SACW | 16 August 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 16 August,  2005

[Interruption notice:  Please note, there will be 
no SACW posts between 17 August - 2 September 
2005]

[1]  Sri Lanka:
   (i) Media Release  - Kadirgamar Assassination  (National Peace Council)
   (ii) Media Release - Kadirgamar Assassination (The Sri Lanka Democracy Forum)
[2]  Bangladesh: Gap between rich and poor widens
[3]  Limited War Under the Nuclear Umbrella and 
its Implications for South Asia (Khurshid Khan)
[4] India : Anti Sikh riots of 1984 riots and the endless wait for justice
  (i)  Justice Delayed Should not be Justice Denied (Smitu Kothari)
  (ii) The politics of apology and 1984 (Editorial, The Hindu)
(iii) Mishandling of Nanavati Report (Dr Amrik Singh)
[5]  Allure Of The Demonic - Hate has become respectable now (Ashis Nandy)
[5]  India: "Our" Women, "Their" Women - Communal 
Ideology and Women (Ram Puniyani)
[6] India:

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[1]

(i)

National Peace Council
of Sri Lanka
12/14 Purana Vihara Road
Colombo 6 [Sri Lanka]

15.08.05

Media Release

CALL FOR RETALIATION ONLY STRENGTHENS FORCES THAT SEEK ESCALATION

The assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman 
Kadirgamar has taken place when important efforts 
were being made to re-engage the government and 
LTTE in a joint mechanism for humanitarian 
purposes and to re-start the peace process. The 
National Peace Council condemns this 
assassination, more so as it has been carried out 
during a time of ceasefire that has existed for 
three and a half years. The government has 
accused the LTTE of this assassination which the 
LTTE has denied.  This open breakdown of 
relations is a major blow to hopes of a revival 
of the peace process. 

While Minister Kadirgamar is the most prominent 
figure to be assassinated during the 
post-ceasefire period, he is only one among a 
large number of victims. Tamil political 
opponents of the LTTE, military personnel and 
LTTE cadre are today being killed virtually on a 
daily basis. Journalists supporting and opposing 
the LTTE have also been killed. We are saddened 
by these killings and condole with their 
families.  Regrettably the repeated condemnations 
of these actions by civil society and the 
international community have failed to stem the 
growing number of such killings.

The National Peace Council takes this opportunity 
to once again condemn the use of violence and 
assassination to address past grievances or to 
weaken the opponent.  Such actions will not serve 
to bring any benefit to either the peace process 
or help in finding a political settlement to the 
ethnic conflict.  Likewise, the call for 
retaliation in kind only serves to strengthen 
forces that seek escalation of conflict, and 
would create conditions of war in which killings 
get much worse. Difficult though it is all 
parties have to collectively ensure that a 
suitable environment is created for dialogue on 
the various issues that separate the government 
and LTTE.

In this time of heightened emotions and political 
instability NPC calls on the political leadership 
together with civil society to work in a 
bipartisan manner to create conditions for a 
resumption of the peace process. We urge the 
international community to do likewise with the 
LTTE. An independent investigation with 
international assistance will be helpful in 
restoring peopleís faith in the legal process. 
We also call on both the government and LTTE to 
renegotiate the Ceasefire Agreement and implement 
it sincerely.

Media Director

o o o o

(ii)

5 August 2005

For Immediate Release:

The Sri Lanka Democracy Forum (SLDF) expresses its absolute
condemnation of the assassination of Foreign Minister Lakshman
Kadirgamar by the LTTE.  The assassination of the Foreign Minister,
during a ceasefire is tantamount to a declaration of war and is
clearly a deliberate attempt by the LTTE to derail the peace process
and precipitate a return to war.


The LTTE has characterized Kadirgamar as a controversial figure, a
'traitor' purely because he, a Tamil, held high office with the Sri
Lankan government, and was opposed to the LTTE's claim of 'sole
representation'.  Kadirgamar's significant political address six weeks
ago gives us an insight into why he was murdered.

Kadirgamar spoke of the responsibility of the President to open a new
chapter after the signing of the P-TOMS agreement to address the
concerns of the Tamil people.  On that occasion, Kadirgamar said:
"That chapter involves addressing as vigorously as she has addressed
the cause of promoting engagement with the LTTE, the task of making it
clear to the LTTE, and to the Government of Norway, that the
restoration of democracy, including the creation of space for dissent
and the promotion of human rights in areas presently controlled by the
LTTE, is a priority of the highest order."

And to the Government of Norway, he had the following to say: "The
movement for democracy in certain districts of the North and East must
begin to roll. If the Government of Norway is unable to plead this
cause with the conviction and determination that it deserves it should
stand aside and yield to other parties who could carry the flag of
democracy into areas where darkness presently prevails."

The LTTE's lack of commitment to the peace process and to a democratic
political solution to the ethnic conflict is exposed by this brutal
slaying of a senior cabinet official of the Sri Lankan Government
which is its negotiating partner.  On the same day, we were chillingly
reminded of the terror that the Tamil community is mired in, by the
tragic murder of Relangi Selvarajah, the SLBC journalist and her
husband.  The long suffering people of war ravaged Sri Lanka, and in
particular the people living in the North and East have watched
helplessly as the peace process gradually degenerated into an orgy of
terror, of forced child conscriptions, abductions and the brutal
suppression of Tamil dissent through a relentless campaign of
political killings.

