SACW | 25 May 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 25 May,  2005

[1]  Pakistan: Transcript of General Pervez 
Musharraf's interview to Daily Times
[2]  Just give me that old-time atheism! (Salman Rushdie)
[3]  Bangladesh: Jamaat the secret instigator of 
anti-Ahmadiya attacks (Rashed Khan Menon)
[4]  Making of a fundamentalist (Rakesh Shukla)
[5]  India: Bhagalpur: Justice, Only Symbolic (Editorial, EPW)
[6]  India: Religious row over tsunami relief in Kerala (Sunil Raman)
[7]  India: Savarkar memorial unveiled in Mumbai
[8]  India: Mission Hindutva: VHP's plan is to catch 'em young (Soumik Dey)
[9]  Book Review: "Coming Out of Partition: 
Refugee Women of Bengal, Gargi Chakravartty" 
(Ranjita Biswas)

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


[1]

Daily Times
May 24, 2005

FOLLOWING IS THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF PRESIDENT 
GENERAL PERVEZ MUSHARRAF'S INTERVIEW TO DAILY 
TIMES.

Q: Where is the Indo-Pak process going from here?
Musharraf: More than any agreements or joint 
statements that we make, more than that is the 
intention of the leaders. Is there any intention 
to solve the problem? We reached so many 
agreements and declarations in the past but all 
ended in failure. All ended in another conflict. 
So more than the declarations, it is the 
intention of the leaders that is important. The 
second important thing is that when leaders reach 
an agreement and there is an understanding 
between two leaders, if within the tenure of 
those two leaders you don't reach an agreement 
then there is no guarantee that the next leader 
will be equally accommodating and will have the 
same understanding and perspective. So therefore 
it is very important to do these things now. Now 
we have a situation where I think the intentions 
are good on both sides. Certainly, I am clear 
about my side. And I am also reasonably sure that 
Prime Minster Manmohan Singh's intentions are 
very noble. He wants to resolve all disputes 
including the Kashmir dispute. So I have been 
told that we shouldn't hurry and we should take 
our time. But my belief is if we don't resolve 
this dispute by ourselves - Prime Minister 
Manmohan Singh and myself - because we have such 
a good rapport, because we have such a good 
understanding, I am afraid we will have repeated 
the history of the failures of the past. And we 
will both go and the situation will remain 
unresolved. And there is no guarantee about the 
future. Now having said, where do we go from 
here? Well, we need to arrive at an amicable 
solution is acceptable to India, Pakistan and the 
people of Kashmir. And in this there are 
statements by the three parties to the conflict: 
India says boundaries cannot be redrawn. I keep 
saying we cannot accept the Line of Control. And 
I also strongly believe the third element: that 
borders are becoming irrelevant. This is another 
statement from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. We 
need to reconcile all these three statements 
because there are contradictions within these 
statements. How do you reconcile these? I can 
just give you a feel for the approach that I am 
inclined to take. We obviously need to take the 
whole of Kashmir and put it in front of us and 
see the sensitivities of all the regions of 
Kashmir. And identify some regions which need to 
be demilitarised. I think it's the presence of 
the military which causes all the irritants and 
disturbs the people there. And all the atrocities 
also, may I say, stem from the presence of the 
militaries in these regions. The human rights 
violations, the atrocities, these are quite 
natural when there are 600,000 troops involved. 
So demilitarisation. And the third issue is that 
we should address what kind of governance these 
regions should have. There are many in Kashmir 
who are demanding independence. Now can that be 
acceptable to Pakistan and India? Is it anything 
short of independence that can be accepted? India 
has been telling them that it is prepared to 
given them autonomy, maximum autonomy. Is that 
acceptable to us? Is there something between 
autonomy and independence, like self-governance, 
that might be acceptable? What would it imply? 
What are the implications of self-governance as 
opposed to autonomy? And when we talk of 
self-governance, who governs? Obviously, the 
Kashmiris should govern themselves. But if are 
not giving them independence, then should they be 
over watched over by all three parties. And what 
is the distribution of responsibilities between 
the Kashmiris and the other two in this 
"over-watch"? These are issues which I feel are 
do-able, irrespective of these three statements. 
I think they are very much doable; if we show a 
little bit of flexibility in our stands we can 
arrive at a midpoint acceptable to the people of 
Kashmir and India and Pakistan."
Q: Are you pressing India for a ceasefire in the valley?
Musharraf: This is somewhat like the chicken and 
egg situation. We say that they must stop their 
atrocities and demilitarise the area. And the 
response that I get from the other side is that 
all "terrorist" activities inside the valley must 
stop first. So it's a chicken and egg situation. 
Who stops first? Maybe if there is goodwill and 
there is a move forward towards addressing the 
core issue this could be a good starting point.
Q: Are you in a position to enforce a ceasefire by the militants in Kashmir?
Musharraf: If there is an agreement, up to a 
point one can try and do something. But I can't 
give a guarantee that there will no bullet fired. 
Absolutely not, that's clear. I don't hold a 
whistle which when I blow it will end all 
militancy. After all, look at the attack on that 
bus station. I am against it. We are going in a 
certain direction. Obviously, these are 
individuals who don't agree with me or with the 
India prime minister. Unfortunately, these 
elements will be there to create problems in the 
transition period. But they will die their own 
death if we reach a conclusion which the vast 
majority of Kashmiris and Pakistanis and Indians 
are willing to accept. If there is willingness on 
the part of the Indians to demilitarise, and if 
the requirement is that there is no militant 
activity there, then one could get involved in a 
discussion with all roots and try to persuade and 
influence them to stop this activity. But this 
has to be tied in with demilitarisation because 
there is so much of mistrust and these things 
can't be one-sided. It cannot be that you stop 
all your activities and we will stop or 
demilitarise later. This is not doable. It has to 
