They have registered their protest with their government for 
not letting the Indian marchers enter Pakistan. We are determined to 
complete the peace march whenever we get permission from the two 
governments. We knew right from the beginning that crossing Wagah was 
not going to be easy. We were mentally prepared to suspend our effort 
as an 'Unfinished March'. We are in no hurry.

The march will be completed. That could be in the next six months, a 
year, or any time in the future. We will wait. Our hope is our 
strength.

We have learnt from sources within the Pakistani interior ministry 
that Indians walking on Pakistani roads could be a security concern. 
Obviously, anything is possible when such an exercise is undertaken. 
After all, in our own country, Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and 
Rajiv Gandhi have been assassinated. But the fear of any untoward 
incident should not prevent us from embarking on a noble mission. The 
Pakistani government must put aside all reports from security 
agencies and approve the peace march in a positive spirit. The 
potential gains far outweigh the risks involved.

Indeed, the promises made by the two governments during President 
Pervez Musharraf's visit to India about more people-to-people contact 
and soft borders seem to ring hollow - the ground reality has not 
changed at all. The process remains as complicated as ever; for the 
common person it is still a nightmare to even think of crossing the 
border. There is no relaxation in bureaucratic hurdles and Kafkasque 
norms. People are made to run from this obstacle to another. They are 
harassed and intimidated. We can only trust the governments if the 
ground reality shifts with a note of optimism. Finally, the 
experiences of people must validate the rhetoric of official claims.

We are afraid that the Indian and Pakistani governments do not really 
want the peace process to go into the hands of the common people. 
Until that happens, we cannot say that the peace process has become 
"irreversible". So long as governments determine the extent and pace 
of the peace process, there is a possibility that it may be reversed 
to suit geo-political whims. If they can buy fighter aircraft from 
the US, what is the guarantee that they will not begin issuing 
threats of bombing each other tomorrow? It is necessary to talk about 
the abolition of nuclear weapons and land mines and the reduction of 
defence budgets if governments want the people to take their 
confidence building measures (cbms) seriously. There has been such 
intense mistrust during the past 57 years that cbms without any 
disarmament measures do not appear credible.

If free people-to-people contacts and softer borders are allowed, it 
would become difficult even for establishments in Islamabad and Delhi 
to reverse the peace process. Only in an atmosphere where people are 
kept artificially separated from each other that hostilities can be 
promoted. It is the right of the common people to live in peace and 
harmony and if the governments represent the will of the people they 
must honour the popular public sentiment. The passport-visa regime 
between India and Pakistan must be done away with.

The writer is a Magsaysay
Award winner

o o o o

The News International - May 10, 2005

INDIAN DELEGATION TO BE ALLOWED TO HOLD PEACE RALLY IN LAHORE: DISTRICT NAZIM
(Updated at 0005 PST)
LAHORE: District Nazim Lahore Mian Amir Mehmood has said that if the 
Indian delegation, which did a peace, march from Dehli to Multan 
wants to do another peaceful march the district administration of 
Lahore would allow it to do so.

He said this during his meeting with the members of the delegation in 
Lahore. The district Nazim Lahore welcomed the Indian delegation in 
Lahore.

He said that it is necessary that the Pak-India relationship is dual 
sided and exchanges of elected representatives along with prominent 
personalities from different fields of life from both countries must 
take place. The district Nazim further said that new land and air 
routes should be opened between Pakistan and India.

The members of the Indian delegation demanded that they should be 
allowed to hold a peace march at Lahore. They also stressed that the 
bottlenecks for the acquirement of visa must also be removed and the 
defence budget should be minimized so that it can be used for the 
people.

The members of the both the Pakistani and Indian delegation chanted 
slogans for Kashmir. The district Nazim Lahore said that friendship 
is always two-sided and we would have good relations with India if 
our friendship is also two-sided. 

"We have welcomed them in Lahore and if they want to hold a peace 
march in any street of Lahore then we have no objections on such a 
step", Mehmood said.


o o o o

The News International - May 09, 2005

PEACE MARCHERS FOR END TO INDO-PAK ARMS RACE

By Our Correspondent

PARTICIPANTS of India Pakistan Peace March have urged the governments 
of both the countries to end arms race and missile testing if they 
want to establish peace in the region.

The peace ceremony was organised by World Punjabi Congress on Sunday 
at a local hotel. The India Pakistan Peace March was organised by 
different NGOs and a delegation of 20 members which started the march 
from Delhi and entered Pakistan through Wagha. The delegation 
consists of 11 Indians and nine Pakistanis.