The assassination of Kadirgamar, the last victim of this long line of
brutal killings makes it clear, that the policy of appeasement of the
LTTE, is at best, self delusional on the part of the Government of Sri
Lanka (GOSL) and the Norwegian peace facilitators and at worst, a
cynical
abandonment of the Tamil people's political future to the vagaries of
the LTTE's quest for power.  The policy of placating the LTTE is being
followed at the expense of, and will delay a genuine and lasting peace
with democracy and justice on this island, for many years to come.
The last three decades of the LTTE's dirty war against its opponents
are ominous signals of what the people of the North and East will
encounter in an administration with no democratic accountability by
the LTTE.  The International Community has to recognize that the
LTTE's aspirations for total power, for 'sole representation' can
never be equated with the Tamil people's quest for democracy and
justice.  The LTTE's proposed Interim Self Governing Authority with
total and untrammeled power will become the burial ground of genuine
Tamil aspirations.

The ceasefire as it stands is steadily becoming meaningless due to
systematic violations by the LTTE and the future of the Tamil people
is atstake.  Hence,

1.  We call upon the International Community to enforce immediate
sanctions on the LTTE including travel bans on its leaders until all
political killings and child recruitment end.

2.  We call upon the British Government to investigate whether Anton
Balasingam, the spokesperson for the LTTE in the UK, had prior
knowledge of Kadirgamar's assassination, in view of his threats about
the resumption of war a day prior to the murder.

3.  We call upon GOSL and the International Community to demand that
the LTTE immediately agree to the revision of the Ceasefire Agreement
(CFA) and additional measures, in order to end the flagrant violations
of human rights and the constant threat of war.  The provision for the
LTTE to
do political work in government controlled territories in particular
should be renegotiated given the LTTE's abuse of that provision to
carry out political killings.

4.  In view of the destitution of our peoples due to the long running
war and the Tsunami, we call upon the International Community to
address the threat of war by pressuring the GOSL and the LTTE to agree
to a moratorium on the war for a length of four years and eschew the
threat of war in
negotiations.

5.  We call upon GOSL and Norway to take measures to augment the
monitoring of the CFA by international human rights monitors in order
to end the rampant human rights violations.

6.  In view of the State of Emergency imposed by the GOSL, we call for
the civil liberties of all citizens to be protected, and particularly
those of the Tamil civilians who have faced the brunt of emergency
violations in the past.

7.  We call on the Southern political formations and civil society to
actively work towards and campaign for a permanent political solution
that meets the aspirations of the minorities through the devolution of
power, instead of an interim arrangement that merely attempts to
appease the
LTTE and consolidate its control over the Tamil people.

--
Sri Lanka Democracy Forum
www.lankademocracy.org

______


[2]

The New Nation
August 12, 2005

[BANGLADESH] GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR WIDENS
By Economic Correspondent

The gap between the rich and the poor widened 
despite an admirable annual growth in the gross 
domestic product (GDP) during the last decade.

A survey conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of 
Statistics (BBS) on the national income and its 
relative impact on the different sections of the 
people revealed that the poor have become poorer 
and the rich richer. The disparity is growing 
between the urban rich and the urban poor as well 
as between the rural rich and the rural poor.

It finds that the income gap between the urban 
rich and the rural poor is widening more 
evidently. A comparison of the household incomes 
of the rich and the poor lays bare a still worse 
scenario of the income distribution. It is not 
just that the poor are falling behind in the race 
of getting its due share of the national income.

The factors that contribute to the increase in 
GDP include the rise in the production in the 
industry, agriculture, service sector, external 
trade and the amount of foreign remittance to the 
economy. So, increased national production also 
implies growth in national income. The alarming 
aspect of the whole development is that the 
income of the poorer section of the population is 
decreasing while that of the richer section is 
increasing.

The study shows that national household income of 
the rich has risen by 13.36 per cent, while the 
household income of the poor has decreased by 
3.56 per cent. Similarly, between 1999 and 2004, 
the urban poor earned less by 5.34 per cent in 
real terms compared to what they did earlier, but 
the urban rich made a net gain in the same period 
by 7.96 per cent. In the case of the rural poor, 
their household income decreased by 7.32 per 
cent, but the household income of their rich 
counterparts has risen by 3.32 per cent.

The picture is not different if one calculated 
the economic growth in terms of increase in per 
capita income. Every poor person in the country 
could get hold of only 4.82 per cent of the 
growth in national income over the period under 
survey, but each member of the richer community 
could make a windfall gain of 19 per cent in all 
these years. It is worthwhile to mention here 
that if one distributed the overall increase in 
national income during this period among the 
entire population, the figure would come to 17.51 
per cent. The rich are getting the lion's share 
of the national income, while the poor of are 
deprived of their due shares.

The overall economy is getting more and more 
pro-rich despite the fact that the government is 
busy preparing its Poverty Reduction Strategy 
Paper (PRSP) to meet the UN's millennium 
development goal (MDG) of reducing poverty 
drastically within a decade's time. A pro-rich 
economy means that the poor are getting less of 
the employment being created over the years, so 
much so that their contribution to the nation's 
increasing productivity is decreasing, an 
observer said.

