SACW | 26 June 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 26 June,  2005

[1]  Bangladesh: Ahmadiyas under attack
- A patently irreligious act - Wrath against a 
defenceless community (Edit., Daily Star)
- Int'l concern can't stop persecution - 20 
attacks on Ahmadiyyas in 18 months (Shamim Ashraf)
[2]  Pakistan:
- Battle for Pakistan's soul (Irfan Husain)
- Three Years On: Remembering Omar Asghar Khan (Ali Asghar Khan)
[3] India History: Gandhi's Bad Faith (Mukul Kesavan)
[4] India: Wrong men, wrong party (J Sri Raman)
[5] India-Pakistan: Jinnah : How Much Secular, 
How Much Communal (Asghar Ali Engineer)
[6] India: Compensation with Repression (Anil Chamadia)

______

[1]

Bangladesh
June 26, 2005
Editorial

A PATENTLY IRRELIGIOUS ACT
Wrath against a defenceless community
The Ahmadiyyas have come under attack again. This 
time in a more virulent form. It began with 
dousing petrol on an Ahmadiyya mosque and 
torching it in the small hours of Thursday night 
at Kandipara in Brahmanbaria town. The community 
people themselves put out the blaze before the 
police and the firefighters arrived on the scene.

Almost simultaneously, at least two dozen 
homemade bombs were burst at Bhadughar within 
Brahmanbaria municipal limits and Shuhilpur under 
Sadar upazila. Khatm-e-Nabuat may have denied 
having had anything to do with it, but there is 
no question about the orchestrated attack in 
Brahmanbaria being the outcome of sustained, open 
incitement to religious frenzy against a 
particular community.

If the series of assaults on them, especially on 
their mosques, had not taken place in various 
parts of the country earlier on, there is no 
gainsaying the fact that the Brahmanbaria 
cocktail blasts and arson would most possibly 
have been averted.

There was the usual run of post-incident medical 
treatment for the victims, police placement and 
law and order alert of all kinds, but the 
question that exercises the mind a lot is this: 
why was there a local intelligence failure to 
foresee what was coming and to preempt it? 
Generally the administration must be seized of 
the need to provide security cover to 
Ahmadiyya-inhabited areas in order that no 
untoward incident can take place in them. The 
police couldn't arrest anyone in that small area, 
which is bound to surprise people.

Let us not forget that lately Bangladesh has come 
under international spotlight not for all the 
right reasons. One of the points of criticism 
related to religious intolerance of a handful 
against the Ahmadiyyas which is out of steps with 
our age-old traditions of religious harmony and 
peaceful co-existence of different faiths. We 
must not allow anybody to spoil our natural image.

o o o

The Daily Star
June 26, 2005

INT'L CONCERN CAN'T STOP PERSECUTION
20 ATTACKS ON AHMADIYYAS IN 18 MONTHS
Shamim Ashraf
Zealots carrying out countrywide violent 
campaigns against Ahmadiyyas once again 
disregarded the concern of world rights community 
by attacking the sect members with bombs and 
setting fire to their mosque in Brahmanbaria on 
Friday.

The attack created panic among the 20,000 
Ahmadiyyas in the district where the minority 
sect preached their beliefs first in Bangladesh.

One suspect was arrested yesterday at the 
district town after a Special Branch (SB) team 
visited the spot where two dozen bombs were 
exploded by the zealots. A team of army 
explosives experts is likely to visit the spot 
today.

District Amir of Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Monzur 
Hossain filed two separate cases with Sadar 
Police Station in connection with Friday's attack.

The attack came six days after a European Human 
Rights Conference on extremism, intolerance and 
violence asked Bangladesh government to ensure 
safety to Ahmadiyyas and restore their mosques 
now in capture of anti-Ahmadiyya operatives.

The conference also asked for lifting the 
government ban on Ahmadiyya publications but it 
could not stop the zealots from boosting the 
anti-Ahmadiyya campaign.

The Amnesty International, UN Human Rights 
Commission, US State Department, European Union, 
US-based Human Rights Watch and rights activists 
at home and abroad earlier repeatedly asked the 
zealots to stop persecution on the Ahmadiyyas.

In spite of the right bodies' concern, as many as 
20 incidents of attack on the Ahmadiyyas took 
place across the country in the last 18 months.

The persecution on the Ahmadiyyas never stopped 
since the anti-Ahmadiyya campaign got a boost in 
1987 when Khatme Nabuwat Movement was founded in 
Brahmanbaria to lead the anti-Ahmadiyya campaign.

The district has become the most dangerous place 
for the Ahmadiyyas where the zealots captured six 
mosques including the main Ahmadiyya mosque, 
Masjidul Mobarak, in April 1987 to oust them from 
the area.

Syed Abdul Wahed, a pir (religious leader) who 
was the head moulana of Annada High School in 
Brahmanbaria, preached Ahmediat (belief of 
Ahmadiyyas) in 1912.

Opposition was there against the Ahmadiyyas 
although they follow the same rituals as Sunnis 
who constitute 90 percent of Bangladeshi Muslims, 
apart from their belief about the emergence of 
Imam Mehdi, the last messenger of Prophet 
Muhammad.

The anti-Ahmadiyya people in a total distortion 
of fact propagate that the Ahmadiyyas do not 
believe Mohammad as the last prophet.

Organising anti-Ahmadiyya forces under the banner 
of Khatme Nabuwat Movement in Brahmanbaria in 
1987, local religious leader Moulana Sirajul 
Islam demanded that the Ahmadiyyas should be 
declared as non-Muslim.

They captured six Ahmadiyya mosques including 
their main mosque, Masjidul Mobarak. Although the 
Ahmadiyyas got back two mosques, four including 
Masjidul Mobarak are still under siege by the 
anti-Ahmadiyya elements.

The zealots renamed the main mosque as 'Masjidul 
Fathah' and established 'Khatme Nabuwat Tajul 
Ulum Madrasa' in the mosque. Moulana Idris, 
personal assistant to Islamic Oikya Jote Chairman 
Fazlul Haq Amini, is the principal of the madrasa.

