SACW | 13 August 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  |13 August,  2005

[1]  South Asia: Paving the Way to People Power (Marty Logan)
[2]  India: Employment Guarantee and its 
Discontents ; Time to Clean Up (Jean Drèze)
[3]  India: An evaluation of the Communal 
Violence (Suppression) Bill, 2005 (Colin 
Gonsalves)
[4]  India: From Superstition to Savagery - Women 
Accused of Witchcraft Face Violence in Rural 
India (Rama Lakshmi)
[5] India : Anti Sikh riots of 1984 riots and the endless wait for justice :
  - Shameless Collaborators (V.B.Rawat)
- 72 hours, 21 years (Shekhar Gupta)
[6]  Publication Announcement: Europe in The 
Second Millenium: A Hegemony Achieved ?, Editors, 
Rila Mukherjee and Kunal Chattopadhyay

______

[1]

Inter Press Service
August 12, 2005

SOUTH ASIA: PAVING THE WAY TO PEOPLE POWER
Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Aug 12 (IPS) - When South Asian 
leaders cancelled their summit earlier this year 
the "people" still gathered. "This is the second 
time we are meeting while governments refrain 
from meeting with each other. This proves that 
we, the people, want to meet and exchange views 
when governments don't," said Bushra Gohar, 
chairperson of South Asia Partnership (SAP) 
International, co-organiser of the fifth Peoples 
Summit.

