SACW | 6 August 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 5 August,  2005


[1]  Hiroshima Day Reflections: The Time of the Bomb (Zia Mian and A.H. Nayyar)
[2]  Hiroshima Day Reflections: The World's Worst Terrorist Act (Praful Bidwai)
[3]  Pakistan: Activists complain of bar on women to contest NWFP polls
[4]  India: The struggle for the Hindu[tva] soul (The Economist)
[5]  India - Gujarat: Midnight's Children No More (Lamat Ayub)
[6]  UK and elsewhere: In the aftermath of the London Bombings - Reflections
(i) The enemy of my enemy is not my friend! (Nadje Al-Ali)
(ii) The Tavistock Square Gandhi and the War on 
Terror, War on Non-violence (Vinay Lal)
(iii)  I Am A Lawyer, Not A Bomber (Rabinder Singh)

______

[1]


The News International
August 06, 2005

THE TIME OF THE BOMB

by Zia Mian and A.H. Nayyar

When he was told on August 6, 1945, that 
America's new atom bomb had destroyed its first 
target, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, U.S. 
President Harry Truman declared "This is the 
greatest thing in history." Three days later, on 
August 9, another atom bomb destroyed the city of 
Nagasaki.

The coming of the bomb brought pain and death. A 
1946 survey by the Hiroshima City Council found 
that from a civilian population of about 320,000 
on the day of the explosion: over 118,000 were 
killed, over 30,000 seriously injured, with 
almost 49,000 slightly injured, and nearly 4,000 
people were missing. In December 1945, the 
Nagasaki City Commission determined that because 
of the bombing there, almost 74,000 people had 
been killed and 75,000 injured. The injured 
continued to die for months and years later, one 
of the reasons being radiation sickness. Pregnant 
women who were affected produced children who 
were severely physically and mentally retarded. 
The Japanese created a new word -- hibakusha, -- 
a survivor of the atom bomb.

In the sixty years since the destruction of 
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we have been spared the 
horror of a nuclear weapon attack on another 
city. But nuclear weapons have grown in their 
destructive power; each can now be tens of times, 
or even hundreds of times, more powerful that 
those used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The 
number of nuclear weapons has grown; there are 
now tens of thousands. Where there was one 
country with the bomb, there are now perhaps nine 
(US, Russia, UK, France, China, Israel, India, 
Pakistan and North Korea). There are many more 
political and military leaders who, like Truman 
in 1945, see the bomb as "the greatest thing in 
history".

From the very beginning, there has also been 
opposition to the bomb. The French writer and 
activist Albert Camus wrote on August 6, 1945: 
"technological civilization has just reached its 
final degree of savagery... Faced with the 
terrifying perspectives which are opening up to 
humanity, we can perceive even better that peace 
is the only battle worth waging."

The American sociologist and critic Lewis Mumford 
wrote: "We in America are living among madmen. 
Madmen govern our affairs in the name of order 
and security. The chief madmen claim the titles 
of general, admiral, senator, scientist, 
administrator, Secretary of State, even 
President." There are many more of these madmen 
now. They all mumble the same nonsense about 
"threats," and "national security," and "nuclear 
deterrence," and try to scare everyone around 
them.

Protest and resistance against the madness of 
nuclear weapons has brought together some of the 
greatest figures of our times with millions of 
ordinary men and women around the world. Albert 
Einstein and the philosopher Bertrand Russell 
gave the reason most simply and clearly. They 
published a manifesto in 1955 in which they 
identified the stark challenge created by nuclear 
weapons: "Shall we put an end to the human race; 
or shall mankind renounce war?"

The only way forward for humanity, Einstein and 
Russell said, was that "We have to learn to think 
in a new way. We have to learn to ask ourselves, 
not what steps can be taken to give a military 
victory to whatever group we prefer, for there no 
longer are such steps; the question we have to 
ask ourselves is: what steps can be taken to 
prevent a military contest of which the issue 
must be disastrous to all parties?" Their 1955 
manifesto led to the formation of the Pugwash 
movement of scientists. It was awarded the Nobel 
Peace Prize for its work against nuclear weapons 
in 1995. There are now Pugwash groups in 50 
countries, including in India and Pakistan.

Global protests eventually forced an end to 
nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere and 
under water. These explosions had been spewing 
radioactivity in the air, where it was blown 
around the world, poisoning land, water, food and 
people. But the "madmen" were blinded by the 
power of the ultimate weapon. They kept building 
more and bigger bombs and threatening to use 
them. They have been stopped from using them only 
by the determined efforts of peace movements and 
public pressure.

The bomb and the madmen came to South Asia too. 
India tested a bomb in 1974 and Pakistan set 
about trying to make one. There was protest too. 
In 1985, a small group of people in Islamabad 
organised an event for Hiroshima Day, August 6, 
at the Rawalpindi Press Club. There was a slide 
show and talk about nuclear weapons and their 
terrible effects, with pictures of the 
destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Every 
picture brought gasps of horror and revulsion 
from the packed audience. The posters and 
placards and banners on the walls carried 
messages about the need to end war, to reduce 
military spending and increase spending on 
education and health, and to make peace between 
India and Pakistan. A small, short-lived peace 
group was born, the Movement for Nuclear 
Disarmament.

That was twenty years ago. The Cold War is long 
over, the Soviet Union long gone, but there has 
been little relief. The United States still has 
five thousand weapons deployed, 2000 of which are 
ready to use within 15 minutes, and there are 
another five thousand in reserve. Russia has over 
7000 weapons deployed and 9000 in reserve. The 
UK, France, and China are estimated each to have 
several hundred warheads, Israel may have almost 
as many, and India and Pakistan have a hundred or 
fewer. North Korea may have a handful. And, 
leaders are still mad; they send armies to attack 
and occupy other countries, and kill and maim 
tens of thousands. In America, they plan for 
newer and more useable nuclear weapons.

In the meantime, India and Pakistan have also 
tested their nuclear weapons -- which are about 
as powerful as the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima 
and Nagasaki. They have threatened to use their 
weapons in every crisis since then. They are 
making more weapons and missiles as fast as they 
can. A nuclear war between Pakistan and India, in 
which they each used only five of their nuclear 
weapons, would likely kill about three million 
people and severely injure another one and a half 
million. What more proof is needed that we are 
ruled by madmen?

