SACW | 30 May 2005
sacw
aiindex at mnet.fr
Sun May 29 19:43:56 CDT 2005
South Asia Citizens Wire | 30 May, 2005
[1] Religions and Unreason
- New Age Drivel and Superstition Posing As Science . . . (Johann Hari)
- Far from eradicating illiberalism,
anti-blasphemy laws actually encourage it (Nick
Cohen)
[2] Pakistan: Media Freedom trimmed (I.A. Rehman)
[3] India: The proposed law on communal violence
won't prevent a Gujarat (Harsh Mander)
[4] India: Babri Masjid demolition inquiry and
lies of the Kalyan Singh government (Ajmer Singh)
[5] India: A report from the 'Rozgar Adhikar
Yatra' [A Citizens March for the Right to work]
[6] Publication Announcements:
(i) The Wrongs of the Religious Right:
Reflections on Science, Secularism and Hindutva
by Meera Nanda
(ii) Gateway to the East: A Symposium on
Northeast India and the Look East Policy -
Seminar Issue - June 2005
--------------
[1]
The Independent (UK)
25 May 2005
NEW AGE DRIVEL AND SUPERSTITION POSING AS SCIENCE ARE THREATENING OUR PROGRESS
Johann Hari
It used to be easy to spot attacks on science. A
Southern pastor would wave the Bible and hiccup
that he wasn't descended from no monkey. An
African village would refuse vaccines, preferring
the hallucinatory treatments of the local sage.
New Age fortune-tellers would sell their potions
in fairgrounds. All would be quickly dismissed by
people who could see the fruits of science every
time they flicked a light-switch or headed to
their GP.
But over the past few decades, the enemies of
science have evolved (oh, the irony). Rather than
attacking the Enlightenment from the front,
pedlars of irrationalist and superstitious
theories have begun to claim that their beliefs
are simply alternative and equally valid
scientific theories. They have adopted the style
(but not the techniques) of scientific discourse.
Now, they construct fake evidence to meet their
preordained religious conclusions " and demand
scientific respect for it.
So today, the Southern pastor doesn't wave the
Bible; he waves a collection of apparently
scientific papers about 'Intelligent Design
Theory' that claim to prove the world must have
been created by a conscious intelligence. The New
Age fortune-tellers have a whole section in every
pharmacy headed 'alternative medicine'. And many
defenders of the Enlightenment " afraid of
falsely being dubbed intolerant " have shut up
and accepted it. The result is that global
understanding of science is being slowly
contaminated.
If you want an example of this new
pseudo-science, check out the dismal,
brain-rotting new movie What the Bleep Do We
Know? which arrives fresh from sleeper-success in
the States. Marlee Matlin plays a woman who is
having a strange day; she meets a boy who is
capable of bizarre physical tricks, and he asks
her, 'How far down the rabbit-hole do you want to
go?'
The film claims to be a serious study of the
philosophical implications of quantum physics,
and Matlin's story is intercut with interviews
from people who seem to be scientists. At first,
they simply point out some of the extraordinary
things that have emerged from the study of matter
at a quantum (sub-molecular) level. But gradually
the film begins to stir in unscientific (and
absurd) extrapolations from quantum physics. The
movie's 'scientists' begin to claim that
discoveries in quantum physics provide proof for
a whole range of fantastical New Age claims. They
say you can walk on water if only 'you believe it
with every fibre of your being'.
The real scientist Richard Dawkins summarises the
film's assumptions: 'Quantum physics is deeply
mysterious and incomprehensible. Eastern
spirituality is deeply mysterious and
incomprehensible. Therefore they must be saying
the same thing.' Sadly, Dawkins' reaction is an
exception; many newspapers have lauded the film
as a 'brilliant scientific study'.
Okay, so it's a dumb movie, you might think, but
what harm does it do? On its own, very little.
But What the Bleep ... bears all the hallmarks of
the new pseudo-sciences. One typical tactic is to
take a gap in scientific evidence and fill it
with faith-based claims. For example, geologists
have discovered a gap in the fossil record which
makes it hard to explain how evolution worked at
certain periods. The neo-creationists seize on
this and claim it as 'proof' that evolution
didn't happen at all. (Incredibly, over 40 per
cent of Americans believe them). The New Agers do
the same with the gaps in quantum physics.
In the case of New Age spirituality, little
physical harm is done. A few dupes are sold
worthless 'alternative medicines'; a few gullible
people might end up embarrassingly splashing
about at the bottom of a river after trying to
walk on it. Even in the case of creationism, it's
hard to show substantial harm. Some children are
cheated of a real scientific education and taught
an outright lie, but nobody is dying as a result.
But the failure of defenders of the Enlightenment
to stand up against this erosion of science is
leading to deaths in some of the poorest
countries in the world. Since the 1970s and the
rise of postmodernism, it has become popular to
view science as a Western, imperialist system, no
better or worse than other 'indigenous forms of
knowledge'. Some leaders in developing countries
have taken this seriously " and the victims have
been their own people. The South African
President Thabo Mbeki has enthusiastically picked
up this rhetoric, attacking the 'hegemony' of
Western science and claiming it is 'colonialist'
to argue HIV causes Aids. He has latched on to a
scientist called Peter Duesberg, who says that
Aids is caused by poverty and cannot be
transmitted by heterosexual sex. The result? Over
70,000 children are now born every year with HIV
in South Africa " a great victory over
imperialism.
Similarly, the Hindu fundamentalist BJP party
that governed India from 1998 to 2004
aggressively promoted something called 'Vedic
science'. This claims that all scientific
knowledge can be found in the Hindu sacred texts
that were revealed 'in a flash' over a millennium
ago. The best scientific techniques are not
experimentation and verification but yoga and
meditation. It is, in other words, not science
but religion. As a result, India's earthquake
prediction systems were steered away from
scientific method towards 'Vedic' practices. The
Department of Health invested millions in the
research, development and sale of cow urine as a
treatment for TB and Aids.
