SACW #1 | 4-5 Sept. 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch No.1  | 4-5 September,  2005

[Eight Anniversary of SACW dispatches - Sept 1998 to Sept 2005]


[1]  Pakistan: The war against women  (Hamid Mir)
[2]  Bangladesh: August 17, 2005 - The attack against democracy
  -  Leaflets ridicule democracy, ask for Islamic rule (Unb, Dhaka)
  -  Text of leaflet in Bangla (The Daily Star)
  -  A new force arrives (M B Naqvi)
[3]  India: S.A.R. Geelani and the Dance of Holy Justice (Mukul Dube)
[4]  Of Riots and Minority Rights in India (J. Sri Raman)
[5]  India: Press Release On the Recent Fatwa of Darul Uloom (AIDWA)
[6]  India: 'The Battle Against Hunger' (Harsh Mander)

______

[1]



The News International
August 25, 2005

THE WAR AGAINST WOMEN

Hamid Mir

Zubaida Begum was the one and only graduate woman in the whole 
district of upper Dir in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of 
Pakistan. She spent 20 years in a small girls school of her remote 
village Daroda as a teacher. After the sudden death of her husband 
she retired from teaching and started looking after her three 
daughters.

Five years ago she came to know that General Pervez Musharraf has 
announced a new local government system in Pakistan and reserved 33 
percent special seats for the women in every union council and 
district council of the country. She was very happy that her 
daughters and old girl students would get a chance to participate in 
the local level political process. A few days before the elections 
she heard an announcement from local tribal elders that no women 
would be allowed to vote or participate as a candidate in the coming 
local bodies polls.

Zubaida Begum decided to revolt against this announcement. She 
submitted her nomination papers to the local election officer for the 
reserved woman's seat of the union council. This was quite a surprise 
for the entire village. Relatives and friends tried their best to 
convince her not to go against the decision of the local elders but 
she was prepared to take the risk. A majority of the village elders 
were supporters of the Taliban leader Mullah Omer. They sent dozens 
of young boys to Afghanistan to fight against the enemies of Taliban 
after 9/11. Zubaida Begum stood against these elders and faced danger 
not only to herself but also to her daughters.

Finally, brave Zubaida was elected member of the local union council 
unopposed. She became the first-ever woman politician of the most 
conservative area of a most conservative province in Pakistan. She 
started social service not only for the women but also for the men of 
the village. She constructed a road from her funds for the village. 
She arranged clean drinking water for the village and got a lot of 
respect from the men also. When the local government elections for 
2005 were announced many men of the village approached her and 
requested that she should not contest for the women seat but for the 
general seat. Some people proposed that she must go to the district 
council and do something for the other villages also.

Her popularity was a matter of great concern for all those who had a 
monopoly over local politics since the creation of Pakistan. She was 
once again contacted through some relatives and given the message 
that she must stay away from politics. She ignored the message. Just 
a few days before the elections, some armed people entered her house 
and sprayed bullets on her. Zubaida Begum died on the spot with her 
19-year-old daughter Shumaila.

Her assassination was a big blow to all those women who wanted to 
exercise their constitutional right of voting in the local bodies 
polls held on August 18. Her 17-year-old daughter is fighting her 
mother's case. The youngest Jannat Bibi cannot contest election 
because she is under age but she has tried her best to encourage 
local women to go ahead.

There are 2.5 million registered male voters and 2 million female 
voters in NWFP. According to official sources, women in more than 30 
union councils of 12 districts in the NWFP were not allowed to vote 
and contest. Unfortunately politics was banned for women not only in 
the remote tribal areas but also in some towns and Peshawar, which is 
the provincial headquarters of the NWFP.

This conservative province is being run by the religious parties' 
alliance MMA but surprisingly all the liberal and progressive parties 
were also involved in banning the women to come to the polling 
stations. Adviser to the Prime Minister for Women Development, 
Neelofer Bakhtiar, shocked us by accepting that the Pakistan Muslim 
League was also part of some agreements in the NWFP for banning women 
in the local bodies elections. PML is one of the major allies of 
President Pervez Musharraf but the President House is silent on the 
statement of Neelofer Bakhtiar who is also a leader of the PML.