Now SAP is leading a push to transform the annual 
peoples gathering into a permanent force that can 
influence the work of the South Asian Association 
for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). That is a huge 
challenge, say observers.
"There have been many declarations and 
discussions from previous peoples summits. Based 
on their agendas we've then further developed 
them," said SAP International Executive Director 
Rohit Kumar Nepali after a planning meeting in 
Kathmandu earlier this month. "Our dream is that 
this should be a people's SAARC ultimately," he 
told IPS.
This month's regional forum brought together more 
than 50 activists from five of the seven SAARC 
nations: Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and 
Sri Lanka. Bhutan and the Maldives were not 
represented. "They don't have proper civil 
society organisations there so we're finding it 
difficult to invite them," added Nepali in an 
interview.
Participants drafted a statement that singled out 
five themes "that require urgent attention": 
democracy, peace and militarisation, (human) 
trafficking, social security and disasters. These 
are "some of the most pressing problems of the 
region", the statement added, urging participants 
to launch campaigns "and advocate to SAARC and 
its constituent states to accept their 
responsibilities fully and to transform their 
lives and conditions of people across South Asia".
SAARC's seven nations include about 1.4 billion 
people (one-fifth of humanity) and are home to 
half of the world's illiterates and half of its 
malnourished children, according to the United 
Nations.
Created in 1985 the grouping concluded at its 
third summit in Kathmandu in 1987, "SAARC should 
be increasingly oriented to the people's needs 
and aspirations so that the masses of the region 
could be drawn to a greater extent into the 
mainstream of SAARC activities".
Yet far from answering to its citizens' needs and 
dreams, SAARC has failed to strengthen the 
region, according to critics. "SAARC hasn't 
really taken off as an institution," said Tapan 
Bose, secretary general of Kathmandu-based South 
Asia Forum for Human Rights (SAFHR).
"Its attempts to build an identity and harmony 
have failed," and no other unifying institutions 
-- a regional economic agreement for example -- 
has emerged to fill that void.
Like others, Bose believes that a SAARC people's 
movement is a good idea, but suggests it will 
have to overcome many barriers. One is tension 
between successful grassroots movements in the 
region and non- governmental organisations (NGOs).
Reacting spontaneously to particular local 
challenges, movements that oppose planned 
mega-dams or fight for the rights of fisher 
people, for example, might see NGOs -- 
established, project-driven and well-funded -- as 
lacking credibility. Yet at the same time they 
might have to turn to them for funding or other 
resources, according to Bose.
Another barrier is nationalism, of both 
governments and groups, he argued. "The 
governments are still very nationalistic and use 
the idiom very strongly in their language."
And while South Asian writers and intellectuals, 
for instance, will often criticise their 
governments' domestic agendas it is rare to see 
them take on their leaders' foreign policies, 
particularly vis-à-vis other SAARC nations.
"There are issues (such as migrant workers' 
rights) through which we have tried to push the 
agenda of trans-border dialogue (but) it's been a 
difficult process," says Bose.
For example, Nepali civil society rallied to 
oppose the proposed Arun-3 dam. "The people here 
were very much looking forward to support from 
India (where groups have successfully defeated 
proposed mega-dams). Very little was forthcoming. 
The concerns sort of stopped at the border."
According to a former SAARC secretary- general, 
"South Asia is a region where the civil society 
phenomenon is not very much visible or has not 
taken shape. In South Asia somehow it is the 
government and the bureaucracy that dominate," 
said Yadav Kant Silwal in an interview.
That perception also colours SAARC, he added, 
where the only civil society organisation that 
had any influence when Silwal led the 
organisation in 1994-95 was the Chamber of 
Commerce and Industry. The SAP initiative is "a 
very good beginning because you have to create an 
awareness among the people" about issues, and 
SAARC should "engage as many constituencies as 
possible".
"Regional integration efforts will bear fruit 
only with the cooperation of governments and 
civil society," argued Silwal.
Bose suggested that Indian activists' success in 
opposing the Narmada Dam project illustrates the 
need for civil society to look beyond its borders 
for support. At the same time those who have led 
successful campaigns must be willing to share 
their expertise.
"If democracy in India is successful then it is 
in the interest of democratic forces in India to 
link up with forces in other countries. It is the 
duty of democratic forces in India to link with 
democratic forces in Nepalàbecause it will 
ultimately strengthen democracy in India," said 
Bose.
However Silwal advised the people's movement to 
refrain from pushing a political agenda, noting 
that SAARC operates by unanimity so if a country 
is singled out for criticism it can react by 
quashing any proposal.
"As civil society they are entitled to express 
their opinion (on political matters) but I think 
their focus should be more on economic and social 
matters" such as the South Asian Free Trade 
Agreement.
"Eventually (a successful SAARC) will create a 
climate where there will be political 
understanding among the countries," argued Silwal.
In its statement, this month's regional forum 
called for an end to SAARC's unanimity rule. It 
also urged the grouping to include "the ability 
to address bilateral issues and conflicts in the 
spirit of regional cooperation".
January's postponed SAARC summit is now slated 
for November. Before then the people's movement 
will create a peace commission, hold a peace 
rally Sep. 21 and launch a campaign for 
governments to ratify the region's convention on 
trafficking of human beings, said Nepali. 
(END/2005)


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[2]

EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Part I  [Times of India, August 12, 2005]

by Jean Drèze

In Manufacturing Consent and other writings, Noam 
Chomsky presents an illuminating analysis of 
propaganda techniques in democratic societies. 
One of these techniques is "flak" - a barrage of 
attacks on ideas that challenge the interests of 
established power.

The Employment Guarantee Act (EGA), no doubt a 
"dangerous" idea, has been the target of two 
waves of flak in recent months.  The first 
occurred around December 2004, when the National 
Rural Employment Guarantee Bill was tabled in 
Parliament.  The second started earlier this 
month, just after Sonia Gandhi threw her weight 
behind some key recommendations of the Standing 
Committee on Rural Development.