This injection of multiculturalism and relativism
into science has not done any harm to privileged
Westerners, who revert to real medicine the
moment they get seriously ill. But it has been a
disaster for poor countries.
Dawkins has debunked this relativism best, saying
simply, 'Science works. An African tribe might
believe that the moon is an old cooking pot throw
up into the sky, but that doesn't get you to the
moon. Science does. Show me a relativist at
30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite.'
Yet fewer and fewer people seem able to spot the
difference between science and pseudo-science.
The people who stuff their faces with
'alternative medicines' (now available on the NHS
in some parts of Britain) are no more scientific
than Thabo Mbeki or the BJP. Science-sapping
postmodernists have popularised a false equality
between sense and nonsense. This has replaced the
real equality of all people before the rigours of
the scientific method, which is not 'Western' "
just ask the Arabs who pioneered it, or the tens
of millions of people in Africa whose lives have
been saved by the scientific eradication of
smallpox.
But if we in the developed world cannot resist
the rise of New Age drivel and neo-creationism,
if even we say it's all relative, what hope do
people in more desperate circumstances have
against their own anti-scientific charlatans?
o o o o
The Observer (UK)
May 29, 2005
Without prejudice
A FREEDOM TO OPPRESS
Far from eradicating illiberalism, anti-blasphemy laws actually encourage it
Nick Cohen
Anyone who has seen the films of Michael Moore or
read the vaguely leftish books which pour out of
America might imagine that they don't need to be
told the background to the Workplace Religious
Freedom Act currently before the US Congress.
After the loud campaigns to allow prayers and
creationism into US schools, a working assumption
would be that Republicans, probably in the pocket
of Halliburton or Exxon, were once again playing
on the ineradicable paranoia of the religious by
claiming that Christians were being persecuted by
employers. With the votes of the credulous
sewn-up, they would be free to concentrate on
destroying rainforests and dining on seals. But
not a bit of it. The act is sponsored by those
great liberals, Hillary Clinton and John Kerry,
who maintain that it is the logical extension of
the movement to uphold the rights of women,
blacks and homosexuals.
The same pattern is being repeated across the
democratic world. In Italy, a journalist, Oriana
Fallaci, faces trial for writing a book which is
'unequivocally offensive to Islam'. The alleged
crime of The Rage and the Pride is to insist
there is an unbridgeable divide between the
Islamic world and the West. What she says may not
be true, although it certainly is true of
Islamism and the West, which have armies at war
to prove it. It's also the case that even by the
standards of Italian journalism, Fallaci is a
raging prima donna. Still, since when has it been
a criminal offence for prima donnas to sing,
however tunelessly?
If Tony Blair has his way, his government will
soon be censoring critics of each and every
religion for the crime of inciting religious
hatred. As I write, the radio reports that the
Sunni Muslims of al-Qaeda are slaughtering Shia
Muslims in Iraq. As true believers, they kill
because they necessarily believe that every other
religion incites hatred against them. In these
circumstances, a universal blasphemy law is an
oxymoron as well as an assault on the victories
of the Enlightenment, but the government either
doesn't know or doesn't care. The wise course for
a centre-left party is to prosecute ideas.
In the Queen's Speech, the government went
further and announced it would create a new
Commission for Equality and Human Rights, which
sounds liberal and cuddly. It's only when you get
to the detail you find that the commission will
fight all those who have prejudices about
'gender, race, disability, sexual orientation,
age, religion and belief'.
Belief? What beliefs? Are the censors planning to
take their ideas to the conclusion and prohibit
the incitement of hatred against all other
beliefs. It makes as much sense (or as much
nonsense) to have a law preventing offensive
attacks on Blairism or romanticism or Europeanism
as Judaism and Hinduism and satanism. Unless,
that is, you somehow imagine that religious
beliefs - all of them and all at the same time -
are truer than the ideas of mortal men.
Corporate Britain is mooing along with the
political herd. Human resources managers from BT,
Accenture, Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland,
B&Q, Shell, the Co-operative Group and the BBC
came together last month to form the Employers'
Forum on Belief. It will 'recognise the religious
needs of employees and promote good business
practice toward religious belief'. Allowing Sikhs
to wear turbans at work or the devout to
celebrate religious holidays sounds innocuous,
although the National Secular Society has asked
whether irreligious employees will have to cover
for them during prayer breaks and festivals. To
date, it hasn't had a reply.
The idea behind the upsurge in demand for benefit
of the clergy is that the religious are the
victims of injustice in developed countries
rather than of a long, slow intellectual defeat
in the free exchange of ideas. The cries from the
persecuted are hard to square with the following
story.
A condom used by the boyfriend of Kerrie Gooch, a
respectable woman from Swindon, broke while they
were making love. She went to the local Lloyds
Pharmacy, where the Catholic chemist refused to
sell her the morning-after pill. After six hours
of searching, she managed to find a chemist who
would help her. 'I don't want someone else making
a decision like this for me,' she protested.
Women have complained about chemists at Asda
stores in Stockport and Sheffield which refuse to
sell the morning-after pill and a Muslim chemist
at a Boots in the East End of London who refused
to sell contraceptives. At least he had the
virtue of consistency. You don't have to be happy
about the number of abortions to know the
difference between taking the morning-after pill
and killing a 20-week-old foetus. If you don't,
you may as well believe that every sperm is
sacred and ban contraception.
Ms Gooch asked: 'What gives the pharmacist the
right to play God?' As good a question is: who
else is playing God? We don't know how many women
slink off after a public scene and have an
unwanted child or an abortion.