It is also unfortunate that liberal parties such as the Pakistan 
People's Party were also part of the conspiracy against women. The 
only reason to prevent women from polling is that participation of 
women in the decision making process is against the centuries old 
tribal traditions of the NWFP. Our Federal Interior Minister, Aftab 
Sherpao, is very fond of speaking against Al Qaeda and propagating 
the enlightened moderation introduced by General Pervez Musharraf, 
but what happened in his own hometown Charsada? Women were not 
allowed to vote in more than three union councils of Charsada 
including a big town of Tangi.

Aftab Sherpao is justified in condemning the extremist policies of 
the religious parties but what about himself? He told me with a lot 
of pleasure and pride that his people got a majority in Charsada. Why 
has he failed in challenging the anti-women extremist policies in his 
own hometown? Why were his provincial party leaders part of the 
anti-women agreements? In some areas Imran Khan's Tehrik-e-Insaf was 
also involved in banning women from polling. No one took any action 
against their provincial or district leaders for committing political 
terrorism against the women.

Pakistan is a country where a woman like Fatima Jinnah contested the 
first-ever Presidential election 40 years ago against a dictator like 
General Ayub Khan. She lost that election but won in the big cities 
of Karachi and Dhaka despite the rigging. Pakistan is a country where 
Benazir Bhutto became the first-ever woman Prime Minister of any 
Muslim country 17 years ago, despite opposition from the Army 
intelligence agencies. Pakistan is a country where the number of 
women members in the two houses of parliament is more than one 
hundred today. And unfortunately Pakistan is a country where Zubaida 
Begum was killed only because she was trying to break anti-women 
traditions by participating in the local bodies election.

The assassination of Zubaida Begum and the ban on women in the NWFP 
and in some areas of Balochistan is a great challenge for General 
Pervez Musharraf who always takes pride in fighting a war on terror. 
This time his own allies are involved in political terrorism against 
women. They were part of the agreements saying that if any female 
will go to the polling station for casting her vote her male 
counterpart would be fined Rs5 lakhs.

These unconstitutional and un-Islamic agreements are like a mirror 
for us. We can see our ugly and dirty face in these mirrors. General 
Musharraf claims that he has introduced real democracy in Pakistan. 
This is not democracy. This is hypocrisy. Musharraf needs to stop 
political terrorism against the women in NWFP and Balochistan. Can he 
deny the fact that his allies in PML are enjoying power in 
Balochistan with religious parties? If the Chief Minister of that 
province belongs to PML then why were women prevented from 
participating in the elections in many areas of Balochistan? General 
Musharraf is not justified in claiming that Pakistan is a genuine 
democratic country, which is participating in the war against terror. 
First of all he must stop the war against women being waged by his 
own political allies.


The writer is Editor Northern Regions Geo TV

_____


[2]  [ August 17, 2005 - The attack against democracy in Bangladesh ]

(i)

The Daily star
August 18, 2005
Front Page

LEAFLETS RIDICULE DEMOCRACY, ASK FOR ISLAMIC RULE
Unb, Dhaka
http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/08/18/d5081801076.htm

o o o

TEXT OF THE LEAFLET IN BANGLA
http://www.thedailystar.net/2005/08/18/d5081801076p.htm


o o o

The News International
August 24, 2005

A NEW FORCE ARRIVES

M B Naqvi

The writer is a well-known journalist and freelance columnist.

A rightwing fringe Islamic party organized an attention-grabbing 
demonstration by exploding virtually simultaneously 350 to 400 bomb 
blasts in all the major cities and towns of Bangladesh last week. 
This is a forceful demonstration by, historically speaking, a new 
revolutionary force. It is sure to become even more extreme and will 
probably be more thoroughgoing. Needless to say, its progression will 
be marked by more terrorist acts against an established Muslim state 
-- until it succeeds in establishing a new revolutionary Islamic 
State, along the lines of Taliban's Afghanistan.

