SACW | 16 June 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 16 June,  2005

[1]  Pakistan's moderates are beaten in public (Ali Dayan Hasan)
[2]  Sri Lanka: No Peace, No War (Alan Keenan)
[3]  India: Promises to Keep (Harsh Mander)
[4]  India: Letter to police regarding the recent 
intimidation of the Indian People's Tribunal on 
Communalism held in Orissa (Angana Chatterji)
+ petition to India's Ambassador to the US to 
Protect the Indian People's Tribunal - Orissa
[5]  India - Pakistan: Shifting Sands Of History (Ashis Nandy)
[6]  L K Advani's Pakistan Yatra - Historical 
Revisionism (Sukumar Muralidharan)
[7]  India: Human Rights Groups petitions the court re Sati
[8]  India: War and Peace: Once banned film to be released in the cinema

______


[1]

The International Herald Tribune
  June 15, 2005

PAKISTAN'S MODERATES ARE BEATEN IN PUBLIC

by Ali Dayan Hasan (Pakistan researcher for Human Rights Watch)

(Lahore, Pakistan)--"Teach the bitch a lesson. 
Strip her in public." As one of the police 
officers told me, these were the orders issued by 
their bosses. The police beat the woman with 
batons in the full glare of the news media, tore 
her shirt off and, though they failed to take off 
her baggy trousers, certainly tried their best. 
The ritual public humiliation over, she and 
others - some bloodied - were dragged screaming 
and protesting to police vans and taken away to 
police stations.

This didn't happen to some unknown student or 
impoverished villager. This happened to Asma 
Jahangir, the United Nations special rapporteur 
on freedom of religion and head of the Human 
Rights Commission of Pakistan, the country's 
largest such nongovernmental group. The setting: 
a glitzy thoroughfare in Lahore's upmarket 
Gulberg neighborhood. The crime: attempting to 
organize a symbolic mixed-gender mini-marathon on 
May 14.  

The stated aim of the marathon was to highlight 
violence against women and to promote 
"enlightened moderation" - a reference to 
President Pervez Musharraf's constant refrain 
describing the Pakistani military's ostensible 
shift from state-sponsored Islamist militancy and 
religious orthodoxy to something else (just what 
is not entirely clear).  

Others arrested included Hina Jilani, the UN 
special rapporteur on the situation of human 
rights defenders, and 40 others, this writer 
included (an observer, not a runner - too many 
cigarettes). The police, faced with embarrassing 
media coverage, released us a few hours later.  

The marathon was organized by the Human Rights 
Commission of Pakistan and affiliated 
nongovernmental organizations in the light of 
recent "marathon politics" in Pakistan. Until 
early April, it was government policy to 
encourage sporting events for women, so Punjab 
Province organized a series of marathons in which 
men and women could compete. The brief experiment 
ended abruptly on April 3, when 900 activists of 
the Islamist alliance, the Muttaheda Majlis-e- 
Amal, or MMA - which was effectively created as a 
serious political force by Musharraf and is 
backed by the military - attacked the 
participants of a race in the town of Gujranwala. 
 

According to a government statement at the time, 
the MMA activists were armed with firearms, 
batons and Molotov cocktails. Yet within days the 
activists were released without charge and 
Musharraf's government had reversed its policy of 
allowing mixed-gender sporting activities in 
public.  

The public beating of Pakistan's most 
high-profile human rights defenders highlights 
what most Pakistanis have known all along: 
"Enlightened moderation" is a hoax perpetrated by 
Musharraf for international consumption. What is 
known in Pakistan as the "mullah-military 
alliance" remains deeply rooted, and the 
Pakistani military and Musharraf continue to view 
"moderate" and "liberal" forces in politics and 
society as their principal adversaries.

The reason is simple: Democracy, human rights and 
meaningful civil liberties are anathema to a 
hypermilitarized state. Pakistan's voters 
consistently vote overwhelmingly for moderate, 
secular-oriented parties and reject religious 
extremists, so the military must rely on the most 
retrogressive elements in society to preserve its 
hold on power. Jahangir and others were beaten 
because they tried - in a symbolic but crucial 
way - to challenge the mullah-military alliance 
on the streets of Lahore.  

In Washington and London, Musharraf presents 
himself as the face of enlightenment; in Pakistan 
there is another face. The Bush administration, 
Musharraf's chief backer, should realize that its 
friend in the war on terror came to power in a 
coup, continues to hold office without facing 
Pakistani voters, refuses to schedule a vote, and 
bans women from running in mixed-gender races. 
Those who stand for the values of human rights 
and democracy that the Bush administration calls 
universal are seen as the enemy within and are 
beaten on the streets.

Instead of allying himself with espousers of hate 
and intolerance, Musharraf should pursue a 
genuine path of enlightened moderation by telling 
the MMA and others that the days of treating 
women as second-class citizens are over. If human 
rights defenders can be beaten for running for 
their rights, will they have to run for their 
lives before the rest of the world and 
Musharraf's patrons wake up?


______


[2]


Boston Review
Summer 2005

NO PEACE, NO WAR
HAVE INTERNATIONAL DONORS FAILED SRI LANKA'S MOST VULNERABLE?