be taken as a package.
Q: Who will represent the Kashmiris in the dialogue?
Musharraf: This is another sensitive issue. I 
feel the true representatives of Kashmiris is the 
All Parties Hurriyat Conference, the APHC. We 
feel that there has to be a trilateral 
arrangement where Kashmiris become part of the 
dialogue process. Now the Kashmiris are the APHC 
and there are Pakistan and India. Now we have a 
breakthrough. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has 
allowed them to travel to Pakistan. So once they 
visit us and they also talk to the Indian 
government, which we will try to facilitate, we 
shall have a trilateral arrangement going. Let us 
start from here and see if there is any other 
group who also represents the Kashmiris and needs 
to be included. If so, then we let's bring them 
together. As I said, if you are moving forwards 
towards a resolution I am sure these are small 
issues that can be solved as we move forward. 
Let's move forward, as I said, towards 
demilitarisation and issues of governance.
Q: Even Mir Waiz has accepted the fact that the 
APHC is not the exclusive representative of the 
Kashmiris, that the PDP, Mufti Sahib, and the 
National Conference have their constituencies and 
also represent the Kashmiris.
Musharraf: I do not want to be drawn into this 
debate on sensitive issues. I am not going to 
comment on it. To us the APHC is the sole 
representative. But if we see forward movement 
and flexibility on the other side, we would like 
to show flexibility on our side. But I will not 
show flexibility if I don't see flexibility on 
the other side.
Q: So you expect to see a solution on Baglihar and Siachin and Sir Creek soon?
Musharraf: On Siachen and Sir Creek, the 
intentions are very good on both sides and that 
is strongly reflected in the joint statement in 
New Delhi. Both of these are actually troublesome 
on both sides and they are unnecessary irritants 
which can be resolved. Now on the third issue, 
Baglihar, we have taken it to the World Bank. 
There is a mediator now, a Swiss gentleman who 
has been nominated. Let him decide. It is 
surprising that India should have dragged its 
feet so long on bilateral discussions that it 
pushed Pakistan to demand a neutral expert to 
adjudicate the issue. But it was always a do-able 
issue between us. They have a right to generate 
electricity from the river above our river. The 
issue is: what is the size of the pond needed to 
generate the required electricity? The size of 
the pondage according to the treaty is to be 
based on design parameters. The other issue is 
the operation element of the reservoir. If you 
work out the pondage on an operational basis, it 
comes to a much bigger figure than if you work it 
out on the basis of the design parameters. 
However, even if - and I told this to Prime 
Minister Manmohan Singh - Pakistan were to agree 
to Indiaia's demand for more electricity, we 
would have problems with the gates they are 
making at the bottom of the dam. I asked him to 
give me one good reason why they are making those 
gates at the bottom, because this is suspicious. 
This is mala fide. The only use of these gates is 
if you want to discharge the entire water of the 
dam and then close them and start filling again, 
it will take at least 21 days or 27 days to fill. 
So you will end up denying water to Pakistan for 
27 days. Otherwise for pure generation of 
electricity, additional electricity which they 
want, why have those gates? And there is no 
answer to this.
Q: Is it possible to have a demilitarisation of 
Siachen to pre-1984 positions without having a 
demilitarisation in the Kashmir valley first?
Musharraf: Yes, indeed, there was an agreement in 
1989. And that agreement was based on relocation 
of Siachen. And in 1992 the relocation position 
was decided. And our secretary defence went from 
here to India for a signing ceremony. Two hours 
before the signing ceremony, they backtracked. I 
think it's a habit with them to backtrack at the 
last moment. And out secretary defence came back 
empty handed. Now I have told the Indian prime 
minister that this is clear decision, there is no 
problem. Let's decide on that.
Q: Are they linking it with other issues, with 
the issue of Kashmir, with security in Kashmir 
for them?
Musharraf: No, it's quite the opposite. We are 
linking it to the resolution of Kashmir. It is 
pinching them more than it is hurting us.
Q: If you want to look ahead what do you see in 
next 12 months or so? Where do you see Indo-Pak 
relations going?
Musharraf: I see them looking much better. My 
only hope is Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stays 
and is allowed to move forward. I am very glad to 
say that my interaction with the BJP leaders, 
Advani and Vajpayee, has been very good. The only 
thing that I said was: please don't oppose it 
because you are in the opposition. And then the 
coalition partners, the communist members who are 
very strong in the coalition, they are totally on 
board. We must resolve this issue. These are 
positive signs. If were move forward, which we 
can, if we have the courage I am very sure this 
whole issue can be put behind in 12 months.
Q: But do you think the Indians share your sense of urgency?
Musharraf: I said this in the banquet speech in 
New Delhi because Prime Minister Manmohan Singh 
said "we are incidental leaders". Yes, indeed. So 
I said, whether incidental or accidental, we are 
there and we have this moment to grasp. Grasp the 
moment. We don't know how much time we have. So 
therefore the earlier, the better. New leaders 
may have different perceptions altogether. I 
don't know, I haven't thought of this point, but 
maybe the peace process should be guaranteed by 
the international community. I think if we reach 
an agreement there should be something other than 
just bilateral guarantees. I think the 
international community should play a role in the 
guarantees. And this is a new thing that I am 
saying. We are talking of guarantees which go 
beyond us. If we reach an agreement and we are 
reasonably sure that it will be followed, there 
is no harm why we should be so stuck up. If we 
have sincerity in the permanence of whatever we 
decide, I think we will have better permanence if 
the international community is involved, finally, 
in the guarantee.
Q: But suppose this optimistic scenario doesn't 
work out in 12-months time, what sort of pressure 
will you come under?
Musharraf: Well, people will say why are we 
wasting time talking to them, why are we going 
ahead with CBMs when there is no movement on the 
core issue.
[...]