This revolutionary force rejects a more or less secular democratic 
structure run by mainly conservative Muslim parties. What is desired 
to replace it with is no mystery. All orthodox Islamic schools of 
thought in the subcontinent have now come to approve, as truly 
Islamic, what the Taliban did in Afghanistan. An Islamic State, 
Caliphate, was what they established in Afghanistan.

It was run by Mullah Umar whose word was final in all spheres of 
life: politics, religion, economy and culture. He was the apex of 
decision-making and he chose whether or not to consult anyone in 
arriving at a particular decision. A revolutionary new Islamic state 
in Bangladesh would have a local version of Mullah Umar as its Amirul 
Momineen, whose word would be final in politics, religion, economy 
and culture. He would be above even the Chief Qazi and establish 
total sway of Islam over society, as he understands it.

Looked at closely, Afghans' Caliphate was a naked dictatorship of one 
man who had his usual human strengths and weaknesses, ranging from 
lust for power and greed to other venalities as well as the seemingly 
noble aim of enforcing Islam -- as an admixture of well-known Islamic 
punishments with local Afghan culture. The major preoccupation of the 
Bangladeshi Amirul Momineen will be with the conduct of women. Most 
of his reforms will deal with women's dress and what they have to do 
and how they have to do it. Whether they have to observe purdah or 
not will have to be decided in the Bangladeshi cultural milieu.

Bangladesh is not alone in having to face such a problem. All Muslim 
states are now prone to it. Only India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are 
immune from it. Why? because (a) the majority of population in India 
or elsewhere in South Asia is non-Muslim and (b) such Muslims, qua 
minority, can scarcely conceive of an Islamic State in India or 
elsewhere. But Muslim religious types in India will applaud a 
Bangladeshi Islamic State.

The reality is that the religious fanatics of Bangladesh are planning 
to institute an Islamic-seeming personalized dictatorship by 
exploiting a certain new interpretation of Islam. They call it 
Islamic State or Nizam-e-Islam. The question to be asked is what 
about the civic rights, guaranteed by their Constitution, for the 
people of Bangladesh that they enjoy today, being citizens of a 
largely secular democracy? Would they continue to have the same human 
rights and guarantees as now in a more thoroughgoing Islamic 
dispensation of this kind? These fundamental rights are the basis of 
all democracies and their absence means absence of democracy or self 
rule.

The question is when a Bangladeshi Caliph controls the administration 
and law enforcement agencies, what guarantees can his subjects have 
against harassment by a corrupt police or bureaucracy, especially as 
the Caliph will stand above the judiciary? There were none in Mulla 
Omar's rule in Afghanistan. Indeed there cannot be if the Caliph is 
to be above every department of state.

What economic goals an Islamic State can strive to have is not known. 
All these Islamic revolutionaries are only interested in methods of 
conducting social operations and for that they hold the practices of 
over 1400 years ago to be worthy of copying at present in a 
non-tribal society, vastly different from the city state of Medina.

The people of Bangladesh and Pakistan need proper economic 
development in which welfare of the common people has to be the 
criterion. What an individual as a dictator will decide cannot be 
entirely predictable because there will be no checks and balances on 
him; his word would be the word of law.

The choice is crystal clear. Do we go for a naked dictatorship of one 
individual who has all the noble and ignoble characteristics of an 
ordinary human being or do we opt to treat all citizens of a state as 
equal, and give them the ultimate authority to run their affairs as 
they think best?