My guess is that not very many in our secular
country. In the US by contrast, chemists who
refuse contraception are so commonplace that
Governor Rod R Blagojevich of Illinois has
introduced an emergency order to make it illegal
for pharmacists to turn away women with a
prescription for birth control. 'No delays. No
hassles. No lectures,' he demanded. His law may
not survive because chemists in Britain and
America can refuse to act against their
consciences and big businesses have the right not
to offend religious pressure groups, which is why
Wal-Mart refuses to stock the morning-after pill.
Clinton and Kerry are not therefore proposing to
give rights to people who must presently go naked
into a godless world. Since 1977, American
employers have had to make 'reasonable
accommodation' for the religious beliefs of
employees and allow them to follow religious
fashions and observe festivals. The American
Civil Liberties Union made a good guess at what
would happen if Clinton and Kerry got there way
by looking at the claims which have failed under
the existing law but may have a chance of success
if privileges were extended.
Many were from police officers who wouldn't
protect abortion clinics. But the majority were
from devotees who complained about their
employers' refusal to allow them to express their
religious beliefs: a nurse from Connecticut who
was reprimanded for telling an Aids victim and
his boyfriend that their homosexuality was
contrary to God's will, for instance; a social
worker who was disciplined for treating a captive
audience of prisoners to exorcisms.
They complained their freedom of conscience had
been infringed. In a sense, they were right. A
truly fundamentalist theory has to hold that a
believer can no more accept the separation of
private and public than the separation of church
and state. Their life and faith must be one and
no compromises can be made. In the past, most
people who lived outside theocracies either
compromised or withdrew into communities where
they found sanctuary from the profane by living
and working with co-believers.
Now, in the name of tolerance, the institutions
of the profane are agreeing to compromise with
fundamentalism and, in the process,
multiculturalism is manufacturing culture.
American civil libertarians fear that nurses who
want to denounce gays or social workers who want
to cast out prisoners' demons but don't because
of the restraints of the rest of society will be
emboldened by their new rights. What was a
private conviction would become a public act.
It's not necessarily a hysterical fear. We saw
the multicultural production line at work in the
protests against Jerry Springer: the Opera. The
show had run at the National Theatre without any
trouble, but after a religious rabble silenced a
young Sikh playwright in Birmingham and Blair
promised a universal blasphemy law, they thought
it was worth attacking the BBC. A British
religious right was created. Its members were
always there, but our strange liberalism made
them a visible force in public life.
Everyone knows that the contradiction of
liberalism is that its commitments to tolerance
and freedom conflict when the intolerant demand
the freedom to be illiberal. It's also the case
that liberals can become ugly and intolerant when
they use force to make others become liberal.
None the less, you might have expected that the
governments of the countries which send young men
and women to fight fanaticism on foreign fields
wouldn't be using the majesty of their laws to
nurture fanaticism at home.
______
[2]
The News on Sunday
May 29, 2005
MEDIA FREEDOM TRIMMED
A USEFUL INDEX OF A SOCIETY'S PROGRESS IS ITS
DECLINING RELIANCE ON THOUGHT REGULATION. AND
VICE VERSA. A LOOK AT CHANGES IN PEMRA ORDINANCE
By I.A. Rehman
The amendments to the Pakistan Electronic Media
Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) Ordinance, adopted
by the National Assembly recently, are clearly
designed to tighten government control over the
fast burgeoning electronic media. There is little
hope that the PFUJ call for a national debate on
these changes, before the relevant bill is
discussed in the Senate, will be heeded by
Authority. One should therefore be prepared to
witness the latest attempt at thought control in
Pakistan.
Measures to regulate the working of the media are
almost always designed to control and censor
information. Since radio and TV had traditionally
been state monopolies the need for an authority
to control the electronic media arose only when
licences to private broadcasters could no longer
be denied. The first law, the Electronic Media
Regulatory Authority (EMRA) Ordinance, came in
February 1997. It was replaced by the PEMRA
Ordinance of 2002, and that is now going to be
comprehensively mauled vide the amendment bill.
As usual in such cases, restrictions on freedom
of expression are clothed in proclamations of
noble ideas. The objects of the EMRA Ordinance of
1997 were described in the following words:
Whereas it is necessary to provide for the
development of electronic media in order to
improve the standards of information, education
and entertainment and to enlarge the choice
available to the people of Pakistan in the media
for news, current affairs, religions knowledge,
art, culture, science, technology, economic
development, social sector concerns, music,
sports, drama and other subjects of public and
national interest.
In the PEMRA Ordinance of 2002, two new objects
were added to the text given above:
(to) facilitate the devolution of responsibility
and power to the grass roots by improving the
access of the people to mass media at the local
and community levels: and
(to) ensure accountability, transparency and good
governance by optimizing the free flow of
information.
(Incidentally, the omission of expressions such
as democracy, justice, and human rights from the
narration of media objectives could not have been
fortuitous.)
Now, the principles and norms of censorship,
which includes information control, are neither
universal nor immutable. The most widely accepted
justification for censorship/media regulation is
that it is a necessary evil to be applied to
individuals and societies whose minds and habits
have not acquired the maturity to absorb free
flow of ideas and cultural concepts without
injury to national codes. Further, it is
understood that censorship rigours must ease as
society's intellectual and social capital grows,
and that a time may come when censorship/media
control will not be required.
A useful index of a society's progress is its
declining reliance on thought/information
regulation. And vice versa. Whoever is interested
in the Pakistan society's mental health and
social advancement must view PEMRA, a bad law
made worse by the fresh amendments, in this
context.