The falling number of jobs for the poor means 
rising unemployment in the urban as well as rural 
areas. The agriculture, especially in the 
non-farm sector, is depending on skilled workers. 
The service sector and the industry proper are 
also showing a similar trend. As a consequence, 
the unskilled section of the rural and urban work 
force is gradually being phased out of the 
nation's productive activity.

A survey conducted by the government in 1995-96 
revealed that the very rich 5.0 per cent of the 
population possessed 23.62 per cent of the 
nation's income at that time. In 2000, the same 
section of the richest 5.0 per cent possessed 
30.66 per cent of the national income. During the 
same time, the income of the 5.0 per cent poorest 
of the poor decreased from 0.88 per cent of the 
national income to 0.67 per cent. That is the 
income level of the extreme poor fell by 24 per 
cent within a five years' time. The income of the 
richest 5.0 per cent of society was 27 times that 
of the 5.0 per cent poorest. In the year 2000, 
the income of the richest went up to 46 times 
that of the poorest section of the community. The 
study further showed that the income of the 95 
per cent population fell by that time. The trend 
is continuing, observers said.


______

[3]

south-asians-against-nukes.org
August 15, 2005

LIMITED WAR UNDER THE NUCLEAR UMBRELLA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR SOUTH ASIA
by Khurshid Khan
http://www.s-asians-against-nukes.org/2005/khurshidkhan.pdf

______

[4]

www.sacw.net  | 15 August 2005
URL: 
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/SmituKothari15082005.html

JUSTICE DELAYED SHOULD NOT BE JUSTICE DENIED

by Smitu Kothari

[Published earlier in Sunday Pioneer, 14 August 2005]

Any analysis of the history of Commissions and 
Committees set up to investigate the  massacre of 
Sikhs that took place in 1984 after the 
assassination of Indira Gandhi must acknowledge 
five facts: that 3-4,000 Sikhs were brutally 
murdered - many roasted alive - in the three days 
following the assassination; that this happened 
in the capital of a democracy; that members of 
the ruling Congress party that takes great pride 
in labeling itself as secular, actively directed, 
inspired and participated in this carnage; that 
the police actively connived or looked the other 
way while the mobs went about their brutal 
business; and, that the Indian state and its 
agencies have tried to subvert or deflect all 
efforts by the victims and their survivors to 
secure justice.

The Nanavati Commission's tabling of the report 
in Parliament has brought some action. Jagdish 
Tytler and Sajjan Kumar have resigned from their 
governmental responsibilities, the Home Ministry 
has asked for all records pertaining to 
compensation and the Prime Minister has 
apologized to the Sikh community and the nation. 
For those whose loved ones were brutally killed, 
twenty-one long years have passed with no justice 
having been done. A generation of children who 
had watched there brothers and fathers being 
killed before their eyes have now grown up, many 
bitter with the games modern states play. While 
Tytler and Sajjan Kumar's resignation is a 
welcome small step, coming as they do after two 
decades of denial, lies and deceit, and with the 
prospect of their manipulating the system further 
to evade arrest and a trial, we have yet to see 
what concrete steps the criminal justice system 
and conscientious citizens are willing to take to 
ensure that this process is brought to some kind 
of satisfactory end.

I will never forget those first three days on the 
streets of Delhi, the months in the relief camps 
and the many trips to the various commissions 
inquiring into the carnage. Almost immediately 
after the first reports of killings started 
coming in, some of us spent those three days 
traveling extensively across the city from 
Trilokpuri where some of the worst atrocities had 
taken place to Lajpat Nagar and Ashram. We 
witnessed the mobs,  visited police stations and 
extensively interviewed the survivors. After the 
killings, we were active in the relief and 
rehabilitation work, made depositions before some 
of the committees and written widely in the 
press. Throughout this process, we have felt a 
deep sense of frustration and anger as we have 
witnessed delaying tactics, active subversion of 
the criminal justice system and a growing voice 
among a section of the population  that "we 
should move on and let bygones be bygones".

Throughout this period, there have been some who 
have been consistent in their recording the 
gravity of what happened, what it means for the 
fabric of democratic institutions and how 
shameful were attempts to subvert and cover-up 
the massacre. One of these was Judge AS Dhingra. 
He had this to say in his judgment on one of the 
1984 cases: "The manner in which the trail of the 
riot cases had proceeded is unthinkable in any 
civilised country. In fact, the inordinate delay 
in trial of the rioters had legitimised  the 
violence and the criminality.   A system which 
permits the legitimised violence and criminals 
through the instrumentalities of the state to 
stifle the investigation, cannot be relied upon 
to dispense basic justice uniformly to the 
people.  It amounts to a total wiping out of the 
rule of law".