Alan Keenan

When I arrived last summer at the burial ceremony the ten crude wooden
coffins were lined up on the concrete floor. A bare-chested Hindu priest
was chanting Sanskrit verses and preparing the offerings, an assortment of
freshly chopped coconuts, leaves and flowers, oil, water, and brightly
colored pastes for family members to place on the coffins bearing the
remains of their loved ones. As the rain gently beat on the roof of the
small open-sided structure, oil lanterns of chopped coconut shells were
set in front of each casket. Families began circling the coffins,
sometimes joining in on the prayers, mostly remaining silent. The tears
were few, though one mother broke down every time it was her turn to
anoint the coffin of her son.

A hundred yards away workers had just finished digging the graves. The
families followed the coffins as the sarong-clad workers carted them
unceremoniously across the muddy grounds. After the burial the families
boarded two white vans provided by the International Committee of the Red
Cross and began their journey home to the Tamil areas in the north and
east of Sri Lanka.

Colombo's Borella Public Cemetery is filled with ornate tombstones,
Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu, some inlaid with photographs of the
deceased. The newly dug graves, however, are likely to remain unmarked.
They contain the badly decomposed remains of ten young Tamil men, victims
of Sri Lanka's long civil war between the Sinhalese-dominated government
and the separatist Tamil Tigers. The men were murdered almost four years
earlier in one of Sri Lanka's most celebrated  - if now largely
forgotten - massacres.

On the morning of October 25, 2000, in the quiet central hill-country
village of Bindunuwewa, a mob of Sinhalese villagers and residents from
the nearby town of Bandarawela stormed the government "rehabilitation"
center. The minimum-security center housed 41 young Tamil men who had
either surrendered to the army after being involved with the separatist
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) or been arrested on suspicion of
involvement with the Tigers. While none detained at the Bindunuwewa camp
were considered serious security risks, the stigma alone of being
associated with the Tigers can inflame tensions in Sinhalese areas of Sri
Lanka. An altercation in the camp one evening between some inmates and
Sinhalese officers launched a rumor that spread quickly with help from
local police: "The Tigers are attacking." Early the next morning a crowd
of hundreds, perhaps thousands, had assembled. Armed with knives and poles
and gasoline, the mob hacked and burned to death 27 of the Tamil inmates.
Some 60 police officers sent the previous evening and earlier that morning
to guard the camp made no effort to stop the attack. Instead, some fired
on inmates trying to escape, killing one and injuring two others. No one
was arrested.

[. . . ]

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR30.3/keenan.html

______


[3]

Hindustan Times
9 June 2005

Promises to Keep

by Harsh Mander

In the mixed record of the UPA government in its 
first year in power, the greatest disappointment 
has been its neglect of steps to genuinely 
strengthen and restore the gravely threatened 
secular fabric of our land. During its term, the 
BJP-led NDA recklessly engineered a communal 
divide. The entire Muslim community was 
systematically demonised, especially in the 
hearts and minds of large sections of the 
influential middle class, as implacably 
unpatriotic, regressive, unreliable and violent. 
The manufacture of hatred extended, especially in 
distant tribal regions of central India, to other 
minority groups like Christians. Textbooks were 
re-written, and popular cultural forms like 
cinema distorted, to propogate a false, 
dangerously communal, undemocratic, patriarchal 
and non-egalitarian vision of our pluralist 
history and cultural legacy.

The  2004 elections were therefore no ordinary 
elections , signaling merely a change of fortunes 
of various political formations. Ordinary people 
in many parts of India recognized that its 
outcomes would decisively influence in many ways 
the destinies of our nation and its people, and 
the survival of the very idea of India. The 
Congress-led UPA alliance was catapulted to power 
by people who decisively rejected the politics of 
hate and the assaults that these had mounted on 
the secular democratic idea of India. The new 
government needed to acknowledge with  humility 
the trust that had been bestowed on them. Its 
first year in office shows little awareness on 
its part, that its actions would influence 
profoundly the future course our country will 
take.

The first set of unmet expectations relate to 
healing of - and justice to- the survivors of 
Gujarat, who were denied even elementary 
reparation and rehabilitation by a government 
unashamedly hostile to a segment of its citizens. 
Even more than the Babri masjid dispute, the fate 
of the survivors of the 2002 carnage has come to 
symbolize the very terms on which minorities in 
India will continue to live in India- whether 
with head held high exercising fully equal legal 
rights, or as  second class citizens.

  As legal justice is openly subverted and 
economic boycott and fear persist in many parts 
of Gujarat, no hand has reached out from the 
centre or parties to wipe their tears. There is 
no special rehabilitation package, no measures to 
secure independent investigation, prosecution and 
trial. The constitution under Article 355 had 
bestowed them with both the powers and the duty 
to intervene in such moments of intense internal 
strife. They have instead chosen to look the 
other way. The defiant impunity of the state 
government continues unchecked. A year after the 
UPA government came to power, life has not 
improved in any way for the survivors of the 
state sponsored carnage. This is its gravest 
indictment.

There was hope that at least the brazen misuse of 
POTA, applied exclusively in Gujarat against the 
minorities, would be corrected by  repealing  the 
legislation. The law was allowed to die, but all 
those charged under it by the previous regime 
continue to languish in jails. In fact, the Modi 
government has made fresh arrests under POTA, 
including of lawyers fighting cases of the 
survivors, even after the meaningless repeal, 
maintaining that investigation is still in 
progress in half a dozen cases of terrorist 
conspiracy.

Many hopes were pinned on the law on communal 
violence, as promised in the CMP, to prevent the 
recurrence of state impunity in communal 
massacres like Gujarat. The expectation was a law 
that would strengthen the hands of citizens by 
codifying the mandatory duties of the state to 
prevent and control communal violence, and to 
secure reparation and legal justice. Instead, the 
government has produced a draft that adds to the 
powers of the state, including measures from POTA 
and the Armed Forces Act, that, far from 
protecting minorities,  have been used against 
them.