As Chomsky observes, flak often involves personal 
attacks, and that certainly applies in this case. 
Dr. Surjit Bhalla, for instance, attacked the 
so-called "leaders" of the pro-EGA campaign as 
"liars" and also accused them of being 
"arrogant", "ignorant", and "brazen", among other 
colourful epithets (Business Standard, 25 
December 2004 and 8 January 2005). Swapan 
Dasgupta called some of us "jholawala 
economists", as if there was something indecent 
about an economist carrying a jhola instead of a 
corporate briefcase.  Tavleen Singh used the same 
term (no copyright it seems), and extended it to 
the entire National Advisory Council, dismissed 
as "a bunch of jholewalas with their hearts in 
the right place but their worn out sandals 
walking the wrong way" (Indian Express, 6 
February 2005). She argued that instead of these 
jholewalas, the National Advisory Council needed 
"people like Sam Pitroda", apparently forgetting 
that Sam was in the NAC at that time.

Even fratricide has figured in this merciless 
crusade.  Jairam Ramesh, otherwise known as the 
"poster boy of economic reforms", was recently 
called a "turncoat" in the business media for 
supporting EGA and related ideas (DNA, 7 August 
2005).  "What is he smoking these days?", asked 
an aghast member of the pro-reform brotherhood 
quoted in the article.

Aside from personal attacks, deceptive statistics 
have played a major role in this propaganda 
operation.  Surjit Bhalla deployed some of his 
most spectacular hat-tricks to rubbish the 
Employment Guarantee Act.  He even managed to 
show, based on a creative reading of National 
Sample Survey data, that "poor agricultural 
workers had an unemployment rate of only 1 per 
cent" (Business Standard, 25 December 2004). 
Ergo, the Employment Guarantee Act is not 
required.  As the late Sudhir Mulji soberly 
observed: "That the magnitude of unemployment is 
substantially higher than one per cent inferred 
by analysts of NSS data is obvious to even casual 
observers if not to skilled statisticians" 
(Business Standard, 20 January).  It is worth 
adding that Dr. Bhalla's figures do not stand the 
scrutiny of serious "analysts of NSS data".

In a related genre, statistical hyperbole has 
also been widely used to produce scary estimates 
of the cost of an Employment Guarantee Act.  Dr. 
Bibek Debroy, for instance, came up with a figure 
of Rs 208,000 crores per year (Indian Express, 23 
October).  In per-capita terms, this is almost 
twenty times as much as the cost of Maharashtra's 
Employment Guarantee Act, which is more liberal 
than the proposed National Rural Employment 
Guarantee Bill.

It is also interesting to consider the 
"alternatives" that have been proposed by these 
and other opponents of EGA.  The first prize for 
creativity goes to Swaminathan Aiyyar, who 
suggested dropping cash from helicopters instead 
of asking people to work for wages (Times of 
India, 19 December 2004).  Shankar Acharya argued 
that "the first best option would be to do 
nothing" (Business Standard, 30 November 2004). 
Bibek Debroy tersely said that it would be 
"better to have unemployment insurance alone, 
without the employment guarantee" (Indian 
Express, 13 October 2004), without explaining how 
a universal unemployment insurance scheme could 
possibly work in rural India.  T.C.A. 
Srinivasa-Raghavan suggested taking refuge in 
Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, which allows 
donations to charity to be deducted from tax: 
"re-examine 80G, tighten it, and direct it for 
rural employment creation" (Business Standard, 19 
December 2004).

For once, Surjit Bhalla was the least 
unreasonable: he suggested universal cash 
transfers as an alternative to EGA.  I leave it 
to the reader to guess whether this is a serious 
proposal, or just another stick to beat the Act. 
Be that as it may, the proposal can easily be 
accommodated.  All one has to do is to insert a 
clause in the Act stating that if the government 
prefers to pay the equivalent of 100 days' wages 
to every household in a particular district, 
instead of organising public works, it is free to 
do so.

Fireworks aside, is there any substance in this 
chorus of protest against EGA?  I believe there 
is.  As Anatol Rapoport pointed out in his 
pioneering work on "ethical debate", even the 
most outlandish statements often have their 
"domain of validity".  For instance, the 
statement "black is white" makes sense in the 
limited circumstance where one is looking at the 
negative of a photograph.  Similarly, there is an 
important message in these shrill interventions - 
more on this in the second part of this article.

