SACW | 10 -11 May 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 10 - 11 May,  2005

[Interruption: Please note, SACW Dispatches  will 
remain  interrupted between  12 - 20  May 2005.]

[1] Pakistan India: 7 years after their Nuclear [con]tests (M B Naqvi)
+ Lahore is happy to be rid of Chagai hills and Ghauri missile models
[2] Norwegian evangelist Aril Edvardsen exposed
[3] Youth for Peace @ Lipton Bangalore International Marathon
[4] Tiger Thackeray in Congress robes (Edit. The Hindu)
[5] Grave Crisis In The Parivar - Giants turn out dwarves (Praful Bidwai)
[6]  The Fake Scare Of Bangladeshis Taking Over Mumbai (Medha Patkar for NAPM)
[7] Manufacturing Consent: Rape verdicts reflect 
social prejudice (Laxmi Murthy)
[8]  Brute Majority (Edit., The Times of India)

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


[1]


The News International - May 11, 2005

The nukes' seventh anniversary I

CHANGES WROUGHT BY SOUTH ASIAN NUKES

M B Naqvi

The international context of South Asia's nuclear 
weapons is important. To begin with, India and 
Pakistan were born as separate nations soon after 
the World War II ended. This War destroyed old 
European imperialisms making the world bipolar, 
characterised by an equally ferocious cold war. 
The WWII started between European imperialists 
and Axis of Fascist states. It led to a total 
victory after the alliance of old European 
imperialists with the US and a Soviet Union that 
had burst on the world stage in 1917. German and 
Italian Fascists, supported by Japan, were 
defeated. Fascists were aggressive nationalists 
who wanted to carve out empires of their own by 
war. The bipolar post- WWII world was mostly 
dominated by US, the real victor of the 1939-45 
war, with the Soviets challenging it.

British imperialism gave way to the newly 
independent states of India and Pakistan, later 
also Bangladesh. They found the world divided and 
Nehru's India chose to follow a course of 
non-alignment along with the likes of Marshal 
Tito, Gemal Nasser and Sukarno. Pakistan looked 
for outside support (against India) and the US 
happily accepted it, although insisting not to 
have become a partisan against India. The US 
supported all Pakistan's Bonapartes in scuttling 
democracy and made Pakistan a satellite.

Nehru's heritage was a state committed to secular 
liberalism, social reforms -- chiefly ending 
feudal land tenures -- vague socialism, 
anti-imperialism and improving the world order. 
All this was foreign and unfamiliar to the Muslim 
League's galaxy, except Jinnah who was a secular 
liberal. Most others proudly preserved Pakistan's 
inherited social system though only a few 
proforma and largely ineffective land ownership 
reforms were made. The Leaguers' consuming idea, 
however, was military weakness relative to India. 
While Nehru tried ineffectually to refashion the 
world, Pakistan's stalwarts sold themselves for 
obsolescent military equipment that failed to 
offset India's advantage, becoming American 
stooges. Ties with US caused the murder of 
democracy, with generals becoming the authority 
of last resort.

Pakistan tried to counter Nehru's 
internationalism with a rapid pan-Islamism, 
hoping to become leaders of the Islamic World. 
Muslim kings and dictators now gracing a 
toothless OIC are terrified after 9/11.

The US needed the Pakistan Army and a long era of 
roller-coaster relations between Pakistan and 
America ensued, involving more heartbreaks than 
bliss. America perfected techniques of regime 
changes quite early and much of the Third World 
was foisted with US-supporting dictators. A few 
former colonies chose to become satellites of the 
Soviets. Nehru-Tito-Sukarno and other leadership 
of Non-aligned Movement held the high moral 
ground. The people of Pakistan were baffled and 
angry; often hearing taunts of being American 
stooges.

At the heart of the story is Pakistan's ties with 
India. Pakistan initially aligned with US to 
obtain support against India's highhandedness in 
Kashmir. The history of these ties is well known, 
characterised as they are by three full-scale 
wars and three or four quasi-wars. Pakistan, 
reflecting the ground reality of its own state of 
development and size of its resources, was never 
successful in these wars and fierce skirmishes. 
India always managed to stymie Pakistan. After 
1971's decisive defeat, Pakistan opted for 
nuclear weapons. Its crash programme succeeded 
fairly soon. The exact date of its starting is 
not important: it was either 1972 as some have 
asserted, while Pakistan government talks of 
1976. Anyhow Pakistan acquired nuclear capability 
by the mid 1980s; by 1986 it could threaten India 
with a nuclear riposte.