In the continuing persecution on the Ahmadiyyas, 
the zealots boycotted and outcast the sect 
members in different parts of the country. Some 
people bombed the Ahmadiyya headquarters at 
Bakshibazar in Dhaka on October 29, 1992.

The cruellest attack was the explosion of a time 
bomb in a mosque at Nirala residential area in 
Khulna on October 8, 1999 during Juma prayers, 
which left seven Ahmadiyyas killed and 27 others 
injured.

The fanatics confined 17 Ahmadiyya families of 
Uttar Bhabanipur village in Kushtia for over a 
month in October, 2003.

The zealots killed Ahmadiyya imam Shah Alam in 
Roghunathpurbak village in Jhikargachha upazila 
of Jessore on October 29, 2003. Ahmadiyyas 
alleged that local Jamaat leader Aminul Islam had 
led the gang.

Trampling down Ahmadiyyas' fundamental rights, 
the government on January 8, 2004, banned their 
publications for what it said was "objectionable 
materials which hurt or might hurt the sentiments 
of the majority Muslim population of Bangladesh".

Khatme Nabuwat groups pulled down the signboards 
of Ahmadiyyas mosques at Puranbazar in Patuakhali 
on May 12 last year, at Chawkbazar in Chittagong 
16 days later and at Nirala in Khulna on August 
11 last year.

They hung new signboards there that branded the 
mosques as merely "place of worship" and asked 
people not to mistake those for mosques.

The agitators also changed the signboard of 
Ahmadiyya mosque in Bogra on March 11 and of 
another mosque in Shyamnagar, Satkhira on April 
17 this year.

The zealots attacked the Ahmadiyyas of Dharmapur, 
Dalpara and Kazipara villages in Badarganj 
upazila in Rangpur and looted their houses on 
April 29 this year.

A series of attacks on the Ahmadiyyas and looting 
of their houses left 17 Ahmadiyyas injured, 
including four women, in Shyamnagar.

Unknown people set fire to an Ahmadiyya mosque in 
Maharajpur village in Gurudaspur upazila of 
Natore on June 21.

And the latest attack came on Friday when the 
zealots set fire to an Ahmadiyya mosque of 
Kandipara in Brahmanbaria and blasted over two 
dozen bombs including some time bombs leaving two 
Ahmadiyyas injured. They also hurled bombs in 
Bhadughar in the municipal area and Suhilpur in 
Sadar upazila simultaneously.

The bombs went off one after another, sending a 
chill of panic among the Ahmadiyyas who accused 
local Khatme Nabuwat operatives for the attacks.

Leaders of left-leaning 11-party alliance visited 
the trouble-torn area yesterday and submitted a 
memorandum to the deputy commissioner and 
superintendent of police demanding arrest and 
trial of the attackers.

The 11-party leaders will observe a token sit-in 
in front of the DC office today.

Police yesterday nabbed Sumon alias Chanchal, 22, 
from Mowrail area of the town suspecting him as a 
bomb-maker. They started interrogating him.

______


[2]

Dawn
June 25, 2005

BATTLE FOR PAKISTAN'S SOUL

By Irfan Husain

A FASCINATING debate on Jinnah's political 
beliefs has opened up on both sides of the 
Indo-Pakistan border. Triggered by L.K. Advani's 
praise for the Quaid's secular credentials, this 
assessment has been attacked by BJP hardliners in 
India as well as mullahs in Pakistan.
There is an irony here: religious extremists in 
both countries are on the same side of this 
debate. The militantly Hindu RSS has stridently 
rejected Jinnah's secular stance, while our 
religious parties have always maintained that 
Pakistan's founder had fought for, and won, an 
Islamic state.
For any objective student of recent Indian 
history, Jinnah's secularism is not a subject for 
debate. Anybody reading his famous and oft-quoted 
speech to the Constituent Assembly on August 11, 
1947, ("You are free; you are free to go to your 
temples... You may belong to any religion or 
caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the 
business of the state...") will conclude that 
this is as clear an enunciation of the secular 
ideal as found anywhere.
But despite the unambiguous message contained in 
this speech, there are many in Pakistan today who 
insist that Jinnah had always intended to create 
an Islamic state. The sophisticated among them 
quote from selected speeches made to justify a 
separate state for the Muslims, while the less 
educated simply ask: "If the Quaid did not want 
an Islamic state, why did he demand the partition 
of India?"
Indeed, this is a difficult argument to rebut. If 
he had wanted a secular Pakistan, what was wrong 
with Muslims and Hindus living together in a 
secular and united India? Nearly sixty years 
after the event, it is easy to forget that Jinnah 
had often spoken of 'a homeland for the Muslims 
of the subcontinent', and never an Islamic state. 
But this subtle difference is not easy to sell to 
the religious right.
The fact that Jinnah's vision is still being 
debated on both sides of the border indicates 
that the question of the nature of the Pakistani 
state has not yet been settled. And while the 
religious parties have made significant gains 
since Zia's dark period, pushing the national 
agenda far to the right, secular forces are still 
fighting a rearguard action.
In a recent talk show on a private TV channel, 
the subject under discussion was whether Jinnah 
was secular or not. During the show, Dr Pervez 
Hoodbhoy raised an interesting point.
He said our mullahs were against secularism in 
Pakistan, but wanted secularism in India and the 
West. This is very true. In ideologically 
organized states, minorities would have few 
religious freedoms, just as they don't in 
Pakistan. So while fundamentalist Muslims insist 
on asserting their religious identity in the 
West, they deny this right to the minorities in 
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
But why should Hindu extremists in India be so 
concerned about Jinnah's secularism? Clearly, in 
their world view, partition only makes sense if 
the demand for Pakistan came from Islamic 
ideologues. The RSS has consistently branded 
Pakistan a fundamentalist state responsible for 
much of India's woes. So if its founder is upheld 
to be a secularist by its BJP partner, L.K. 
Advani, this requires a major U-turn in Hindu 
nationalist thinking.
For their own reasons, the RSS's Muslim 
counterparts in Pakistan require Jinnah to be one 
of theirs if they are to sell the concept of a 
pure and unalloyed Islamic state. After all, if 
they concede that Jinnah never wanted or 
visualized a theocracy, their demand to transform 
Pakistan into 'a laboratory of Islam' is severely 
compromised. So not only has Jinnah to be 
posthumously transformed into a pious, orthodox 
Muslim, he must also be projected as the founder 
of an Islamic state.
The reality of Jinnah was very different from the 
image religious elements have tried to create. 
Stanley Wolpert's readable and well-researched 
biography paints a picture of a very human Jinnah 
whose faith was anything but orthodox. Indeed, 
Wolpert's passing reference to Jinnah's dietary 
preferences caused the book to be banned in 
Pakistan during Zia's rule.
The fact that Jinnah remained on the fringes of 
Indian politics during the Khilafat movement in 
the 1920s clearly indicates that he did not wish 
to mix religion with politics. Nevertheless, 
being a shrewd politician, he actively sought the 
support of Deobandis and Barelvis alike in his 
quest for Muslim unity. In the 1937 elections, 
the Muslim League cultivated the pirs of Punjab 
and Sindh to use their influence with their 
millions of mureeds.
In this duality lies much of the confusion about 
Jinnah's secularism. Before different audiences, 
he used different languages. Now, over five 
decades after his death, people with differing 
political agendas are able to find different 
texts to support their views. Like theologians 
poring over ancient religious texts to underpin 
their beliefs, modern-day fundamentalists and 
secularists clutch at Jinnah's words to support 
their vision of Pakistan. But as in ancient 
scriptures, there is much ambiguity in Jinnah's 
writings and speeches. Both sides can find texts 
to justify their respective views.
Perhaps one clear clue to the reality of Jinnah's 
political views lies in the fact that before 
Pakistan became a reality, Muslim parties were 
almost unanimously opposed to partition.
Some of them adopted this stance because they 
genuinely thought (and they were not far wrong) 
that the creation of a Muslim state in the 
Muslim-majority areas would mean abandoning 
Muslims in Hindu-majority provinces. But most 
ulema opposed Jinnah because they saw him as a 
westernized, secular politician whose faith was 
not as rigid as theirs. Indeed, when asked 
whether he was a Shia or a Sunni, Jinnah is 
supposed to have replied: "I am neither Shia nor 
Sunni. I am a simple Musalman." For zealots, a 
state created by such a person could only be 
secular.
It is unlikely that logic or scholarship will 
decide this debate. Both clearly indicate that 
Jinnah was one of the most secular politicians of 
his generation. Nevertheless, we are left with 
the undisputed fact that Pakistan was carved up 
in the name of religion, and it is now difficult 
to argue that the new state was never intended to 
be the hotbed of fanaticism it has become, 
whatever its founder's real intentions.
Many younger readers might find this entire 
subject academic and irrelevant. But in reality, 
this ongoing debate is nothing short of a battle 
for the soul of Pakistan. Indeed, its outcome 
will determine what kind of country future 
generations will grow up in.