The author is Honorary Professor at the Delhi School of Economics.


o o o o


TIME TO CLEAN UP

Part 2 [ The Times of India, August 13, 2005]

by Jean Drèze

Job guarantee programme can overcome corruption

The proposed employment guarantee Act (EGA) has 
found wide support among political parties, 
social movements and the public at large. This 
broad support is reflected in the recent report 
of the Standing Committee on Rural Development, 
aptly described by the finance minister as a 
microcosm of Parliament.
Opposition to the Act has come chiefly from a 
small but powerful section of the corporate 
sector and its allies in government. It tends to 
be rooted in a minimalist view of the role of the 
state in the social sector. In an article with a 
transparent title (Can the State Really Help the 
Poor?), T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan clearly 
articulated the main argument of the minimalists: 
Those who think that the money will reach the 
intended beneficiaries are living in a fool's 
paradise (Business Standard, Dec 19). Similar 
statements can be found in most of the writings 
cited in the first part of this article yesterday.
This argument should not be lightly dismissed. 
The record of anti-poverty programmes in India is 
far from encouraging. Early feedback on the 
National Food For Work Programme (NFFWP), from a 
recent survey conducted by students from Delhi 
University and JNU, is also sobering. The survey 
suggests that the programme is a potential 
lifeline for the rural poor, and also has many 
other positive effects, from slowing down 
rural-urban migration to the creation of useful 
assets. However, much of this potential has been 
wasted due to widespread corruption.
The issue is whether this situation is immutable, 
or whether corruption can be eradicated from 
public works programmes. The minimalists feel 
that corruption is an intrinsic feature of these 
programmes, but recent experience suggests 
otherwise.
One major development is the cleaning of muster 
rolls in Rajasthan. Fudging of muster rolls is 
the principal method through which public funds 
are siphoned off from rural employment 
programmes. For instance, unscrupulous officials 
enter fake names in the muster rolls and 
appropriate the wages of fictitious labourers. 
This has been going on for decades all over 
India. In Rajasthan, however, this practice has 
been significantly curtailed, at least in areas 
where active use has been made of the state's 
Right to Information Act. This is largely a 
reflection not only of the accessibility of the 
muster rolls under the Act, but also of the 
culture of public vigilance and bureaucratic 
accountability that has started spreading in 
Rajasthan in the wake of the right to information 
movement.
The NFFWP survey mentioned earlier confirms that 
Rajasthan is different from other states in this 
respect. In each of the other five sample states 
(Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar 
Pradesh, West Bengal), the muster rolls were 
virtually impossible to trace. In rare cases 
where they could be traced, simple verification 
exercises uncovered massive fudging. In 
Rajasthan, however, the muster rolls were easy to 
obtain and they were, by and large, accurate.
There is much to learn from this experience. 
First and foremost, corruption is not an 
immutable feature of rural development 
programmes. Second, the best way to fight 
corruption in public works is to empower those 
who are at the receiving end of the system of 
fraud and embezzlement - starting with the 
labourers, for whom it is a matter of life and 
death. Third, the right to information is a 
powerful tool of empowerment. The national Right 
to Information Act, which is due to come into 
force next month, is a major breakthrough in this 
respect. Fourth, a law is not enough - legal 
rights have to be combined with a process of 
public mobilisation that enables people to 
exercise those rights.
The EGA is an opportunity to take this process 
much further than it has gone in Rajasthan. Like 
the Right to Information Act, EGA is an important 
tool of empowerment. It puts in place legal 
safeguards and accountability mechanisms that 
strengthen the bargaining power of labourers: Job 
cards for all workers, proactive disclosure of 
muster rolls, mandatory social audits by gram 
sabhas, penalties for any violation of the law, 
among others. The Act will also give labourers a 
new opportunity to organise.
Unlike a scheme, a law gives people durable 
entitlements that they can learn to fight for.
This feature of Maharashtra's EGA is well 
conveyed in a recent study by Anuradha Joshi. As 
Joshi points out, a strong national EGA is likely 
to lead to a flourishing of activist 
organisations that would help mobilise the poor 
in their interest. Thus, while the EGA is widely 
regarded as a potential fountain of corruption, 
it can also be seen (along with the Right to 
Information Act) as an integral part of the 
battle for restoring accountability in rural 
development programmes. There is a possible 
meeting ground here for the minimalists and their 
opponents.
The premise of the EGA is that every adult has a 
right to basic employment opportunities at the 
statutory minimum wage. It is a political 
initiative based on the state's responsibility to 
protect the right to work. Corruption should not 
be used as an excuse to abdicate this 
responsibility -- it can and must be fought.