Why India chose to go nuclear remains a matter of 
speculation. Some think that India always wanted 
to be a nuclear power, as the road to national 
grandeur. Many think that the Indians were of two 
minds; others believe they were more interested 
in moral stature; still others think they were 
simply going slow. Anyhow India chose 1974 to 
test explode a nuclear device, and has been 
nuclear-capable since then, as an undeclared 
nuclear power. Speculation about its motives 
remains. Why did it go nuclear after the long 
history of its own international campaigns 
against nuclear weapons and the leadership of 
Non-aligned Movement? That is inexplicable. 
Perhaps somehow Mrs. Indira Gandhi heard about 
the start of Pakistan's nuclear programme and 
wanted to warn it. Motivation is less important 
than the effect, however.

About Pakistan there is absolutely no doubt that 
its nuclear programme is militaristic and 
India-centric. It wanted an equalizer against 
India's superiority in conventional armaments as 
well as in resources. It thought that the 
cheapest route to greatness was going nuclear. As 
soon as Pakistan had exploded its six nuclear 
devices in May 1998, its chattering classes went 
ga ga; Pakistan was termed the seventh great 
nuclear power of the world. A hubris set in about 
Pakistan's defence being impregnable.

What this means is that Pakistan and India had 
jointly drilled a large hole in the 
Non-Proliferation Treaty. NPT represented a noble 
objective -- though largely on paper. There are 
contradictions in it. The five recognised nuclear 
powers refuse to implement the promise of NPT's 
Article 6, making the Treaty one-sided. Others 
are being asked not to make atomic bombs while 
the Big Five are smugly sitting on countless 
nuclear weapons.

Except the Soviets and Chinese, the other three 
permanent members of the UN Security Council, 
have winked wickedly at Israel's nuclear weapons. 
America and France had actually helped it become 
a nuclear power. While the Big Five continue 
campaigning for NPT, they refuse to do what the 
Treaty asks them to. This is a case of double 
standards. True, Pakistan and India inhabit a 
world dominated by two, and now one, superpower. 
Their going nuclear simply made the international 
order more chaotic and has rendered the NPT into 
an instrument of superpower coercion, virtually 
cancelling its noble aim.

The fact is that nobody respects India and 
Pakistan for their nuclear prowess. A consequence 
is that the road to proliferation looks rosy to 
many have-nots; it is only a matter of time 
before new members join the non-recognised 
nuclear powers' club. Apart from promoting 
proliferation by precedence, India's defection 
has killed non-alignment as an international 
force. The UN has been rendered even more 
farcical and the US is being respected more, 
after the Soviets died. India too has joined the 
US drive to remake Asia. The US is generally able 
to use the UN machinery for its purposes. And as 
soon as the Soviet Union expired, the Americans 
started crudely exploiting the UN. The latest 
insult inflicted on it is to nominate John Bolton 
as America's representative in the UN -- a man 
who is on record belittling the UN and affirming 
the intention of using it when profitable and 
discarding it when not required.

Finally, India and Pakistan are seriously 
threatening their neighbourhood even more than 
they promote unilateralism. World Order is even 
more fragile and precarious today. The absence of 
an equal power has made the US taller than it is, 
while others are reduced to second rank powers in 
Europe, Japan and China. While the US knows what 
it wants, others find the world less predictable 
than before.

There is also very little chance of Pakistan and 
India being welcomed into the Nuclear Club or NPT 
as a recognised nuclear power, as is their 
immediate objective. The two remain secondary 
powers at best, nukes notwithstanding.

o o o o


The News International
May 11, 2005

CITY HAPPY TO BE RID OF CHAGAI HILLS AND GHAURI MISSILE MODELS

By Shahnawaz Khan
LAHORE: Most people in Lahore are pleased that 
the Punjab government has removed models of the 
Chagai hills and Ghauri missile from public 
display because they symbolised war and violence.
Saleema Hashmi, an art critic, said that 
throughout the world models are only installed 
after considering public opinion and its future 
impact on people, but unfortunately in Pakistan 
this process is not carried out. She said that 
the models of the Chagai hills and Ghauri missile 
did not depict beauty, love, peace or culture.
Mian Yousaf Salahuddin, a prominent socialite, 
appreciated the removal of the models and said 
that people throughout the world have tried to 
demolish such models. He said that if India had 
similar models depicting its nuclear power than 
it should also have them removed.
Dr Ajaz Anwar, a painter, said that the models 
symbolised war. He said that many foreigners 
visited the Lahore Railway Station and the Chagai 
hills model gave a bad impression of the city. He 
said that the historic Lahore Railway station 
building was beautiful and it was not appropriate 
to have placed the models outside it in the first 
place.
The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), 
however, sees the removal as a weakness of the 
government. MNA Muhammad Pervaiz Malik, PML-N 
central finance secretary, said that the removal 
of the models reflected the government's 
cowardice.
The Punjab government removed the models from the 
Lahore Railway Station on Sunday (May 8). The 
monuments were placed outside the station during 
Nawaz Sharif's regime. The models represented the 
nuclear tests conducted at Chagai in Balochistan 
on May 28, 1998. The two replicas were installed 
at eye-catching locations in 1999 with the 
objective of evoking national sentiment and 
patriotic feelings.