The delegation is headed by Sandeep Pandey, who runs an NGO, "Voice 
of Ayodhiya". The other Indian delegates include Gurudial Singh 
Sheetal, Mahesh K Pandey, Faisal Khan, Darshan Singh, Monika Wahi, 
Zaid Ahmed Shaikh, Niranjan Parikh, Ramnik Mohan, Sanat Mohanty and 
Mazher Hussain. Delegation from Pakistan includes Saeeda Diep, 
Muhammad Akbar, Safdar Mahar, Nayyar Habib, Rafia Bano, Miss Lali, 
Aslam Khwaja, Ghulam Hussain and Mithu Khan.

Addressing the gathering, Sandeep Pandey urged Pakistan and India to 
relax visa restrictions to promote people-to-people contact. He said 
both the countries should take steps to ensure peace in the region 
and cut their defence budgets, besides stopping tests of missiles. He 
said issues should be resolved through dialogues. "Kashmir is a core 
issue between the two countries and it should not be settled without 
the participation of the Kashmiris," said Gurudial Singh. He urged 
both the countries to eliminate their nuclear weapons as a solid move 
towards peace.

Minorities in both the countries should be protected and they should 
be given a surety that they are an integral part of majority in their 
respective countries, said Faisal Khan, an Indian participant from 
Ayodhiya. He said in Ayodhiya there were NGOs which were promoting 
peace and harmony among the Hindu and the Muslim and most of the NGOs 
were run by the Hindus.

Renowned Pakistani film actor Mustafa Qureshi said that in the 
present age film was considered as an effective media of 
communication and both the countries should use this media to promote 
peace instead of making movies against each other. He urged the World 
Punjabi Congress to produce a co-production to promote peace. He said 
Pakistan was a reality and those who were talking about the 
elimination of borders should accept the reality. Instead of talking 
about elimination of borders, we should plead for more peace and 
harmony among the people of both the countries, he added. He urged 
both the governments to relax visa rules and asked the Pakistani 
government to allow the Peach March to go everywhere in the country 
as a goodwill.

Fakhar Zaman, Chairman World Punjabi Congress, said the peace process 
should not be stopped at any stage in future. He said direct 
interaction between the people of both the countries will result in 
lasting peace. Sandeep Pandy said the peace march had initiated a 
massive signature campaign and the results will be presented to the 
heads of both the countries. He urged the people to participate in 
this campaign. He announced that a new campaign against the arms race 
in the two countries will be started soon.

Earlier, before the start of the program, the World Punjabi Congress 
showed a song sung by Shaukat Ali "Bohay Khool Deyo" to the 
participants. Another song of Arif Lohar was also presented. In the 
end, the congress distributed gifts among the delegates of the India 
Pakistan Peace March.


_______


[3]


The Telegraph - May 10, 2005

NOT BY SCIENCE ALONE
- Modernity has to do with treating others as ethical equals
Dipankar Gupta

The author is professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

While the "scientific temper" flourishes best in a modern society, it 
does not mean that a modern person is by definition one who is 
sceptical, materialist, rational, and demands proofs for everything. 
While this point of view has an instinctive appeal about it, one 
needs to be cautious in too easily equating science with modernity. 
There were great men of science in ancient and medieval periods who 
cannot be called "modern" in any meaningful way. Even the great Isaac 
Newton has been quite persuasively likened to the last great magician 
given his predilection towards something quite as unscientific as 
alchemy. In fact, there are a number of great minds to whom modern 
science owes an enormous debt but who thought in a very pre-modern 
way, had very pre-modern relationships with their families, wives and 
children, and who probably saw nothing wrong in the fact that certain 
people should enjoy privileges of birth. Equally, there were people 
in the past, and not all of them were renowned, who were also 
inquisitive and generous to others, but that did not make them, or 
their societies, modern.

There is yet another reason why science should not be seen as a near 
synonym of modernity. It is here that we need to be a little 
self-critical, for not all modern people are actually scientific. It 
would be incorrect to categorize somebody as pre-modern simply 
because the person has faith in god, or believes in a particular 
brand of spiritualism, or who, on a day to day basis, does not 
question the authority of received knowledge regarding why wood 
floats or fire burns.

The truth of the matter is that most of us lead our lives trusting 
the knowledge that we have grown up with, and not seriously bothering 
to exercise an attitude of organized scepticism towards all forms of 
authority and with respect to everything our senses superficially 
behold. We do not begin our daily encounters by arguing over the 
validity of first principles. And, yet, we are very significantly 
different from our ancestors in the middle ages.