______

[5]

The Washington Post
August 8, 2005; Page A12

From Superstition to Savagery
Women Accused of Witchcraft Face Violence in Rural India

By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post

PALANI, India -- At sundown, Pusanidevi Manjhi 
recalled, nine village men stormed into her house 
shouting, "Witch, witch!" and dragged her out by 
her hair as her six small children watched 
helplessly.

"This woman is a witch!" the men announced to the 
villagers, said Manjhi, 36. She said they tied 
her ankles together and locked her in a dark room.
Pusanidevi Manjhi, pictured with husband Gooda 
and their six children, was accused of being a 
witch by a landowner whose paddy crop was 
destroyed by fire. She was tortured and held 
captive for four days. (By Rama Lakshmi For The 
Washington Post)

"They beat me with bamboo sticks and metal rods 
and tried to pull my nails out. 'You are a witch, 
admit it,' they screamed at me again and again," 
Manjhi said, tearfully recalling her four days of 
captivity in June.

"They accused me of casting an evil spell on 
their paddy crop that was destroyed in a fire. I 
begged them and told them I was not a witch," she 
said, showing wounds on her legs, thighs, hips 
and shoulders one recent morning in this village 
in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.

After a police investigation, the men who 
attacked Manjhi were arrested. An official said 
that the attack was spurred by a powerful 
landowner who owned rice paddies in the village 
and used local superstition to mask his attempts 
to maintain control.

Threats and charges of witchcraft occur in a 
number of Indian states that have large tribal 
populations with traditional beliefs about 
witches. Indian newspapers periodically publish 
reports about women who, after being accused of 
being witches, have been beaten, had their heads 
shaved or had strings of shoes hung around their 
necks. Some have been killed.

In a tribal society steeped in superstition, the 
spells of witches often are blamed for stubborn 
illnesses, a stroke of bad luck, the drying up of 
wells, crop failure or the inability to give 
birth to a son. But social analysts and officials 
said that superstition and faith in witchcraft 
often are a ploy for carrying out violence 
against women.

"Superstition is only an excuse. Often a woman is 
branded a witch so that you can throw her out of 
the village and grab her land, or to settle 
scores, family rivalry, or because powerful men 
want to punish her for spurning their sexual 
advances. Sometimes it is used to punish women 
who question social norms," said Pooja Singhal 
Purwar, an official at the Jharkhand social 
welfare department.

"Women from well-to-do homes in the village are 
never branded witches," Purwar said. "It is 
always the socially and economically vulnerable 
women who are targeted and boycotted."

Purwar said she sees an average of five women a 
month being denounced as witches and tortured in 
rural Jharkhand. Her department has drawn up a 
public information project to oppose the 
practice, providing information at village fairs 
and conducting street performances and puppet 
shows. Police at the local level have been 
alerted to track the cases of women who are 
attacked, she said.

While Manjhi was imprisoned by her captors, her 
husband, a farmhand, sought help from the village 
elders, who called a meeting to determine if 
Manjhi was a witch and summoned a witch doctor 
for verification. But by then, word spread and 
the police arrived.