______


[2]

8 May 2005


The Norwegian TV company TV2 broadcast Saturday 
in their news programme 6.45 pm an exposure of 
the Norwegian international evangelist Aril 
Edvardsen, based on an interview by IHEU director 
Babu Gogineni and myself with Indian politicians 
who in Mr. Edvardsen`s Norwegian magazine Troens 
Bevis (The Proofs of Faith) have falsely been 
used as eyewitnesses to claimed mass-conversions 
of thousands of Hindus and a large number of 
miraculous healings in the state of Andra Pradesh.

The interviews with the local municipal president 
Lingam Goud and his deputy Laxma Reddy are 
video-taped. They say that the claims (by Aril 
Edvardsen) are lies.

As many of you know I have for decades been 
concerned about the  expansion of Charismatic 
Christianity among poor and uneducated people in 
the Third World, initiatied by commercialized 
Western preachers, who use their "success" as 
spectacular healers and excorsists in foreign 
regions to collect enormous sums of money from 
honest believers in their homelands, who want all 
the "unreached" (formerly called heathens) to be 
"saved" before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. 
Aril Edvardsen`s former international partner, 
Morris Cerullo, is one of these (look him up at 
Internet!), Benny Hinn is another. Many of us 
have recently visited IHEU groups in African 
countries, where humanists, scientists, medical 
doctors and other concerned citizens say that 
this new Christianity hinders the development of 
enlightened culture, free choice and equal 
rights, HIV awareness etc. Hospital doctors in 
Nigeria told me that people die because the 
preachers have declared cancer patients 
miraculously healed – and the malign tumors have 
thereafter developed and become inoperable.

I call upon rationalists, freethinkers and 
humanists on continents where Charismatic 
miracle-preachers mislead and degrade fellow 
humans, to stand up against this disgraceful 
activity, expose it and report internationally 
what is going on. Many thanks to my friends in 
India who now have contributed to one victory 
over shameful religious practice. (In addition to 
the war against suppressive superstition they 
continuously conduct within their own culture.)

Levi Fragell

_____


[3]

YOUTH FOR PEACE

PARTICIPATES IN THE

LIPTON BANGALORE INTERNATIONAL MARATHON

May 15, 2005

Youth For Peace Runs to raise funds for the 
education of the underprivileged children
Young sensitive citizens are disturbed by the 
culture and politics of violence that surrounds 
them - violence that one faces everyday on the 
streets, at home, in college, in the state and in 
the country. They are worried and want to make a 
change. They are tired of being stereotyped as 
indifferent, because in fact they deeply care.

Youth for Peace is a platform to share such 
concerns for young minds, a space without 
boundaries where each one can voice their 
opinions and ideas without fears.

Anhad (Act Now for Harmony and Democracy), a 
Delhi based platform working for communal 
harmony, started Youth For Peace in Ahmedabad 
where in July 2003, around 50 students from Delhi 
and Gujarat got together to form Youth for Peace.

They were different from each other and from many 
of the traditional activists in many ways the 
language they spoke, the clothes they wore, the 
music they listened to, places they hung out at 
and the colleges and institutions they went to. 
Nevertheless they got together because they had 
one thing in common  they all believed 
passionately and actively in 'peace' and more 
important all of them wanted to build a new world 
around 'peace'. A world where there is freedom to 
express ones opinions without out treading on 
other people's spaces. A more caring, just, 
humane world.

Youth for Peace is envisaged as an ongoing 
activity conceptualised, designed, executed by 
and for the youth in campuses and schools around 
the country. The main aim is to make 'peace' a 
movement with immediacy and meaning for young 
people, and not just a remote idea or theory.

Youth for Peace is participating in the Lipton 
Bangalore International Marathon on May 15, 2005 
to raise funds for the education of the 
underprivileged children, specially from the 
Gujarat displaced families of the Gujarat carnage 
2002.

50 Youth for Peace members would be running in 
the 7 km Celebration Run of the Lipton Bangalore 
International Marathon.

So far Youth For Peace has been active in Delhi 
and Ahmedabad, with this we launch Youth For 
Peace in Bangalore also .

"The Lipton Bangalore International Marathon 
(LBIM), the first such international event in the 
city of an unprecedented scale, is all set to be 
staged on May 15, 2005. Encapsulating the highest 
standards of sportsmanship, grit and resilience, 
the Lipton Bangalore International Marathon will 
see participation from several top international 
and national marathon runners, besides active 
participation from the lively Bangaloreans.''