If South Asia is to survive its own nuclear age, 
we shall need to have strong peace movements in 
both Pakistan and India. A beginning has been 
made. The Pakistan Peace Coalition was founded in 
1999; it is a national network of groups working 
for peace and justice. In 2000, Indian activists 
established the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 
and Peace. These movements will need all the help 
and support they can get to keep the generals and 
Prime Ministers in both countries in check. The 
leaders in both countries must be taught, over 
and over again, that the people will not allow a 
nuclear war to be fought. There should never be a 
word in any other language for hibakusha.


Zia Mian, peace activist, is a physicist at Princeton University.

A.H. Nayyar is a physicist, co-convener of 
Pugwash Pakistan, and president of the Pakistan 
Peace Coalition.


______

[2]

The News International
August 06, 2005

THE WORLD'S WORST TERRORIST ACT

by Praful Bidwai

As the clock struck 8:15 a.m. in Japan this very 
day exactly 60 years ago, the world witnessed a 
wholly new kind and scale of brutality, leading 
to mass death. The entire city of Hiroshima was 
flattened by a single bomb, made with just 60 kg 
of uranium, and dropped from a B-29 United States 
Air Force warplane.

Within seconds, temperatures in the city centre 
soared to 4,0000C, more than 2,5000 higher than 
the melting point of iron. Savage firestorms 
raged through Hiroshima as buildings were reduced 
to rubble. Giant shock-waves releasing blast 
energy ripped through the city, wreaking more 
destruction.

Within seconds, 80,000 people were killed. Within 
hours, over 100,000 died, most of them crushed 
under the impact of blast-waves and falling 
buildings, or severely burnt by firestorms. Not 
just people, the body and soul of Hiroshima had 
died.

Then came waves of radiation, invisible and 
intangible, but nevertheless lethal. These took 
their toll slowly, painfully and cruelly. Those 
who didn't die within days from radiation 
sickness produced by exposure to high doses of 
gamma-rays or poisonous radio-nuclides, perished 
over years from cancers and leukaemias. The 
suffering was excruciating and prolonged. Often, 
the living envied the dead. Hiroshima's death 
toll climbed to 140,000.

This was a new kind of weapon, besides which even 
deadly chemical armaments like mustard gas pale 
into insignificance. You could defend yourself 
against conventional-explosive bombs by hiding in 
an air-raid shelter or sandbagging your home. To 
protect yourself from a chemical attack, you 
could wear a gas mask and a special plastic suit. 
But against the nuclear bombs, there could be no 
defence --military, civil or medical.

Nuclear weapons are unique for yet another 
reason. They are, typically, not meant to be used 
against soldiers, but are earmarked for use 
against unarmed non-combatant civilians. But it 
is illegitimate and illegal to attack 
non-combatant civilians. Attacking them is 
commonly called terrorism. Hence, Hiroshima 
remains the world's worst terrorist act.

Hiroshima's bombing was followed three days later 
by an atomic attack on Nagasaki, this time with a 
bomb using a different material, plutonium. The 
effects were equally devastating. More than 
70,000 people perished in agonising ways.

US President Harry S. Truman was jubilant. Six 
days later, Japan surrendered. The US cynically 
exploited this coincidence. It claimed that the 
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had saved 
thousands of lives by bringing the war to an 
early end. This was a lie. Japan was preparing to 
surrender anyway and was only waiting to 
negotiate the details of the terms. That entire 
country has been reduced to a wasteland. Most of 
its soldiers had stopped fighting. Schoolgirls 
were being drafted to perform emergency services 
in Japanese cities.

American leaders knew this. Historians Peter 
Kuznick and Mark Selden have just disclosed in 
the British New Scientist magazine that three 
days before Hiroshima, Truman agreed Japan was 
"looking for peace". General Dwight Eisenhower 
said in a 1963 Newsweek interview that "the 
Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't 
necessary to hit them with that awful thing". 
Truman's chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, 
also said that "the use of this barbarous weapon 
at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material 
assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese 
were already defeated and ready to surrender".

The real function of the two bombs was not 
military, but political. It was to establish the 
US's superiority and pre-eminence within the 
Alliance that defeated the Axis powers, and thus 
to shift the terms of the ensuing new power 
struggle in Washington's favour.

The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings inaugurated 
another rivalry: the Cold War, which was to last 
for four decades. They also triggered fierce 
competition among the other victors of the World 
War to acquire nuclear weapons. The insane arms 
race this launched but hasn't ended yet.

From a few dozen bombs in the early 1950s, the 
world's nuclear arsenals swelled to several 
hundred warheads in a decade, and then several 
thousand by the 1970s. At the Cold War's peak, 
the world had amassed 70,000 nukes, with 
explosive power equivalent to one million 
Hiroshimas, enough to destroy Planet Earth 50 
times over. One-and-a-half decades after the Cold 
War ended, the world still has 36,000 nuclear 
weapons. Nothing could be a greater disgrace!

Nuclear weapons are uniquely destructive and have 
never ceased to horrify people and hurt the 
public conscience. The damage they cause is hard 
to limit in space --thanks to the 
wind-transporting radioactivity over thousands of 
miles --or in time. Radioactive poisons persist 
and remain dangerous for years, some for tens of 
thousands of years. For instance, the half-life 
of plutonium-239, which India uses in its bombs, 
is 24,400 years. And the half-life of 
uranium-235, which Pakistan uses in its bombs, is 
710 million years!

Nuclear weapons violate every rule of warfare and 
every convention governing the conduct of armed 
conflict, they target non-combatant civilians. 
They kill indiscriminately and massively. They 
cause death in cruel, inhumane and degrading 
ways. And the destruction gets transmitted to 
future generations through genetic defects. 
That's why nuclear weapons have been held to be 
incompatible with international law by the 
International Court of Justice.