FULL TEXT AT : 
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_24-5-2005_pg7_28

_______


[2]

Toronto Star
May 23, 2005

JUST GIVE ME THAT OLD-TIME ATHEISM!
by Salman Rushdie

"Not believing in God is no excuse for being 
virulently anti-religious or naïvely 
pro-science," says Dylan Evans, a professor of 
robotics at the University of West England in 
Bristol.

Evans has written an article for the Guardian of 
London deriding the old-fashioned, "19th-century" 
atheism of such prominent thinkers as Richard 
Dawkins and Jonathan Miller, instead proposing a 
new, modern atheism which "values religion, 
treats science as simply a means to an end and 
finds the meaning of life in art."

Indeed, he says, religion itself is to be 
understood as "a kind of art, which only a child 
could mistake for reality and which only a child 
would reject for being false."

Evans' position fits well with that of the 
American philosopher of science Michael Ruse, 
whose new book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle, 
lays much of the blame for the growth of 
creationism in America - and for the increasingly 
strident attempts by the religious right to have 
evolutionary theory kicked off the curriculum and 
replaced by the new dogma of "intelligent design" 
- at the door of the scientists who have tried to 
compete with, and even supplant, religion.

A staunch evolutionist himself, he is 
nevertheless highly critical of such modern 
giants as Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson.

Evans' "Atheism Lite," which seeks to negotiate a 
truce between religious and irreligious world 
views, is easily demolished.

Such a truce would have a chance of working only 
if it were reciprocal - if the world's religions 
agreed to value the atheist position and to 
concede its ethical basis, if they respected the 
discoveries and achievements of modern science, 
even when these discoveries challenge religious 
sanctities, and if they agreed that art at its 
best reveals life's multiple meanings at least as 
clearly as so-called "revealed" texts.

No such reciprocal arrangement exists, however, 
nor is there the slightest chance that such an 
accommodation could ever be reached.

It is among the truths believed to be 
self-evident by the followers of all religions 
that godlessness is equivalent to amorality and 
that ethics requires the underpinning presence of 
some sort of ultimate arbiter, some sort of 
supernatural absolute, without which secularism, 
humanism, relativism, hedonism, liberalism and 
all manner of permissive improprieties will 
inevitably seduce the unbeliever down immoral 
ways.

To those of us who are perfectly prepared to 
indulge in the above vices but still believe 
ourselves to be ethical beings, the 
godlessness-equals-morality position is pretty 
hard to swallow.

Nor does the current behaviour of organized 
religion breed confidence in the Evans/Ruse 
laissez-faire attitude. Education everywhere is 
seriously imperilled by religious attacks.

In recent years, Hindu nationalists in India 
attempted to rewrite the nation's history books 
to support their anti-Muslim ideology, an effort 
thwarted only by the electoral victory of a 
secularist coalition led by the Congress party.

Meanwhile, Muslim voices the world over are 
claiming that evolutionary theory is incompatible 
with Islam.

And in America, the battle over the teaching of 
intelligent design in U.S. schools is reaching 
crunch time, as the American Civil Liberties 
Union prepares to take on intelligent-design 
proponents in a Pennsylvania court.

It seems inconceivable that better behaviour on 
the part of the world's great scientists, of the 
sort that Ruse would prefer, would persuade these 
forces to back down.

Intelligent design, an idea designed backward so 
as to force the antique idea of a Creator upon 
the beauty of creation, is so thoroughly rooted 
in pseudoscience, so full of false logic, so easy 
to attack that a little rudeness seems called for.

Its advocates argue, for example, that the sheer 
complexity and perfection of cellular/molecular 
structures is inexplicable by gradual evolution.

However, the multiple parts of complex, 
interlocking biological systems do evolve 
together, gradually expanding and adapting - and, 
as Dawkins showed in The Blind Watchmaker: Why 
the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe 
Without Design, natural selection is active at 
every step of this process.

But, as well as scientific arguments, there are 
others that are more, well, novelistic. What 
about bad design, for example? Was it really so 
intelligent to come up with the birth canal or 
the prostate gland?

Then, there's the moral argument against an 
intelligent designer who cursed his creations 
with cancer and AIDS. Is the intelligent designer 
also amorally cruel?

To see religion as "a kind of art," as Evans 
rather sweetly proposes, is possible only when 
the religion is dead or when, like the Church of 
England, it has become a set of polite rituals.

The old Greek religion lives on as mythology, the 
old Norse religion has left us the Norse myths 
and, yes, now we can read them as literature.