The 42.195-km  Marathon, the 21.1- km _half 
marathon and the 7 km Celebration Run, would be 
run across the city. It would be flagged off from 
the Kanteerava Stadium at 7.00 AM and would make 
its way around, touching key Bangalore landmarks 
such as Vidhana Soudha, MG Road, Cubbon Park, 
GPO, High Court, Central Library before 
culminating at the Kanteerava Stadium.

Dell is the co sponsor of the marathon.

As with every large sporting event, especially 
marathons, a large number of participants would 
be running for a social cause. The entire 
marathon itself would be held to promote 
philanthropy for social justice and social giving 
for one's favorite cause through I-CONGO (Indian 
Confederation of NGOs) a first of its kind 
national collective of over 155 credible, 
transparent and accountable NGO members 
registered as founder, patron, privilege and 
ordinary members.  The confederation represents 
various NGOs (who have to adhere to basic 
credibility draft norms) working on social causes 
nationally.

We request you to support us by donating whatever 
you can. Kindly send your cheques with the pledge 
form. Donations are exempt under section 80-G of 
the Income Tax Act, 1961. We accept donation in 
Indian rupees only. All cheques have to be in 
favour of 'Confederation of NGOs' and posted to 
us at Youth For Peace, 4, Windsor Place, New 
Delhi-110001, Tel.: 23327366/67,  e-mail : 
<mailto:anhad_delhi at yahoo.co.in>anhad_delhi at yahoo.co.in


Youth for Peace

Formation
July, 2003

Peace Concert, Indian Ocean, attended by 4,000 students

Delhi, September, 2003


Walk For Peace
Ahmedabad, November, 2003


Peace Concert, Indian Ocean, attended by 6,000 students
Ahmedabad, November, 2003


Unity Concert, in collaboration with Promise of India
Delhi, January, 2004

Youth Aman Karwan

30 Students ( age group 14-20) travelled across 
India covering 15,000 km., 30 cities, addressing 
media and appealing to the young voter to defeat 
communal forces.

April-May, 2004

Third Act - Essentially Yerma in Imphal

Play on Manipur, August, 2004


Rock the Nation
A competition of Rock Bands in Delhi
to produce new peace songs. 11 Youth bands participated .

November, 2004


Two Women
Play on Gujarat, December, 2004
More than 20 workshops, seminars and film screenings in various Delhi Colleges




_______


[4]

The Hindu - May 11, 2005  |  Editorial

TIGER THACKERAY IN CONGRESS ROBES

The Congress, in theory, is liberal, secular, and 
socially enlightened. In practice, it is a party 
of many moods - and many avatars. Not only do the 
staunchly secular and the ideologically hazy 
co-exist in the party; Congress Chief Ministers 
sometimes act as if they were appointed by the 
Opposition. Take the case of Maharashtra where 
Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh and his deputy, 
R.R. Patil of the breakaway Nationalist Congress 
Party, have gone about seeking solutions to the 
once progressive State's problems with 
authoritarian mindset. Worse, they have defended 
their actions in language that found Balasaheb 
Thackeray cheering. Mr. Deshmukh's justification 
for razing more than 80,000 homes in the slums of 
Mumbai was that the city no longer had "any room 
for guests." The Chief Minister argued in the 
State Assembly that slum-dwellers were a burden 
on taxpayers, and warned prospective migrants 
against building slums. Mr. Deshmukh also 
admitted that his demolition squads might have 
flattened more slums than was originally 
intended. It took a sharp rebuke from Sonia 
Gandhi for the Chief Minister to call a halt to, 
and then officially abandon, this inhuman mission.

Even as the controversy raged, Mr. Patil 
announced a State-wide ban on dance bars on the 
specious plea that they corrupted "the moral 
fibre of our youth and culture." The State 
Cabinet unanimously resolved to make the running 
of such bars a non-bailable offence punishable 
with rigorous imprisonment up to three years. Mr. 
Patil also spotted a "security threat" in the 
bars, which he said, employed Bangladeshi women 
in "large numbers." The culture cops of the Shiv 
Sena could not have done better. Then there is 
the draconian Maharashtra Water Resources 
Regulatory Act (MWRRA), which requires farmers 
with more than two children to pay one and a half 
times more for irrigation water. Paradoxically, 
Messrs Deshmukh and Patil have targeted their own 
support base. The Congress-NCP combine earned a 
second term in 2004 not on the strength of its 
performance - which was widely judged to be 
abysmal - but because of fears surrounding the 
Shiv Sena's return. Mumbai voted largely for the 
Congress in the 14th general election as well as 
in the Assembly election because the poor and 
migrant population of India's friendly and 
hospitable business capital saw the Sushil Kumar 
Shinde Government as a bulwark against the 
Thackeray clan. They could have hardly 
anticipated that events would take such an 
anti-climactic turn. The United Nations Special 
Rapporteur on Adequate Housing has condemned the 
demolition of slums for being brutal and executed 
without advance notice. Linking family size to 
water entitlement is a cruel and undemocratic 
move aimed at the poor. The ban on dance bars, 
when enforced, will put out of work more than 
75,000 bar dancers. The Maharashtra Chief 
Minister and his deputy have wilfully betrayed a 
mandate given to them in good faith and trust.