But then these Islamic innovators claim Islam's sanction for their 
nostrums. How Islamic it is, is a difficult question on which to 
opine. The best way is to have a broad overview of history. This 
supposed requirement of Islam is a new construct. It is in 
contradistinction to old Islamic orthodoxies or sects. Old 
orthodoxies were able to co-exist with all manner of kings: good, bad 
and indifferent. Old Islamic orthodoxies had no difficulty in 
adjusting to even foreign colonial rule. Islam was in no danger 
during the British rule over the subcontinent for most scholars of 
all sects, for instance.

Exceptions were particularly in East Bengal. It did produce 
anti-British movements in the 19th century. But that was because East 
Bengali Muslims' majority comprised tenants who were poor, while 
landlords exploited them to get rich. Tenants' economic conditions 
were conducive to supporting revolutionary ideas. While the social 
content of the Faraezi and other movements can be said to be modern 
and worthwhile, most of their methodology and beliefs were half 
quixotic and half orthodox.

In the subcontinent, Islam, qua-Islam, was at peace with the British 
rule. Darul Uloom Deoband mostly produced Imams for village or 
neighbourhood mosques who actually survived on community's charity. 
Their politics, by stretching, could only be described as making them 
Nationalist Muslims like Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani was. Deoband 
did not produce revolutionaries; it produced well-adjusted social 
conservatives, although generally poor.

This revolutionary Islam is a 20th century construct mainly promoted 
by Jamaate Islami and Muslim Brotherhood. It grew in the backwash of 
the Bolshevik Revolution and it too promised that no one will go 
hungry in the new Islamic State. It relied on imitating socialist 
catch-phrases and this went so far as the Jamaat organizing itself 
like a communist party.

But we should note the inspiration of JI; it was a product of the 
climate of opinion created by earlier Muslim writers and poets in 
Urdu who moaned about Muslims decadence and backwardness. They saw 
European colonialism as enslavement and a calamitous development. 
Some poets wrote virtual dirges about the Muslims decline everywhere. 
Let's remember also that pan-Islamism has had a particular appeal for 
the subcontinental Muslims.

Two eminent journalists of the 20th century, viz. Maulanas Abul Kalam 
Azad and Muhammad Ali, wrote, as a rhetorical flourish, the slogan 
that 'Islam provides for all eventualities from cradle to grave.' 
That caught the imagination of all Muslims. More or less the common 
purpose was to draw all Muslims to overthrow western domination from 
the Islamic world, with special reference to India.

But they were not simple communalists, talking to Muslims alone. 
Their wake up call was for all Indians to gird their loins and 
overthrow the hated foreign regime. They assumed the Hindus were any 
way ready to join the struggle. Jamaate Islami, and the Muslim 
Brotherhood in other Islamic countries, were exclusivists; they 
talked only to the Muslims. Islam gives no sanction to this new 
revolutionary Islam. This is a 20th century concept.


_____


[3]

Mainstream, 3 September 2005

S.A.R. GEELANI AND THE DANCE OF HOLY JUSTICE

Mukul Dube


Scots law is unusual in that under it three verdicts are
possible: "guilty," "not guilty" and "not proven." A
verdict of "not proven," which amounts to an acquittal,
has the same legal effects as one of "not guilty." It
It is generally thought, though, to offer juries and
judges an intermediate option when guilt cannot be
established but innocence too appears uncertain. One well
known English judge said that Scots and English law
differed in "spirit": Scots law was "logical" while
English law was "sporting." Juries and the media often
take a verdict of "not proven" to mean, "We know he did
it but there isn't enough proof." Whether or not this
third option should be retained has been long debated;
but at this time there is no indication that it will be
done away with.

In acquitting S.A.R. Geelani of involvement in the
Parliament attack case, the Supreme Court said that his
actions had been suspicious, but suspicion alone was not
enough to convict a man. The words seem closer to the
"he did it" version of "not proven" than to "the benefit
of the doubt." They carry the implication, "Look, you
scoundrel, had there been just a little more than suspicion
against you, we would have hanged you," and perhaps also,
"You played your game well, which is why you got away with
it." It is not sporting to say, "How we wish we could had
nailed you," and it is not judicially neutral either.