The Bible contains much great literature, too, 
but the literalist voices of Christianity grow 
ever louder, and one doubts that they would 
welcome Evans' child's storybook approach.

Meanwhile religions continue to attack their own 
artists: Hindu artists' paintings are attacked by 
Hindu mobs, Sikh playwrights are threatened by 
Sikh violence and Muslim novelists and filmmakers 
are menaced by Islamic fanatics with a vigorous 
unawareness of any kinship.

If religion were a private matter, one could more 
easily respect its believers' right to seek its 
comforts and nourishments.

But religion today is big public business, using 
efficient political organization and cutting-edge 
information technology to advance its ends. 
Religions play bare-knuckle rough all the time, 
while demanding kid-glove treatment in return.

As Evans and Ruse would do well to recognize, 
atheists such as Dawkins, Miller and Wilson are 
neither immature nor culpable for taking on such 
religionists.

They are doing a vital and necessary thing.

Salman Rushdie is the author of The Satanic Verses, Fury and many other books.

_______


[3]

New Age - May 20, 2005

THE AHMADIYAS AND THE JAMAAT
Jamaat the secret instigator of anti-Ahmadiya attacks

It is clear to all that Jamaat has the agenda of 
establishing an Islamic state in Bangladesh, and 
it does not mince its words in declaring that it 
wants an Islamic revolution. What makes it 
formidable is that it is far more organised than 
AL or BNP, and it
will go to any length to fulfil its ambition,
writes Rashed Khan Menon

  The Jamaat-E-Islami, in its attempt to prove 
itself a democratic political party, tried to 
prove its innocence and non-involvement in the 
persecution of the Ahmadiyas by the Islamic 
zealots, which has been going on for sometime 
with the active help of the alliance government 
and its administration. In their talk with 
Christina Rocca, the US Assistant Secretary of 
State, the Jamaat's representatives told her that 
though they consider the Ahmadiyas to be 
non-Muslims, they are against any act of violence 
against them and in no way support such 
persecution. They put the blame on the extremist 
elements in the Islamic front for such happenings.
    But things on the ground prove otherwise. In 
the last incident in Jatindranagar, Satkhira, 
where the Ahmadiya villages were attacked  and 
looted, their women and children were tortured, 
the men were not allowed to go to the markets and 
a signboard was hung in front of their mosque, 
describing it as a 'prayer hall', with help of 
the police posted there to prevent such attacks 
on the Ahmadiyas. The attacks were not only 
publicly supported by the local MPs from Jamaat 
but were planned in their office at Satkhira. The 
local TNO was asked by the Jamaat MPs to act 
according to dictates of the demonstrators of the 
Khatme Nabuyat movement. The local Jamaat MP also 
directed the police not to take any case filed by 
the Ahmadiyas against these atrocities.
    The people who took part in the looting of the 
Ahmadiya village and tortured of their women and 
children are known activists of the local Jamaat. 
The local journalists   reported the involvement 
of Jamaat, for which they were threatened with 
dire consequences. Any impartial enquiry will 
reveal the direct involvement of the Jamaat in 
the persecution of the Ahmadiyas in Bogra and 
Chittagong also.
    The Jamaat's active involvement in the 
anti-Ahmadiya movement is not new. The founder of 
the Jamaat, Moududi, in his attempt to get a 
foothold in Pakistan politics, raised the issue 
of Ahmadiyas. Before that Moududi was isolated 
from the general Muslim population for supporting 
the British Raj  against the independence 
movement of the subcontinent, particularly in 
opposing the Pakistan movement. Coming to 
Pakistan after partition of India, Moududi tried 
to gain political prominence by raising the 
Ahmadiya issue and instigated an anti-Kadiani 
riot in Lahore. The situation became bad enough 
to force the Pakistan government to impose 
martial law in Lahore. The martial law authority 
arrested Moududi and put him on trial. A judicial 
inquiry committee by Justice Munir and Justice 
Kayani found the involvement of Moududi and 
Jamaat in the riot though the Jamaat, in its 
usual way, denied its involvement. Moududi was 
given the death sentence by the court for 
instigating the riot, but the later military 
regime of Ayub Khan, facing tremendous pressure 
from Saudi Arabia, commuted that sentence.
    Moududi and Jamaat, in exchange, helped Ayub's 
military regime to consolidate its power. Later 
on the Jamaat turned away from Ayub Khan and 
joined the opposition movement. But true to its 
treacherous nature, the Jamaat, in its usual way, 
stood against the liberation struggle of 
Bangladesh and collaborated with the Pakistani 
army in its genocide of the Bengali population, 
rape of the women, loot and arson.
    The Jamaat in Bangladesh learnt its lesson 
from the past and charted out a clever way of 
re-establishing itself in Bangladesh politics. 
Taking advantage of the post-'75 political 
changes, it re-entered the political arena of 
Bangladesh. It found great political allies 
in Zia and Ershad, but in a clever manoeuvre it 
soon joined the opposition movement.
    After the changes of the '90's, the Jamaat 
started to assert itself. Besides aligning itself 
with the BNP it tried to gather all the Islamic 
forces around it. In this effort it found the 
Mufti of Baitul Mukarram, Moulana Obaidul Huq, a 
great ally, and through him started the Khatme 
Nabuat movement which demanded the declaration of 
the Ahmadiyas as non-Muslims, as was done in 
Pakistan by the military regime of General Ziaul 
Huq at the insistence of the Jamaat. The Khatme 
Nabuat was also joined by others like the 
so-called Pir Sahib of Char Monai, Moulana 
Noorani and others.
    But the main motivating force behind the 
anti-Ahmadiya movement is still the Jamaat as it 
has forced the government to ban the publications 
of the Ahmadiyas. Though the Jamaat pleads 
innocence it cannot explain away the publication 
of the chairman of the standing committee on the 
religious ministry, Moulana Sayeedi, titled 'Why 
the Ahmadiyas are not Muslims', published 
immediately after the ban was imposed.  The Amir 
of Jamaat and industry minister, Matiur Rahman 
Nizami, is also on record declaring anyone 
supporting the Ahmadiyas as Kafirs or 
non-believers. These provocative statements of 
the leaders of the Jamaat are enough to prove 
their involvement in the recent persecution of 
the Ahmadiyas in Bangladesh. They, being in the 
government, forced the people in the 
administration to stand against the Ahmadiyas.
    It is clear to all that Jamaat has the agenda 
of establishing an Islamic state in Bangladesh, 
and it does not mince its words in declaring that 
it wants an Islamic revolution. What makes it 
formidable is that it is far more organised than 
AL or BNP, and it will go to any length to fulfil 
its ambition.