o o o o

The News International
June 25, 2005

THREE YEARS ON: REMEMBERING OMAR ASGHAR KHAN
The loss of a brother unresolved

Ali Asghar Khan

The truth is elusive. If he was murdered, as most 
of those close to him believe, then why? If he 
took his own life, as the authorities would have 
us believe, then why?

These are the questions we, his family and 
friends, face on a daily basis. As if the loss 
and grief is not enough, we are left abandoned in 
search of the truth. Our insistence on calling it 
murder is treated almost as a denial of reality, 
but those that knew Omar and those who were with 
him in the last few days reinforce the belief of 
those who knew him a lifetime: the belief that he 
was murdered.

The pain, even today, is as fresh as the night 
his body was brought to our family home. Here lay 
a young man who had kept himself in the best of 
health -- keeping fit, exercising regularly. For 
a man who had just supposedly hung himself, he 
looked totally serene and peacefully asleep. The 
only visible sign of violence was a rope-like 
mark, on the left side of his neck, supposedly 
caused by a bed sheet. Here lay a man who 
believed that violence was never a means of 
resolving any conflict, and who never used it 
against anyone. And they would have us believe 
that he used it against himself.

Why? By whom? We are questioned sometimes out of 
sympathetic concern and sometimes as if there is 
something to hide. How can a family so well 
connected not have access to the truth and to 
justice? The truth is that poverty exists in the 
strangest forms. Access to justice as we have 
seen on numerous occasions is denied to even the 
most influential when their interests are on a 
collision course with those who have learnt to 
survive in all environments, serving their 
self-interest at all costs. They lurk amongst the 
shadows in the corridors of power. Seeking 
opportunities, willing to manipulate the destiny 
of a nation in a direction that serves them best. 
They use individuals, organizations and 
institutions to their own maximum benefit, simply 
deleting everyone else from the equation as 
required.

The questions remain unanswered. The truth will 
only be known when people who matter ask the 
questions and are willing to accept the answers 
at whatever cost. But our history is replete with 
examples of the truth being closeted. Until this 
changes and the nation is allowed to access the 
truth, when institutions are allowed to function 
and are strong enough not to buckle before 
individual interests. Only then shall the people 
get a glimpse of the truth and history shall be 
re-written. It is only then that we as people 
shall be free to gauge for ourselves where we 
went wrong and finally evolve as a nation where 
justice, freedom and equality are no longer empty 
slogans.

Until then, however, we shall learn to live with 
pain. Omar was an idealist, totally committed and 
focused. People like him have no place in the 
corridors of power. It is they that let the light 
in -- a death knell for those that hide in the 
shadows. Some of the ministries Omar was in 
charge of, had over the years, remained dens of 
corruption. He was either too naive or too bold 
to understand the intrinsic implications of his 
actions and their effect on the vested interests 
that had for decades manipulated our nation's 
coffers to their own best advantage.

These were the forces he had struggled against 
all his life. He now found himself in their 
midst, could not recognise them and probably did 
not understand the extent to which he threatened 
them or the extremes they would go to in order to 
protect their interests. At last something had to 
give and it is small wonder that it had to be 
Omar, who had given of himself all his life.