There is a dangerous conspiracy of silence in the 
ruling political establishment about the 
continued hate mobilization of the Muslims by the 
Sangh Parivar organizations, and the attacks on 
Christians in many parts of the country. Communal 
tempers are mounting dangerously in states like 
Rajasthan. The Sangh schools continue to 
propogate hate in young minds, by falsifying 
history and demonizing minorities. Several of 
these schools, especially in tribal areas, are 
resourced by overseas supporters of the Sangh, 
and many are even state-funded. But the centre 
has done little to control this. It has not even 
challenged the content of the textbooks of these 
schools which defy the Indian constitution itself.

The government seems guided by the  cynical 
calculas of vote banks, believing that minorities 
have nowhere else to go, and that decisive steps 
on secularism may alienate an allegedly 
communalized Hindu majority. On this flawed and 
utterly dishonourable computation, secularism 
remains exiled to the peripheries of the national 
political agenda and discourse. Future 
generations will pay dearly the price of this 
unconscionable and shameful abdication.


_______


[4]


[ - Text of the letter to the police official 
regarding the recent intimidation of the Indian 
People's Tribunal on Communalism held in Orissa, 
India
- Link to a petition to India's Ambassador to the 
US to Protect the Indian People's Tribunal - 
Orissa: 
http://www.petitiononline.com/ipt1/petition.html ]


_______________________

To:      Mr. Amitava Thakur
      Superintendent of Police

15 June 2005


Dear Mr. Thakur,

I am writing to you to inform you of an incident 
characterised by shocking and dangerously 
aggressive conduct and to express my concern 
regarding the behaviour of certain persons 
connected to Hindu nationalist organizations.

I am convening and serving on the Indian People's 
Tribunal on Communalism organized by the Indian 
People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights 
(IPT). Members of the Tribunal have been 
travelling throughout the state as part of its 
investigations on communalism in Orissa. The 
primary investigations of the Tribunal took place 
from June 11-14, 2005.

Yesterday, 14 June 2005, we were conducting a 
hearing with Hindu nationalist organizations, 
between 11 am and 1 pm, at the Red Cross Bhawan 
in Bhubaneswar. During the majority of the 
hearing, along with me, other Tribunal members 
present were: Justice K.K. Usha, Former Chief 
Justice, Kerala High Court, and Justice R.A. 
Mehta, Former Acting Chief Justice, Gujarat High 
Court, and Former Director, Gujarat Judicial 
Academy, who are heading the Tribunal; Mr. Mihir 
Desai, Indian People's Tribunal and Advocate, 
Mumbai High Court and Supreme Court of India, who 
is co-convening the Tribunal with me; Dr. Asha 
Hans, Professor, Women's Studies, Utkal 
University; and Dr. Ram Puniyani, EKTA, Committee 
for Communal Amity. In addition, the following 
IPT staff members were also present: Ms. Sameena 
Dalwai, Ms. Priyanka Josson and Ms. Maya Nair.

(Other Tribunal Members who were not present at 
that meeting were: Dr. Chetan Bhatt, Reader, 
Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of 
London; Ms. Lalita Missal, National Alliance of 
Women-Orissa Chapter; Dr. Shaheen Nilofer, 
Scholar-activist from Orissa; Mr. Sudhir Patnaik, 
Scholar-activist from Orissa.)

On 14 June 2005, shortly after 11 am, the event 
began without incident. Invited representatives 
of the Bajrang Dal (BD) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad 
(VHP) came to offer testimonies. The first person 
to depose was Mr. Ramachandra Behera, who 
informed us that he was a journalist representing 
the Media News Agency and also a worker of the BD 
and he showed us the letter of invitation that 
had been sent to Mr. Subash Chouhan, State 
Convenor, BD. Tribunal members had taken his oral 
consent for audio-recording the testimony. The 
Tribunal members had sought consent of all 
subsequent persons.

Following the conversation with Mr. Behera, Mr. 
Bansidhar Pradhan testified, identifying as a 
member of the VHP. Following which, another male 
person testified, also identifying as a member of 
the VHP. Following which, Mrs. Padmaja, who 
identified as a member of the Rashtriya Sevika 
Samiti (RSS-W) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 
deposed before the Tribunal.

During the last few minutes of Mrs. Padmaja's 
testimony, between 12.25-12.30 pm, Mr. Desai and 
Dr. Puniyani left the meeting for the airport, to 
take a flight to Mumbai.

Then Ms. Mamta Mallik, who identified as a member 
of the RSS-W, also deposed. During Mrs. Mallik's 
deposition, those who offered testimonies 
identifying as VHP members received a fax from 
the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Orissa, Cuttack 
Office. These persons gave a copy of the fax to 
Tribunal members.

The fax made allegations against the Tribunal, 
its conduct, and against persons associated with 
it. The note stated that IPT was, "[a] 
self-appointed body composed wholly of leftists, 
fellow travellers, all known Hindu baiters." The 
note of the VHP was signed by the Organizing 
Secretary, and included allegations against me. I 
am an associate professor of anthropology, and 
have been working with advocacy research in 
Orissa since 1995, and teach in San Francisco. 
The fax stated that: "the inclusion of an NRI 
[non-resident Indian, referring to me] well known 
for anti-Hindu activities in the US suggests 
foreign funds from sources bent on destabilizing 
the country." There is no merit to these 
allegations. The Indian People's Tribunal has 
provided all funding for costs related to the 
Tribunal in Orissa. No private funds or grants 
were solicited, and participation by all members 
is on a voluntary basis and in their capacity as 
individuals.