Here is what Soli Sorabji wrote in a letter to the *Indian
Express*, published on 8 August 2005. "[After it
acquitted him on account of] technicalities relating to
prosecution evidence, the Supreme Court ... proceeded to
observe that Geelani's conduct was not above suspicion
because he seemed to rejoice when informed about the attack
on Parliament.... By this judicial certificate Geelani's
reputation has been irredeemably tarnished. In effect the
Court has imposed a civil death sentence on him. How can
Geelani now lead a normal life or pursue his avocation with
this terrible stigma?"

It seems to me that underlying all this is what we may call
a new variant of the Holy Cow Syndrome. Few of us can have
forgotten the self-contradictory statement made ad nauseam
by the Hindu Right: "On the Mandir-Masjid issue, we shall
abide by the verdict of the courts -- but the birth-place
of Ram Lalla is a matter of faith, which is higher than
any court can ever be."

In the Parliament attack case, National Security was
elevated to the divine status of a holy cow, of "faith".
As *ram sevaks* were rendered blind and incapable of
rational thought by their "faith," so was nearly the
entire nation affected by the equally holy (through
identification or conflation with an implicitly "Hindu"
State under attack from a Muslim neighbour) and there-
fore unquestionable construct National Security.

The nation sat back acquiescently and watched the show:
without feeling, I suspect, anything like the pity it feels
for the unspeakably wronged characters in television soap
operas. I suspect also that it swallowed whole what it was
given, suspending completely its critical faculties.

The real actors, the heroes, were the anointed custodians
of law and order. Their holy cause, as all saw it, permitted
them to use any means they could to attain their ends,
never mind that in the process they broke all of the laws
which they were duty bound to uphold, which they had sworn
to uphold and which they were paid to uphold. We know that
in India, their designations and their uniforms place them
above ordinary mortals: collectively they form a kind of
unholy pantheon, with a code of secrecy, with slush funds,
and so on. An angry friend used the expression "the Mafia
of the State." The logic of this is compelling.

Then there were the bards who brought to the populace the
blow-by-blow account of the chase, the hunt. For the most
part the media, who at times go about bragging that they
are investigative and all the rest of it, merely
regurgitated what they were fed by the police. They even
ignored what is perhaps the most basic rule of reportage:
that someone's claim should not be presented as a fact.
It was here, in fact, that the suspension of critical
faculties began.

The newspaper reports which appeared the day after the
Supreme Court gave its verdict had an unusual uniformity
about them. It was only later that the press had time to
re-think: or, if you will, to tailor its statements.

All over the country, Muslim Kashmiris have for long been
among the favourite whipping boys of the "law and order"
forces. They have been arrested on the flimsiest
evidence or on no evidence at all, they have faced verbal
and physical abuse, they have been denied the rights due to
all prisoners under the law of the land. In the same way as
Narendra Modi holds that all Muslims are Pakistanis and
therefore terrorists, the holy cow of National Security
causes all Muslim Kashmiris to be labelled ISI agents and
treated as enemies of the State.

There is no doubt that some Muslim Kashmiris have been and
are separatists; there is no doubt that some have received
and continue to receive training across the border; there
is no doubt that some have got and continue to get weaponry
and explosives from across the line. But if this should
cause *all* Muslim Kashmiris to be lumped together as anti-
national or whatever, then, by the same warped reasoning,
the entire law and order apparatus of the country should be
called criminals in khaki.

Indeed, there is far more than a single reason to apply
that label. Muslims Kashmiris continue to be treated
unjustly. Muslims in Gujarat are treated by that state as
though they have no rights and no basic needs. People from
our north-eastern states are looked upon and treated as
foreigners; and their states too might just as well be
outposts annexed on other continents by India that is
Bharat. Finally, all across the land, is not the wisdom of
our National Law-Giver Manu used by our brave men in khaki
to guide the destinies of Dalits and of women?