Whatever failings there may be in Justice 
Nanavati's report, it is a powerful statement 
that justice has been hopelessly delayed. Also, 
what must be a matter of grave concern is that 
the Commission report says that there was 
evidence that on the day of the assassination, 
"meetings were held or the persons who could 
organize violence were contacted and given 
instructions to kill Sikhs and loot their houses 
and shops." Further that there were powerful 
people involved because those ordering and 
committing the crimes did so without, "fear of 
the police, almost suggesting that they were 
assured that they would not be harmed while 
committing those acts and even thereafter" Yet, 
one of the failings of the Nanavati report is 
that it presents this evidence and then shies 
away from investigating or naming those who 
organized the killings.

An almost identical pattern was evident in 
Gujarat a little over two years ago. Premeditated 
and systematic planning, coordinated instructions 
from politicians or others with political 
authority, assurances from them that the police 
will look the other way. Who gave these 
assurances? Who was present when the plans were 
drawn up to teach "the Sikhs a lesson"? These 
questions must be answered, even two decades 
later.

If there is one other indictment in Nanvati's 
report, it is of those who run our country: 
"Anything can happen anywhere in the country 
because politicians have no value system to 
follow and the police have no limits in behaviour 
or action."

Kuldip Nayar has argued for the setting up of a 
Truth and Reconciliation Commission similar to 
the one set up in South Africa after the end of 
apartheid rule. There are few similarities 
between the Sikh massacre and the decades-long 
victimization of millions of South Africans under 
a regime that systematically sought to sustain 
white, supremacist rule by actively torturing, 
killing and repressing vast populations of 
predominantly black South Africans. After the 
overthrow of the apartheid regime, most South 
Africans were committed to establishing a just 
and democratic country and wanted to move forward 
but with the full knowledge of what had happened 
and who was responsible. What happened in 1984 
cannot be similarly condoned. While some of the 
more privileged members of the Sikh community may 
want to maintain political status quo, most would 
agree that justice needs to be done and that the 
country is demeaned and degraded if those 
responsible for crimes against humanity are 
allowed to go free.

Also, deeper reforms and changes need to be made. 
For instance, about the police and the 
administration, Judge Dhingra is right when he 
says that, "it is imperative that the police 
force, which is increasingly becoming a threat to 
the democratic institutions of the country, is 
insulated from political interference made 
accountable to the people and effective steps 
taken to ensure that delinquent police officers 
no longer enjoy impunity. It is also imperative 
that when crimes of this gravity and magnitude 
take place, there needs to be urgent, 
unambiguously independent investigations and 
prompt action.

Our contemporary history is replete with grave 
tragedies where the economically and politically 
powerful who have been responsible for mass 
killings and suffering have actively manipulated 
the political system to escape any punishment for 
the grave crimes that they have committed. Just 
three out of thousands of cases are illustrative: 
the Bhopal tragedy (the world's worst industrial 
disaster); the systematic massacre of Muslims in 
Gujarat under a BJP chief minister, and, the Sikh 
massacre of 1984 under Congress rule at the 
centre. Time should not dilute the culpability of 
those responsible for heinous crimes. Until we 
are able to create the political conditions where 
those responsible face the strongest punishments 
(short of death penalty), we are far from 
realizing what a civilised, democratic country 
should be.

o o o o

(ii)

The Hindu
August 16, 2005
Editorials

THE POLITICS OF APOLOGY AND 1984

There can be no denying the sincerity of 
sentiment but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 
apology for the November 1984 massacre of Sikhs 
will be accepted by the victims - and by the 
country at large - only when he delivers on his 
promise of justice. Dr. Singh was apologising on 
behalf of his party and Government for a crime 
that has gone unpunished despite the passage of 
21 years. To those long years, the Prime Minister 
gratuitously added six months of his own. This 
was the time his Government took to produce an 
`Action Taken Report' on the Nanavati 
Commission's findings, a document that was 
evasive and wholly inadequate. In societies that 
have suffered the trauma of mass violence - of 
political killings, genocide and human rights 
violations on a colossal scale - apologies are 
seldom considered a substitute for a fair and 
expeditious judicial process. Indeed, often, 
apologies are intended to cover up the political 
or moral legacy of an underlying criminality and 
are, therefore, doubly insincere. The U.S. 
Government's apology for the internment of 
Japanese-Americans during World War II, for 
example, rings hollow in the light of Guantanamo 
and Abu Ghraib. Similarly, Japanese apologies for 
wartime atrocities attract cynicism across much 
of Asia because history textbooks in Japan 
underplay them and Japanese leaders routinely 
visit memorials such as the Yasukuni shrine where 
war criminals are interred.

In general terms, apologies allow societies to 
put a closure over an event only if some modicum 
of justice has been delivered. South Africa's 
process of truth and reconciliation is perhaps 
unique in this respect, but the individual 
victims of racist terror had, at least, the 
elimination of apartheid to console them. Even 
there, however, a large number of victims felt a 
profound sense of disquiet at the fact that the 
perpetrators of vicious crimes were able to walk 
away at the very moment that their guilt was 
being established through confession. More often 
than not, truth commissions are the product of an 
incomplete transition from dictatorship to 
democracy - where issues of legal accountability 
are temporarily set aside as a compromise only to 
be taken up when the democratic forces are strong 
enough to assert themselves. The best example of 
this is Chile. Twenty years after the Rettig 
Commission established the extent of the crimes 
committed during the Pinochet era, the country 
has finally managed to put the former dictator 
and his henchmen in the dock. The two committees 
of Secretaries that the Government of India has 
announced represent a welcome first step to 
address the issues of rehabilitation. Going 
beyond these issues, the politicians, policemen, 
and bureaucrats guilty of crimes of commission 
and omission must be called to render account in 
an open court. Only after the courts have handed 
down their verdict and the state has put in place 
the necessary institutional and legal 
correctives, will the apology from the Prime 
Minister allow the victims - and India - to move 
on. Until then, public apologies, for all their 
emotional import, are devoid of true meaning.