The world public overwhelmingly wants nuclear 
weapons to be abolished. The pro-abolition 
sentiment is strong and endorsed by 70 to 90 
percent of the population even in the nuclear 
weapons-states (NWSs), according to opinion 
polls. More than 180 nations have forsworn 
nuclear weapons by signing the Nuclear 
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But a handful of 
states remain addicted to their "nuclear fix". 
Led by the US, five NWSs refuse to honour their 
obligation under the NPT to disarm their nuclear 
weapons. And three of them, India, Pakistan and 
Israel, haven't even signed the treaty.

India and Pakistan occupy a special position 
within the group of NWSs. They are its most 
recent members. They are regional rivals too, 
with a half-century-long hot-cold war, which has 
made South Asia the world's "most dangerous 
place". There is an imperative need for India and 
Pakistan, rooted in self-preservation, to 
negotiate nuclear restraint and abolition of 
nuclear weapons. But the chances of this seem 
rather dim.

Even dimmer is the possibility of the five major 
NWSs embracing nuclear disarmament. Their 
reluctance to do so largely springs from their 
faith in nuclear deterrence. This is a 
dangerously flawed doctrine. It makes hopelessly 
unrealistic assumptions about unfailingly 
rational and perfect behaviour on the part of 
governments and military leaders and rules out 
strategic miscalculation as well as accidents. 
The real world is far messier, and full of 
follies, misperceptions and mishaps. Yet, the 
deterrence juggernaut rolls on.

Today, the system of restraint in the global 
nuclear order is on the verge of being weakened. 
The US-India nuclear deal (discussed here last 
week) is a bad precedent. But even worse are US 
plans to develop nukes both downwards (deep-earth 
penetrators or bunker-busters) and upwards ("Star 
Wars"-style space-based Ballistic Missile 
Defence). If the US conducts nuclear tests in 
pursuit of this, that will impel others to follow 
suit, and encourage some non-nuclear states to go 
overtly nuclear, raising the spectre of another 
Hiroshima.

Sixty years on, that would be a disgrace without 
parallel. Humankind surely deserves better.


The writer is a Delhi-based researcher, peace and 
human rights activist,and former newspaper editor.


______



[3]

Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)

PAKISTAN: ACTIVISTS COMPLAIN OF BAR ON WOMEN TO CONTEST NWFP POLLS
03 Aug 2005 07:56:12 GMT
Source: IRIN
ISLAMABAD, 3 August (IRIN) - Rights activists 
have accused the authorities of failing to act on 
reports of women being barred from contesting 
upcoming local elections in Pakistan's North West 
Frontier Province (NWFP), a staunchly 
conservative area governed by a religious 
parties' alliance.


"Verbal statements alone by officials at the 
Election Commission cannot do away with decrees 
or agreements issued by regional tribal leaders 
and office-bearers of major political parties 
aimed at stopping women from contesting polls," 
Rakhshanda Naz, head of the women rights' body, 
Aurat (Women) Foundation, said from the 
provincial capital Peshawar on Wednesday.

Under the supervision of the Election Commission 
of Pakistan (ECP), the three-phase local 
government polls are scheduled to start on 18 
August in 110 districts across the country's four 
provinces.

The ECP became aware of reports from northern 
NWFP of agreements made earlier this month to 
stop women from participating in elections and 
warned of legal action against those involved.

However, according to rights' activists, to date 
female participation in filing nomination papers 
has been extremely low following announcements by 
local tribal and politically influential leaders 
of possible consequences if they were to do so, 
including fines of over US $800.

In the second week of July, the Peshawar-based 
Aurat Foundation launched a nationwide campaign 
to facilitate and assist women's participation in 
the local government elections.

"The campaign is all about educating women 
candidates and helping them through the course of 
filing nomination papers, running voter campaigns 
and mobilisation meetings," Aasim Malik of the 
Aurat Foundation told IRIN from Lower Dir 
district, some 260 km from Peshawar.

Since the ECP announced the election schedule in 
the last week of June, efforts to stop women from 
participating have been continuing in the area, 
according to rights' campaigners in NWFP.

Malik pointed out that an agreement by 
office-bearers of major political parties was 
only one of a number of means being used to 
harass potential female candidates, citing the 
murder of a devoted councilor from Upper Dir, 
Zubeida Begum, as another example.

During the last four-year term, as of 31 August 
2004, about 1,270 union council seats meant for 
women councillors laid vacant across 24 districts 
of NWFP, with an even more depressing record in 
the province's northern districts.

In Lower Dir district, only six seats were filled 
out of a total 204 allocated for women, however, 
the Batagram district had only one female 
representative against an available 122 
positions. While in Kohistan district not a 
single seat of the 228 reserved for woman was 
filled, Malik said.

Pronouncements on gender equality, emancipation 
of women and female participation in social and 
political development are part of the manifestos 
of every political party, but "with no resolve to 
implement them in a democratic way," Naz claimed.

The ECP could have dispatched special teams or 
made some kind of higher level administrative 
intervention to give a sense of security to 
female contestants and so encourage their 
participation, activists believe. In its latest 
move, the ECP has extended the nomination paper 
filing date for women candidates in four 
districts of NWFP: Lower Dir, Upper Dir, Batagram 
and Kohistan.


______


[4]

The Economist
August 4th 2005

India
THE STRUGGLE FOR THE HINDU SOUL
Aug 4th 2005 | DELHI

A family squabble, or the beginning of the end for Hindu nationalism?

THE idea that India's Bharatiya Janata Party 
(BJP) might be in terminal decline seems little 
short of ludicrous. It is the second-largest 
party in Parliament and the main opposition to 
the ruling coalition led by the Congress party. 
Its election defeat last year was a shock, and it 
still rules five of India's 28 states. In Atal 
Behari Vajpayee, prime minister until last year, 
it has one of the country's most admired 
politicians. Yet an Indian news magazine last 
month splashed across its cover the question: "Is 
the party over?"

It is not alone in asking. The BJP is going 
through more than a bad patch. Its continuing 
quarrel with its parent organisation, the 
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or National 
Association of Volunteers, calls into question 
the party's purpose. Is its main aim to win 
elections or to promote the RSS's ideology of 
Hindutva, (Hindu-ness)? Adherents of the 
organisation portray Hindutva as a demand for 
equality, in that it would end the special 
arrangements, such as their own family-law 
system, enjoyed by India's 150m Muslims. The 
Muslims fear that Hindutva's aim is to promote 
Hinduism over Islam.