The nine men were charged under a Jharkhand state 
law that forbids accusing people of being 
witches. One of them was Gahan Lal, the man whose 
paddy had caught fire. Lal later confessed to 
torturing Manjhi.

"Gahan Lal was a powerful landlord. There were 
fights all the time in the village over land and 
wages," said Jayant Tirkey, the police officer 
investigating the case. "When his paddy caught 
fire, he blamed [Manjhi] for casting an evil 
spell. But that is merely an excuse. His real 
motive is to instill fear among the poor."

Tirkey said he thinks that village witch doctors 
are to blame for superstitious practices, but 
added that witch doctors are not arrested and 
tried because they are not directly involved in 
the violence.

"I never name a witch. I only give villagers some 
clues to find her," said Leena Oraon, who is 
known as a witch doctor in Aragate village and 
who says she studies rice grains to ascertain the 
presence of a witch in the village. "Today's 
doctors cannot cure ailments that are caused by a 
witch's curse. That is why people come to me."

In a case three years ago in Lalganj village, an 
elderly woman, Baili Kashyap, was branded a witch 
for supposedly causing sickness in the family of 
a relative. The relatives, who allegedly were 
engaged in a land dispute with her, tied her to a 
tree and slit her throat with a sickle while 
others in the village watched. Six men are in 
prison for the murder.

"My mother-in-law was not a witch. They were 
after our land. But the entire village just stood 
and watched the murder," said Kashyap's 
daughter-in-law, Reena, 28. "They believed she 
was a witch and deserved to die."

According to a study by the Free Legal Aid 
Committee, an advocacy group that works against 
witch-hunting, only 2 percent of people charged 
with witch-hunting are convicted in court.

"People go scot-free because witnesses are hard 
to come by. Villagers often approve of the 
torture meted out to these women," said Girija 
Shankar Jaiswal, a lawyer who heads the 
organization. "They think witch-hunting is a 
heroic act and that it will clean the society of 
evil."

Only two Indian states, Jharkhand and Bihar, have 
outlawed witch-hunting. Last year, one of India's 
northeastern states, Tripura, conducted a 
discussion in the legislative assembly about the 
need to ban the practice of witch-hunting. After 
a day-long debate, the assembly unanimously 
decided that killing of people for practicing 
witchcraft should be prevented.

However, members failed to reach a consensus on 
whether witchcraft was a science or superstition.

______


[4]

The Indian Express
August 12, 2005
Op-Ed

THE CONTOURS OF A COMMUNAL VIOLENCE LAW
AN EVALUATION OF THE COMMUNAL VIOLENCE (SUPPRESSION) BILL, 2005
by Colin Gonsalves

The big question is, would a communal violence 
law have prevented the 1984 riots? My guess is 
that the Communal Violence (Suppression) Bill, 
2005, in its present draft, would have proved a 
dud. Today, when the country is confronting its 
history of riots, we should also think of ways to 
come up with a more effective piece of 
legislation to deal with communal violence.

The fatal flaw in the Draft Bill is that it 
cannot be invoked even when communal crimes take 
place unless the state or the central government 
decides to declare an area as communally 
disturbed. Therefore, if a state has the support 
of the Centre, it can engage in the most heinous 
communal crimes and get away with it. The Act can 
only be invoked in the most extreme circumstances 
where there is criminal violence resulting in 
death or destruction of property and there is 
danger to the unity of India. There are myriad 
kinds of serious communal crimes which may not 
result in death, such as rape, and which are not 
considered to result in danger to the unity of 
the country. All these crimes fall outside the 
ambit of this Draft. Even if such circumstances 
do exist, it only prescribes that the government 
'may' act. On the face of it, the duty to act is 
not mandatory.