India has always made a big thing of being "a democracy".
The purpose of this has been to differentiate itself from
those of its neighbours who have been or are governed by
their militaries; and its explanation has been the
different roles assigned, at least on paper, to the army
and the police. Those at whom this publicity has been
directed, the consumers, have been the world at large and
the West in particular. To Indira Gandhi more than to
anyone else, the supposedly democratic character of India
was a matter of great importance; apparently because she
wished to project herself as a world statesman like her
father.

But it was under Indira Gandhi that civil liberties, the
bed-rock of a democracy, were crushed during the Emergency
of 1975-77. It is correctly argued that they had not existed
for most Indians even earlier, but the Emergency was an
unambiguous demonstration of absolutist State power.

The Emergency did not last even for two years, but there is
much evidence that it injected into India's blood-stream,
and in particular into the veins of those who wear khaki,
a disregard for civil liberties, the belief that the
State or its functionaries could, at will, take away from
citizens any of their rights that they pleased. The power
of legislation has been misused time and again.

I shall not go into the persuasive argument that Indians
have never had anything which might be called civil
liberties. We were a subject people under the British Raj,
which could at any time turn from benevolently paterna-
listic to harshly autocratic. What we attained, or were
granted, in 1947 can be described as more rhetoric than
reality. The old laws remained in force, virtually
unchanged; and those who enforced them retained the spirit
with which their former masters had imbued them.

Laws such as MISC, TAD, POTA and the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act gave extraordinary powers to the police and to
the judiciary, as will the proposed Communal Violence
(Suppression) Bill, if it is passed. The stock justifi-
cation has been that existing laws are not strong enough
to deal with whatever have been stated to be the
extraordinary circumstances of the time. Each has been
widely criticised for having been misused. An indication of
the validity of this criticism are the remarkably low rates
of conviction under these laws. Other indications are the
lengths of time for which people have been kept in prison
without trial, the prepared "confessions" which they have
been made to sign, and the physical brutality to which
they have been subjected.

Many have remarked also on the strange fact that, in
"encounters", not one "militant" or "foreign agent"
has survived, though no capsules of cyanide have been
found. It is just as strange that these individuals,
whose sole purpose in life seems to have been to serve as
targets for police sharp-shooters, have always carried with
them loads of evidence in the form of cellular phones,
diaries, lists of telephone numbers, and so on. They do not
appear either to have used their always sophisticated
weapons against those who shot them dead, not always from
the front. The bards have sung of all this, and their
absurd songs have been well loved.

That the judiciary has, for the most part, gone along is
more alarming by far. An over-worked police constable may
well find his *lathi* better as the first resort rather
than as the last: but judges are educated people and are, in
theory, trained to evaluate all that is placed before them
and then to act dispassionately. Yet we have examples like
the judge in Gujarat who scolded the police for not having
adequately "prepared" a man who proved uncooperative
when he was brought to trial. Yet we have examples like the
judge who initially sentenced S.A.R. Geelani to death,
writing a judgment full to the brim with unsupported and
abusive assumptions about Muslims in general and Muslim
Kashmiris in particular. Finally, we have the example of
the Supreme Court, which in its majesty applied a thick
coating of tar to the face of a man in the process of
acquitting him.

After the bench of the Supreme Court had upheld the
judgment of the Delhi High Court, many who were present
expected it to pass strictures against the police. Nothing
of the sort happened. Instead, the presiding judge launched
straight into what some saw as a prepared account of how
"suspicious" Geelani's actions had been. This included
a remark that Geelani could not be trusted in respect of
his claim that a telephone call which his cousin made to
him -- and which had been recorded -- concerned no more
than a domestic dispute.

This was perfectly logical. Warring couples do not blow up
parliaments, after all, and everybody knows -- even though
suspicion is unfortunately not sufficient ground for
conviction -- what Geelani had *really* been up to. It was
infinitely more logical that the Supreme Court should have
made this observation about a recording which it had
earlier rejected as inadmissible because the police had not
followed certain POTA safeguards while making it. Scum like
Geelani deserve nothing better than what is recovered from
the judicial waste bin, never mind that that does not add
up even to suspicion.