The RSS is a huge, amorphous organisation, 
claiming 7m-8m activists. About 4m attend daily 
shakhas-early morning gatherings where, in khaki 
uniforms, they engage in physical jerks, sports 
and "ideological discourse". It runs 22,000 
schools, has 45,000 units working in slums and is 
active in 11,000 of the villages where India's 
tribal minorities live. Besides the BJP, its 
"family" includes the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, or 
World Hindu Council. The VHP's Giriraj Kishore 
quite unabashedly defines its aim as establishing 
"a Hindu state and Hindu glory".

The RSS's row with the BJP centres on Lal Krishna 
Advani, president of the party and leader of the 
opposition. Mr Advani upset "family" members on a 
visit to Pakistan in June. He praised Muhammad 
Ali Jinnah, the Islamic country's founder, and 
said he was sad about the destruction, in 1992, 
of a mosque built on the alleged site of a Hindu 
temple in Ayodhya.

BJP colleagues insist that this was nothing new. 
They blame the RSS's furious reaction on its 
leaders' envy of the popularity of Mr Advani and 
Mr Vajpayee, who are both RSS graduates. But the 
RSS accuses the BJP leader of heresy. It believes 
the partition of India in 1947 on religious lines 
was a terrible mistake, and that the tragedy is 
not the demolition of the mosque but the failure, 
so far, to build a Hindu temple on top of the 
rubble.

The oddity is that Mr Advani had always been seen 
as a Hindutva hardliner. He led the campaign that 
culminated in the sacking of the Ayodhya mosque 
and ultimately propelled the BJP to power. Its 
climb was meteoric-from two seats in the 
545-member Parliament in 1984, to 182-and a 
dominant role in the ruling coalition-in 1998. 
Last year, the number fell to 138. Might the 
party's crash be as precipitous as its rise?

Mr Advani's remarks in Pakistan seemed part of an 
effort to prevent a crash by softening the 
party's image. Although the RSS was outraged, and 
wanted him to quit at least one of his two posts, 
he has so far clung on. At 77, he says that he 
will stay only as long as it takes to groom 
younger leaders-not that there are many obvious 
contenders. The BJP's Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi 
promises a "smooth change of leadership" soon. 
But Mr Advani's departure will not resolve the 
underlying tension.

Many in the BJP believe that "with a narrow 
Hindu-only approach, [the BJP] will never occupy 
the dominant position in Indian politics that the 
Congress once enjoyed." Those words come from a 
paper written in March by Sudheendra Kulkarni, 
then an aide to Mr Advani. Most observers outside 
the Hindu "family" agree with his analysis. They 
blame the BJP's poor electoral performance last 
year in part on the bloody anti-Muslim pogrom in 
2002 in Gujarat, a BJP-ruled state, and its 
failure to take action against Narendra Modi, 
Gujarat's chief minister, whose government was 
accused of complicity in the violence. The BJP's 
identification with hardline Hindutva, it is 
argued, cost votes.

However, other party members and RSS leaders 
argue the exact opposite: that the problem was 
that, in office, the BJP was not Hindu enough. To 
forge a governing coalition, it had agreed not to 
pursue the three big Hindutva demands: the 
building of the Ayodhya temple, a matter it left 
to the courts; the adoption of a uniform civil 
law to supplant Muslim family law; and the 
revocation of the special constitutional status 
of Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

The Hindu right argues that it was the failure to 
deliver results on these demands that alienated 
the BJP's core voters and demoralised its 
activists. Prafull Goradia, a former member of 
Parliament for the Jan Sangh, the BJP's 
forerunner, calls the notion that moderation is 
the only way of coming to power "absolute 
hogwash". He argues that the RSS should end its 
reliance on the BJP alone and "license" more 
Hindu parties. This, he insists, would increase 
the total Hindu vote.

The RSS has no plans to open up the field. But 
nor will it allow the BJP a free hand. The BJP's 
Mr Naqvi says that the party has 30m members, of 
whom only 4.5m have an RSS background. But this 
overstates its independence of the RSS. The 4.5m 
are the ones who do the work. As Ram Madhav, an 
RSS spokesman, puts it, the BJP is the opposite 
of a traditional communist party, which might 
spawn many ideological "front" organisations: in 
the case of the BJP, it is the political party 
itself that is the front. The ideological 
"parent" is making clear who calls the shots.


______

[5]


Tehelka.com
August 13 , 2005

MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN NO MORE

Shabnam Hashmi's Anhad, which gave a new life to 
25 children of the Gujarat genocide, recently got 
a fillip with a hostel in the heart of Delhi and 
a brand new school car. Lamat Ayub reports

Good evening. This is Ismail," says the 
16-year-old, confident in his school. Seven 
months ago, when Ismail came to Delhi he looked 
quite lost - just like the 24 other children who 
experienced the horrors of the Gujarat genocide. 
They have all now been rehabilitated in Delhi by 
Shabnam Hashmi's Anhad.

Ismail, a student of Class VI, had to give up 
studies midway because the locals did not want 
any Muslims at the MJS Government Co-Ed School in 
Kalol. Today, Ismail is back to school, but in 
Delhi. And like the other children, there has 
been a marked difference in his comprehension 
skills, his personality, and health. Much to 
their relief, his parents noticed this positive 
shift when he went home for the summer vacation. 
For them, this means hope.

The mood is upbeat at Apna Ghar in Jaitpur on the 
outskirts of Delhi where Anhad has housed the 
children. Last week Shabnam auntie brought them 
real good news. The children are buoyant because 
they are moving to a new hostel - Bal Sahyog - in 
Connaught Place (CP) on August 1. Not only will 
they save time travelling to and fro, they also 
have a brand new vehicle to ferry them to the 
Balwant Rai Mehta School in Greater Kailash II.