To get a true measure of what makes us different it is necessary to 
leave aspects of personal cultivation aside and think instead of how 
modernity alters the way we socially relate to one another. A modern 
society is one where relationships are governed by the fact that we 
treat other people as ethical equals regardless of their station in 
life or the circumstances of their birth. In other words, modernity 
is not about individual attributes such as inquisitiveness, 
scepticism, thirst for knowledge and so on, but rather about how we 
relate to others on a daily basis. The fact that we accord ethical 
respect to our social interlocutors does not come out of a cultivated 
disposition, but from a structural feature of everyday life. It is 
not as if a person makes a huge effort to treat the other as an 
ethical equal, even as such a person stands as an anonymous being, 
but rather the norms of interaction are socialized such that it is 
second nature to treat the other with a sense of dignity, as if the 
person could have been you.

It might help at this juncture to differentiate between morality and 
ethics. Morality can be privatized, and indeed, it is possible to 
carve out different moral principles in the same social environment. 
One might in fact even get a charge out of being the only moral being 
in an immoral world. A person may exult in being the only vegetarian, 
or the only one who believes in feminine chastity, or that children 
should be seen and not heard. In morality the other person does not 
matter as much as oneself.

Ethics, however, is very different. To start with, one cannot be 
ethical alone. To be ethical is to relate to other people and that is 
why the standards of ethics and those of morality are quite 
different. Ethical conduct is one where there is an in-built empathy 
and ability to share one another's fate.

Once this perspective is accepted it is easier to appreciate why 
modernity allows for greater tolerance regarding alternative 
viewpoints, knowledges and lifestyles. If, at a fundamental level, we 
are constrained to treat the other as an ethical equal then it 
follows that we must also respect opinions other than our own, even 
if we do not eventually adopt them. These views might range from 
scientific scepticism, to faith in god, and even to hitherto 
unencountered aesthetic preferences. They are all perfectly 
legitimate so long as they do not undermine the other as an ethical 
equal. If the ethical status of the other is in any way negated then 
it does not matter how much scientific progress a society may achieve 
at any point of time, it will be short-lived. Where social 
relationships are not governed by this in-built respect for others, 
science cannot sustain itself over the long run.

Scientific growth is possible in modern societies not because there 
are suddenly more sceptical scientists, but because people must now 
respect the other as an ethical equal. This person may be an 
anonymous individual, about whose origins we have no knowledge, and 
towards whose point of view we may have no sympathy. Surely this does 
not happen easily and that is why many societies that are 
industrializing are not yet modern in this very critical sense. On 
the other hand, without a thoroughgoing industrialization that 
overthrows every vestige of past relationships that were governed by 
status and birth, it is impossible to inaugurate an era where ethical 
equality can be a defining social motif.

There are certain structural conditions that favour the development 
of such modern social relations. It is difficult to imagine modernity 
of the kind outlined above when there are vast economic disparities 
between classes. Therefore, in societies that are generally middle 
class, as in western Europe, the chances of viewing the other as an 
ethical equal are very high. And yet when the same Europeans or 
Americans interact with people of vastly different backgrounds, they 
do not always accord them the kind of ethical status that they would 
to their own people back home. It is therefore not surprising that 
with only 15 per cent of the globe's population the West produces 
over 85 per cent of all scientific journals and roughly 96 per cent 
of patents worldwide. It would be incorrect to say that only bright 
minds are produced in the western hemisphere. Countries like India 
fall behind in scientific production because we lack the basic 
ethical quotient necessary for being modern.

This demonstrates that social relations of modernity thrive 
particularly well when there is greater economic parity between 
people. So if India is to move towards true modernity then it is 
important that we overcome economic and status differentials of the 
kind that prevail in this country. Modernity, in the ultimate 
analysis, is not about affectations, or about personal dispositions, 
such as being scientific, irreligious, or philanthropic; nor is it 
really about building big industries and dams. Modernity is 
essentially a sociological concept as it emphasizes, above all else, 
the conditions under which social relations based on ethical equality 
can be realized as a universal principle.




_______


[4]


The Economic Times - May 08, 2005

A GUJARAT IN THE MAKING?
Editorial

State Support For Hate In Rajasthan

The fog of communal venom hangs heavy over Rajasthan, no thanks to 
the brazen anti-minorityism being propagated by the sangh parivar 
over the past couple of months. The Vasundhara Raje government, which 
has the responsibility to protect the democratic-secular ethos of the 
Constitution, has reportedly been using every subterfuge to renege on 
its role.