o o o o

(iii)

The Tribune
August 15, 2005

MISHANDLING OF NANAVATI REPORT
Congress has missed the chance to make amends
by Dr Amrik Singh

That even the far-from-adequate Nanavati Report 
was in danger of being mishandled became clear 
when it was decided not to table it in Parliament 
soon after its submission in February this year. 
Furthermore, its presentation was delayed up to 
the last day possible. The intention evidently 
was to push things under the carpet. That this 
did not come about is another thing. The entire 
controversy shows that the UPA government 
initially misjudged the entire issue.

The issue was not only that several thousand 
people had been killed in a riot and so much 
worse had happened. The issue was and is whether 
there would be rule of law in the country. 
Action-taking on the report should have been an 
occasion to reverse the series of mistakes made 
by the Congress during the last few decades. What 
had been totally neglected was an improvement of 
the police system or of the working of the 
judiciary over the years. Was that right? Was 
that constructive? More than that, was that the 
direction in which the country ought to be moving?

There are a number of related questions which can 
be asked but need not be asked. The inescapable 
fact is that for more than a quarter century the 
government in power had mishandled the basic 
issue of how to eradicate poverty. When this fact 
of the unredeemed failure started catching up 
with it, a wayout was found; and that was to play 
upon the Hindu sentiment.

To put it bluntly, the Congress party, which had 
so far been secular in its approach, now decided 
to deviate from it in the interest of sheer 
survival. The electoral reverses in Andhra 
Pradesh and Karnataka in the early eighties had 
set the alarm bells ringing and the wayout was 
seen to be to play the Hindu card. What happened 
in 1984 (the Prime Minister's murder and all 
that) was the logical culmination of the policy 
evolved a little earlier.

All this is known and does not have to be dilated 
upon. What needs to be underlined, however, is 
that this policy of playing the Hindu card 
eventually led to the Congress losing power. 
Earlier, the failure to develop the country had 
created widespread disillusionment and now the 
Congress made things worse for itself when it 
started to compete with the BJP for Hindu 
support. This game began in the eighties and 
continued up to the day the BJP captured power. 
It was a game which the Congress was bound to 
lose and that is exactly what happened.

The principal significance of the 2004 election 
was that the BJP, having ruled the country in 
alliance with some other parties, got dethroned 
from power. Till it actually happened, no one had 
anticipated that it was likely to happen. Once it 
happened, a new process of political churning got 
under way. The message to the Congress was 
unambiguous: if it wanted to stay in power it had 
to set its house in order.

The mishandling of the Nanavati Report 
essentially lay in the Congress failure in 
understanding this key point. The victory of 2004 
was not a victory which was either decisive or 
could be taken for granted. On top of it, the BJP 
has done everything to make things worse for 
itself and has so far mishandled the situation. 
But is the Congress giving a better account of 
itself now?

The task before the Congress is how to 
consolidate and deepen its hold. Two things 
require to be done. One is to answer the question 
where it had gone wrong during the preceding 
couple of decades and, secondly, how to ensure 
that it stays in power and does not permit the 
BJP to return to power. Has it done those two 
things?

It has done nothing of the kind so far. It 
continues to function as it used to before the 
unexpected victory came its way. Perhaps, the 
only difference between its current mode of 
functioning and its earlier mode lies in this 
that it has, to quite an extent, cured itself of 
its tendency to play the Hindu card. But this is 
putting it negatively. What the Congress should 
have done was to analyse its past mistakes, draw 
the appropriate conclusions from it and recast 
its working as also its organisation in such a 
manner that it was in no danger of going out of 
power once again.

If this objective was to be achieved, the only 
way forward was to formulate a new mode of 
functioning for itself, and so arrange things 
that in terms of governance, it overcame its 
traditional weaknesses. That is not happening. In 
consequence, we have neither good governance nor 
the kind of economic dynamism that would give us 
a feeling that the past is dead and buried and 
now we will be entering a new era of growth and 
vitality.

On the other hand, when the Nanavati Report came, 
the Congress reacted in a mechanical kind of way. 
What needs to be remembered is that the basic 
issue in the countryside as also in the 
inexorably expanding urban India is that 
governance is improved. This in turn will help us 
to also perform better economically. If these two 
things can be done during the next few years, the 
situation will start changing and the Congress 
position will become impregnable, if one may 
venture to say so.

But this is not happening because the Congress 
has failed to understand one thing. Governance 
can never be improved without these two things 
happening and in a positive way. One is improved 
police performance and the other is the reform of 
the judiciary. Likely enough, these two 
developments will also weaken and undermine the 
fact of corruption with which we have lived for 
such a long time. Both these dimensions of 
governance have gone down sharply over the years 
and need to be taken care of decisively and 
without any loss of time. If an occasion was 
awaited, the Nanavati Report provided it.