Shabnam Hashmi is pleased that the hard work has 
finally paid off. "We worked hard on these 
children. We hired tutors to teach them English, 
Science and Maths. We are thrilled that they have 
been accepted by a mainstream and reputed 
English-medium school. But we still have a long 
way to go," she says.

"We are very lucky that we got a new 
accommodation for the children in cp which is 
closer to the Anhad office near Janpath," she 
says. "The children can spend more time on their 
studies. Earlier, we had to hire a place in 
Jaitpur because we couldn't afford a hostel in 
Delhi. We were very low on resources. We still 
are. Our calculations also went awry. We forgot 
to add the overhead expenditures and ended up 
spending much more on the kids. We still need to 
get more donations to keep the show running. But 
some people who have helped have been very kind."

Like Aamir Khan, who turned out to be a role 
model for these children. The actor quietly 
donated Rs 5 lakh with which Anhad purchased a 
Tata Sumo to ferry the children to school. Aamir 
has also adopted a child. Khan and several others 
have been intensely responsive to this dream 
project of giving the kids a different life after 
what they have gone through. Fourteen-year-old 
Sohail is excited that he is moving to a new 
hostel. Ask him if he misses home, he says, 
"Sometimes I do. I went home and met my family 
during the summer vacation. They are happy for 
me. But I need to be in Delhi to study. I have to 
become a doctor."

Once the kids move to a more central location, it 
will be easier for Anhad to offer better 
facilities. "We were so cut off in Jaitpur, it 
was difficult to convince people to go there. 
Some committed people did come and spend time 
with the kids, like this boy who did therapy 
through theatre. The lessons really helped. But 
we should be better off now. The new place is 
more accessible," she adds.

It's not just work and no play for these kids 
(aged between 7 and 17). They also get to play 
cricket, volleyball, kabaddi and go for movies at 
the weekend. "I play cricket. Most of the time I 
fall asleep while watching a movie," 12-year-old 
Sameer, who introduces himself as 'Chhota 
Sameer', chuckles.

But the trauma of the past keeps coming back. 
Though the children feel secure and warm in 
Delhi, the nightmares of the tola (mob) attacking 
their village still haunt them. Even the 
youngest, who was about four then, remembers 
every detail of the post-Godhra carnage - images 
of half-burnt bodies hanging from trees, their 
near and dear ones being hacked to death, and the 
murderous mobs chasing them on the streets.

Their wounds are deep, and it will take long to 
heal; but they know Anhad has been a miracle, and 
Shabnam auntie is their fairy godmother who waves 
her magic wand to keep them smiling.

To contact Anhad, mail at <anhadinfo at yahoo.co.in>




______

[6]  [In the aftermath of the London Bombings: Reflections ]

(i)

www.wluml.org

UK: The enemy of my enemy is not my friend!