That is alarming. Rajasthan shouldn't become a second Gujarat. The 
sangh parivar has had considerable influence, traditionally, in the 
state's southern parts.

What is worrying now is the impunity with which the RSS and the 
Bajrang Dal have used two local incidents of murder to whip up 
communal passions in Bhilwara. The consequent violence has forced 
Muslims to migrate from the district, and a few brave souls, who have 
dared to come back, live amid social boycott and fear. That is 
disgraceful.

Even more reprehensible is the patronage reportedly extended by the 
state home minister to purveyors of communal hatred. That underscores 
the complicity of the BJP government in office, which, incidentally, 
has revoked the ban on the practice of trishul diksha.

Replacing primeval custom with modern contract is part of political 
evolution. Rajasthan is characterised by archaic social relations 
inherited from its earlier avatar of Rajputana, a region that even 
ancient reformist currents like Buddhism had passed by. An abysmal 
sex ratio and back-breaking poverty testify to stunted social 
development.

The national movement and social reform had passed this region of 
princely states by. Mainstream parties came to the region only in the 
early '50s, bringing with them the politics of mobilisation based on 
caste, community and feudal loyalties.

This has provided a receptive ambience for the sangh parivar's 
communal ideology, which, however, is irreconcilable with governance 
in a constitutionally-ordained secular polity. Does the BJP want 
Rajasthan to become another Gujarat?



______


[5]

To editor, Indian Express.
Subject: Mahajan article
Date: Mon, 09 May 2005 06:40:18 +0530

This man, whose vocal chords seem to have been paralysed for over three
years, now describes the "incidents after Godhra tragedy" as an
"accident". Did hundreds of defective gas cylinders burst at the same
time? Did two thousand Muslims slip on ice and impale themselves on
sharp weapons, or else land on blazing fires? Did so many women and
girls, wrongly said to have been raped, impale themselves in a different
way while milking buffaloes? An accident, indeed.

Mukul Dube
D-504 Purvasha Anand Lok .. Mayur Vihar 1 .. Delhi 110091

o o o o

  Pramod Mahajan's article
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=46380

______


[6]


Indian Express - May 09, 2005
	 	 
AN INDECENT PROPOSAL
Rape and marriage: it's time to break that link in the public mind
Pamela Philipose

Bhurra's application last week drew two sharply differing public 
responses. The first was that of extreme outrage. The second, 
condoned - even hailed - it as a step by which a raped woman could 
get justice and regain her honour.

For those who came in late to story let me briefly summarise it. On 
September 7, '03, a nurse at the Shanti Mukund Hospital in Delhi was 
brutally raped by Bhurra, a ward boy in the same hospital. He also 
gouged out her right eye for good measure. When the case came up in 
court last week, Bhurra gave an undertaking to marry the nurse to 
make good his act of assault. The additional sessions judge did not 
dismiss this out of hand. He asked the assaulted woman for her 
response to it. She rejected the offer in unequivocal terms. How can 
she accept a beast who has "handicapped my very sense of being, more 
than my physical self, as my husband?" she asked. She went on to say 
that Bhurra's application "is to further humiliate, insult and 
denigrate my dignity. He committed a crime which should not be 
repeated". The judge, perhaps chastened by the protests that greeted 
his decision, then awarded a life term to the accused after observing 
that Bhurra's was a "false, frivolous, mischievous and defamatory 
application with mala fide intention to evade punishment and mislead 
the court". (One wonders why he had then entertained the application 
in the first place.)

This young, traumatised woman needs to be hailed as another one of 
our unsung heroines for her personal courage and clarity of thinking. 
Her words would hearten those who have for decades have been fighting 
against this crime, on the streets and in the courts. But what should 
concern us here is that there is a sizable public opinion - quite 
possibly a majority opinion - that believes that Bhurra's proposal 
should have been entertained and that the court was right in taking 
it seriously. Indeed, there are innumerable instances in the country 
where raped women have married their assaulters with the court's 
intervention and even approval.

The phenomenon causes deep revulsion in many of us but nevertheless 
requires to be understood if we are to respond to it in any 
meaningful way. This link between rape and marriage must not surprise 
us because it is as old as human history itself. The word "rape" has 
its provenance in rapere, Latin for steal or seize. The act of 
"stealing" the Sabine women by raping them and making them "wives" is 
the foundational myth of ancient Rome. This incident of mass rape is 
believed to have helped the city state stabilise itself. 
Interestingly, if we are to examine this particular myth, the injury 
caused by the assault was borne, not by the women - what they 
experienced, what they suffered, does not figure in the legend - but 
their fathers and brothers, whose honour was seen to have been 
compromised. The Sabine men battle the Romans in protest against the 
"stealing" of their women; the women themselves are portrayed as 
having quickly reconciled themselves to their state and making peace 
between the warring groups.