Another triumph of wrong over right, which we as 
a nation have become so used to. After the 
initial shock we have learnt to accept almost 
anything as fait accompli. The nation, like its 
rulers, has learnt to absolve itself of all 
responsibility. Whether it is the murder of an 
individual or of the values that we as a people 
profess to possess. How else can we explain the 
parading of women naked in our streets, their 
rape, the murder of innocents on sectarian 
grounds and the constant daily humiliation of the 
underprivileged, the vulnerable, and the poor? 
These are the people Omar tried to serve, and in 
doing so, left behind a legacy of which we can be 
proud.

A legacy that so many people that he inspired are 
in their own different ways trying to build upon. 
They live in the hope that one day there shall be 
light, the truth shall be revealed, and the 
people shall be able to hold their heads up high 
as a nation that respects human dignity, and is 
no longer willing to accept anything less than 
equal opportunity, peace and justice. They strive 
for the attainment of these goals, inching closer 
to them in the belief that it is then that Omar's 
soul shall rest in peace.

______


[3]

The Telegraph
June 26, 2005

GANDHI'S BAD FAITH
- The opportunism of the Khilafat movement alienated Muslims
Mukul Kesavan

Politics of mobilization
Gandhi returned to Indian politics in 1915. While 
trying to understand his politics, we should bear 
in mind that he was forty-six years old and had 
been an NRI for nearly a quarter of a century. He 
had served his political apprenticeship in South 
Africa, not as a nationalist, but as a civil 
rights activist, fighting for civic and racial 
equality on behalf of South Africa's Indian 
community.

When Gandhi arrived, he found a Congress riven by 
two readings of nationalism. Early Congress 
nationalism was one particular response to the 
challenge of organizing politically within the 
constraints of colonial rule. The strategy the 
early Congress favoured was pluralism powered by 
the rhetoric of economic grievance.

This pluralist style had been challenged by an 
Extremist faction that favoured popular 
mobilization in the name of a Mother India 
defined by a Hindu cultural nationalism. The 
Swadeshi movement was the first fruit of this 
Extremist style. By 1915, the Moderates were in 
some disarray, with many of them deserting the 
Congress to join the Indian Liberal Federation, 
while the great leader of the Extremists, Bal 
Gangadhar Tilak, was busy trying to establish a 
Home Rule League, to press the colonial state to 
grant Indians self-government.

On the face of it, Tilak should have been 
Gandhi's mentor and model. They shared a 
willingness to deploy a "Hindu" idiom in 
political discourse; both wanted to invent a 
politics that transcended the polite, petitioning 
politics of the early Congress; both men tried to 
forge instruments for popular mobilization and 
pan-Indian agitation. Gandhi even used the Home 
Rule League networks created by Tilak to give 
structure to the Non-Cooperation movement. And 
yet Gandhi steadfastly maintained that his mentor 
in matters political was not Tilak but his great 
Moderate contemporary, Gopal Krishna Gokhale.

The fundamental difference between Tilak and 
Gandhi is this. Tilak wanted to confront the raj 
on behalf of a nation imagined in a broadly Hindu 
style. To this end, he was willing to use Shivaji 
and Ganesh symbolically to raise nationalist 
consciousness. Gandhi's political ideas and 
anti-colonial strategies were designed to extend 
Congress pluralism to the new epoch of mass 
politics. Mass politics to Gandhi meant adapting 
the style of civil disobedience he had learned in 
South Africa to the vastness of India. This posed 
two challenges: one, creating a politics that 
overcame the urban alienation of Congress 
politics from the rural Indian hinterland. And 
two, consolidating the representative claims of 
Congress pluralism by drawing into its politics a 
substantial Muslim presence.

Gandhi's homespun make-over, his populist 
folk-religious idiom, his assertion that he was a 
sanatani Hindu, obscures an essential difference 
between him and someone like Tilak. Unlike the 
Extremists, Gandhi, with one fatal exception, 
never mobilized around religious symbols or 
issues. His great mobilizations were centred on 
issues that were secular in an almost doctrinaire 
way: the suspension of civil liberties in the 
case of the Rowlatt satyagraha, the right to make 
untaxed salt later and a strictly civic 
micro-politics based on constructive work, 
sanitation and spinning. Gandhi, in his 
dhoti-wearing, ashram-centred avatar had learnt 
more from Tolstoy's romantic identification with 
Russian peasant life and its traditions and Henry 
Thoreau's Walden than he had from any 
specifically "Hindu" tradition.

Looking back, Gandhi's South African 
apprenticeship seems a controlled experiment 
where he implemented and refined ideas of civil 
disobedience and passive resistance derived from 
his reading of Henry Thoreau's essay, "Resistance 
to Civil Government", written in 1849 and 
posthumously published in 1866 as "Civil 
Disobedience". Similarly, after his arrival in 
India, Gandhi's leadership initiatives in 
Champaran, Ahmedabad and Khera can be seen as 
five-fingers exercises, undertaken in preparation 
for the anti-colonial struggle ahead. The 
agitation he launches against the Rowlatt Bill, 
the first all-India satyagraha, seems, in 
retrospect, a dress rehearsal for the premiere of 
Gandhi's first truly pan-Indian movement, the 
Khilafat-Non-Cooperation struggle.

The Khilafat-Non-Cooperation is generally 
regarded as the Part I of a trilogy, the Civil 
Disobedience movement and the Quit India movement 
being Parts II and III. What's more, it has a 
special place in the history of Indian 
nationalism as the high-water mark of 
Hindu-Muslim cooperation in the course of the 
anti-colonial struggle. Parts II and III, as 
Gyanendra Pandey pointed out in a clever book, 
were notable for the relative meagreness of 
Muslim participation.

The problem with this perspective and this 
seductive sequence of roughly decennial 
agitations, is that the Khilafat-Non-Cooperation 
movement is a massive aberration in Gandhi's 
political career, different from any movement he 
participated in, before or afterwards. The 
Khilafat-Non-Cooperation movement is singular 
because it is the only movement led by Gandhi 
that was centred on a religious issue: the 
preservation of the Sultan of Turkey as the 
Caliph of all Muslims.