Chapter III has the most controversial provisions 
importing the provisions of the Armed Forces 
Special Protection Act in order to allow the army 
to intervene at will, even kill. Section 10 which 
grants immunity to the police and the army is 
particularly insensitive. Various Commissions of 
Inquiry have found the police and civil 
authorities either passive or partisan. Section 
22 introduces the POTA provisions relating to 
bail and remand, doubling the maximum days of 
remand and making grant of bail impossible. These 
were some of the offensive provisions that led to 
the repeal of POTA.

Communal crimes are nowhere defined. Apart from 
the obvious crimes; gender violence including the 
insertion of objects in the genitals, social and 
economic boycotts, forcible evictions, restraint 
on access to public spaces, residential 
segregation, deprivation of access to food and 
medicines, enforced disappearances, interference 
with the right to education, using religious 
weapons and ceremonies to intimidate, 
interference with police work, advocating the 
destruction of a religious structure, need to be 
specifically set out in the statute. A chapter is 
necessary to punish the police and members of the 
security forces for their involvement in communal 
crimes particularly when FIRs are not registered 
or registered improperly, when security is not 
provided to minorities under attack, when 
destruction of property is not prevented and when 
inadequate forces are deployed. Where the 
officers stand firm - and there were many such 
fine examples of bravery even in Gujarat - the 
rioters are quickly scattered. No communal riot 
can take place without the support of the police 
and the security forces. They must be severely 
punished for not doing their duty.

A chapter on preventive action to be taken by the 
authorities along the lines of the SC/ST 
Atrocities Act is also needed. Apart from section 
21 which deals with the externment of persons 
there is nothing else. Immediately on receiving 
information the officials should visit the area, 
establish a police outpost, begin patrolling with 
special police forces and form vigilance 
committees. The abject failure of the criminal 
justice system because of the undermining role of 
the police and the public prosecutor, who often 
side with the accused, needs special legislative 
attention.

Commissions of inquiry

* Justice Ranganath Mishra Commission (Delhi riots)
* Justice Raghuvir Dayal Commission (Ahmednagar riots)
* Justice Jagmohan Reddy Commission (Ahmedabad riots)
* Justice D.P. Madan Commission (Bhiwandi riots)
* Justice Joseph Vithyathil Commission (Tellicheri riots)
* Justice J. Narain, S.K. Ghosh and S.Q. Rizvi Commission (Jamshedpur riots)
* Justice R.C.P. Sinha and S.S. Hasan Commission (Bhagalpur riots)
* Justice Srikrishna Commission (Bombay riots)

	 After the last racial riots in Britain, 
the McPhearson Committee recommended that 
complaints be registered at places other than 
police stations and suggested ways of overcoming 
'institutionalised racism'. Complaints ought to 
be registered even electronically. Recognising 
the role of the police in communal riots, it is 
critical that the immunity granted under sections 
195, 196 and 197 of the Criminal Procedure Code 
be omitted in any statute on communal crimes. No 
junior officer should be allowed to take the 
defence that he was ordered by his superior to 
commit the crime. Nor should any commanding 
officer be allowed to take the defence that he 
was unaware of the crimes that were committed on 
his beat.

Similarly, public prosecutors who side with the 
accused persons and enable them to be released on 
bail or are instrumental in their acquittal ought 
also to come under legislative scrutiny. A 
section is necessary to allow the trial judge, 
who finds the performance of the prosecutor 
unsatisfactory, to remove him from the case. 
Politicians must come in for special mention in 
the legislation. Any minister interfering with 
police work by shielding the accused, 
misdirecting police investigation or by 
preventing relief from reaching the victims 
should be treated as a common criminal.