_______


[4]

Indian Express
May 07, 2005
	 
MAKING OF A FUNDAMENTALIST
This is how a professor of psychiatry recently deconstructed the phenomenon
Rakesh Shukla

If Jesus and Mohammed had been born in Alaska 
they would have visualised heaven as hot and hell 
as cold, they lived in a hot place and visualised 
heaven as cold and hell as hot!" These are the 
words of Dr Salman Akhtar, professor of 
psychiatry at Harvard and a leading 
psychoanalyst, speaking on 'The Lure of 
Fundamentalism' in India recently. The brother of 
Javed Akhtar, he is a poet in his own right.

The stresses of engaging with life with its 
shades of grey as a rational adult were sharply 
contrasted to the attractive black-and-white 
world offered by fundamentalism. Terming it as a 
literal, narrow, self-congratulatory variety of 
thinking with 'a little spice of victimhood' 
thrown in, Akhtar pointed out across-the-spectrum 
appeal of the phenomenon. The dogmatism that 
posits "My Book", "My Religion", "My solution" as 
the only 'right' one in opposition to all the 
other 'wrong' ones was brought out very well. 
Comparing fundamentalism to intra-venous morphine 
he showed how its allurements encompass Hindu, 
Jewish, Islamic, Christian and even a certain 
trajectory of Left politics. Several insights 
into the interface of fundamentalism with 
everyday living emerged from the presentation.

Today living involves dealing with factual 
uncertainties and conceptual complexities. Life 
abounds with unpredictables which assail the 
comfort of certainties. There is no absolute 
truth. The same act can look totally different to 
the various protagonists who may not even 
recognise each other's version. There are but 
partial truths depending on your angle of vision.

Except for extremes like cold-blooded murder, one 
has to engage with moral ambiguities rather than 
the simple 'good-bad' binary. Personal 
responsibility for one's behaviour is another 
burden. Acceptance of the hybrid impurity of the 
world rather than pristine purity and the 
finality of death are other crosses we bear. 
Fundamentalism in one stroke solves these 
'burdens' of living. Instead of complexity and 
uncertainty, there is simplicity and certainty. 
Ambiguities are replaced with comforting moral 
clarities like "Muslims are bad, Hindus are 
good". Instead of hybrid variety of nature is 
offered a world of purity: Pure Aryans, Pure 
Muslims, Pure Brahmins. The burden of personal 
responsibility also gets lifted. Fundamentalist 
leaders offer absolution: "Kill the dirty Jews. 
We take responsibility." Acceptance of total 
mortality is replaced by heaven and eternal life.

A threat, real or manufactured, to the factors 
which help bear these burdens for an individual 
like safety, a sense of belonging, opportunities 
for sexual pleasure and generativity sets the 
stage for action. 'Hindus are being persecuted in 
their own country'; 'Dirty Jews violate our pure 
Aryan girls' are examples. The arrival of leaders 
who re-live past glories making you feel noble 
and strong is the final act. The simultaneous 
invocation of past-trauma as if it happened now 
leads to intensification of emotion and justified 
anger against 'them'. Enmeshing with childhood 
trauma of hurt and humiliation group regression 
occurs with loss of criticality and prejudice, 
transforming into malignant prejudice, which 
ultimately coalesces into violence against the 
'Enemy Other' community.

______


[5]


The Economic and Political Weekly
Editorial
May 21, 2005

BHAGALPUR: JUSTICE, ONLY SYMBOLIC

The 1989 Bhagalpur riots claimed nearly 2,000 
lives and left several hundreds among the 
missing. A dissection of the Bhagalpur riots 
would reveal the usual pattern - incitement to 
violence, apathy and even complicity on the part 
of the authorities; commission of enquiry reports 
becoming handy political tools, and justice 
itself elusive or else so long-delayed that it 
ill-serves its purpose. There is much that is 
familiar with other incidents of mass violence 
post-independent India has been witness to, its 
secular credentials indelibly blotted, as 
communities pit themselves against each other. 
And as is the story with similar riot-marred 
areas, Bhagalpur's is also one of unhealed scars.