The existing law and the amendments can be assailed on the following grounds:
1. The Electronic Media Regulatory Authority was
set up to control the working of broadcasters in
the private sector only. Pakistan Broadcasting
Corporation, the Pakistan Television Corporation,
and the Shalimar Recording Company (STN) are not
subject to PEMRA Ordinance. This means that the
high sounding PEMRA objectives, especially
development of media for socially desirable
tasks, are not recommended to the electronic
media already under state control. In other
words, regulation of electronic media means
imposition of control/censorship over channels
outside the public sector.
2. The Ordinance of 2002 has a provision (not
found in the ordinance of 1997) to the effect
that the Federal Government has the power to
issue directives to PEMRA on matters of policy
and PEMRA is bound to follow these directives.
That is, PEMRA is not an autonomous body.
3. The Chairman and the members of PEMRA are to
be appointed by the President. Under the
Ordinance of 1997, the Chairman had to be a
retired judge of the Supreme Court. But in the
Ordinance of 2002 the Chairman of the Authority
"shall be an eminent professional of known
integrity and competence having substantial
experience in media, business, management,
finance, economic affairs, or law." It will be
interesting to find out why the retired judges of
the apex court were deprived of their entitlement
to head PEMRA. Were they considered less amenable
to government advice than 'eminent professionals?'
4. Under the 1997 law the Authority was to have
six members besides the Chairman -- Information
Secretary, Communication Secretary, and four
public figures (one expert on radio, another on
television, a third on print media and the fourth
on public service). Under the 2002 law the
members number is nine, one is to be appointed by
the Federal Government on full time basis and
five are eminent citizens with expertise in
media, law, human rights, and social service (two
of them women), and three ex-officio members --
Information Secretary, Interior Secretary and the
Chairman of Pakistan Telecommunication Authority.
This section has been amended now to provide for
three more official members. Thus eight out of
the 13 members of the Authority will be
government representatives and there is no
guarantee that the five eminent citizens would be
independent of government.
5. The 2002 law clearly states that the licensee
will be obliged to broadcast or distribute
programmes referred to it by the Federal
Government or the Authority. This provision is
common to laws on all media-control bodies.
6. Section 21 of the 2002 law provided for
consultation with the provincial governments on
location of new enterprises but this condition
has been dropped by the amendment. That is, even
a small concession to provincial authority is
unwelcome.
7. The Authority can revoke a licence on a number
of grounds and one of them is 'reason of
necessity in the public interest' and when action
is taken on this ground there is no need to issue
a show cause notice, which is required before
action on any other ground.
8. Both the laws of 1997 and 2002 provided for
inspection of premises and access to authority's
representatives but in the recent amendment the
police have been authorized to take action
against broadcasters and their staff.
9. Much has been made of the amendment which
strikes down the provision against private
monopolies and the bar to cross media ownership
which was a feature of both the legislations of
1997 and 2002. One is not sure that the proposed
change will make for greater freedom of
expression, because, the bigger an enterprise,
the more vulnerable it is to official pressure.
It is easy to see that over a period of less than
10 years the government has been trying to
increase its hold over private electronic media
and make it subject to the same regulations as it
has devised for the state controlled
broadcasters. The conclusions are obvious: either
Pakistani citizens and the society as a whole
have become progressively more immature over the
years or the custodians of power have become
progressively more insecure over the same period.
This is the essence of the various shapes
attempts at censorship and regulation of thought
take.
Unfortunately the view that the latter may be the
case is strengthened by two factors. First the
government did not realise the need for an open
public debate on its amendment proposals and
there are complaints that even the standing
committee was not allowed to fully debate the
amendment bill. Secondly the changes in PEMRA
come at a time when there is evidence of other
attacks on freedom of expression, such as revival
of press advice and stoppage of government
advertisements to independent or unfriendly
publications.
_______
[3]
The Indian Express
April 27, 2005
THIS LAW WON'T PREVENT A GUJARAT
We need a law specifying what the state must do
in situations of communal violence
by Harsh Mander
In a nation still deeply wounded by the
state-sponsored communal massacre in Gujarat in
2002, one of the most significant pledges made by
the newly installed UPA government was to
introduce a law that would effectively prevent
the recurrence of such crimes. It took a year and
considerable prodding for the government to
produce its draft. Yet, what has emerged has been
deeply disappointing.
The proposed Communal Violence (Suppression)
Bill, 2005, arms the government with wide powers
to control communal violence, including of arrest
and search without warrant. It enhances the
punishment that can be awarded for offences in
riots, and permits the government to set up
special courts and police stations. These courts
can hear cases at any protected place, and can
order that the confidentiality of witnesses be
maintained. For relief and rehabilitation, the
state government is mandated to nominate a
committee of mainly official and some
non-official members selected by it, which will
advise and assist the government in its duties.
A superficial reading of the bill suggests that
it is an unexceptionable, even welcome code,
which will assist future governments to better
control communal violence and ensure justice to
the survivors. However, the benchmark of the
merit of the proposed law should be that if it
was enacted when the Gujarat mass violence
unfolded, or indeed the '84 Sikh riots, would it
have influenced the conduct of recalcitrant state
authorities in terms of ensuring that they take
all the necessary steps to protect the victim and
prosecute the guilty? The answer is that this law
would have made absolutely no difference to a
government driven by a communal agenda.
The problem today is not that the state lacks the
powers to take any of the steps envisaged in the
new law. The predicament in the worst bloody
communal conflagrations of the past, climaxed by
the shame of Gujarat, is that the governments
chose not to use the powers they were already
equipped with, for the protection of minorities
and the defence of justice, or worse, they used
their powers malevolently against the victims of
communal violence if they were minorities. The
new law does nothing whatsoever to ensure that
they will now be forced to perform their
fundamental duties, or face legal action.