After receiving the fax, one of the persons from 
Hindu nationalist organizations received a phone 
call on his mobile phone and left the room. Then 
some of the others followed. Those who deposed 
returned to the meeting room and abruptly stated 
that the meeting was over and that they had 
nothing to say to the Tribunal, and that the fax 
was the only information that they wanted to 
submit. At some point during this, when many of 
the people from Hindu nationalist organizations 
left the room for a brief time, Dr. Hans went out 
to see what had happened to take them out of the 
room. Later I learned that given the situation 
Dr. Hans had decided to leave the building, and 
had driven home.

Mr. Pradhan referred to my earlier meeting with 
Mr. Chouhan, stating that 'they' were aware of 
who I was and that my work was harmful to Orissa. 
Those who deposed then accused the Tribunal of 
anti-Hindu and anti-state activities and demanded 
that the tapes recording their session be 
returned to them. All the Tribunal members and 
staff spoke and attempted to reason with them and 
persuade them to leave the tapes in the 
Tribunal's custody, stating that testimonials 
from representatives of Hindu nationalist 
organizations were necessary to the Tribunal's 
work, and that the representatives who deposed 
had done so with informed consent. It is 
illogical to accept an invitation to depose at a 
Tribunal on Communalism, give consent to be 
recorded and then claim that any coercion or 
deception has been perpetrated. We also explained 
that the tapes were necessary for the Tribunal to 
facilitate accurate representation. At which 
point, Mr. Pradhan said that they had no idea 
that they were being taped. However, the 
tape-recorder was placed in front of each person 
during their testimony and was in full view of 
those deposing at all times. After the first tape 
was over, the tape was changed in front of those 
deposing. Approximately, one and a quarter 
micro-cassettes, each of 90-minute duration, were 
used during the entire session.

Those who had deposed to the Tribunal were joined 
by others and together they verbally attacked 
Tribunal members, made false, defamatory, and 
inflammatory statements, in obscene and vile 
language, and sought to seize information 
gathered during the investigations. At that time, 
barring Justice Mehta, all the other Tribunal 
members (Justice Usha and myself) and staff (Ms. 
Sameena Dalwai, Ms. Priyanka Josson and Ms. Maya 
Nair) in the room were women. Those who deposed 
aggressively responded to Justice Usha and 
Justice Metha. To me, those who deposed said that 
they know of my "vicious activities". Those who 
deposed insisted menacingly and threateningly 
that the tapes with information gathered by the 
Tribunal be returned. If the tapes were not given 
to them, they stated that they would ensure their 
possession by using any means necessary. I had 
the tapes in my custody and they said that they 
were asking me "nicely, as a sister", and if I 
did not listen, then they would be forced "to do 
what they needed to do" to take the tapes away, 
and that I should not force them to act. When 
they approached me threatening to take it away I 
was forced to destroy the tapes in front of those 
who had deposed. By this time, approximately 9 
persons had gheraoed the Tribunal members present 
in the room and the IPT staff.

The Tribunal members and IPT staff present left 
the room, given the escalated and tense 
situation, with the intent to leave the building. 
Outside, those who had deposed and the others who 
joined them continued to shout threats, including 
the promise to rape attending women members of 
the Tribunal. They became increasingly abusive 
and violent in their speech, shouting, "This is 
an IPT funded by the foreign funding agencies to 
tarnish the image of the Hindu Rashtra and we 
will rape those women". When the Tribunal staff 
was leaving, one of the people said that: "We 
will parade them naked". Ms. Mallik also forcibly 
took a picture on her mobile phone of me, saying 
that: "We will make sure that everybody knows 
your face". The people from Hindu nationalist 
organizations also said that they would note the 
vehicle numbers of the cars that Tribunal members 
were travelling in.

On leaving Red Cross Bhavan we made a few 
decisions: that all the Tribunal members and 
staff that were staying at the Swosti Hotel would 
move to another place; and that given the 
escalated and tense situation, we would cancel 
the public hearing scheduled for 2.30-5.30 pm and 
the press conference, scheduled for 6.30-8.30, to 
report preliminary thoughts on the investigation. 
At the public hearing we had invited numerous 
persons to come and speak to us, including 
persons from political parties, people's 
movements, minority and women's groups. People 
had taken the time and care to prepare and come 
to attend the public hearing, and the Tribunal 
was forced to miss the opportunity of hearing 
their testimonials. Later in the afternoon we met 
with a few press persons in private to report the 
incident. 

Since the incident occurred I have been receiving 
intimidating calls. Last night I received a call 
from Mr. Subash Chouhan. This morning I received 
a phone call from a number that my mobile phone 
recorded as 9937316110. When I asked the caller 
to identify himself he asked if I had heard of 
Dara. Dara Singh, the man who can take care of 
trouble, he stated. He stated that he knows who I 
am, of my actions and movements. He stated that I 
should not forget that this is Orissa. He said 
that if I did not behave like a "woman should", I 
would be raped, murdered, then cut into pieces, 
and that no one would know how it happened. 
Tonight I received a call from Mr. Behera, who 
stated that by publicising the incident I had 
maligned him and his "company". I have also 
received a number of calls from unidentified 
persons who have been verbally abusive on the 
phone.