We can see its aberrant nature in the uneasy 
hyphenation of its name: 
Khilafat-Non-Cooperation. As a schoolboy, I used 
to think that the Khilafat part had to do with 
Muslims and the Non-Cooperation part with the 
Congress, till Francis Robinson, in his fine 
book, Separatism Amongst Indian Muslims, set us 
right. Both the agitation to save the Turkish 
Sultan on account of his claim to be the Muslim 
world's Khalifah and the scheme of 
Non-Cooperation were initiatives of the Khilafat 
leadership, not Gandhi or the Congress. Gandhi 
made these two issues his own by presiding over 
the All India Khilafat Conference in Delhi in 
November 1919, well before the Congress had 
anything to do with the Khilafat issue. By 
September 1920, Gandhi in an extraordinary 
political coup, had gotten himself elected 
president of the All-India Home Rule League and 
steered a resolution in favour of Non-Cooperation 
to preserve the Khilafat and wrest swaraj in the 
Congress session in Calcutta.

Gandhi's decision to choose the Khilafat movement 
as the occasion for his all-India debut, seems 
even odder given the Khilafat leadership. Maulana 
Abdul Bari was a conservative Barelvi alim. The 
Ali Brothers, Mohammad and Shaukat, were Young 
Turks from Aligarh, impatient with the loyalism 
of Sir Syed's politics and openly admiring of the 
intransigence of Extremist politics during the 
Swadeshi movement. In fact the leaders of the 
Khilafat movement are best understood as the 
Extremist tendency in Muslim politics. Gandhi, 
Gokhale's disciple, had chosen as his allies a 
pair of populist demagogues: the Lal-Bal-Pal of 
Muslim politics. The irony of this is sharpened 
by the fact that the greatest critic of the 
Khilafat movement and the Congress's part in it 
was Jinnah, once Dadabhai Naoroji's private 
secretary, and, at the time, the outstanding 
representative of the Moderate tendency in Muslim 
politics.

Why did Gandhi do it? For two reasons. One, he 
saw it as a quick, cheap way of getting the 
Muslims on board. What Gandhi was doing here was 
trying to repopulate the Muslim enclosure in the 
nationalist zoo by manipulating a Muslim version 
of Tilakite populism. When Gandhi described the 
Khilafat cause as the "Muslim cow", that is, a 
sacred, sentimental cause, his analogy was off 
the mark. The Turkish Sultan was for the Ali 
Brothers what Shivaji was for Tilak: a lonely 
symbol of defiance in the face of a hostile 
empire. The Khilafat stirred them in the same way 
as the idea of Hindu Padpadshahi stirred the 
Extremist imagination.

Gandhi's second reason for espousing this curious 
cause was that it allowed him to take over the 
Congress. By promising to deliver the Congress, 
he secured the support of the Khilafatists, and 
by promising to deliver the Muslims, he 
effectively took over the Congress without being 
a member or ever standing for election. In the 
short term, he succeeded brilliantly. In the long 
term, this adventurist coup did the anti-colonial 
movement incalculable damage.

The reason Gandhi's alliance with the 
Khilafatists was a form of adventurism was not 
because he was trying to do a deal with a Muslim 
party. The Congress had always approached Muslims 
at one remove, as the Congress-League pact of 
1916 so clearly demonstrated. No, the reason the 
Khilafat movement was aberrant was because the 
earlier deals had been based on rational 
political bargaining, whereas agitating for the 
Sultan was inflammatory posturing in a hopeless 
cause. That Gandhi acted in patronizing bad 
faith, is clear from the abruptness with which he 
called off the movement after the Chauri Chaura 
violence without even consulting his Muslim 
allies. If he had ever believed that Khilafat was 
the Muslim cow, he cut its throat pretty casually.

The passions he had helped rouse, which were now 
turned against him and the Congress, meant that 
the Congress haemorrhaged Muslims ever 
afterwards. Gandhi returned to the secular 
straight-and-narrow with the salt satyagraha ten 
years later and strove manfully to secure the 
Moderate aim of a pluralist nationalism in the 
age of mass politics, but opportunism of the 
Khilafat movement haunted the Congress and helped 
alienate the one constituency it prized above all 
others: India's Muslims. In this season of 
Jinnah, no sensible account of the Khilafat 
movement can be written without acknowledging 
that on this issue at least, Jinnah was right and 
Gandhi, without question, was wrong.


______


[4]