The law as proposed is at best irrelevant to the
challenges of communal governance and, at worst,
dangerous, because many of the special powers
such as of search and arrest can be used against
minorities in the same way as Modi consistently
misused the powers under POTA. The governments of
today do not require greater powers, but greater
moral and legal accountability.
The principal departure in the drafts proposed by
human rights activists, but ignored by the
government, was that the law should not simply
allow the state to act in specified ways in
communal contexts. As argued above, if a state
chooses even without the new law to act in these
ways, it already has the powers to do so. What is
desperately required against malevolent and
partisan state power, is a law that specifies all
that the state must do in these situations. If
state authorities fail to perform these duties
today, as an unrepentant Modi and his
administration has chosen to do, their moral
failures are unarguable, even so it is difficult
to hold them legally accountable for these
crimes. It is for this reason that we need a law
that lists the mandatory duties of the state,
failing which they can be criminally prosecuted
as well as dismissed.
The first binding duty of the state must be to
take legal action against all hate propaganda -
in speeches, publications and textbooks, and
communal mobilisation. The second is to use the
maximum force, including deployment of armed
forces, in the shortest time to control communal
violence when it breaks out. No riot can continue
for more than a few hours without the active
complicity of state authorities. This monumental
crime against humanity must be explicitly and
severely punishable under the new law.
In the aftermath of the violence, it must be
obligatory for the state to set up relief camps
with international standards, for people rendered
homeless by the violence and the fear, for as
long as the survivors do not feel secure enough
to return to their old homes. It must extend
reparation to guarantee that the survivors are
restored shelters and livelihoods, at least to
the levels before the violence. These are
decisions that cannot be left to committees
nominated by the government. Modi had also set up
such committees, but they did nothing to prevent
the state from refusing to assist the victims
according to the norms of a civilised society.
The provisions for legal justice in the aftermath
of the violence are even more disappointing.
There are no measures for witness protection
beyond guarding their confidentiality. There are
no provisions for independent investigation, and
it is the government that constitutes the special
courts and nominates the prosecutors. Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh pledged when he assumed
office that the carnages of 1984 and 2002 will
never be allowed to be repeated. There is nothing
in the new law that redeems that pledge.
______
[4]
Tehelka.com - June 04 , 2005
DEMOLISHERS IN THE DOCK
Former UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh ignored
state intelligence inputs on the threat to the
Babri mosque in 1992, and lied to the Centre in a
secret communication. Former Deputy Prime
Minister LK Advani misquoted Nehru to justify the
elaborate rituals for the construction of the Ram
temple. These facts were revealed during their
cross-examination by the Liberhan Commission of
Inquiry probing the outrage. Ajmer Singh reports
The Babri Masjid demolition inquiry and the
cross-examination of key witnesses by the
Liberhan Commission of Inquiry, which is
currently on, has exposed some of the blatant
lies of the Kalyan Singh government, which was in
power at that time in UP.
It is now revealed that Kalyan Singh, as the
chief minister, had written intelligence inputs
about the threat to the disputed structure from
the state police, but he lied about it in a
secret communication to the Government of India.
Even the Central government's secret
communication, in this context, was ignored by
the state government.
Moreover, former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani
and Singh, in their written statements to the
commission, wrongly claimed that the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad (vhp) owned the disputed land, which in
fact belonged to the government. The commission
records, accessed by Tehelka, also reveal that
Advani distorted facts regarding reconstruction
of the Somnath temple, while drawing parallels
with the Ram temple. (see box)
A few months before the demolition, Singh had
written to the Centre that security arrangements
were in place and there was no threat to the
Babri Masjid, even though the state government
had received an intelligence report suggesting a
serious threat to the disputed structure, as some
security barricades had been removed and massive
digging and levelling work had begun around the
complex.
The Union home ministry had also cautioned the
state government about the threat to the
structure. Tehelka is in possession of the secret
report dated June 7, 1992, prepared by the
intelligence wing of the UP police and signed by
the then Superintendent of Police, GK Shukla, and
the goi secret reports dated May 29, May 30 and
June 3, 1992.
Former Union Minister of State for Home MM Jacob
had written to the chief minister that there was
a deliberate attempt to raze the structure, and
that some speakers had declared that the next
phase of the Ram temple would involve the
demolition of the Babri Masjid.
According to the state intelligence report dated
June 7, 1992 (translated from Hindi): "After the
levelling work around the disputed structure and
dumping of earth towards the western side,
security arrangements of the disputed structure
have weakened. The removal of the outer security
ring has made access to the disputed structure
much easier, and dumping of earth near the
barricades towards western and southern sides
have further facilitated access. Towards the
western side of the disputed structure, iron
gates have been installed to prevent entry, but
it is not safe in the absence of barbed wire and
locks, as anyone can enter the disputed structure
after opening the gate."
The report further stated: "In order to bring a
bad name to the bjp government and create serious
problems for the district administration, any
determined or anti-social element or Opposition
party could damage the disputed structure. After
levelling work was carried out around the
disputed structure, security personnel
(Provincial Armed Constabulary) did not stay as
alert as they were earlier, and followers of the
vhp and Bajrang Dal were rarely stopped by them.
There is a need to reconsider and strengthen
security arrangements within the Ram
Janmabhoomi/Babri Masjid disputed structure."
The Singh government, after receiving this
report, forwarded a contradictory report (in
possession of Tehelka, dated June 16, 1992) to
the Centre. The report said that there was no
let-up in the security of the structure, and
after the construction of the perimeter wall,
security arrangements are stronger than before.
It said, sentries were on duty 24 hours, closed
circuit cameras were in place, and devotees were
being searched. It also said that there was no
threat to the structure from digging or levelling
and there would be no water-logging. "I assure
you that from time to time security arrangements
are being reviewed and security of the disputed
structure is of utmost importance to the state,"
Singh said in his letter.