Such remarks are rarely or never made in judgments. Judges
are expected to say no less and no more than that of which
they have heard or seen convincing evidence. Bazar gossip
is no part of this. I do not know if Geelani can take any
action against the Supreme Court on the prima facie ground
that he was maligned by it. I do know, though, that I shall
try to hit as hard as I can anyone who should say such
things about me.

It has been argued that the court-room was packed with an
expectant crowd of press reporters and that the judges knew
what an expectant country wanted the press to give it. The
inescapable conclusion of this argument is that the court
played to the gallery: the luminaries of the highest court
of the land turned themselves into public entertainers.
Since this happened against the backdrop of that holiest of
holies, National Security, we may say that they preached to
those who had converted to a false faith.

This, then, is the India which is sought to be portrayed as
superior to its army-ruled neighbours by virtue of being
"a democracy". The herders of its new holy cow, National
Security, have seemingly insatiable appetites; and all in
the country worship it unquestioningly, right up to the
summit of our judicial system. Political parties have of
course always had their reasons for opening their mouths
or for keeping them shut, reasons not always related to
such anachronisms as justice and equity.

----------
I acknowledge the helpful comments of Mr. N.D. Pancholi.

M.D.


______


[4]

truthout .org
16 August 2005

Of Riots and Minority Rights in India
By J. Sri Raman

         The past few days have brought back memories
of the assassinations of two Prime Ministers of India.
Even more searing, however, has been the accompanying
and acutely painful reminder of unsettled issues of
minority rights in this multi-religious, multi-ethnic
country.

         On August 8 came a belated reminder of
questions that should have been settled within a
reasonable time after the assassination of former
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. The
report of the latest in a long series of commissions
of inquiry into the post-assassination anti-Sikh riots
was tabled in India's parliament over two decades
after the bloody event.

         Indira had fallen to the bullet of Sikh guards
at her residence. The ensuing attacks on the minority
Sikh community, especially in New Delhi but also
across the country, left thousands dead and many more
thousands homeless and helpless. The carnage lasted
three days, conspicuously without any official
hindrance.

         The wounds left by the violence may have begun
to heal over the recent period. The Justice G.T.
Nanavati commission's report, released to the public
six months after its submission to the government, has
now reopened the wounds.

         May 21, 1991, saw the gruesome assassination
of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Indira's son. A
female suicide bomber succeeded in blowing him to
bits. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who
had once enjoyed official hospitality and sanctuary in
India, were blamed for the crime, though they have
continued to deny their involvement to this day.

         Memories of the LTTE and Indian politics
centered on it, especially in Tamil Nadu, the state
closest to Sri Lanka, returned with the assassination
of Lakshman Kadirgamar, Sri Lanka's foreign minister
of Tamil origin on August 12 night. The LTTE have
again been blamed for the crime, reminiscent of the
Fredrick Forsyth's "Day of the Jackal," though they
have again denied their involvement.

         This assassination, however, has caused fewer
ripples in Tamil Nadu than some may have expected. The
Tigers, it is true, enjoy some sympathy in political
sections subscribing to the idea of a pan-Tamil
identity. The virtual silence from such political
parties on the post-assassination issue, however, has
been eloquent. Some of these parties, part of the
ruling federal coalition, have preferred to speak in
almost the same voice as New Delhi. Some other
parties, more stridently pro-LTTE at other times, have
opted for silence as supporters of the federal
coalition.

         They can afford to do so because the entire
affair does not really involve any issue of an Indian
minority's rights. This is not the case with the
revived issue of anti-Sikh riots that has rocked
Parliament and spilled over to the streets.

         I remember being driven 21 years ago in a
newspaper's car with my wife and our months-old
daughter from a riot-hit part of New Delhi to a safer
haven. Howling mobs armed with broken bottles and
other weapons lined our way on both sides, and we had
to stop several times to let the avengers look for
turbaned and bearded Sikhs inside the vehicle before
letting us proceed.