  22/07/2005: For those of us living in London, 
the recent bombings in the British capital 
brought home the daily violence, the horror and 
fear of millions of people living in many places 
around the world. (Dr Nadje Al-Ali)
For the first time, it was our relatives in Iraq 
who anxiously called to inquire about our health 
and well-being, not the other way around as it 
has been the case for so long.
Right now, Iraq must be the most acutely 
dangerous place in terms of both occupation 
forces as well as militant resistance. Yet people 
in many other cities around the world have to 
live with that daily fear: Whether in Baghdad, 
Ramallah, Jerusalem or Kabul, violence is a daily 
burden on everyone's mind if not an actual 
occurrence.
Although many friends I have been politically 
involved with in the context of anti-sanctions 
and anti-war activism agree that the so-called 
"war on terror" can not be fought with bombs, 
only few seem to acknowledge that neither can we 
fight US imperialism with violence. This is 
particularly the case where most of the victims 
of this violence are innocent civilians. In Iraq, 
for example, thousands of men, women and children 
have been killed just because they happen to be 
passing by, or waiting at a petrol station, a 
market, a mosque, in front of a police station or 
a street at the wrong time. Can we call the 
killing of Iraqi civilians, foreign humanitarian 
workers (and, I would also add, diplomats) 
resistance? For me, the idea of these killings 
being a necessary if regrettable 'by-product' of 
the fight against imperialism is as twisted and 
perverse as the infamous statement by Madeline 
Albright about "a price worth paying" when 
speaking about the thousands of Iraqi children 
dying in the context of economic sanctions and 
the attempt to contain Saddam Hussein.
To make it very clear: in my activism and 
writings, I have been anti-sanctions, anti-war 
and anti-occupation. But being against, never 
meant automatically being for someone or 
something. That held true for the dictatorship of 
Saddam Hussein in the past as well as for those 
fighters terrorizing the Iraqi population today. 
What I have found so disheartening and 
frustrating when participating in anti-war and 
anti-occupation events during the past months is 
the black and white depiction of the world and 
the lack of clarity where the Iraqi resistance is 
concerned. At the recent World Tribunal on Iraq 
in Istanbul, for example, almost every speaker 
either began or finished his or her talk with a 
similar statement: "We have to support the Iraqi 
resistance!" Many speakers added that this was 
not just a matter of fighting the occupation 
inside Iraq but part of a wider struggle against 
encroaching neo-colonialism, neo-liberalism and 
imperialism. But none of the speakers explained 
to the jury of conscience, the audience and their 
fellow speakers what they actually meant by 'the 
resistance'.
No one felt it was necessary to differentiate 
between, on the one hand, the right of 
self-defence and the patriotic attempt to resist 
foreign occupation and, on the other, the 
unlawful indiscriminate killings of 
non-combatants. Neither did anyone question the 
motivations and goals of many of the numerous 
groups, networks, individuals and gangs grouped 
all too casually under 'the resistance' - a term 
that through lack of clear definition has been 
used to encompass various forms of non-violent 
political oppositions, armed resistance, 
terrorism and mafia-type criminality. Again by 
failing to explicitly define and differentiate, 
proponents of the unconditional support slogan 
end up grouping together the large part of the 
Iraqi population opposing US occupation and 
engaging in every-day forms of resistance, with 
remnants of the previous regime, Iraqi-based 
Islamist militias, foreign jihadis, mercenaries 
and criminals.
Views about armed resistance vary amongst the 
Iraqi population reflecting the diversity of 
Iraqi society, not simply in terms of religious 
and ethnic backgrounds as many commentators would 
like us to believe, but diversity in terms of 
social class, place of residence, specific 
experiences with the previous regime and the 
ongoing occupation as well as political 
orientation. However, based on talks with friends 
and family inside as well as various opinion 
polls, I would argue that the majority of Iraqis 
do not translate their opposition to the 
occupation into support for militant insurgents 
killing Iraqis. I also find it hard to believe 
that the majority of Iraqis would actually 
support the kidnapping, torturing and killing of 
foreign workers whatever their occupation.
Ironically it is the lack of security on the 
streets of Iraqi cities today that persuades many 
people, who in principle want US and British 
forces out of their country, not to ask for an 
immediate withdrawal. Obviously the lack of 
security is an effect of the recent war and the 
ongoing occupation. The latter is without doubt a 
brutal continuation of an illegal war, having 
already killed and maimed thousands of civilians 
through numerous conventional and unconventional 
weapons. US and UK troops have been involved in 
the systematic torture of prisoners as well as 
other violations of international human rights 
conventions and humanitarian law. But the fact is 
that when an Iraqi leaves his or her house in the 
morning wondering whether he or she will see 
their loved ones again, it could either be a 
sniper or bomb from the occupation forces or a 
suicide bomb that could kill them. To abuse an 
old cliché, Iraqis are caught between many rocks 
and many hard places.
The culture of violence and the underlying 
fascist ideology of many of the groups operating 
on Iraqi soil today is not a viable alternative 
to US imperialism. While we all know that Bush is 
not about freedom and democracy, please let's 
stop calling local and foreign suicide bombers 
"freedom fighters". I am not sure how long most 
of those unconditionally supporting the 
resistance today would last inside Iraq if the 
militant insurgents responsible for killing and 
kidnapping Iraqi civilians and foreigners would 
actually prevail.
There is no doubt that the previous Coalition 
Provisional Authority and the various 
transitional governments have lacked credibility 
amongst the majority of the Iraqi population. 
Reconstruction has been incredibly slow and 
fraught with corruption and ill-management. Yet, 
the seeds for genuine political transformation, 
the rebuilding of physical and political spaces 
and a non-violent opposition to foreign 
occupation have been made more and more 
impossible by the increasing violence and 
instability caused by the insurgence. And there 
are non-violent ways of resisting: continuous 
images of hundred-thousands even millions of 
Iraqis - men, women and children of all ages and 
backgrounds - demonstrating peacefully on the 
streets of Iraq would send a very forceful 
message across the world: a message that could 
not be ignored by Washington and London, 
especially if Iraqis are joined by people all 
over the world taking to the streets in 
solidarity.
At the same time Iraqis, lobbying their own 
government - as flawed as the process of election 
was - through civil society associations, city 
councils and various other institutions, can 
resist foreign encroachment and the imposition of 
outside political actors, values and economic 
systems. Iraqis at the grassroots level did start 
to group together, mobilize and resist 
non-violently, and they continue to do so. Women 
activists have been at the forefront of these 
actions and initiatives. Yet, the political 
spaces have been shrinking not simply as a 
function of ongoing occupation and the type of 
government in place, but also, and crucially, 
because of the lack of security caused by violent 
insurgents.
For those of us concerned about the erosion of 
women's rights inside Iraq, Islamist militants 
pose a particular danger. Many women's 
organisations and activists inside Iraq have 
documented the increasing attacks on women, the 
pressure to conform to certain dress codes, the 
restrictions in movement and behaviour, incidents 
of acid thrown into women's faces. and even 
killings. It is extremely short-sighted for 
anyone not to condemn these types of attacks, but 
for women this becomes existential. Women and 
'women's issues' have, of course, been 
instrumentalized - in Afghanistan, but also in 
Iraq. We know that both Bush and Blair have tried 
to co-opt the language of democracy and human 
rights, especially women's rights. But them 
instrumentalizing women does not mean that we 
should condone or accept the way Islamist 
militants are, for their part, using women 
symbolically and attacking them physically to 
express their resistance.
It is high time to be much clearer about what we 
should support and what not. It is high time to 
abandon the unconditional support for terrorists 
and criminals responsible for the killing of 
Iraqi civilians. It is high time to acknowledge 
that Iraqis inside are divided along many 
different lines and that glossing over these 
differences does not help national unity in the 
long run. It is high time to seriously look for 
non-violent means of resistance to the occupation 
in Iraq and wider US imperialism. It is high time 
to recognize that the enemy of my enemy is not 
necessarily my friend.

Dr Nadje Al-Ali is senior lecturer in social 
anthropology at the Institute of Arab & Islamic 
Studies at the University of Exeter, UK. She is a 
founding member of Act Together: Women's Action 
on Iraq, and a member of Women in Black, London.


o o o o

(ii)


The Economic and Political Weekly
July 23, 2005
Commentary

THE TAVISTOCK SQUARE GANDHI AND THE WAR ON TERROR, WAR ON NON-VIOLENCE

Gandhi's statue at Tavistock Square dates back to 
the 1960s but in the wake of the recent bomb 
attacks in London, its presence has a somewhat 
ironical significance. That a proponent of 
non-violence could provide an answer to violence 
seems ominously fitting, but what Gandhi divined 
about colonialism - that it is a 'pact' between 
the coloniser and the colonised - is something 
that can shed light on the modern culture of 
violence, which in some perverse way has come to 
link perpetrator and victim alike.

Vinay Lal

In the midst of the horrific carnage and mayhem 
created by coordinated bomb attacks in London, it 
is doubtful that very many people are thinking of 
the fate of a statue. On my very first visit to 
London in 1989, once I had checked into my 
lodgings on Upper Woburn Place, I hastened to 
make my way to Tavistock Square - and it is here 
that one of the bombs blew apart a bus, taking 13 
lives and perhaps more.