Alarmed at the digging and levelling work, which
was never explained by the state government,
Union Home Minister SB Chavan had already written
to the former chief minister on May 29, 1992,
"Šin this connection I wish to state that the
construction of the compound wall does not
obviate the need for having barricades and the
concertina wires. If a determined crowd within
the walled enclosures attempts to cause damage to
the structure, there will be no physical barrier
which could stop them in the absence of the
barricades. I would, therefore like to reiterate
the need for restoring the barricades which have
been removedŠI would also like to mention the
apprehension that the digging undertaken recently
near the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid structure
in the course of levelling the ground is likely
to endanger the structure itselfŠ"
Jacob had also written to the former chief
minister on May 30, 1992: "ŠDigging operations
which are reported to have reached a depth of
about 10 ft in front of the structure would lead
to collection of water during rains resulting in
seepage to the depth of the foundation, weakening
it in the process. The allegation is that this is
being done deliberately so that the structure
collapses on its ownŠ Dumping of earth on the
western and southern side of the structure, in
some places almost up to the height of the
perimeter wall, on the one hand, and the height
of the fencing around the structure on the other,
has rendered ineffective whatever protection to
the structure was afforded by the perimeter wall
and the fencing."
"If dumping of earth is continued in this manner,
very soon the level of the ground at least on the
western side would reach the top of the fencing
making access to the structure from the rear,
relatively easyŠWith the removal of the outer
cordon arrangement which included 12 barricades
at distances up to 2km, there is now only a
single barricade near the present entry point on
Manas Trust lane. The iron pipe
barricading/concertina rolls/barbed wire on the
western, southern and eastern sides of the
complex have been removed. Other physical
security measuresŠhave also become
non-functional. All this would make it difficult
to prevent determined crowds from rushing inŠ
Several speakers are reported to have declared
openly that the next phase of the Ram temple
would involve the demolition of Babri Masjid."
Following this communication, the then Union Home
Secretary Madhav Godbole wrote to the then Chief
Secretary VK Saxena on June 3, 1992: "As has been
mentioned therein serious apprehensions are being
expressed in a number of quarters that digging on
a large-scale will lead to collection of water
during the rains and would ultimately weaken the
foundation of the structure of Janambhoomi-Babri
Masjid complexŠIt would be helpful to know the
purpose for which such large scale levelling and
digging operations have been undertakenŠ."
This was actually a build-up to the demolition of
the disputed structure on December 6, 1992, which
the bjp top brass justified thus: It was an
outburst of pent up emotion as karsevaks had been
waiting for long and had gathered at Ayodhya for
a symbolic karseva on December 6.
Both Advani and Singh blamed the Allahabad High
Court for a delayed judgement suggesting that the
demolition would not have occurred or the
situation could have been defused to make karseva
possible. They suggested that even if the
acquisition of land was struck down by the court,
karseva was still possible as vhp owned pieces of
the land. On the contrary, the karseva was not
possible, as according to government records this
was government land.
Singh stated in his affidavit: "The state
government had been anxiously waiting for the
judgement of the Hon'ble High Court in case of
the acquisition of the 2.77 acres of land before
December 6, 1992. The Ayodhya movement leaders
and the UP government expected the Hon'ble High
Court to give its judgement one way or the other
before December 6, 1992 as the argument and
hearing were finalised on November 4, 1992. Even
adverse judgement, striking down the acquisition
of the land, would have resulted in the handing
over of the possession of 2.04 acres of land out
of a total acquisition of 2.77 acres back to the
vhp from whose possession it was acquisitioned."
"The result would have been that the karseva and
the construction work could have commenced on
this 2.04 acres of land on or about December 6,
1992... So far the deponent (Singh) knows in this
matter the judgement was delivered by the Hon'ble
High Court on or about December 11, 1992," he
states further.
This lie, however, stands exposed as according to
the Bommai report (SR Bommai headed the members
of the Standing Committee of National Integration
Council), "The tourism department of the state
government had acquired 2.77 acres of land around
the Ram Janmbhoomi area in October 1991. Out of
this land 0.36 acres belonged to private owners
and the rest, 2.41 acres, was nazul land which
was also transferred to the tourism department.."
When on May 12, commission counsel Anupam Gupta,
drew Singh's attention to this fact he refused to
comment and demanded a copy of the document.
Asked to comment on the affidavits of the
district magistrate and superintendent of police,
Faizabad, who stated that in December 1949 the
idols of Ramchandraji were placed inside the
Babri mosque, Singh evaded an answer. He instead
quoted the Archaeological Survey of India about
the pre-existence of the temple and the remnants
of a temple found during an excavation.
During the cross-examination the commission
counsel produced the court statement of the
district magistrate and SP, Faizabad.
According to former SP Kirpal Singh's statement
(in the court of civil judge, Faizabad; Gopal
Singh vs Zahur Ahmed and eight others, regular
suit No. 2 of 1950), Para 12 reads: "The property
in suit is known as Babri mosque and it has for a
long time been in use as a mosque for the purpose
of worship by Muslims.
It has not been in use as a temple of Shri Ramchandraji."
Para 13 states: "On the night of December 22,
1949 idols of Shri Ramchandraji were
surreptitiously and wrongly put inside it."
Former Deputy Commissioner Faizabad JN Ugra also
stated this in the above-mentioned suit.
This fact is further substantiated in a book
titled The Babri Masjid Question: A Matter Of
National Honour edited by AG Noorani which also
mentions that Ram Krishna Paramhans claimed that
he had placed the idols in the mosque.
Para 17 states: "...the people who had placed the
image in the mosque were never caught or tried.
In an interview with The New York Times on
Sunday, December 22, 1991, Abbot Paramhans
declared that he was the one who had put the
image inside the mosque." (Religious Nationalism:
Hindus and Muslims in India, Peter Van der Veer,
Oxford University Press, 1996).