Compensating the father for the rape of daughters was 
institutionalised in ancient law. As Susan Brownmiller notes in her 
1975 classic, Against Our Will: "Rape entered the law through the 
back door, as it were, as a property crime of man against man. It was 
the theft of virginity, an embezzlement of his daughter's fair price 
in the market." The Babylonians, for instance, laid down that if a 
rapist was unmarried, he paid the father of the assaulted woman three 
times her marriage price and married the woman. Hebrew law, scholars 
point out, actually defined rape as "bride capture". Closer home, the 
episode involving Sita's agnipariksha was all about how being 
"damaged" by rape - the possibility of Ravana having assaulted Sita - 
can threaten a loving marriage. The woman has to prove herself to be 
"pure", "unravished" before her husband can accept her again as his 
wife. As the character - a raped woman - that Aishwarya Rai plays in 
Dil Aapke Paas Hai whispers to her saviour and hero, "I am not fit 
for you."

Three important points need to be flagged in these discrete examples. 
One, that women are mere goods to be transferred from one group of 
men to another group of men; two, that rape causes these goods to be 
"damaged" and claimed; three, marriage - the ultimate reconciler in 
all these cases - is not an equal institution.

Given our history, given our myths, given our practices, should we 
then really be surprised by Bhurra's proposal? Should we be shocked 
at those who believe it was a honourable one? I think not. But it 
demonstrates how far we, as a society are, from, one, recognising a 
woman's sexual autonomy and her right to her bodily integrity and, 
two, incorporating the principle in our criminal-judicial processes 
and, more fundamentally, in the way we think. Every time, a group 
like the Shiv Sena argues that women invite rape by the way they 
dress, every time a policeman believes that women get raped because 
they are "cheap"; every time someone argues that the only succour for 
a raped woman is to marry the man who attacked her since she's 
"damaged goods"; every time a judge entertains, even for a second, a 
proposal like that of Bhurra's - it shows how far we are from this 
goal.

There is little doubt that our criminal and legal apparatuses, 
shackled by conditioned thinking and age-old practices, are 
ill-equipped to tackle the issue. Those working in the field of women 
and violence have argued that the people responsible for the 
criminal-justice system in the country have played a decisive role in 
reinforcing existing biases. It is they who persist with making the 
unconscionable link between rape and marriage. It is they who 
perpetrate the continuing subordination of women. As the fulcrum of 
any corrective intervention the country makes, they must now reform, 
or be reformed, in the manner they handle such cases; document and 
analyse data; reach conclusions; protect the self-confidence of the 
assaulted; and award punishment. We are talking here of a complete 
ideological re-wiring.

This cannot happen without simultaneous and substantive reform in 
existing law - the very fact that rape within marriage is not 
recognised as a crime in the statute books indicates the significant 
gaps in our jurisprudence. It will not happen if we, as part of 
society, are content to remain entrenched in the matrix of misogyny 
that is our common legacy.


______


[7]


Washington Post - May 8, 2005; Page A20

Bombay Moves to Push Out the Poor
Slums Are Razed as Plans Envisage Reinvented City

By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post

BOMBAY -- Mohammad Badruddin, a mason who lived in a cramped, 
fly-infested slum with open drains, said he was laying floor tiles in 
a gleaming residential high-rise recently when he heard that four 
bulldozers had flattened his neighborhood of tin-walled homes.

"I rushed back and saw the whole slum demolished," recalled 
Badruddin, 52, whose home was in the center of India's commercial 
capital of Bombay. "We resisted the bulldozers, and the police beat 
us. All my hard work was razed to rubble."

Mohammad Badruddin, left, squats outside his makeshift tent in 
Bombay, with his wife, Rahsul, center, and his daughter Sahmim, 
right. He lost his tin-walled home recently when his slum was razed. 
(By Rama Lakshmi For The Washington Post)

Badruddin and his 4,000 neighbors now live in makeshift plastic and 
bamboo tents on a burial ground nearby. To prevent their return, the 
government dumped heaps of putrid garbage on the slum land and posted 
security men to guard the area.