Central London has many beautiful squares, oases 
of rest, reflection and rumination. Nearly every 
square has historical associations, but Tavistock 
Square is uniquely significant. In the centre of 
the square is installed one of the most moving 
statues of Mohandas Gandhi anywhere in the world. 
Gifted to London by the Indian high commissioner 
for Great Britain in 1966, the statue, by the 
British sculptor Fredda Brilliant, was unveiled 
by prime minister Harold Wilson. Tavistock Square 
soon thereafter became the site for various peace 
memorials. The victims of the Hiroshima bombings 
are remembered at the square by a cherry tree, 
and in 1986 the League of Jewish Women planted a 
field maple in the square to mark the United 
Nations International Year of Peace. More 
recently, a granite memorial was installed at the 
square to honour conscientious objectors, always 
a minuscule number and now, one fears, a dying 
breed. One can understand why, among Londoners, 
Tavistock Square has been dubbed 'the peace park'.

Gandhi's Way

One might say that the statue lent the square a 
certain serenity: the Gandhi represented here is 
a seated figure, ponderous and meditative, not 
the Gandhi with the walking stick, a searing 
image made popular by Gandhi's famous march to 
the sea, which is more commonly encountered in 
statues of the chief architect of the Indian 
independence movement. It is the image of this 
seated Gandhi with which, for a long period 
through the 1970s and 1980s, the state-owned 
television channel, Doordarshan, commenced its 
news. Tavistock Square is a short walk from 
University College, London, whose web site claims 
Gandhi as one of its graduates. Gandhi arrived in 
London in 1888 shortly after his 19th birthday to 
study law. What better subject to master than law 
if one aimed to unseat an empire that, above all, 
claimed it had brought the rule of law to unruly 
natives? In those days, however, disassociating 
from the empire, or bringing the empire to its 
knees, was the furthest thing from Gandhi's mind. 
Gandhi's foreign sojourns started in London, and 
ended there; but where he had first come to 
London to, in his own words, "play the English 
gentleman" and render the homage that the 
subjugated customarily accord to their 
oppressors, on his last trip, after parleying 
with the Viceroy on equal terms, he came to 
negotiate India's independence. On the way, 
Gandhi shed a great deal: a top hat, coat-tails, 
the native's awe for the white man, and western 
civilisation's addiction to violence.

The unflinching advocate of non-violence that 
Gandhi was, he knew many a thing about violence. 
It is not necessary to be schooled in violence to 
embrace non-violence, but one would have had to 
sleep-walk through life not to be touched by 
violence. Gandhi would come face-to-face with the 
sheer ugliness of racial violence in South Africa 
on numerous occasions. He raised an ambulance 
corps to assist the British when the Boer War 
broke out in 1898, and he did so again a few 
years later at the commencement of the Zulu 
rebellion. Most commentators have, rightly, seen 
these as expressions of Gandhi's ardent belief 
that Indians could only claim their rights within 
the British empire if they were prepared to 
defend the empire against its opponents. In an 
era when the language of rights was already 
becoming part of the vocabulary of political 
conduct and discussion, Gandhi still insisted on 
the importance of retaining a conception of one's 
duties. But it is characteristic of Gandhi that, 
rather than running away from violence, or 
becoming paralysed by its brutalities, or 
claiming a pacifist sensibility, he entered the 
battlefield of violence in the capacity of a 
healer, bearing truth (as he then saw it) on the 
stretcher of non-violence. He would henceforth 
have a dialectical, dialogic, and hermeneutic 
awareness of non-violence. The advocates of 
violence seldom if ever speak to the votaries of 
non-violence, and one of the many reasons why 
Gandhi held non-violence to be superior to 
violence is that its proponents extend an 
invitation to those who swear by violence to 
enter into a dialogue. The advocates of 
non-violence are always in a conversation with 
the adherents of violence. This relationship 
brought Gandhi to an awareness of the fact that 
some forms of non-violence are tantamount to 
violence, that avoidance of violence is not 
necessarily a form of non-violent action, and 
that there may be occasions when the practice of 
violence is the only way of honouring the spirit 
of non-violence.

Non-violence vs Terror

It would be wishful thinking to suppose that the 
London bomber who chose to explode a bomb in 
London's peace park, outside the statue of 
Gandhi, was seeking in his own macabre way to 
enter into a dialogue with Gandhi and the 
advocates of non-violence. In Gandhi's own time, 
he was nearly alone among the principal theorists 
and practitioners of revolutionary change in 
arguing for the primacy of non-violence, and he 
stands ranged against a whole galaxy of figures - 
Lenin, Trotsky, Fanon, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara - 
who did not only glorify violence but dismissed 
non-violence as a chimera. Gandhi had held up the 
later Tolstoy as a figure worthy of emulation, 
but Lenin spoke with open contempt of his 
countryman's "imbecile preaching about not 
resisting evil with force". One hears even less 
of non-violence these days. It may be argued, of 
course, that Trotsky, Fanon, and Che are just as 
much foreign figures to jihadists or suicide 
bombers as Gandhi, and that the schooling 
terrorists receive is of a different order. One 
will hear, no doubt, of the 'sleeper cells' that 
Al Qaida is said to have formed in Britain, of 
the madrasas at which Muslim men are believed to 
be indoctrinated to hate the west and (in Bush's 
language) its freedoms, and of the experts in 
terrorist warfare who are one species, altogether 
unintended, of the iconic transnational figure of 
the 21st century.

Whatever the precise training required to strap 
explosives together into a bomb, plan and 
orchestrate an attack in heavily monitored areas, 
and eventually to steel oneself to explode 
devices along with oneself in a busy public 
space, the perpetrators of the Tavistock Square 
and tube bombings required no schooling in 
madrasas or radical mosques. They are more likely 
(as has been established in the case of the 
London attacks) to have attended secular 
institutions of higher learning in the west than 
universities in the Islamic world. They received 
their training, one might say, in streets - not 
as street urchins or as deprived children of the 
third world, but as careful observers of 
America's prosecution of war in Afghanistan and 
Iraq. They have taken their cues from history 
books, from the culture of violence to which they 
are deeply inured, and from the architects of the 
war on terror. The perpetrators of terrorism have 
also understood that there are numerous ways in 
which one can enlist oneself as a member of that 
profession. The culture of terror is 
all-pervasive.