The recent decision then, by a Bhagalpur lower 
court sentencing 10 riot-accused to life 
imprisonment, becomes, at best, a symbolic 
gesture. Badrul Islam's case had been pending in 
the local courts for 15 years. His father and 
five others were killed in riots in Kamarganj 
village of Bhagalpur. For Badrul Islam, it was a 
long wait for justice but of the other 836 FIRs 
filed, most have been closed by the courts. 
Bhagalpur's victims, most of them Muslims, have 
already lost too much. Fifteen years on, most 
have already sunk into penury, devastated by twin 
blows - the violence and the state's failure to 
follow up on its promises. The promise of 
ensuring that a Bhagalpur would never be repeated 
helped propel Laloo Yadav's triumph in three 
assembly elections in Bihar. Yadav's success was 
built on the twin planks of social justice to 
backwards and secularism, but thus far, these 
have only made for popular election slogans.

The compensation promised by the state government 
was paid to less than one-third of the families 
of the 1,981 victims, listed as the riots' 
official casualties. And it was only in 2002 that 
the state government proposed writing off loans, 
ranging from as little as Rs 12,000 to 15,000, 
that 843 riot victims had been sanctioned in 
1990. In the intervening period, arrest warrants 
had been issued against 12 victims, too poor to 
repay these loans; while cases were registered 
against some others. As for the rioters, 
according to various reports in The Indian 
Express, of 329 chargesheets filed, 125 became 
'untraceable'. But Bhagalpur is not the 
exception. As a police study reveals, riots 
between 1954 and 1996 claimed 16,000 lives while 
over a lakh were grievously injured; the number 
of rioters convicted make up an insignificant 
number. It is a story repeated in more grievous 
dimensions in the instance of the anti-Sikh riots 
of 1984 and threatens to do so for the victims of 
Gujarat 2002. Not only has the state been unable 
to protect its citizens, it has failed in several 
instances to ensure justice.

Possibly scarred by the riots, Bhagalpur's 
Muslims have long voted for the Rashtriya Janata 
Dal, but little has been done to alleviate their 
lot. In most villages, occupations suffered and 
livelihoods were never restored to erstwhile 
levels. Bhagalpur's annual silk exports once 
grossed Rs 200 crore, but poverty now stalks most 
weaving villages. In the early 1980s, under the 
20-point programme, some people received training 
as weavers and were sanctioned loans for 
handlooms; they were also supplied silk yarn from 
exporters on credit. But with the riots, the flow 
of credit stopped and with that earning a 
livelihood became even more of a struggle. In 
some villages, weavers switched to powerlooms but 
those that did not have electricity and could not 
invest in generators, suffered. People were 
forced to switch professions, taking on manual 
labour or moving to the cities. All through the 
1990s, caste clashes - Bara (1992), 
Laxmanpur-Bathe (1997) and Shankarbigha (1999) - 
have been endemic in Bihar, but victims' 
narratives in all instances have the same 
unchanging quality. Fear and a 'victim' complex 
fostered the creation of a captive votebank. 
Elsewhere, in other riot-hit areas, it has 
cemented a state of suspicion between communities 
or led to a permanent polarisation, with 
minorities either ghettoed in clearly demarcated 
areas, as in the walled area of Ahmedabad and 
Delhi's Trilokpuri, or have been rendered 
refugees, forbidden to return as in countless 
instances in Gujarat.

The UPA government's proposed bill on communal 
violence purports to deter such acts of communal 
violence. The bill promises special procedures 
for investigations and speedy trials to ensure 
justice. The bill, whose drafting has now been 
caught in disputes over its provisions for 
special powers to government authorities, will 
not address how the state should cope with the 
aftermath - of rebuilding lives, homes and 
businesses among the victims who have survived 
the violence. This implies not only greater 
attention be paid to rehabilitation but also, 
howsoever difficult, to ensure a possible 
'closure'. This would mean sustained attempts to 
heal lingering hatreds between communities that 
would perhaps help stave future resurgence of 
violence.
______


[6]

BBC News
24 May, 2005, 15:36 GMT 16:36 UK 

RELIGIOUS ROW OVER TSUNAMI RELIEF
By Sunil Raman
BBC News, Kerala

Five months after the tsunami hit the southern 
coast of India, relief work has stalled in the 
southern state of Kerala after a row between 
Hindu and Christian groups.

Right-wing Hindu groups are angry at the local 
administration for allowing Christian 
organisations to participate in the 
reconstruction of homes for the tsunami victims.

They allege that the church is using relief 
programmes as a vehicle for converting Hindus, a 
charge that has been denied.

Driving down the state of Kerala, north of Quilon 
lies a thickly populated strip of palm-fringed 
land called Alappad.