______


[5]

The Praful Bidwai Column    -  May 9, 2005

GRAVE CRISIS IN THE PARIVAR - GIANTS TURN OUT DWARVES
By Praful Bidwai

Even one month on, the seismic waves sent out by 
Mr K.S. Sudarshan's vitriolic public attack on 
the Bharatiya Janata Party's top leadership 
refuse to die down. The RSS sarasanghachalak 
shocked and surprised his colleagues because he 
didn't single out Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, but 
launched a broadside against Mr L.K. Advani too. 
Soon, Vishwa Hindu Parishad functionaries joined 
him. For a while, it looked as if Mr Vajpayee, 
who hasn't had a comfortable relationship with Mr 
Sudarshan, and whose family was specifically 
attacked, might assert his authority to end the 
controversy.

Instead, Mr Vajpayee first sulked-petulantly 
saying "I do not fear death, but I fear getting a 
bad name." Then, he fired a scarcely concealed 
salvo at BJP president Advani, telling him to 
follow Mr Sudarshan's advice and make way for 
younger leaders! Yet, a day later, Mr Vajpayee, 
in the sangh's characteristic style, declared the 
party badly needs Mr Advani's leadership. He 
again reiterated this against Mukhtar Abbas 
Naqvi's veiled attack on the party leadership. He 
has since gone out of his way to defend the RSS 
too. On April 26, he boasted he has been its 
member since childhood. He couldn't have found a 
worse way of humiliating and diminishing himself.

Amidst this washing of dirty linen in public, the 
entire top leadership of the parivar stands 
discredited. Badly dented and very nearly 
destroyed is the cultivated image of the RSS as a 
"disciplined" and "united" organisation, where 
dissidence is unknown, and absolute, 
unquestioning obedience to the Supreme Leader is 
a much-prized virtue. For the first time, the 
sarasanghachalak was publicly contradicted by his 
own deputy (Mohan Bhagwat), who was forced by the 
BJP to reaffirm faith in the Vajpayee-Advani duo: 
"the RSS has always held [their] leadership in 
high esteem and maintained that the party needs 
their guidance and leadership always."

The BJP's image, battered by its Lok Sabha 
debacle and its confrontationist politics of 
opposition for opposition's sake, has now 
nosedived to a new low. Its top leaders, who it 
claimed, are giants and astute politicians, have 
been exposed as pygmies-petty men and women with 
consuming ambition but no vision, driven by 
parochial agendas, and lacking even a sense of 
solidarity, despite decades of working together 
in the Jana Sangh-BJP.

Meanwhile, the BJP's succession problem has 
proved intractable. Its former president M. 
Venkaiah Naidu had to quit after the Maharashtra 
elections because he could exercise no authority 
over his peers like Ms Uma Bharati and Sushma 
Swaraj or Messrs Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley and 
Rajnath Singh. He begged his patron (Advani) to 
take over. But Mr Advani has failed to rein in 
highly angular leaders like Ms Bharati. He 
expelled her for defying his authority, but soon 
had to rehabilitate her-although not as general 
secretary.

Now, week after week, Ms Bharati spews venom at 
Mr Advani, threatening him with a 
"Mahabharata-style" war, in which she would play 
Arjun, the victor! She has also declared that she 
has "ideological differences" not with her 
successor in Bhopal, whom she regularly 
humiliates, but with Mr Advani himself!  (She has 
again backtracked, unconvincingly.)

The BJP's unending succession crisis contrasts 
sharply with the smooth transition in the 
Communist Party of India (Marxist) from the 
Harkishan Singh Surjeet leadership to the next 
generation. On the yardsticks of organisational 
coherence, ideological clarity, and political 
principle, the CPM scores way, way above its 
adversary on the Right. Nominally, both are 
termed "cadre parties". But the BJP is different. 
Within it, the cement of ideology and common 
purpose crumbles beside political venality and 
vaulting ambition.