The Daily Times
June 24, 2005	 

Wrong men, wrong party
by J Sri Raman

Along with Vajpayee's saintly image, BJP spin 
doctors had assiduously built the opposite image 
of Advani. Vajpayee was compared to Nehru for his 
democratic virtues, Advani was likened to Sardar 
Vallabhbhai Patel. For the far right, Patel 
represented the right in the Congress
It's not even two weeks since the Advani affair 
hit and then hogged the headlines for four days. 
Those days of media agony over the former deputy 
prime minister's political fate and fortune, 
however, already seem to belong to a dim, distant 
past. Has nothing changed then?
A change, a subtle but significant one, is indeed 
underway. But it is the opposite of the change 
that Lal Krishna Advani's labours in Pakistan 
were perhaps expected to effect.
A personal image makeover for the president of 
the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was, by all 
accounts, the objective of the Advani statements 
in Pakistan that have so upset the constituency 
back home. That objective has not been achieved. 
An entirely unexpected image makeover for the 
party, however, seems to be taking place.
To appreciate the full significance of the 
change, one must go farther back than Advani's 
revelation in Pakistan of a finer self and a less 
fascist outlook than India had ever seen before. 
We must go back to the example Advani was trying, 
in vain, to emulate.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee had a long enough record as 
a communal rabble-rouser before the media and the 
middle class anointed him a saint. The image he 
thus achieved, however, was as an individual 
misfit in a party. As M Karunanidhi - patriarch 
of 'Dravidian' politics, said to be dramatically 
opposed to the 'Hindutva' camp, - once put it: 
"Vajpayee is the right man in the wrong party."
Karunanidhi, like several other opportunists, was 
trying to rationalise participation of his party 
in the Vajpayee-led government in New Delhi. The 
image, however, gained acceptance beyond the 
BJP-led coalition.
A similar, larger-than-party, image was sought 
for Advani, too. The former deputy prime 
minister, however, had distinct disadvantages. 
Along with Vajpayee's saintly image, influential 
BJP spin doctors had also assiduously built the 
opposite image of Advani. If Vajpayee was 
compared to Nehru for his democratic virtues, 
Advani was likened to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. 
For the far right, Patel who represented the 
right in the Congress, was "the right man in the 
wrong party".
Advani was the architect of the Ayodhya movement. 
He was the most outspoken BJP leader against 
"demographic invasion" from Bangladesh. He was 
the candidate of the "core constituency". The 
image had gained endurance beyond easy reversal 
by means of press conferences and statements at a 
far-away mausoleum.
The parivar (the far-right 'family') has stopped 
concentrating fire at him. The new target of its 
offensive is the party itself - as a whole.
The Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), until the other 
day, was appealing to the BJP over the head of 
Advani (and Vajpayee). The VHP now has let it be 
known that the BJP has ceased to be a party of 
Hindus. It has abandoned them as political 
orphans. Instead of reserving the role for the 
BJP, the RSS, sources close to it indicate, is 
considering promotion of regional forces of a 
far-right outlook as the parivar's political 
fronts.
The Shiv Sena of Maharashtra is such a force. Bal 
Thackeray, the bumptious chief of the Sena, has 
declared: "If it moves away from its ideology, it 
will be difficult for us to remain allied to the 
BJP."
All this, despite the fact that the BJP hastened 
to pass a resolution that put Advani's 
controversial statements in a communal 
perspective.
Despite also the fact that the BJP has been at 
pains for the past few days to stress its 
commitment to its "fundamental tenets".
Sections of the media with a hidden pro-BJP 
agenda have joined in. They are now pining in 
print and bytes for a reinvented BJP as a liberal 
right-of-the-centre party.
Forgotten amidst all this is the fact that the 
BJP is still the party of Narendra Modi of the 
Gujarat infamy, of Uma Bharti and others of the 
Babri Masjid demolition squad, and Murli Manohar 
Joshi of made-to-order history. Also forgotten is 
the fact, acknowledged on other occasions, that 
the headquarters of the Rashtriya Swamasevak 
Sangh (RSS) - the family patriarch - remains a 
place of holy pilgrimage to BJP leaders, 
including Vajpayee, irrespective of the attempts 
at image makeover. Conveniently forgotten, too, 
is the fact that the parivar provides cadre power 
for most of the BJP candidates in every election.
Those attempting an image makeover for the BJP 
can always say: "All these are only wrong men 
(and women) in the right party"!
The writer is a journalist and peace activist based in Chennai, India


______


[5]

24 June 2005

JINNAH : HOW MUCH SECULAR, HOW MUCH COMMUNAL

Asghar Ali Engineer

Shri L.K.Advani’s recent statements about Jinnah 
describing him as secular leader has raised a 
storm of controversy about him in India and large 
number of people are writing and expressing their 
opinion about him. It is quite natural. Jinnah, 
at best, would remain controversial figure in 
India for a long time to come. Advani’s statement 
came as a shock not only to the Sangh Parivar but 
also to any secularists. Advani and his parivar 
had always reviled Jinnah and hence the shock.

It is difficult to guess why Advani said what he 
did in Karachi. Did he become sentimental in his 
‘home town’? Was he overwhelmed by the reception 
and hospitality he got in Pakistan as he and his 
Parivar had always demonised Pakistan? Or was he 
trying, as some politically aware people think, 
to project his image as a moderate now after his 
tryst with extremism? And if so why his 
temptation for moderation? One surmise is that he 
is eying prime ministership of India if ever NDA 
comes back to power again as Vajpayee is too old 
to be in the prime ministerial chair again.

However, it could also be a genuine change of 
heart. One cannot rule out that possibility also. 
Advani had joined the RSS when he was in Karachi 
and hence espoused communal ideology based on 
hatred of Muslims and much more on hatred of 
Muslim League and its leaders. Ideology always 
creates certain simplistic beliefs and divides 
the world in black and white ignoring all in 
between shades.

Ideology often becomes blinkers and makes its 
believer ignore complex realities and tread the 
straight path of ideology and hence she/he 
becomes victims of her/his own ideological 
beliefs. Advani, as believer in Hindutva ideology 
could be no exception to it. But when one comes 
face to face with reality and experiences 
something contrary to ones ideology, one could be 
easily shaken and change ones view. It is 
difficult to say whether Advani had changed his 
views genuinely in the light of his experiences 
in Pakistan. However, I am inclined to think 
there is an element of genuineness in Advani’s 
changed view of Jinnah.

One thing is sure that Advani did not retract his 
statement back home in India. He stuck to his 
guns. Usual politicians take recourse to having 
been misquoted by the media, he did not take any 
such plea. But under intense pressure from the 
Parivar he only partly retracted saying he did 
not say Jinnah was secular but that Jinnah’s 
concept of state was. No one can deny Jinnah’s 
speech on 11th August 1947 in the Pakistan 
Constituent Assembly. In that respect Advani 
cannot be faulted. Also it is a fact that Jinnah 
was described as ‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim 
unity by Sarojini Naidu after Jinnah helped forge 
Lucknow Pact between the Congress and Muslim 
League in 1916. Here too Advani cannot be faulted.

But the question is did Advani not know all this 
before he went to Karachi? If he did, why he kept 
on demonising Jinnah along with his political 
Parivar? Why did he make such statement only 
after going to Pakistan? The only possibility is 
that either he is now trying to project his image 
as moderate or since the RSS has demanded his 
resignation and he has agreed to resign from the 
BJP presidentship at the end of 2005 he now 
wishes to go down in history as a changed man. 
Anyway after he resigns as president of the BJP 
he may not have politically crucial role to play 
in the Sangh politics.

Having said this another important question is 
how to characterise Jinnah? Was he communal or 
secular. One columnist has suggested Jinnah was 
“pseudo-communal” and more westernised than an 
authentic Muslim. It is very difficult to 
honestly assess Jinnah in India. His name arouses 
strong emotions as he is seen as solely 
responsible for dividing the country. It is not 
only the Sangh parivar which condemns Jinnah and 
his role but even the Indian secularists see him 
as culprit, if not communal, for dividing India.