It is bound by sea on one side and Kerala's famous backwaters on the other.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4574799.stm

______


[7]

NDTV.com

SAVARKAR MEMORIAL UNVEILED IN MUMBAI

NDTV Correspondent
Wednesday, May 18, 2005 (Mumbai):
A new memorial to Veer Savarkar is almost ready 
in Mumbai's Shivaji Park on land donated by the 
Congress.
The shiny concrete and glass exteriors of the 
building can fool anyone that it's a corporate 
house.
On the inside the Rs 8.5 crore building has the 
same split personality. On one floor there's a 
museum to the controversial Hindutva icon.
Raising funds
But another floor has been leased out to the 
international accounting and IT consultancy firm 
Price Waterhouse Coopers.
Savarkar's descendants, who are also office 
bearers of the Memorial Trust say it's the only 
way they could have raised money to complete the 
building.
"We went to HDFC to raise funds for this project 
and they have got these private parties on their 
own as lessees to help pay off the loan according 
to our deal with them. Everything is above 
board," said Vikram Savarkar, Veer Savarkar's 
nephew.
Help from the Congress
Ironically, the land for this mammoth memorial 
was donated by a Congress government. Today, 
Savarkar may be an icon for the BJP and the Sena, 
but the trustees acknowledge the Congress did 
more for the trust than the saffron parties.
"When Indira Gandhi was prime minister she had 
donated Rs 1 lakh from her personal account and 
she wanted the memorial to house a museum for all 
freedom fighters who had taken up arms in the 
freedom struggle. But unfortunately after her 
death things changed and the memorial never got 
built," said Vikram Savarkar.
The building will also house an auditorium for 
Marathi theatre, a centre for strategic studies 
and analysis, an air rifle shooting range and a 
gymnasium. But its odd mix of swadeshi and 
videshi is likely to intrigue visitors.


______


[8]

Indian Express
May 21, 2005

MISSION HINDUTVA: VHP'S PLAN IS TO CATCH 'EM YOUNG
Brought from refugee camps in Tripura, kids being trained in Padra
Soumik Dey
Samiala (Vadodara), May 20:	To carry out its 
mission of popularising the concept of Hindutva 
among people in the northeastern states, the 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has set a launch pad 
in Padra. Here, it wants to groom young children 
in the rudiments of the concept so that they go 
back to their places and bring people from other 
faiths to Hinduism.

VHP working president Ashok Singhal last week 
inaugurated Shri Guruji Purwanachal Chatralaya at 
Samiala village near Padra. Singhal had said: 
''Hindus in the North-East are in great threat 
from Christian terrorists and Muslim infiltrators 
from Bangladesh. We need a suitable force to 
defend our faith from them. This hostel is part 
of our efforts for that.''

There are now 20 school-going children staying at 
this new hostel. Here, they are learning to utter 
prayers in Hindi every morning at the hostel's 
'tulsi mandaps' and being acquainted with slogans 
like 'Jai Shri Ram'.

On Saturday, 10-year-old Devendra from Mizoram 
had impressed the VHP leader by reciting the 
'adivasi sankulan geet' in clear Gujarati. The 
boys go to Gujrati, English and Hindi medium 
schools in Padra and Vadodara for regular 
education.

These children, all from the Riyang tribe in 
Mizoram, have been sourced by VHP's sister 
organisation, Uttar Purwanachal Jan Jati Samity, 
from refugee camps in Tripura. ''Some of them 
were earlier staying at our Padra hostel with 
tribal students from Gujarat. But vast cultural 
differences among them prompted us to set up a 
separate hostel,'' VHP activist and trustee Vijay 
Pranami says, adding that another 20 boys are 
expected to join the hostel in June.

He says a VHP fellow activist holding Gandhian 
values had donated the land for the hostel. 
''Samutkarsh Foundation, our trust, has taken the 
responsibility to run it,'' he adds.

''This is part of the social service extended to 
members of the Hindu community. The church is 
terrorising people to have them converted and 
these people are refugees. We are aiding 
displaced Hindus and imbibing 'Bharat Bhakti' and 
'Hindu Sanskar' in them. They, in turn, will 
educate their people when they go back to their 
native places,'' said Arvind Brahmbhatt, VHP 
organising secretary for Gujarat and Rajasthan.

The VHP has changed the tribal names of some of 
the boys for ease in pronounciation. ''My parents 
are farmers in a Tripura village. One Dr 
Dhananjay had got in touch with them offering 
education for me... It is alright here,'' said 
Lalrinthangba alias Lalji, who is in Std III at 
GEB School, Vadodara.

Lalmarpe, who is in Std XI (Commerce), is the 
oldest of the lot. He had been specially brought 
here a year back when the organisers had a 
communication problem with the children. 
Lalmarpe, now Naresh, was a church-goer and was 
studying at Mary John School in Aizwal.

''Dr Dhananjay, who had been trained in Kanpur, 
told my parents that Praveen Togadia wanted more 
youths from the community to be part of the 
social project here. I was unwilling to come, but 
my parents thought it would be good for my 
education,'' said Lalmarpe, adding ''we are all 
Hindus now. Only one of my brothers had decided 
to stick to Christianity.''

Asked about his ambition, Lalmarpe said: ''I want 
to become a lawyer and an activist like Dr 
Dhananjay. I will tell my people and educate them 
about Hindu values and Hindi.''

Brahmbhatt says they are trying to provide the 
children with ample feel-good factors so that 
they concentrate on adopting ''our sanskars'' 
fully. ''Inko desh bhakt banake bhejenge,'' he 
says.

When fully functional, the hostel will house at 
least 40 boys in four of its rooms. A play 
ground, a cultural stage and a gymkhana will be 
in place soon.

''These will come with more donations by getting 
life members. We are also asking people to adopt 
one child for an estimated expenditure of Rs 
12,000 a year,'' said Parnami.

According to Brahmbhatt, about 35 boys from 
Tripura and Assam are also kept at a similar 
hostel in Banswada, Rajasthan. The hostel is run 
by Bhartiya Jan Sewa Pratisthan and the inmates 
are sent to the trust's school there.