As important as the BJP's leadership crisis and 
power struggle are changes under way in the RSS 
and in its relations with the party. The RSS top 
leadership is reportedly divided between 
Maharashtrian and non-Maharashtrian members. Most 
of the latter, barring Mr H.V. Seshadri, are with 
Mr Sudarshan. This is unprecedented. The RSS 
sarasanghachalak used to keep himself relatively 
distant from the nitty-gritty of politics and 
dirty deal-making. But since the days of 
Balasaheb Deoras, this has changed. Mr Sudarshan 
wants a more aggressive role-which brings him 
into conflict with the BJP leadership.

Yet, the RSS is increasingly clueless about what 
it should do to push the BJP towards a hardline 
Hindutva agenda, including the "trinity" issues 
of the temple, Article 370 and a Uniform Civil 
Code. Both organisations are aware of the damage 
they have inflicted upon themselves and are 
awkwardly trying to control it. For the moment, 
the BJP's "strategy" is to deal not directly with 
Mr Sudarshan, but with two second-ranking RSS 
functionaries: general secretary Mohan Bhagwat 
and joint general secretary Suresh Soni. They are 
both in their 50s. The BJP hopes they might be 
reverential towards the much older 
Vajpayee-Advani duo.

It's unlikely that such frivolous tactics will 
work. The current power scuffle has produced 
realignments within the parivar. On the 
sarasanghachalak's side are BJP leaders Uma 
Bharati and Murli Manohar Joshi, and the entire 
bunch of the VHP, Swadeshi Jagaran Manch and 
Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram. Arrayed against him are 
BJP leaders L.K. Advani, Naidu and Pramod 
Mahajan, as well as the sangh's Maharashtrian 
group. Many others, including the Bharatiya 
Mazdoor Sangh, are neutral or vacillating.

Their differences cannot be easily reconciled. 
For instance, for the VHP, the Ayodhya temple is 
a serious issue, which allows no compromise. Its 
importance is absolute. For the BJP, it is a 
political instrument and a bargaining counter, to 
be used with other counters. Its relative utility 
is a function of the political balance of power 
at a given time.

The RSS-BJP confrontation has to be seen in the 
context of the BJP's loss of national power, 
which has brought many frustrations to the 
surface. Its immediate probable cause was the 
RSS's annoyance at being bypassed when Mr Advani 
took over the BJP, and an attack on the "Hindu 
vote" concept by a BJP ideologue at a meeting of 
the BJP's Intellectual Cell in Bhopal at the end 
of March. This spat isn't the only recent one.

In 1998, shortly after Mr Vajpayee was sworn in 
PM, Mr Sudarshan forced him to rescind Mr Jaswant 
Singh's appointment as Finance Minister, a post 
he had held for 13 days in 1996. Two years later, 
Mr Sudarshan attacked Mr Vajpayee's "kitchen 
cabinet" and foster family, including his trusted 
aide Brajesh Mishra. In retaliation, Mr Vajpayee 
prevailed upon Mr Sudarshan to move from 
Jhandewalan in Delhi to Nagpur.

In 2002, the RSS forced Mr Advani's appointment 
as Deputy Prime Minister-in return for promise 
that the parivar would go slow on the temple. Mr 
Vajpayee conceded this extremely reluctantly, 
without assigning any additional responsibilities 
to Mr Advani. Throughout its years in office, the 
BJP had skirmishes with the BMS, SJM, and 
especially, the VHP.

The RSS and its extremist associates yielded 
grumblingly or pusillanimously to the BJP on many 
issues-especially on its neoliberal economic 
policy, which was unabashedly pro-globalisation. 
But the BJP was in power. It could silence RSS 
office-bearers by offering the loaves and fishes 
of office. Some sangh leaders got worried at the 
sight of "soft" pracharaks leading a life of 
luxury-far, far removed from the austerity of the 
swayamsevak's world.

They are now venting their worries over these 
corrosive influences because the BJP is out of 
power. The RSS is also anxious because attendance 
at its shakhas is dropping and the influx of 
pracharaks has greatly decreased. As always, when 
threatened, the RSS has returned to its hardline 
moorings. It wants a more pliant BJP leadership.

However, the BJP is now too big to be bullied by 
the sangh. Some of its leaders calculate that the 
RSS's door-to-door mobilisation during elections 
cannot win the party more than, say, 5-6 percent 
of the popular vote, a fraction of the party's 
20-odd percentage-point total. They believe that 
the NDA allies can contribute more to the BJP 
than the RSS. This perception may not be correct, 
but it prevails.

These contrary perceptions, calculations and 
compulsions have precipitated a tug of war inside 
the parivar, which neither side can easily win. 
The BJP, for its all fascination with economic 
globalisation, is not yet in a position to cut 
off its ideological dependence on Hindutva or its 
organisational links with the RSS. There is scope 
in India for a conservative Right-of-Centre party 
that is not aggressively communal, like the 
Christian Democrats in Western Europe.