I am horrified and saddened by the high-handed 
and aggressive actions of these persons connected 
to the BD, VHP, RSS-W and BJP that has now 
derailed the Tribunal process. That senior and 
respected retired members of the Indian 
judiciary, one of them a woman, could be so 
humiliated and threatened is unfathomable. It has 
also undermined the Indian People's Tribunal, 
which was founded on 05 June 1993, based on a 
people's mandate, to conduct principled 
investigations that focus on issues of human 
rights, social and environmental justice. The 
Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human 
Rights investigates and adjudicates on human 
rights violations and environmental injustices, 
emphasizing issues of state accountability and 
the conditions of the marginalized, in 
particular, women, children, adivasi/indigenous 
peoples, dalits, minority groups, including 
sexual identity based groups, labourers, the 
disabled, and prisoners.

Through this process, I am also made acutely 
aware that if bodies with the legitimacy and 
social recognition such as the Indian People's 
Tribunal can be so threatened in Orissa and 
violated for undertaking an inquiry in the state 
capital, the plight and vulnerability of 
marginalized people's and groups must be 
assumedly so much worse should/when they attempt 
to speak up. I am hopeful that you will take 
appropriate action to ensure that democratic and 
public processes can continue in Orissa, and that 
people, particularly women, as was the case here, 
participating in these processes do not encounter 
violent behaviour or fear for their safety. To 
ensure that there is no breakdown in governance, 
it is imperative that rule of law is ensured to 
enable freedom of speech, freedom of movement, 
freedom of assembly, freedom of inquiry, and the 
right to information.



Yours sincerely,

Dr. Angana Chatterji
Associate Professor, Social and Cultural Anthropology
California Institute of Integral Studies

Address in Bhubaneswar: XXXXX
Phone in Bhubaneswar: XXXXXX


_______


[5]

  The Times of India
June 16, 2005

SHIFTING SANDS OF HISTORY
Ashis Nandy

All politicians have multiple selves; so do most 
South Asians. South Asian politicians are, thus, 
notoriously difficult to pigeonhole. Just when 
you think you have entered their inner world, you 
find they have slipped out through your fingers. 
Things get worse because ideologies are usually 
skin-deep in this part of the world. Ideologies 
thrive where faiths are in decline and ideologies 
serve as substitutes for faith. They give meaning 
to life.

In societies where faiths are a living presence, 
ideologies often become emotionally empty moral 
postures, designed to hide one's real beliefs. 
The meaning of life and the ends of politics come 
from somewhere else.

Everything said, secularism is an ideology and 
like other ideologies - nationalism, socialism, 
feminism or pacifism - can be an anchor for 
passionate commitments, an invitation to ethical 
politics and the last refuge of scoundrels. It is 
also a mask that does not look like a mask; South 
Asians know that it can be worn for effect and 
acceptability. Hence, the bitter debate today on 
M A Jinnah's secular status.

Many have taken part in the debate not to explore 
truth but to proclaim their location in the 
political matrix. Jinnah has become for them an 
excuse. Yet, the question remains: Who was the 
real Jinnah? The one who gave that moving speech 
on August 11, 1947 pleading for a humane, 
democratic Pakistan or the one who gave the call 
fo direct action because he did not believe that 
Hindus and Muslims could live together in one 
country and precipitated a first-class blood bath?
How much weight must one give to Jinnah's 
un-Islamic lifestyle and marriage with a Parsi 
and how much to his Muslim nationalism? How to 
reconcile his contempt for the ulema and his 
exploitation of them for electoral purposes?

In 2005, these questions are relevant mainly for 
the biographers of Jinnah, not for young Indians 
and Pakistanis facing more serious political 
choices. More relevant for them are the following 
facts: First, Jinnah has become a demonic 
presence in the culture of Indian politics, an 
exemplar of the kind of political leader one 
should not be; he is, at the same time, for the 
Pakistanis, the ultimate example of a just, 
morally pure founder of a state which, since his 
death, has been floundering as a political 
entity, insecure about its past and uncertain of 
its future. Secondly, politics being the art of 
the possible, in public life one must learn to 
build on the resources one has. The 
intellectually, historically and ethically 
satisfying may not be achievable politically.

L K Advani has shown immense courage by 
acknowledging these two realities of political 
life in the subcontinent and by trying to rescue 
Jinnah from his own other selves. The effort is 
not entirely fair to the millions of Muslims in 
India and Pakistan who refused to support the 
Muslim League in the 1940s.

It is even less fair to those who like Abul Kalam 
Azad took a position on the kind of state one 
should have in this part of the world. But it is 
eminently fair to the new generations of Indians 
and Pakistanis who do not want to fight the 
battle of their grandparents and parents on the 
nature of historical truths and want to live 
unencumbered lives in which the ideological 
battles of yesteryears will become less salient.

Those arguing that the politically adroit Jinnah, 
who after 1937 began to talk of irreconcilable 
cultural differences between Hindus and Muslims, 
is the real Jinnah are missing the point. In the 
new century, we and, more than us, the Pakistanis 
need the other Jinnah, however recessive he might 
have become in his own later life and in the 
policy choices made by the country he founded.

Is this attempt to empower the other Jinnah also 
a self-confession, an unconscious invitation to 
reaffirm and rediscover the other Advani, not the 
one who led the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, but the 
one who was brought up and lived his formative 
years in a Muslim-majority society where Islam 
and Hinduism were not two antagonistic creeds but 
two intertwined cultural and spiritual streams?