There is no provision in the present Draft Bill 
relating to the duties of authorities after the 
riots takes place. A section is necessary 
requiring the authorities to provide immediate 
relief, protection from further acts of violence, 
to prepare a list of victims and their losses, to 
provide for legal aid and for allowances and 
facilities during legal proceedings. Likewise, 
provisions are required to enable the arrest and 
detention of people engaging in hate speeches and 
enabling the court to shift the investigation to 
the CBI in cases of involvement of the local 
police in the communal crime. Section 27 of the 
Bill deals with compensation to be paid to the 
victims but restricts the compensation to the 
amount of fine payable under the Code which is a 
few thousand rupees. In Chapter XIII of the 
Communal Crimes Bill submitted by Anhad, an 
anti-communal group, the suggested sections made 
it mandatory for government to set up relief 
camps, pay subsistence allowance, pay substantial 
compensation and provide reasonable 
rehabilitation including alternative sites and 
housing and reconstruct the destroyed places of 
worship at government's expense. All these 
victim's rights are missing from the government 
Bill.

There is, of course, a wishy-washy Section 31 in 
the Draft Bill requiring the government to plan 
and coordinate relief and rehabilitation measures 
but this section falls short of clearly 
enunciating a victim's rights enforceable in a 
court. Once again had government cared to look at 
the Atrocities Act, it would have noticed the 
provisions relating to the collective fine where 
the community harboring the aggressors could be 
substantially fined and the money used for the 
payment of compensation. A special section on 
communal crimes against women and children is 
solely needed covering sexual violence, 
penetrative assault, sexual slavery, enforced 
prostitution, forced pregnancies, enforces 
sterilisation and other forms of sexual violence. 
The rules of evidence need to be modified so that 
the victim is not further victimised during the 
trial.


The writer is the senior advocate with the Supreme Court

______


[5]   [India: Anti Sikh  riots of 1984 riots and the endless wait for justice ]

www.sacw.net
11 August, 2005

Shameless Collaborators
by V.B.Rawat
The ghost of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs has returned to haunt the
Congress. For two days you make noise in the parliament and then ask a
person to resign. It's good but not enough. [. . . ]
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/VBrawat11082005.html

o o o

72 hours, 21 years
Lesson from Nanavati: you can no longer brush the 
past aside, it always comes back to haunt
by Shekhar Gupta
http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=76143


_____


[6]

BOOK NOTICE

Books on Europe are normally written in the west.

EUROPE IN THE SECOND MILLENIUM: A HEGEMONY 
ACHIEVED ?, Editors, Rila Mukherjee and Kunal 
Chattopadhyay, Kolkata, Progressive, 2005. 320 
pp. Price Rs. 450 or $ 14.99/Euro 10.99 is an 
exception.

The editors have chosen a group of essays with a 
refreshingly different 'take'on Europe.The 
contributors are from China, Japan, India, 
Canada, the US, and Europe.

A publication of the Centre for European Studies, 
Jadavpur University, the volume contains a 
refreshing look at Europe by (mostly) 
non-Europeans. The 12 essays including the 
Introduction by the editors are :
1. Rila Mukherjee-History, Memory and 'Being 
There' in Europe from the thirteenth to the 
Sixteenth Centuries,
2. Dietmar Rothermund, Transformations of 
European Expansion (16th to 18th Centuries),
3. Andre Gunder Frank, Eurocentrism in Historiographic Tradition,
4. Jean Marie Lafont, Some French Engineers in India in the 18th Century,
5. Andre Gunder Frank, The Centrality of China 
and the Marginality of Europe in the World 
Economy,
6. Fritz Reheis, The Just State: Observations on 
Gustav von schmoller's Political Theory,
7. Fritz Reheis, Return to the Grace of God : 
Werner Sombart's Compromise with National 
Socialism
8. Makarand Paranjape, Theorising Post Colonial 
Difference : Culture, nation, Civilisation,
9. Yang Biao, The studies and Perceptions of Germany in China,
10. Kunal Chattopadhyay, The German Reunification and the Left,
11. David Mandel, Revolution, Counterrevolution 
and Working Class in Russia: Reflections for the 
Eightieth Anniversary of the October Revolution,
12. Masao Nishikawa, The Position of European History in World History.

You may place Orders at Progressive Publishers, 
37A College Street, Calcutta 73. [India]




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