The BJP cannot be such a party. The 
Vajpayee-Advani leadership does not have the 
stomach to execute such a change. If it couldn't 
do so while in power, it's most unlikely to do so 
now. The BJP has found no issues to agitate, on 
which to rebuild itself. The "foreign origins" 
(of Sonia Gandhi), the Savarkar quote, the Hubli 
tiranga yatra, have all failed. The party is 
floundering. What's on the cards now is more 
contention, suspicion and strife within the 
parivar, more sniping at each other, and yet more 
disunity. That does not spell a half-way bright 
future for the downwardly mobile BJP. Its decline 
could prove irreversible.-end-


______


[6]

NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF PEOPLE’S MOVEMENTS
C/o chemical Mazdoor Sabha, 1 st floor, A Wing, Haji
Habib Bldg,
Naigaon Cross Rd, Dadar (E), Mumbai -400014)


Press Release:
May 10, 2005

THE FAKE SCARE OF BANGLADESHIS TAKING OVER MUMBAI
STANDS EXPOSED:
Official Record Shows only 626 Bangladeshis in Mumbai

While both Bal Thakre with his son and nephew, as 
well as Vilasrao Deshmukh raised a hue and cry 
against the Bangladeshis taking over Mumbai, one 
got a feeling as the government tried hard to 
make us believe, that these "encroachers" are 
"terrorists" and "crowding" the country in large 
numbers. That they are "all criminals" and the 
country's peace, law and order, morality and 
culture- everything was at stake.

The two senior-most of the opponent politicians 
in Mumbai must have felt threatened by this since 
both agreed on this common issue; one would Have 
thought this was a crisis or a critical issue!

We therefore decided to get out any information 
on the Bangladeshis, if not their whereabouts, 
their anti-social activities as claimed by the 
government, starting with their number. The Right 
to Information Act came to our help. The question 
raised has the official reply by now. There are 
(only) 626 Bangladeshis in the entire city of 
Mumbai, as of 2004. Six hundred and twenty six 
out of one crore people in Mumbai and we're being 
made to believe they constitute an unprecedented 
threat!

And the slum-dwellers are to be defamed to get 
sympathy from the middle and upper class 
taxpayers, whose taxable property itself came 
through the blood and sweat of the poor, 
including poor Bangladeshis. They are to be 
evicted to snatch away the land. It is certainly 
to condemn the slum-dwellers as videshis and 
vagabonds that the Bangladeshi false allegation 
has been used. The truth is that not the 
Bangladeshis but the desi corrupt buildings and 
their protectors are the real threat to India. 
When American, European and other videshis are 
welcomed into our country, why not
the Bangladeshis?

The hypocrisy and double standards of the government are evident and shameful.

Medha Patkar

______


[7]

The Times of India - May 10, 2005

MANUFACTURING CONSENT: RAPE VERDICTS REFLECT SOCIAL PREJUDICE

Laxmi Murthy

What is it about rape that the judiciary cannot 
restrict itself to delivering verdicts about the 
guilt of the accused, but makes observations on 
the complainant's behaviour, her moral character 
and her marriage prospects? Three recent 
judgments are indicative of this disturbing 
trend; they reflect and legitimise a social 
prejudice against rape survivors.

The most recent is the judgment on the rape of a 
nurse by an employee of the Shanti Mukund 
Hospital in east Delhi. On May 3, additional 
sessions judge of Karkardooma court, Justice J M 
Malik deferred his judgment by a day and ordered 
the victim to reply to a preposterous proposal by 
the rapist to marry her. The young nurse 
understandably refused to marry the man who in 
September 2003 had raped her and gouged out one 
eye. She instead demanded that the most stringent 
punishment be meted out to him.

Justice Malik, delivering his verdict of life 
imprisonment, called the rapist's marriage 
proposal "false, frivolous and mischievous" and 
observed that it was made with the mala fide 
intention to evade punishment. Inexplicable, 
then, is the judge's decision to entertain this 
proposal, withhold his judgment and consider 
reduction in sentence were the "proposal" to be 
accepted.

The pressures brought to bear on women subjected 
to rape and sexual assault are evident in the 
formulation of the proposal. The rapist is 
projected as helping the victim live a proper 
life. It is unlikely that a judge would remotely 
consider a proposal by a car thief that he 
marries the owner of the car so that they can 
both share the car.

Such attempts to exploit a rape survivor's 
vulnerability are not few and far between. In a 
recent case, the lower court in Mumbai seemed 
convinced that the resolution of a rape case lay 
in marriage. The acquittal of a rapist by Mumbai 
sessions court judge B C Singh on May 3 would 
border on the absurd were it not so tragic.