In the case of the 1984 killings in Delhi, for 
reasons which do not have to be gone into here, 
the matter had been neglected in a planned way. 
As many as nine committees and commissions had 
gone into it. Everyone knew what required to be 
done. The main significance of the Nanavati 
Report was that it provided an opportunity to the 
Congress to turn a new leaf in its career.

There are all kinds of weaknesses in this report. 
One obvious weakness is that it was supposed to 
cover the whole of India, indeed, wherever 
killings had taken place. Even when some of those 
affected in other towns submitted petitions, the 
commission did not find it convenient to look 
into them. But even in regard to Delhi, what it 
has done is nothing new or startling. It mainly 
repeated what the earlier commissions had been 
saying and in certain cases even ignored them.

The Congress almost missed this golden chance. 
Thereby it did two things. One, it missed the 
chance of improving the police and the judicial 
system of the country. That, however, can still 
be done. Secondly, it missed the chance of making 
amends for the past. Properly speaking, the 
Congress owes an apology to the country for 
having "misbehaved" in the past on several 
occasions; let us not forget what happened in 
Assam in 1982. But it could have recovered the 
position now and by implication done something of 
the kind suggested above. As stated above, it can 
do it even now though the difficulties in its way 
cannot be underrated. More than that, it would 
have sent out a signal that the Congress party is 
now not what it used to be.

The writer is a former Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University, Patiala.

______

[4]

Outlook Magazine
August 22, 2005

ALLURE OF THE DEMONIC
Hate has become respectable now. But Savarkar and 
Jinnah had understood this maxim long ago.
Ashis Nandy

The nineteenth century saw two key 
self-corrections in Europe's intellectual 
culture. First, Sigmund Freud rediscovered the 
continuities between health and ill-health, 
sanity and insanity, and normality and 
abnormality; he insisted that human beings were 
not even masters of their own selves. This 
humanised the mentally ill and the criminal, and 
saw them as victims of the same forces that 
shaped normal persons and everyday life. What 
psychoanalysis did for the individual, socialist 
thought did for societies. It rejected conspiracy 
theories of political economy and declared social 
pathologies-individual and collective-as products 
of impersonal historical forces.
The lives of Jinnah and Savarkar can be read as a 
story of the limits of 19th century modernity 
rather than that of a noxious form of nationalism.
In it there was ample scope for resistance and violence but not for hatred.
Early post-war studies of prejudice and 
violence-particularly the most ambitious and 
influential of them, the massive study of the 
fascist mind done by Theodor W. Adorno and his 
associates-inherited these traditions.
They worked in a milieu where there was much 
tiredness with cruelty, hate and gratuitous 
violence. By studying the authoritarian 
personality as a clinical case, they avoided 
being trapped by the paranoiac, hate-filled world 
of European fascism itself. The fascist did not 
become a term of abuse for them or fascism a 
demonic possession.
There has been a reversal in recent years; hate 
has become respectable, especially when directed 
against the hateful, whether the target is Osama 
bin Laden or George Bush. While ethno-religious 
extremism demands a one-dimensional, heroic 
picture of sacrifice and martyrdom, those 
fighting it fear that any humane treatment of the 
subjectivities of the extremists will only 
legitimise the enemy. Both fear that the enemy 
may not turn out to be an alien infra-human 
species, but a dangerous human potentiality 
within each of us. The recent proliferation of 
Partition studies is caught in this fear. The 
more we re-examine the heroes and the villains of 
Partition and discover shades of grey, the more 
anxious become those who cope with the pain of 
Partition by setting up rigid borders between the 
angelic and the demonic.
A good example is the recent controversies around 
South Asia's two favourite and archetypal 
villains of Partition, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar 
and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Both represented the 
westernising, urban middle classes dreaming of 
European-style nation-states-homogenised, 
secular, backed by modern science and technology. 
Both wanted their compatriots to move out of 
their traditional, community-based 
self-definitions and get reborn as European-style 
nations, convinced that the Hindus and the 
Muslims were only incidentally the carriers of 
two distinctive religions, having diverse, 
community-based cultural bases, and were actually 
ill-formed, sleepwalking crypto-nations that had 
not actualised their potentialities.
When Savarkar propounded his two-nation theory, 
it was some years before the Muslim League 
embraced the idea. His pioneering role in this 
respect was recognised. Historian R.C. Majumdar, 
an admirer of Savarkar, thought he knew wherefrom 
the League got its inspiration; it "took serious 
notice of the frank speeches of Savarkar". But 
the idea was not entirely Savarkar's either; he 
had borrowed it from European thinkers like 
Giuseppe Mazzini. Only the likes of Mazzini did 
not include in their repertoire an ideology of 
hate, as Savarkar did. Indians had to learn to 
shed, Savarkar said in 1925, soft values like 
"humility, self-surrender and forgiveness," and 
cultivate "sturdy habits of hatred, retaliation, 
vindictiveness". He also seems quite miserable 
that his heroes, Shivaji and Chinaji Appu, did 
not rape Muslim women, "because of then prevalent 
suicidal ideas about chivalry to women, which 
ultimately proved highly detrimental to the Hindu 
community".Savarkar may not have been a loveable 
character but he had a Brahminic respect for 
ideas.
   