"They say they want to turn this city into Shanghai," Badruddin said, 
referring to a multibillion-dollar government development program. "I 
don't know what the word Shanghai means, but it is an excuse to kick 
poor people in the stomach."

To free up hundreds of acres of land for new building, about 90,000 
shanties were flattened in the slum clearance drive this year, 
leaving about 300,000 people homeless.

Bombay, 7 1/2 miles wide at its broadest point and nearly 25 miles 
long, has been a magnet for rural migrants seeking jobs and an escape 
from the poverty of their villages for more than a century. Today, 
more than half of Bombay's estimated 16 million people live in 
overcrowded slums in the heart of the city, on the streets, along 
railway tracks and near water pipelines. Slums even hug the 
boundaries of the Bombay airport, hindering expansion plans that 
include a new terminal and taxiways.

Successive governments have legalized new slums or doled out free 
alternate housing hoping to secure votes from people who live in 
those areas. But officials now declare that the city's fragile 
infrastructure is collapsing under population pressure and that 
Bombay had no space for more migrants.

"All these years, our politicians have encouraged these encroachers 
of public land," said Sanjay Ubale, an official in the state 
government of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital. He said 
new rural migrants made up 37 percent of the city's population 
increase from 1991 to 2001. "With the slum demolitions, we showed 
political courage for the first time and sent a strong signal that 
you cannot expect free space in this city anymore," Ubale said.

Even as more people stream into this teeming and diverse metropolis, 
the city's economic fortunes have decreased in the past eight years, 
Ubale said. Meanwhile, he said, southern Indian cities such as of 
Bangalore, Hyderabad and Madras have upstaged Bombay in wooing 
foreign investment.

"Real estate prices in Mumbai," as Bombay is now called, "are among 
the highest in the world, cost of living and doing business is very 
high," Ubale said. "We have added no new railway lines in 50 years 
and our public transport is choked. Water pipelines were laid 100 
years ago. There are slums everywhere," he said. "The city is 
decaying and needs to urgently reinvent itself into an efficient 
world-class city, like Shanghai and Cleveland did."

India's Finance Ministry has earmarked funding this year for urban 
renewal projects in six cities, including the start of a subway and 
what has been called a trans-harbor project in Bombay. That project 
will include a multilane highway and rail connections from wealthier 
south Bombay to poorer sections outside the city.

"The trans-harbor link will be Mumbai's Brooklyn Bridge. It will 
decongest our city. And the hinterland can be developed for 
manufacturing and would absorb Mumbai's migrants too," said Milind 
Deora, a parliamentarian from South Bombay. "But ultimately we will 
have to find our own model for renewal. We can't just hope to copy, 
cut and paste Shanghai onto our city."

The state government's actions have fueled an impassioned debate 
about whether there is room for the poor in Bombay's Shanghai dream. 
Activists argue that the poor alone cannot be blamed for squatting on 
public land. Slums, they claim, come into existence because of a 
corrupt collusion among slumlords, police and politicians.

One controversial part of the renewal plan is to develop land 
occupied by shuttered cotton mills. The mills gave Bombay its first 
economic impetus in the 1800s, but were closed 20 years ago. A 
prolonged workers' strike in 1982 and the use of modern equipment 
proved fatal to the mills, affecting about 250,000 jobs. Today, 54 
textile mills occupy about 6,000 acres in central Bombay. A report 
prepared for the government by McKinsey &Co., an international 
consulting firm, recommends the creation of "islands of housing and 
commercial excellence" by selling old mill and port land, widening 
roads, and building upscale homes, retail outlets, urban plazas, 
museums and hospitals.

Owners of the closed mills want the land for shopping malls and 
luxury high-rise apartments, while the city hopes to reserve a share 
of the land for open spaces and affordable public housing. The former 
mill workers are lobbying for movie studios and garment or gem 
cutting factories that will create jobs for their children.

"My heart breaks every time I see a mill being torn down," said 
Narendra Kargaonkar, 42, a second-generation mill worker who lost his 
job at Phoenix Mills, now the site of a bustling shopping mall, 
nightclub and a bowling alley. The only reminder of the old structure 
is the tall chimneystack protruding out of the mall. Kargaonkar now 
works as a door-to-door milk deliveryman, earning a fraction of his 
salary in 1982.

Mohammad Badruddin, the slum dweller, and Kargaonkar are among the 
hundreds of thousands of poorer residents who feel left out of 
Bombay's race to become a new global city.

"What kind of a city renewal is this?" Kargaonkar said. "There is now 
a discotheque where our looms once stood."



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

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