M.N. Roy, a noted rationalist intellectual and 
activist wrote, “ Mohammed Ali Jinnah was the 
most maligned and misunderstood man. That 
experience made him bitter and it was very 
largely but of spitefulness that he pursued an 
object, the attainment of which placed him in the 
most difficult position. Jinnah was not an 
idealist in the sense of being a visionary; he 
was a practical man possessed of great shrewdness 
as well as of more than average intelligence.”

And for Pakistanis he is everything father and 
founder of the nation. He is beyond any 
criticism. In fact Jinnah to Pakistanis is what 
Mahatma Gandhi is to Indians or perhaps 
combination of Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru. One 
cannot think of Pakistan without Jinnah. Pakistan 
would not have come into existence without him. 
Though this is true but question is was Jinnah 
solely responsible for creation of Pakistan? Was 
Pakistan more an accident of history that outcome 
of a pre-planned operation long cherished by 
Jinnah?  There is no evidence to show that 
operation Pakistan was pre-planned and long 
cherished dream of Jinnah.

Jinnah began as nationalist and was active 
supporter of Congress nationalism. He was liberal 
and was described as ‘Muslim Gokhale’. He had 
joined Congress and went to Muslim League on his 
own conditions and brought them together through 
the Lucknow Pact in 1916. In Jinnah’s life 1928 
was a crucial year when the Nehru Committee 
turned down his demand for 33% seats of Muslims 
in Parliament. It is again debatable whether his 
demand was justified and whether such a demand 
could be met in any political democracy. Maulana 
Azad himself rejected this demand in the AICC 
session when Nehru Committee report was discussed 
there.

Second turning point was 1937 elections in which 
the Muslim League lost heavily and the Congress 
went back on promise to take two League ministers 
in the U.P. cabinet. For Jinnah it was great 
betrayal. It was final break off from the 
Congress in a way though not the ultimate one. 
The ultimate break off point came in 1946 when 
Nehru madder a statement that changes in the 
Cabinet Mission Plan could not be ruled out. 
After 1946 fall elections the Congress and Muslim 
League had formed a composite government. Thus 
one cannot say that even after passing the two 
nation theory resolution Jinnah had made up his 
mind for Pakistan.

All available evidence shows even after that 
resolution of 1940 Indian unity could have been 
saved, if a satisfactory power-sharing 
arrangement could have been worked out. It would 
be very difficult to maintain that Jinnah alone 
was responsible for creation of Pakistan, much 
less Pakistan being long cherished dream of 
Jinnah. And how can one ignore the ignoble role 
of British imperialism in partitioning of the 
country.

Partition was not only culmination of the British 
divide and rule policy but also result of 
definite political design to bring about 
partition of the country. United India would have 
strengthened socialist camp led by Soviet Union 
and would have posed a great challenge to 
imperialist powers both in China which was 
heading towards communist revolution but also in 
the Middle East which was rich in oil resources.

Thus an honest assessment of Jinnah would require 
taking into account various complex forces in 
operation then in south, south east and west 
Asia. Jinnah, for all these and various other 
reasons, cannot fit into any neat political 
category – communal or secular. He was secular, 
if seen in his social and personal context. He 
was far from religious fanatic as the Sangh 
Parivar would like to project him. He hardly ever 
subscribed to any religious dogmas. He was far 
more closer to Nehru in this respect.  He was 
struggling for Muslim and not Islamic politics. 
He wanted ‘Muslim homeland’ rather than an 
Islamic state. He was more of an advocate 
fighting his case than a mass leader or a 
visionary.

It is true the result of his politics was 
partition of the country and hence he is dubbed 
as communalist. But as we have seen despite his 
‘two nation’ theory he was not really wanting a 
separate state of Pakistan but a power-sharing 
arrangement which did not work out to his 
satisfaction. There is some evidence to show that 
for him partition was more of a temporary affair 
than a permanent division. He wanted to spend his 
last days in Mumbai where he had built a house 
for himself and he greatly cared for it so much 
so that he requested Nehru not to let it to any 
commoner but to some foreigner or to some royal 
house. The correspondence to this effect between 
Nehru and Jinnah is on record for anyone to see.

The Indian Muslims also have grievance against 
him. He left them in the lurch. All Muslims did 
not agree with his partition project. In fact 
only the elite Muslims of U.P. and Bihar fell for 
him. Muslim majority areas were indifferent to 
him and to Muslim League politics and so were 
poor and lower class Muslims for whom Pakistan 
project brought no benefit, political or 
economic. The Jamiat-ul-Ulama –e-Hind was also 
totally opposed to creation of Pakistan.

Thus Jinnah will remain highly controversial in 
Indian subcontinent evoking great admiration for 
some and total condemnation by others. This is 
inevitable. Here are very few who would take a 
balanced view keeping all the factors into 
account. Neither uncritical adulation nor total 
condemnation of Jinnah would do. A critical 
evaluation is highly necessary. Perhaps more time 
might be needed for this. Half a century may not 
be enough on history’s time scale.

(Centre for Study of Society and Secularism
Mumbai)

______


[6]