When Mohammed Ali Jinnah began to go places with 
his two-nation theory, Savarkar was honest enough 
to say: "I have no quarrel with Mr Jinnah's 
two-nation theory.... It is a historical fact 
that Hindus and Muslims are two nations."
I have come to the conclusion that the lives of 
such stalwarts can be read as a story of the 
limits of nineteenth-century modernity, 
scientific rationality and political realism 
rather than that of a particularly noxious form 
of religious nationalism. For even their 
attitudes to Hinduism and Islam-and to Hindus and 
Muslims-were primarily instrumental. Their 
rationalist, anti-clerical selves had concluded 
that only religion could be an efficacious 
building block for nation- and state-formation in 
South Asia and they did not know where to stop. I 
must also note that in their impersonal, reified, 
scientised ideas of statecraft and politics, 
there was not much scope for emotions. The aloof 
ruthlessness came packaged in an arrogant trust 
in one's own cleverness and strategising skills 
and one's reading of history. It was as if, 
through them, all the South Asian faiths were 
readying themselves to flirt with the Dionysian 
in human personality by participating in an 
inescapable evolutionary transformation. Neither 
seemed terribly disturbed by the death of more 
than a million people in the violence of 1946-48. 
Like European colonialism and racism, both drew 
upon modern knowledge systems, particularly 
nineteenth-century biology and eugenics, and saw 
themselves as responsible for doing the dirty 
work of history.
Jinnah's case is more tragic. Westernised, given 
to constitutionalism, perfectly secular in 
personal life, his role model was the liberal 
Gopalkrishna Gokhale. Yet, though Jinnah shunned 
the ulema throughout life, he was perfectly 
willing to use them to create a separate homeland 
for South Asian Muslims. Exactly as Savarkar, 
despite all his rhetoric, not only established 
coalitions in Sindh and Bengal with the Muslim 
League, but was proud of them. But, unlike 
Savarkar, Jinnah tried to break out of the mould. 
In his famous speech of August 11, 1947, he spoke 
of an inclusive Pakistan. Himself a Shia, he 
included in Pakistan's first cabinet an Ahmadiya 
as the foreign minister and a Hindu as a law 
minister. Sadly, it already was too late. 
Religious nationalism has its own logic. Once 
unleashed, it becomes a self-sustaining force 
having its own agenda.
The history of state formation in the modern West 
is a story of how religions, denominations and 
ethnicities were bludgeoned into nationalities. 
For those entering the domain of history for the 
first time in Asia and Africa, the temptation is 
not only to construct one's own history, but to 
read into Europe's history one's own past and 
future. Even when these neophytes produce their 
own history, the categories and concerns remain 
"universal" or European. When deployed as an 
evolutionary grid to an Asian or African society, 
such history permits only one conclusion: unless 
one builds a nation, whatever its cost in human 
suffering, one cannot get justice in either the 
national or the global sphere.
Savarkar and Jinnah were not as culpable as many 
like to believe. Like most Afro-Asian 
nation-builders, they were obedient and 
obsequious pupils who sought to duplicate 
European history in our backyard. The so-called 
villains of Partition were also victims of their 
times. They represent, in a grotesque form, one 
temptation inherent in the South's encounter with 
the global nation-state system and the South's 
deep need to internalise what Rabindranath Tagore 
called 'the motive force of western nationalism'. 
That temptation was not confined to them and 
inheres in all who dream of working with a tamed 
version of secular nationalism in the Southern 
hemisphere.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of 
Developing Societies, Nandy's books include The 
Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self under 
Colonialism)


______

[5]

www.sacw.net | 15 August 2005
URL: 
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/RamPuniyani15082005.html

"Our" Women, "Their" Women
Communal Ideology and Women

by Ram Puniyani

The Governments driven by communal ideology do come up
with moves, which many a times astound us beyond
belief. The BJP Government's decision to swap the
location of MLB Girls College and Hamidia College,
Bhopal (June 2005) is one such action, which betrays
the deeper communal thinking of the BJP Govt. of
Madhya Pradesh.

Government of Madhya Pradeh in one of its recent
orders swapped the MLB Girls College located in a
Muslim area with the co-ed Hamidia Arts and Commerce
College. The logic given by the Govt was that the
Hindu Girls were unsafe in Muslim area. The BJP
affiliates, RSS and Bajrang Dal, were more forthright
in giving the reasons for the unthinkable move of the
Government. Two members of Sangh Parivar claimed that
439 Hindu Girls in Bhopal have converted to Islam in
past 8years and 90% of these happened to be from MLB
College. As per them a confidential inquiry by CID has
revealed these statistics. An interesting and new
assignment for CID! One never knew CID is assigned
such tasks! It later came to be known that no such
inquiry exists and it was just a make believe
propaganda by RSS affiliates. It is not for nothing
that RSS also stands for Rumor Spreading Society!