It remains to be seen whether Tavistock Square 
will continue to be known as London's 'Peace 
Park'. Quite likely it will be, if only because 
the legend of the grit, resilience, and resolve 
of Londoners, about which we have heard so much, 
will need to be preserved. Such consolations are 
soothing but they disguise more than they reveal 
about the culture of violence which stitches 
together modern society. Gandhi, as we might 
recall, was felled by an assassin's bullet - as 
was, two decades later, Martin Luther King, Jr. 
It is supremely if ominously fitting that the 
reply to non-violence should always be given by a 
proponent of violence. One of the most disturbing 
aspects of violence is that it is irreversible, 
just as its perpetrators, through their very act, 
claim to be in possession of a superior version 
or account of truth. What Gandhi divined about 
colonialism, namely, that it is a pact - and 
pacts are not without their element of deception, 
coercion, and attraction - between the colonised 
and the coloniser, is something that can be 
brought to our awareness of the pact that drives 
the modern culture of violence. The colonised 
were, to be sure, exploited and beaten; but they 
were also lured by the glitter of the modern 
west. The leaders and good samaritans of the west 
are, to be sure, repulsed by savage and brute 
acts of violence; but they also breathlessly 
await such acts, as it is the only language that 
they themselves understand. How else can one 
explain that stupefyingly idiotic, obscene, and 
terror-laden phrase - indeed ambition, 'the war 
on terror'? Terrorism is manna to the prosecutors 
of the 'war on terror'.

We have entered into a phase of brutal and 
unending violence. Terrorists and advocates of 
the war on terror are bound together in a 
horrifying pact. Violence has a ravenous maw. It 
countenances no opposition. The assassin of 
Gandhi and his numerous patrons, having done away 
with the old man, have been determined ever since 
to install violence as the supreme monarch. One 
wonders whether, once the assassins of 
non-violence are finished with their work, any 
statues of Gandhi will remain.

o o o o


(iii)

The Guardian
August 6, 2005

I AM A LAWYER, NOT A BOMBER

Asians should not be prejudged because of the way we look

Rabinder Singh

An open letter to the person I sat opposite on the train yesterday.

Yesterday I sat on my commuter train and you were 
already sitting there in the seat opposite. Your 
eyes were closed. You must have been tired. Then 
you opened your eyes and you saw me. You got up 
and moved to the next carriage. Perhaps you 
wanted some privacy or did not want to disturb me 
with a mobile phone call. Or perhaps you were 
afraid of me ...

That would not surprise me. Some people say that 
the police should stop and search people who look 
"Asian" or "Muslim" at underground stations. In 
fact I am not a Muslim, I am a Sikh, but it does 
not matter - I still look suspicious to some. 
They say that only young men are like the 
suspects, but I have heard of women being stopped.

I share your fears. I do not want to die a 
horrible death any more than you do. I have a 
family to look after - perhaps you do too. You 
know so little about me - I wish we could have 
chatted and perhaps we might have realised what 
we have in common. All I ask is that you do not 
prejudge me. That is what "prejudice" means: to 
prejudge someone simply because of what they look 
like.

What can I say? On the television everyone is 
talking about what it means to be "British" and 
the end of multiculturalism. You may not think I 
look British but I feel British - I am a British 
Asian, or British Sikh if you like. If I go to 
India they know I am not one of them - they can 
see me coming a mile off. I like Indian food but 
so, I think, do you. And I also like Italian 
food, and Chinese, and bagels ...

I don't particularly like Bollywood, but 
apparently enough people in the area where I live 
do like it because they show Hindi films at the 
local cinema. By the way, in case you were 
wondering, it is not in Southall - in fact most 
of our neighbours are white, although one is from 
Norway and another American. I don't think people 
ask them: "What are you doing here? Are you 
British?"

I do not go to the gurdwara very often but I do 
believe in God and I am proud of my heritage - I 
respect my parents and the tradition they came 
from. I do not think God would want us to hate 
each other because of the way we look. And I 
certainly cannot accept that God wants us to kill 
innocent people.

But we have to care about innocent people 
everywhere - in Iraq and Chechnya as well as in 
New York and Madrid and London. I am not a 
pacifist, but I do believe in the principle of 
nonviolence. Only in the last resort could it 
ever be justified to use violence, when there is 
no other way open to defend ourselves or to 
protect others. You may have heard of Mahatma 
Gandhi. He was not British. In fact he used the 
principle of nonviolence to help push the British 
out of India. I think he was an inspiration to 
everyone; I think you might agree.

I am a lawyer, by the way. What do you do? In my 
work I sometimes represent the government. Not 
just the present government; I used to represent 
the last Conservative government in court too. 
But I also sometimes defend the rights of 
individuals who are pretty unpopular. That's my 
job. They may be asylum claimants or gay people. 
They may even be suspected of terrorism. I don't 
think suspending the Human Rights Act is the 
answer to the terrorist threat. The act is not 
part of the problem. It is part of the answer. It 
represents what we stand for - democracy and the 
rule of law.

Some people say we should not let the terrorists 
win; we should carry on as normal. But they seem 
to be the first people to say that we should get 
rid of these laws that "get in the way". In the 
way of what? Do we want people locked up in 
prison for years without ever being charged, let 
alone convicted? If it happened somewhere else, I 
think you might write a letter for Amnesty 
International demanding their release. But it 
happened here - until the law lords said it was 
incompatible with human rights.

These are not some foreign laws. British lawyers 
helped to draft the European convention on human 
rights, which was "brought home" by the Human 
Rights Act. And it is based on British notions of 
fair play going back to Magna Carta. Yes, I do 
know about these things and I do care about them. 
Shakespeare, John Locke and Tom Paine. They have 
made me who I am. They were as British as I am.

Maybe I am not what you think I am. Remember, we 
are all individual human beings, with our hopes 
and dreams; we all have our faults but are 
basically good, I think, and try to do the right 
thing. It's what is inside us that really 
matters, not the colour of our skin or what we 
wear. I do not ask you to agree with me about 
everything. But I do ask: please do not prejudge 
me because of the way I look.

· Rabinder Singh QC is a barrister at Matrix 
Chambers and a visiting professor of law at the 
LSE


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