Is it an attempt to recover a lost childhood 
where state building and nation formation - and 
the criminality that is invariably associated 
with them everywhere in the world - were not the 
last word in human relations and social ethics? 
Are even hardboiled statists everywhere beginning 
to suspect that nineteenth century nation states 
are not sustainable in the new millennium? For 
the iron man of BJP, is his estimate of Jinnah a 
form of expiation, a reparative gesture and an 
attempt to undo?

Advani's homage to Jinnah, whether it refurbishes 
Jinnah's image or not, opens up the possibility 
of a different kind of self-confrontation. That 
self-confrontation may allow us to move beyond 
history, indeed, may give us the courage and the 
wherewithal to defy history. Advani's political 
opponents have accused him of staging a drama. I 
wish they had the sagacity to stage such a drama 
for the sake of the future of India and Pakistan.

The writer is a social psychologist.

_______



[6]

The Economic and Political Weekly
June 11, 2005


L K ADVANI'S PAKISTAN YATRA
HISTORICAL REVISIONISM

by Sukumar Muralidharan

Saying sorry is often an act of great courage. It 
is a recorded fact, impossible to efface, that 
shortly after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, 
Lal Krishna Advani described the day as the 
'saddest' of his life. Yet to be sad does not 
mean necessarily being sorry. Sadness suggests 
victimhood; to be sorry implies the admission of 
responsibility in what has transpired and a 
genuine sense of contrition at its consequences.

On his recent visit to Pakistan, Advani revisited 
the pathos and anguish he had felt the day the 
Babri Masjid fell. This still did not quite 
amount to an apology, though it was construed as 
such by outraged elements within the larger 
Hindutva fraternity. Leading the charge were the 
extreme elements: Ashok Singhal, president of the 
Vishwa Hindu Parishad, denouncing his "betrayal" 
of the cause of the Hindus, and debunking his 
fervent wish to forge peace with a country that 
had been conducting a sustained war of attrition 
against India.

Overture to Middle Ground

Was it merely the location that Advani had chosen 
that called forth Singhal's ire? Does it make a 
substantive difference that Advani chose in 1992 
to express his sorrow through the columns of an 
Indian newspaper and in 2005, to do likewise at a 
public forum in Pakistan's capital city? The case 
is rather difficult to sift through, since Advani 
in 1992 had followed his expression of regret - 
which was quite transparently an overture towards 
the middle ground in Indian politics - with an 
equally clear gesture of appeasement towards his 
core constituency in the Hindutva fringe.

This subtle manoeuvre came within a month of the 
Babri Masjid demolition, in the form of a rather 
bizarre analogy that only the political genius of 
an Advani could have devised. Yes, he said, the 
Ayodhya event had indeed been a ghastly act that 
he deeply regretted. But his social conscience 
was obviously far ahead of its milieu, since the 
larger public shared little of this anguish. 
Indeed, suggested Advani, the reaction at the 
popular level resembled the public attitude 
towards the blinding of under-trial prisoners, by 
custodians of the law at Bhagalpur in Bihar in 
1980. There was a widespread sense of horror at 
the heinousness of the crime, but little sympathy 
for the victims.1 The victims, indeed, had 
forfeited all rights to public sympathy by their 
wilful criminality and their disregard for the 
law. When due processes of law proved inadequate 
in calling them to account, they were visited 
with a horrible retribution that left them maimed 
for life. The dark deed at Ayodhya on December 6, 
1992, was analogously, a cathartic act of 
vengeance against a political order that had for 
too long denied the people of India their 
rightful national patrimony.

It is entirely likely that by not appending the 
Bhagalpur revelation to his remarks in Pakistan, 
Advani tilted too strongly against his 
ideological fraternity, provoking Singhal's fury. 
But there is still some ambivalence about why he 
chose to do so. Was it a genuine change of 
heart, a genuine process of learning that has led 
to the analogy being discarded as bogus? Or is 
the more mundane truth merely that Advani is an 
adept at tailoring his public statements to the 
mood of his audience?

Irony and Symbolism

The day after his expression of regret in 
Islamabad, Advani partook of the inaugural 
ceremony of a programme to rebuild what are 
believed to be the oldest Hindu temples in 
Pakistan. Elaborate with irony and symbolism, the 
occasion seemed to bring forth a number of 
questions: what for instance, would be the 
practical consequence of Advani's remorse for the 
demolition of the Babri Masjid? Would it mean 
that he would cooperate in the process of holding 
the culprits to account? Would it mean that he 
would uphold the principle of lawful restitution 
and lend his authority to a programme to rebuild 
the monument?

There is no way of knowing until Advani himself 
comes forth with a detailed exegeses of his 
thought processes since he crafted the Ayodhya 
strategy of the BJP, couching it in the high 
phraseology of nationalist resurgence. This was 
an idiom that portrayed the many years that had 
been spent in pursuit of a secular idiom of 
governance as just so many wasted years. Because 
it denied the original ethos of the Indian nation 
and pandered quite unabashedly to the cultural 
exclusivity of the religious minorities, the 
Congress had never quite been able to achieve a 
true brand of secularism. In contrast to the 
'pseudo-secularism' that the country had suffered 
for years, the BJP would enshrine the true 
variant, whose essential premises were 
resoundingly captured in the slogan: "justice for 
all, appeasement of none."