As such MLB Girls College has a long and glorious
tradition, situated across the lake it has picturesque
location. Girls in general and Muslim girls in
particular feel at home here due to its ambience. It
has all the disciplines, science, home science, fine
arts and what have you. Its botanical garden is
unique. Hamidia College is having only arts and
commerce faculties. One is not sure how much time will
it take to set up these facilities in the new
location. In addition Hamidia College, located
kilometers away will deter the girls from Muslim
locality to travel that far. In effect it will mean a
deterrent for Muslim girl's higher education. To cap
it all Government never bothered to take the opinion
of the college authorities and students in such a
crucial move.

Any way, it does give the justification to the Govt.
to undertake this swapping, and it gives a sense of
righteousness to the Sangh activists who now will feel
that they have been ratified in their propagation that
Muslim boys and Muslims have been converting Hindu
girls in an effort to increase the population of
Muslims to eventually convert this Hindu nation in to
an Islamic state.

By now this propagation has been made the part of
social common sense. It is said that Muslim boys have
been given the assignment to lure or to intimidate the
Hindu girls into Islam. Surely, there is a decline in
the sex ratio amongst Hindus but the reasons for that
pertain more to dowry deaths, amniocentesis and the
killing of girl child in the womb and due to the poor
nutritional status of girls and mothers. Selective
conversion of Hindu girls into Islam may be occurring
more as a rarity than as a systematic phenomenon. But
it does serve as a powerful appeal to the communalists
that the "others" i.e. the Muslims are luring "our"
girls. This forms a powerful propaganda point for the
Hindu communal ideology. The ideology of communalism
plays around the game of numbers. It goes on to assert
that the population of minorities is on the rise due
to more wives and children of Muslims. And this will
result in this Hindu Rashtra being converted to
Islamic country. Communalism is the most blatant
patriarchal ideology, which puts forth the notions of
male centric world. It is based on the projection of
threat posed by the 'other'. One major threat
projection is about 'they' violating 'our' women. When
communalists construct the History, one of the points
taken to frightening proportions is that the Muslim
Kings did atrocities on the Hindu women. Here the
basic notion that during the era of Kingdoms women
were subject to control and violation of their being
by the powerful of the society irrespective of the
religion of the king or the feudal lord is
underplayed. The armies irrespective of their religion
resorted to rape and plunder of women, as exemplified
by various narrations of the exploits of the armies.
This continues today as well goes without saying.

One such narration, which describes Shivaji's army
bringing in the daughter in law of the Subhedar of
Kalyan, goes on to show the humane attitude of
Shivaji, who disapproves of the act of his army and
returns her to her family. While this incident shows
the plunder of women as the norm of the armies, the
communalists see this in a different light. Savarkar,
the pioneer of Hindu communalism, while commenting on
this incident criticizes Shivaji for this humane
policy on the ground that this could not bring in the
similar feeling amongst the cruel Muslims. Connecting
this up with what happened to women during the
partition tragedy, Savarkar's biographer, Dhananjay
Keer observes. " He (Savarkar) said that Pakistan's
inhuman and barbarous acts such as kidnapping and
raping Indian women would not be stopped unless
Pakistan was given tit for tat. Two years earlier
Savarkar had expressed similar opinion that the
liberal policy adopted by Shivaji in case of Muslim
women was wrong, as this cultured and humane treatment
could not evoke in those fanatics the same feelings
about Hindu women. They should have been given tit for
tat, he observed frankly, so that they might have
realized the horrors of those brutalities." Keer, Veer
Savarkar, Popular Prakashan, 1966, p.539).

Going a step further in the communal riots of 92-93 in
Mumbai and Surat and the Gujarat riots of 2002 Muslim
women were targeted in a horrific way. In all communal
ideologies women are regarded as the property of men
and as the vehicle of community honor. Rape is used as
the weapon to humiliate the 'other' community. The
rapists coming in Khaki shorts with saffron underwears
in Gujarat gave a message of sorts. The communalized
section of Hindu women helping 'their' men in
committing of this heinous crime spoke volumes as to
how the perversions of communal ideology can influence
the victims of communal ideology, the women
themselves. The other aspect, which has got linked up
with the communal ideology, is the dangerous fertility
of 'others' and "their" women. The selective targeting
of women's reproductive organs in the Gujarat carnage
stared in our face telling the tale of the success of
this propaganda which subsists as the fodder that
Muslims are increasing their population. The fact that
the relative rise in Muslim population has nothing to
do with religion, or that it has more do with the
poverty, illiteracy and social development does not
have any place in such thinking. In a sense when all
these acts are being perpetrated on the hapless
victims it is regarded as a service to a particular
nation as the case may be, in this case, the Hindu
Nation!

The present move to apparently 'protect' the Hindu
girls from the Muslims is the step further in the
Hindu nations gender project. It is the other side of
coin of gendered violence against "their" women. To
protect 'our' girls from 'them' is the logical next
step of what we have observed in the politics of
Hindutva and what we have seen in the case of Kausar
Bano and her likes who were raped and whose unborn
children were done to death right in front of their
eyes. The shifting of girls' college away from Muslim
locality reveals the deeper communal agenda, with BJP
govt. in power, it does intensify the communalization
process in the manners which are novel and horrific,
both at the same time.


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

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