In a case that dated back to August 2003, the 
judge acquitted the accused after the trial was 
almost complete and the ground prepared for his 
conviction.

The judge reportedly (TOI, May 5) offered a 
police escort to the marriage party so that the 
accused did not flee the scene. What milord, of 
the evidence in the case establishing the proof 
of rape?

When patriarchal values determine the nature of 
judgments, who will hold judges accountable? In 
the infamous Suryanelli case, involving a minor 
girl who was abducted and gangraped by several 
men for about 40 days, Kerala high court judges 
decided that the girl was of a "deviant 
character" because she "squandered" Rs 450 given 
to her for her hostel fees, and subsequently 
tried to pawn an ornament to make up the deficit. 
Thus, according to the learned judges, the girl 
was not a "normal innocent" girl, and the court 
could not be expected to "swallow her version".

On January 20, 2005, justices K A Abdul Gafoor 
and R Basant of the Kerala high court exonerated 
all but one of the 36 accused in the case. The 
court's disbelief in the lack of the girl's 
consent led them to question "whether it was rape 
at all".

The girl, according to the judges, on returning 
home after her "escapade" was attempting to wish 
away all "consensual sexual intercourses." She 
was apparently "attempting to place the blame for 
her unfortunate predicament on the shoulders of 
all with whom she had sexual intercourse by 
making convenient omnibus assertions that they 
were all rapes".

Let us for now not go into the double standards 
in society whereby a girl who has consensual sex 
is considered to be in an "unfortunate 
predicament", whereas a man in a similar position 
can boast about his sexual prowess and invincible 
manhood. Let us, instead, delve into the 
assumptions made by judges while delivering their 
verdicts.

The high court judges found it fit to overturn 
the lower court convictions of 35 of the 36 
accused, because the victim, in their opinion, 
could have "escaped at any time". Disregarding 
the trauma of sexually abused women who have been 
held captive, especially by politically powerful 
men, the court inferred from this that she was 
willing to go with the accused. The sole judicial 
conviction was not for rape, but for procuring a 
minor and using her for prostitution.

The judgment in the Suryanelli case is all the 
more disturbing as it is the first of several 
cases of sexual abuse and rape to be decided in 
the Kerala courts. Such judgments could set 
dangerous precedents in cases of sexual crime, 
particularly when mechanisms to ensure judicial 
accountability are not in place.

One can only hope that the Supreme Court, where 
the Suryanelli matter is now likely to come up, 
is more tuned into the harsh realities of women 
fighting for justice in cases of sexual violence.

As for matchmaking, that is a task best handled by marriage bureaus.

The writer is with Saheli, a women's organisation.

______


[8]


The Times of India - May 10, 2005

EDITORIAL: Brute Majority
Delhi car rape exposes cultural, gender biases

We are doubly cursed. First, we are women, and 
then we are north-eastern women". This statement 
by a Delhi-based working woman from the 
north-east succinctly sums up the plight of the 
20-year-old victim of rape in a moving car in the 
capital. In saying so, she identifies herself 
with two minorities, a gender minority and an 
ethnic minority. This discrimination against 
people on the basis of gender, culture or 
community is driven by a parochialism that views 
them as beyond the pale of a so-called Indian 
mainstream. Rape is the ultimate expression of 
brute majoritarianism which seeks to impose its 
power on those whom it deems children of a lesser 
God by virtue of gender, social status or 
community. Sexual violence is a symptom of a 
deeper malaise of social inequity which militates 
against those unable to assert their democratic 
rights. In reports following the brutal rape, 
many north-eastern students have said that they 
did not feel excluded or picked on in other 
Indian metros. The problem, they felt, was 
confined to Delhi.

Despite people migrating from other parts of the 
country to the capital for economic reasons, 
Delhi has never become a truly integrated city. 
Rather than celebrate our vibrant cultures and 
ethnic differences, many in Delhi treat 
'outsiders' with suspicion or downright 
hostility. In the case of women, this often takes 
the form of violent crime, especially sexual 
aggression. Male machismo seems to find its 
apotheosis in the capital where a socially and 
economically liberated woman is seen to 
constitute a threat to masculine hegemony. In 
short, the capital seems to suffer from 
peripheral vision with regard to those cultural, 
gender and social minorities. It is a telling 
indictment of our polity that the political 
capital of the country should be so inimical to 
those it deems alien because of their cultural 
and social norms which, in fact, enrich the city 
- and the country - both economically and in 
terms of demographic diversity. This ingrained 
insensitivity to those who do not conform to a 
mythological concept of what an Indian is may 
well have contributed to genuine causes of unrest 
which have long plagued the north-east and other 
parts of the country distant from Delhi. Victims 
of such ethnophobia might add: Not distant enough.


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