Given this pronounced ambivalence, it is 
worthwhile asking which of the two notions Advani 
had in mind when shortly after incurring 
Singhal's wrath, he visited the Mohammad Ali 
Jinnah mausoleum in Karachi and made out a 
glowing entry in the visitor's book, extolling 
the founder of the Pakistani state for his 
commitment to secularism. The following day, he 
returned to the theme in the course of an address 
to the Karachi Council on Foreign Relations. 
Referring to Jinnah's speech of August 11, 1947, 
before the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, he 
said: "What has been stated in this speech - 
namely, equality of all citizens in the eyes of 
the state and freedom of faith for all citizens - 
is what we in India call a secular or a 
non-theocratic state. There is no place for 
bigotry, hatred, intolerance and discrimination 
in the name of religion in such a state. And 
there can be no place, much less state 
protection, for religious extremism and terrorism 
in such a state."

As with much else that happened during Advani's 
journey of discovery in Pakistan, these words 
raised a political firestorm in India. Praveen 
Togadia, Singhal's even more disagreeable 
understudy in the VHP, denounced him for his 
"treason" in eulogising the man singularly 
responsible for the vivisection of the sacred 
topography of India. But once the lunatic fringe 
is taken out of the picture, Advani's remarks 
seemed to raise a host of deeply interesting 
possibilities.

A few hundred miles to the east of Karachi lies 
Gujarat's capital Gandhinagar, a constituency 
which Advani himself represents in the Indian 
parliament. Could in the course of his political 
campaigning in this city, Advani have brought 
himself to quote from any one of Mahatma Gandhi's 
many speeches and writings on religious tolerance 
and the neutrality of the State? If so, would 
anybody from his audience have been wrong in 
inferring that he was issuing a veiled but stern 
rebuke to his party's chief minister in Gujarat, 
Narendra Modi, who serves by most objective 
criteria as the single most egregious example of 
bigotry and intolerance being rewarded in a 
competitive electoral system?

Undelivered Admonition

That admonition to the delinquent chief minister 
of course remains undelivered. But to place the 
story of Advani's political conscience and its 
occasional stirrings in proper context, it bears 
recalling that during a visit to the UK in August 
2002, he did come perilously close to issuing an 
apology for the Gujarat riots that Modi presided 
over. Confronted with protesters outside the 
Indian High Commission in London, he spoke his 
mind about the events that had traumatised all of 
India just six months before: "It is 
indefensible. I can't defend it. I feel sorry 
that this happened."2

This was more than sadness, it was an actual 
expression of regret and contrition. But then, 
the subsequent record of Advani's political 
activities speaks for itself: his failure as 
union home minister and then deputy prime 
minister, to institute any process of 
accountability for the ghastly riots, his 
energetic participation in the December 2002 
election campaign in Gujarat, and his scarcely 
concealed exultation that Modi was returned to 
power with an enhanced majority.3 

Unalterable Realities

Similar doubts surround his assertion before the 
Karachi gathering that India and Pakistan were 
"unalterable realities" of history. Strobe 
Talbott, the US diplomat who conducted a 
high-profile (but deeply secretive) set of 
negotiations with the BJP-led coalition 
government after the nuclear tests of May 1998, 
has spoken of an "unnerving" meeting he had with 
Advani in 2000, when the latter "mused aloud 
about the happy days when India, Pakistan, Sri 
Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar would be reunited 
in a single South Asian 'confederation'". Coming 
from "India's highest ranking hard line Hindu 
nationalist", this seemed to Talbott, little else 
than a vision of Indian pre-eminence, which would 
have been "truly frightening to all (India's) 
neighbours, most of all Pakistan."4 

Simply put, Advani has in the course of his 
momentous five days in Pakistan, departed too 
radically from his established political persona 
to convince those who would like to believe that 
he has acted in good faith. And for those who 
believed that he was a committed ideological 
ally, his utterances smack of little less 
than perfidy. There have been unexpected 
political dividends of course. Advani's is the 
first high-profile political resignation (June 7) 
occasioned by conflicting readings of history. In 
this sense, it limits the potentiality of history 
being a quarry from which prejudices can be mined 
for political advantage. It is likely to provoke 
a re-examination of the 'Good Queen Bess and Bad 
King John' school of historiography that has long 
dominated pedagogy in the subject. And to the 
extent that the past is not dead - indeed not 
even past - it could trigger a reconstruction of 
a common history for the people of south Asia 
that allows room for reconciliation in the future.

Notes

1 The theme was reiterated while Advani was home 
minister, in the course of his deposition before 
the Liberhan Commission of Inquiry into the Babri 
Masjid demolition. The bare details are available 
at:
http://www1.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-37242505,prtpage-1.cms.
2 The report is available at the time of writing 
at: 
www.thehindu.com/2002/08/24/stories/2002082404130100.htm.
3 Anecdotally, from this writer's personal 
experience, it is worth recalling that Advani 
gently taunted journalists who had gathered 
at the BJP headquarters in Delhi the day the 
results were announced, suggesting that 
some of them would likely be wearing black badges 
in mourning that day, clearly hinting that the 
media had been rather partisan in its attitude. 
This was curious, since the media had done little 
other than record that the Gujarat riots were 
"outrageous and indefensible" - the precise 
characterisation that Advani had bestowed upon 
them from faraway London.
4 Strobe Talbott, Engaging India, Diplomacy, 
Democracy and the Bomb, Viking/Penguin, Delhi, 
2004, p 101.