Mainstream weekly
June 4, 2005

Compensation with Repression
Anil Chamadia

Following the Supreme Court's orders on two 
different occasions-on December 12, 1996 and 
December 10, 1998-the National Human Rights 
Commission (NHRC) prepared a list of 2097 persons 
whose bodies had been cremated as 'unidentified' 
in Amritsar, Majitha and Taran Taran cremation 
grounds in Punjab. They were victims of police 
and paramilitary forces during the period from 
June 1984 to December 1994. The NHRC, in turn, 
directed the Punjab Government to ask the 
victims' relatives to furnish claims for 
compensation.
The list, based on the Central Bureau of 
Investigations, identified 646 of the dead; some 
were partially identified and 1190 are yet to be 
identified. Recently, the NHRC named 109 victims' 
families for compensation. This is a rare example 
when compensation has been announced for such a 
large number of sufferers. A team of human rights 
activists, led by Ram Narayan Kumar, should be 
acclaimed for its persistent efforts that forced 
the CBI to start investigations into such large 
scale killings. The team, through its consistant 
efforts spanning over the years, gathered details 
about how a victim came into the security force's 
net, how he was killed before being disposed off 
at the chosen cremation ground-all these find 
mention in their report along with the sufferings 
of the families of the victims.
The government has been under a two-sided
pressure in the matter of these incidents. On the 
one side, the family members of the deceased 
persons are demanding punishment to those who 
were involved in 'cold-blooded murders' and on 
the other side the security forces are building 
up pressure not to take any action against them. 
The accused policemen formed an organisation and 
warned the government that they would return 
their medals to the President, which they were 
awarded for conducting "successful operation 
against terrorism". These policemen also claimed 
that whatever they did was in pursuance of the 
order from above. It is true that a majority of 
the accused are from the lower ranks. A glaring 
case is that of Ajit Singh Sandhu, who had served 
as the SP of Tarn Tarn; he committed suicide in 
1996 obviously fearing criminal proceedings being 
instituted against him for faking 'encounters'. 
After all, this seems plausible if the government 
is to compensate the deceased families. In many 
cases six deceased persons belong to a single 
family.
After publication of the compensation notice in 
Punjab, the process of filling forms has begun; 
but at the same time this has initiated a debate 
about what would be the basis of the 
compensation. Here, the bigger question relates 
to the "right to live". A pertinent question is 
also whether like the Bhopal gas tragedy, justice 
would remain limited to the payment of 
compensation alone. No doubt, responsibility for 
such kind of gory incidents must be fixed; 
otherwise the security forces would get 
encouraged and such excesses would be repeated 
and the government would continue giving 
compensations.
One can notice that 'power politics' that became 
a part of governance in the 1980s, transformed 
the government into a 'Compensation Institute'. 
This kind of attitude was seen sharply since the 
Arwal killings of 14 farm labourers in Bihar in a 
police firing on April 19, 1986. Many people then 
compared these killings with the pre-independence 
episode of Jallianwalabagh in Amritsar. At that 
time, the Bindeshwari Dubey-led Congress 
Government was running Bihar. Though he could not 
do anything against the responsible policemen, he 
approached the deceased families with a 
compensation of Rs ten thousand each. Later, a 
similar government tendency was seen in the 
Kandela village killings in Haryana when the 
police opened fire without any pre-warning that 
claimed the lives of three farmer protesters in 
May 2002. Compensation was paid to the victims 
even as Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala 
initially labelled the farmers' protest as a 
gathering of anti-social elements.
Interestingly, Chautala's Opposition party in the 
State, the Congress, also paid compensation to 
the families of the deceased farmers. But neither 
of the parties (that time the Opposition party 
was the Congress and the Chautala's INLD was 
ruling the State) uttered a single word about the 
changing policies that brew discontent among the 
farming community nor mentioned the need for 
effecting a change in the State's suppressive 
machinery. This mindset of the rulers who prefer 
disbursing compensation without addressing 
policies, should also be judged in the 
perspective of the increasing incidents of 
suicides by farmers in Andhra Pradesh.
Dozens of such examples can be presented when the 
governments of different political parties or 
that of a Front behaved in the same manner. As 
the Prime Minister, I.K. Gujral sanctioned Rs 
50,000 each to the next of kin of those killed in 
police firing in 1998 in the Betul district in 
MP. This ex-gratia payment by the Centre was in 
addition to the relief already announced by the 
State Government. But, in this too no policeman 
responsible for firing was hauled up.

This practice shows that the State is fast losing 
its role of being a regulator of the 'system of 
governance'. However, to project its character of 
'a welfare state' it takes up the act of 
distributing compensation. And it expresses its 
explicit inability in checking its armed arm from 
executing "the duty" in the way they wish to. 
Previously, 'the political power of the day' was 
seen setting up commissions to identify those 
responsible for any sort of excesses. Now, 
constituting a probe into an incident has become 
extinct perhaps because the people have begun 
suspecting such excercises.
The fate of such scores of commissions in at 
least Bihar is fairly known. Not even in a single 
case, the government even after fixing the 
responsibility has acted on it. This is why 
elderly people can be heard saying that British 
rule before independence was more egalitarian. As 
the Hunter Commission was constituted by the 
British rulers to investigate into the 
Jallianwalabagh incident and its recommendation 
held General Dyer responsible for the massacre of 
the innocents and was penalised. The second 
culprit of that incident, the then Lt Governor of 
Lahore, was shot dead by the witness of the gory 
killings, Udham Singh, in London. After 75 years 
of the incident when the British Queen came to 
India during the regime of P.V. Narasimha Rao, 
she apologised for the act of Jallianwalabagh in 
Amritsar.
Even as the government may be trying to conceal 
the pressure of the security forces for 
exercising a free hand by disbursing compensation 
to their victims, it can no longer ignore that 
use of oppressive measures against society has 
become a common practice and the democratic 
system is thus getting perverted. Moreover, in 
the process other organs of the system of 
governance are fast becoming irrelevant. Imagine 
how the judicial system could maintain its 
relevance and to what extent the armed forces 
subscribe to the court rulings. One may note the 
fact that granting covertly the freedom to kill 
in the name of encounters in Andhra Pradesh, 
Punjab, Kashmir, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Bihar 
after 1970 resulted in more killings of 
civilians. The trend assumed a different 
dimension when top Army officials reportedly 
performed dummy exchanges of fire with the 
"enemy" in Siachen and even video-filmed these to 
win medals!
The list prepared by the Human Rights Commission 
of the people killed in Punjab is a long one 
because the police officials who were then at the 
helm of affairs, were given a free hand. 
Moreover, those gun-totting policemen put on the 
'official mission' were decorated with medals. 
The system, which owes no responsibility for the 
public, develops such kind of attitude towards 
the victims of state excesses.
Like in the case of Punjab, compensation payments 
may be witnessed in the North-East and Kashmir as 
well. These two States are also in the process of 
gathering information about the persons killed by 
the armed forces in Kashmir and the North-East. 
But one thing should be borne in mind: 
compensating the victims cannot keep democracy 
alive. Liabilities must be fixed and the stream 
of suppression must end.

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

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