But for the rss the act of placing the idols in
the mosque was divine intervention.
______
[5]
ROZGAR ADHIKAR YATRA: SECOND REPORT
(from the Yatra's communication team)
The Rozgar Adhikar Yatra will be reaching Bhopal
today (27 May), two weeks after leaving Delhi.
The Yatra's colourful bus has already covered a
distance of nearly 2,000 km through the scorched
landscape of India's most deprived districts -
Banswara, Panchmahals, Narmada, Nandurbar,
Badwani, Khargone, among others. A long series
of public events have been held on the way,
including conventions, rallies, street plays,
puppet shows and meetings with political leaders.
The Yatra is a highly multi-cultural event.
Participants have joined from very diverse
regions, age groups, communities and
organizations – including workers' organizations,
students' unions, women's groups, Dalit
organizations and Adivasi sangathans. They are
united in their commitment to the right to work
as an aspect of the fundamental right to live
with dignity. They live together and work as a
team, with no master high or low.
In Gujarat, the highlight of the Yatra was a
massive rally in Sagbara (Narmada district),
convened by Punaravasan Sangharsh Samiti on 21
May. Around mid-day, some 5,000 women and men
from surrounding villages virtually paralysed the
town as they marched down the streets shouting
the Yatra's main slogan – "Har Haath Ko Kaam Do,
Kaam Ka Pura Daam Do". The pot-bellied traders
who normally call the shots in Sagbara were not
amused, though some did express sympathy and
offered water to the marchers. The rally was
followed by a three-hour meeting in a large mango
grove. Speakers included Prof. D. Prempati
(Dalit intellectual and activist), Pratibha
Shinde (Punaravasan Sangharsh Samiti), Shankar
Singh (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan), Annie
Raja (National Federation of Indian Women),
Ambarish Rai (National Alliance for the
Fundamental Right to Education), Jean Dreze
(economist) as well as local activists. A
recurrent theme of the meeting was the need to
link the right to work with land reform and
democratic control of natural resources,
especially "jal, jungle, jameen".
The next day, the Yatra made a brief foray in
Maharashtra (Nandurbar district). This was a
good opportunity to learn more about
Maharashtra's "employment guarantee scheme",
which derives from an Employment Guarantee Act
passed in the late seventies. The scheme is in
place, but employment generation under EGS has
declined significantly in the nineties. Nearly
Rs 10,000 crores are lying idle in the state's
"employment guarantee fund", ear-marked for EGS -
this money is effectively being "raided" for
other purposes. At a district-level convention
held in Nandurbar on 22 May, many speakers
emphasised the need for sustained struggle to
ensure implementation of the forthcoming National
Employment Guarantee Act, even after the Act is
passed.
After entering Madhya Pradesh in Badwani
district, the Yatris had a startling first-hand
view of deforestation in India's semi-arid
districts. In an area where there were dense
forests not so long ago, the bare ground
stretches for miles on end without shade. There
is no work and most people survive from labour
migration. In the absence of any economic
security, local labourers (mainly Dalits and
Adivasis) are exposed to rampant exploitation
from the traders, employers and government
officials. Some of them, however, are fighting
back. In Pati, for instance, Jagrit Adivasi
Dalit Sangathan has been waging a long struggle
for minimum wages and the right to work. On 23
May, the Sangathan and the Yatra joined hands in
a strong display of solidarity at the Block
headquarters.
Also in Pati Block, the Yatris had a sobering
glimpse of the National Food For Work Programme
(NFFWP). The Programme appears to have been
initiated in a half-hearted manner, without the
safeguards required for effective implementation.
In village Piparkund, a team of field
investigators from the Delhi School of Economics
found that labourers who asked for the minimum
wage were summarily dismissed from the worksites.
They also noticed other flagrant violations of
the Programme guidelines. For instance, the
muster rolls were nowhere to be found, the
"monitoring committees" were inactive, and
children were routinely employed on NFFWP
worksites.
In Indore (24 May), public meetings were held
among migrant labourers and slum dwellers. Here
as elsewhere, the Yatra's message on the right to
work immediately struck a chord with the
audience. Labourers spoke about the hardships of
seasonal migration - exploitation, health
hazards, disruption of children's education, and
survival problems in the city. Assured
employment in the village, they felt, was the
only possible escape from this vicious cycle of
exploitation and poverty. In the evening, an
open-air dialogue on employment guarantee and the
right to work took place between the Yatris and
some of Indore's distinguished citizens -
intellectuals, trade unionists, lawyers, writers,
scientists, among others. Homi F. Dazi, veteran
trade unionist and former Member of Parliament,
welcomed the Yatra and placed the campaign for a
full-fledged Employment Guarantee Act in the
context of the larger struggle for workers'
rights.
On 25 May, the Yatris were exposed to another
dark side of rural India: large-scale
displacement due to "development" projects
especially large dams. A public meeting was held
in Udaipur (district Khargone), one of 14
villages to be submerged by the Upper Veda dam.
It is a lovely spot, where Adivasi families have
built sturdy wooden houses surrounded by fertile
land and splendid groves. So far, they have been
able to prevent the construction of the dam and
they are determined to stop it unless a credible
rehabilitation package (including "land for
land") is put in place. In the shadow of a large
mango tree, the Yatris heard moving testimonies
from Adivasi women and men who live under the
constant threat of brutal displacement. In this
area, the Food For Work Programme has not been
initiated at all, because of the submergence
plans.
The day ended with further glimpses of shattered
lives in New Harsud, where the inhabitants of an
entire town were "rehabilitated" a year ago.