_______


[7]


SATI-COMPLAINT
PUCL moves Sati prevention court against Raj govt book
JAIPUR, JUNE 13 (PTI)

The state unit of Peoples Union for Civil 
Liberties (PUCL) today filed a criminal complaint 
with the special judge of Sati prevention court 
here against a Rajasthan government book which 
allegedly mentioned a couple of references of 
"Sati glorification".

The government has already withdrawn the book from the market.

The complaint was filed under Sati Prevention 
Act, 1987, Kavita Srivastava, PUCL state general 
secretary, said in a release.

Since the local Ashok Nagar police station 
refused to lodge an FIR against the government 
and the writer of the book, and after several 
memoranda to the state government, the PUCL 
decided to fight the issue in the court, she said.

The government book titled 'Rajasthan Ke Lok Devi 
Devta' allegedly included some of the important 
"sati temples" which the PUCL termed as 
"violation" of the Act.

However, Tourism and Devsthan Minister Usha Punia 
has already withdrawn the book from the market 
and ordered seizure of the remaining copies.

The complaint was also supported and signed by 10 
other women's organisations, the release said.

_______


[8]

[India] War and Peace: Once banned film to be released in the cinema

Opens 24 June  8pm Fun Republic Andheri
  Box Office Tel: 5675 5675 or website: http://www.Fun-Republic.com

Opens 1 July Evening Inox Nariman Point


When War and Peace was completed in 2002, the 
Censor Board (CBFC) asked for 6 cuts.  On appeal, 
the Revising Committee of the CBFC banned the 
film. A second Revising Committee reduced the ban 
to 21 cuts. An Appellate Tribunal then reduced 
the cuts to just 2.  The matter went to court. 
The Bombay High Court finally cleared the film 
without any cuts. Today, several years later, the 
film is set to mark a rare moment when 
documentary films enter a world hitherto reserved 
for the commercial cinema.

Awards include
Grand Prize, Earth Vision Festival, Tokyo
International Critics’ Award (FIPRESCI), Sydney Film Festival
Best Film/Video, Mumbai International Film Festival
International Jury Prize, Mumbai International Film Festival
Grand Prize, Indian Documentary Producers’ Association
Best Documentary, International Video Festival, Kerala
Best Documentary, Karachi International Film Festival
Best Non-fiction, National Film Awards, India

Reviews
“The film itself is a tour de force, beautifully 
shot and often darkly funny and much more 
riveting than the dry subject matter might 
suggest.”
 
Duncan Campbell - The Guardian, UK

"War and Peace" has a riveting intelligence all 
its own and earns its epic title.
 
Elvis Mitchell - The New York Times

“We should listen to our voices of dissent for 
our own sake and for the sake of our children and 
their children.  War and Peace is that voice’s 
most eloquent expression. Which is why it should 
be seen by everyone, everywhere.”
 
Anil Dharker - The Times of India

“The atom bomb has come to India with another 
American tradition - the curbing of works that 
seek to expose its dangers. ''War and Peace'' has 
won praise and prizes at film festivals around 
the world, including Bombay's, but it is 
effectively banned in its home country. “
 
A.S. Hamrah  The Boston Globe

  “Narrated in quiet yet passionate terms
of immense interest and importance.”
 
David Stratton  Variety

“Patwardhan is as unsparing in his criticism of 
the aggressiveness of the American military and 
nuclear machine as he is of the nuclear 
pretensions of India and Pakistan
and in his 
understanding of the sexual politics of resurgent 
Hindu communalism, Patwardhan remains India’s 
most astute and daring documentary filmmaker and 
one of the country’s most sensitive commentators.”
   Vinay Lal  Manas

  “This film by India’s leading documentary 
filmmaker is so important that one could justify 
its requirement as part of the education of all 
high school students and undergraduates. The 
power of the film derives from its brilliant 
cinematography and narration, its juxtaposition 
of points of view and its total honesty. 
Patwardhan never preaches, he simply shows things 
the way they are and lets his audience react.”
 
Blair B. Kling  University of Illinois


Synopsis
Filmed over three tumultuous years in India, 
Pakistan, Japan and the USA  War and Peace is a 
documentary journey of peace activism in the face 
of global militarism and war.  Triggered by 
macabre scenes of jubilation that greeted nuclear 
testing in the Indian sub-continent, the film is 
framed by the murder of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948.

Moving on to examine the costs being extracted 
from citizens in the name of national security, 
from the plight of residents living near the 
nuclear test site to the horrendous effects of 
uranium mining on local indigenous populations, 
it becomes abundantly clear that contrary to a 
myth first created by the U.S.A, there is no such 
thing as the “peaceful Atom”.

War and Peace slips seamlessly from a description 
of home made jingoism to focus on how an 
aggressive United States has become a role model, 
its doctrine of “Might is Right” only too 
well-absorbed by aspiring elites of the 
developing world.  As we enter the 21st century, 
war has become perennial, enemies are re-invented 
and economies are inextricably tied to the 
production and sale of weapons. In the moral 
wastelands of the world memories of Gandhi seem 
like a mirage that never was, created by our 
thirst for peace and our very distance from it.


Anand Patwardhan has been making politically 
charged documentaries for nearly three decades. 
Despite winning numerous national and 
international awards his films are often 
suppressed by the ruling Indian elite, tackling 
as they do subjects like street dwellers (Bombay 
our City, 1985), religious fundamentalism (In the 
Name of God, 1992), the connection between 
machismo and sectarian violence (Father, Son and 
Holy War, 1995) and the plight of those displaced 
in the name of “development” (A Narmada Diary, 
1995).

For more info: Web: www.patwardhan.com




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