______


[9]



The Hindu
May 01, 2005
Literary Review


Gender Studies

Untold stories

RANJITA BISWAS

Coming out of Partition is a significant addition 
to the lean corpus of analytical studies on the 
Partition vis-à-vis the eastern border.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming Out of Partition : Refugee Women of 
Bengal, Gargi Chakravartty, Bluejay Books, Rs. 
295.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

IT does not need elaborating that the emergence 
of the subcontinent from colonial rule and 
subsequent division into two entities were at a 
great human cost. There is a considerable corpus 
of books examining the Partition from different 
angles, political, historical, sociological, etc. 
But only recently, during the golden jubilee 
celebration of Indian Independence in fact, that 
attention was drawn to the "other" voice: the 
voice of the women who suffered greatly in the 
bloody aftermath. Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin's 
Borders & Boundaries: Women in India's Partition 
revealed the shearing tales of women who lived 
through that traumatic phase in the western 
border. Then there was Urvashi Butalia's The 
Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition 
of India focusing on the experiences of women who 
survived the convulsive division.

Unexplored space

But, even though the eastern front was divided 
too into West Bengal and East Pakistan, and even 
here large-scale displacement happened, the story 
of Bengali women remained unexplored, except 
perhaps in creative writing, particularly by 
women writers.

Gargi Chakravartty's Coming Out of Partition : 
Refugee Women of Bengal painstakingly chronicles 
those times through the eyes of Bengali women 
when the very fabric of the society was shaken 
with the impact of the birth pangs of the twin 
countries. What inspired the author to explore 
those dark recesses of memory and social history 
was her own longing to find her roots as she 
listened to the stories of Opar Bangla (the other 
side of Bengal) told by older members of her 
family who, like many others, were uprooted from 
their homeland. Living in the proximity of a 
refugee colony peopled with displaced families 
from the erstwhile East Pakistan also raised her 
curiosity to delve deeper because, "The stories 
of these women do not feature in any Partition 
account, which either narrates the political 
bifurcation of a nation state or documents 
incidences of sexual violence in the context of 
the Partition-related communal mayhem".

There is, however, an important distinction 
between the western and eastern fronts, as 
historian Tanika Sarkar points out in the 
Foreword to the book: "Unlike Punjab, Bengal did 
not experience a single, compressed moment of 
massive violence... Partition here was a very 
long term process. It is, in fact, difficult to 
put a definite closure on the process". This was 
also argued by Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan 
Dasgupta in Voices of Women in Bengal Partition, 
as they tried to look at the continuous process 
from 1947 to as late as 1971, when the Bangladesh 
war led to a fresh exodus to Bengal

While trying to construct a picture of women in 
those times of upheaval, Chakravartty draws 
extensively from oral narratives and published 
material. But what is more important is that she 
goes beyond to examine the impact of the change 
on the status of Bengali women, as also the 
impact these women have had acting as catalysts 
for that change.

Chakravartty begins with the chapter "Abandoned 
Ancestral Home" to furnish a background of the 
exodus to the Indian side. However, many Bengalis 
thought that "it was a temporary affair. Hence, 
despite the violence, 1,33,00,000 Hindus 
initially stayed back in East Pakistan". But once 
it became a reality, these women from refugee 
colonies showed tremendous grit to cope and make 
a new beginning like Nita's character in Ritwik 
Ghatak's heart-rending film "Meghe Dhaka Tara". 
This was also the beginning of political activism 
among Bengali women though the seeds of Communism 
were sown earlier during the great Bengal famine 
in 1943 when 3.5 million people died of 
starvation and which had tremendous impact on the 
women as it "killed the ideas of social morality 
and promoted trading in immoral traffic".

The other story

The following chapter, "The Crossover", showcases 
the growing presence of women in the new social 
and cultural milieu of the state. As Chakravartty 
rightly says, "Crossing the border was not a 
simple stepping into West Bengal from East 
Bengal. The new migrants were faced suddenly with 
situations alien to their culture". To the 
outside world, this would seem somewhat puzzling 
since the language and general lifestyle of both 
the regions are perceived as the same but East 
Bengal's social ambience, food habits, even 
dialects were different from West Bengal. It also 
meant that more women joined the workforce 
struggling to make a living and that was "an end 
of andarmahal, the segregation of women from the 
outside world". The author importantly points out 
that while the gender dimension of Partition 
stories evokes images of violence, rape etc., 
there is also an "other story" - the silent 
metamorphosis of a woman's life. Sharing economic 
burden of the family was a "new phenomenon in the 
trajectory of women's search for identity in 
Bengal". Not that it was a smooth transition. 
Conservative values and the new realities often 
put the woman in an unenviable position but that 
there could also be an acceptance of the new 
reality was beautifully portrayed in Satyajit 
Ray's "Mahanagar".

Chakravartty also makes a vital point by adding a 
chapter on the Bengali Muslim women, their 
position in the Hindu majority India and their 
migration to East Pakistan which also made a 
difference to the society there, particularly by 
educated Muslim women.

Full of anecdotes, nuggets from oral history, as 
also official documents, Chakravartty's book 
sometimes seems burdened by repetitions while 
making a point, but it is a significant addition 
to the lean corpus of analytical studies on the 
Partition vis-à-vis the eastern border. And, the 
importance is not confined to gender studies 
alone but to social history of the country as a 
whole.


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