After being forced to destroy their own homes in
Harsud, the displaced families had to struggle
with extreme hardships in this isolated spot,
devoid of basic facilities such as water and
sanitation. Today, many of them have built new
houses with the compensation money, but the
houses are empty and lifeless shells because
there is no work around. "Unemployment is our
main problem," said witness after witness at a
public meeting held there late at night. There
was an overwhelming sense of betrayal in the
audience, as the rosy promises made at the time
of displacment turned out to be empty.
After the Bhopal convention on 27 May (convened
by Jan Sangharsh Morcha), the Yatra will be
making stopovers in Hoshangabad and Betul. State
conventions will be held in Nagpur (Maharashtra)
on 30 May and in Raipur (Chhattisgarh) on 1 June.
From there the Yatra will proceed towards
Jharkhand via Bilaspur and Surguja. Stay tuned.
For further information on the Yatra, including
the full itinerary, see the special section on
"Rozgar Adhikar Yatra" at www.righttofoodindi.org.
______
[6] [Publication Announcements: ]
(i)
New title from *Three Essays Collective*:
(available from June 1)
*The Wrongs of the Religious Right*:
Reflections on Science, Secularism and Hindutva
by *Meera Nanda*
Contents:
1. Secularism without Secularization: Reflections
on the Religious Right in America and India
2. Hindu Ecology in the Age of Hindutva: The
Dangers of Religious Environmentalism
3. Making Science Sacred: How Postmodernism Aids Vedic Science
About the Book:
Meera Nanda's book is an impassioned plea for
secularization of mentalities. She compares the
secular polities of India and America to argue
that, faced with the current right wing assault,
secular constitutions alone cannot guarantee
secularism. She examines how India's major
ecological movements have been reframed by
Brahminical Hinduism with some unintended but
crucial help from those within these movements.
Her work shows the interconnections between the
Hindutva scientism and national chauvinism, a
factor crucial for its middle class support and
its 'reactionary modernism'.
About the Author:
*Meera Nanda* is a John Templeton Foundation
Fellow in Religion and Science (2005-2007). She
is the author of 'Prophets Facing Backward:
Postmodernism, Science and Hindu Nationalism'
(Rutgers University Press, 2004), 'Postmodernism
and Religious Fundamentalism: A Scientific
Rebuttal to Hindu Science' (Navayana, 2003) and
'Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays'
(Three Essays, 2002).
120 p., Demy 8vo
2005
81-88789-30-5 Paperback Rs150
81-88789-31-3 Hardcover Rs350
Three Essays Collective
P.O. Box 6 Palam Vihar
GURGAON (Haryana)
122 017
India
Tel.: (91-124) 5074079 and 236 9023
Mobile: 0 98681 26587, 0 98683 44843
e-mail: info at threeessays.com
www.threeessays.com
(ii)
Seminar Issue on Northeast India and the Look East Policy
The June 2005 issue of Seminar on the theme
Gateway to the East: Northeast India and the Look
East Policy has just come out and is available at
bookstores. The contents of the issue are listed
below.
The issue will be available on Seminar's website
<http://www.india-semonar.com/>http://www.india-seminar.com
after a few week.
Seminar 550 June 2005
Gateway to the East: A Symposium on Northeast India and the Look East Policy.
1. The Problem
Posed by Sanjib Baruah, Visiting Professor,
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
2. Northeast India in a New Asia
Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha)
3. Economic Opportunities Or Continuing Stagnation
Sushil Khanna, Professor of Economics and
Strategic Management, Indian Institute of
Management, Calcutta
4. Waters of despair, waters of hope
Sanjoy Hazarika, Managing Trustee, Centre for
Northeast Studies and Policy Research, New Delhi and Guwahati.
5. Prospects for tourism
M.P. Bezbaruah, Former Secretary Ministry of Tourism, Government of India
6. Operation Hornbill Festival 2004
Dolly Kikon, Member, Working Group, Northeast Peoples’ Initiative, Guwahati.
7. Guns, drugs and rebels
Subir Bhaumik, East India Correspondent, BBC, Kolkata
8. A historical perspective
Jayeeta Sharma, Assistant Professor of History,
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA
9. Territorialities yet unaccounted
Karin Dean, Asia Correspondent, ‘Postimees,’ Bangkok
10. The Tai-Ahom connection
Yasmin Saikia, Assistant Professor History,
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA
11. Community, Culture, Nation
Mrinal Miri, Vice Chancellor, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong
12. The Ethnic Dimension
Samir Kumar Das, Reader, Department of Political Science, Calcutta University
13. BOOKS
Reviewer: Nandana Datta
Durable Dusorder: Understanding the Politics of
Northeast India by Sanjib Baruah, Oxford
University Press, 2005
Reviewer: Dulali Nag
Towards an Asian Economic Community: Vision of a
New Asia, 2004, (Ed) Nagesh Kumar. New Delhi: RIS
for Developing Countries and Singapore: Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies and
India-ASEAN Partnership in an Era of
Globalization: Reflections by Eminent Persons.
2002. New Delhi: RIS for Developing Countries and
Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Reviewer: Bodhisattva Kar
Assam and India: Fragmented Memories, Cultural
Identity and the Tai-Ahom Struggle by Yasmin
Saikia, Permanent Black, 2005.
Reviewer: Nimmi Kurian
Making Sense of Chindia: Reflections on China and
India by Jairam Ramesh, India Research Press, 2005
Reviewer: M.S. Prabhakara
Wooing the Generals: India’s New Burma Policy by
Renaud Egreteau; Authorspress and Centre de
Sciences Humaines; Delhi, 2003; pp. x + 224;
14. FURTHER READING
Compiled by Sukanya Sharma, Fellow, Centre for
Northeast India, South and Southeast Asia
Studies, Guwahati
15. COMMUNICATION
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
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