         Striking to us, above all, was the utter
absence of any police or paramilitary personnel all
along the route. This was also the most visible (or
invisible?) feature of the sanguinary 72 hours, to
most other observers as well. Yet the Nanavati report
found no evidence of political higher-ups' involvement
in the orchestrated orgy. Little wonder that the
report elicited as angry a reaction as the riots
themselves did.

         Initially, the government made it worse with
its "action taken report" (ATR). It actually turned
out to be a report of action not taken, even on the
very few and feeble recommendations of further
investigations into charges against a handful of local
luminaries of the Congress Party heading the federal
coalition.

         Subsequently, the government made amends of
sorts, with an apology to the aggrieved community as
well as to the entire nation from Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh and the promise of further
investigations. It is not these steps, however, that
restrained the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) from a relentlessly furious pursuit of the
issue.

         The profound irony of the far-right BJP's
feigned indignation over the issue, in fact, was not
lost upon either the political observers or the
public. There were severe limits to which the party
could press on, in the light of its record in power in
Delhi. It only needed a gentle reminder about Gujarat
to nudge the party into a more guarded and less
militant mood.

         The police might have been invisible on the
riot-torn Delhi streets, but it was present in
strength to help the anti-Muslim rioters along in all
the affected parts of Gujarat. The police
participation in the three-month-long carnage, which
took a toll of about 3,000 lives, made it a pogrom. It
made senior police officer Harsh Mander put in his
papers and launch a protest movement against the
politics of massacre.

         Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, who
presided over the pogrom, stays put in his office to
this day. The national leadership of the BJP has never
deemed it necessary to demand his resignation.

         True, the Prime Minister's apology - or the
Congress Party's sometime ago - offers no substitute
for long-overdue action to find the culprits behind
the anti-Sikh riots and punish them. What deserves
note, however, is that the BJP has never apologized
for Gujarat. Modi and national leaders of the party
have, in fact, repeatedly asserted their pride over
the riots. The party made its elation over the carnage
its electoral plank in Gujarat and, at one point, even
threatened to "repeat Gujarat" elsewhere.

         The political-ideological differences between
the Congress and the BJP, however, spell poor comfort
not only to the endangered minorities but even more to
all defenders of minority rights as an essential
ingredient of democracy.

         A freelance journalist and a peace activist of
India, J. Sri Raman is the author of Flashpoint
(Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular
contributor to t r u t h o u t.

______


[5]

ALL INDIA DEMOCRATIC WOMEN'S ASSOCIATION
121, Vithalbhai Patel House, Rafi Marg, New Delhi 110
001

19 August 2005

PRESS RELEASE

ON RECENT FATWA OF DARUL ULOOM

The Darul Uloom 'fatwa' (which has since been
withdrawn by the institution) seeking to restrict the
rights of Muslim women contesting elections and
announcing that if women are chosen the leaders of any
nation or community it will prove disastrous is
extremely objectionable and flies in the face of
historical evidence.  The Indian constitution gives
every citizen the right to contest elections, campaign
and also to dress as he or she chooses.  These rights
cannot be infringed upon by any institution and, in
fact, should be extended and
widened in the interests of democracy.  The fact that
many Muslims are taking advantage of reservations for
women in the local bodies is extremely welcome and any
effort to circumscribe their participation in public
affairs in the name of religion is to be opposed.  It
is also very important that the women contesting
organise and conduct their own campaigns so that they
can become effective representatives and can also
mobilise other women in their support.  It is untrue
to say that women in politics are cyphers.  Fatwas
like this only strengthen such misconceptions.

AIDWA is also of the opinion that such fatwas are
mostly resorted to against the interests of poor
Muslim women.  We should not forget that Bhopal was
ruled by a succession of Begums who were not only
extremely efficient rulers but enjoyed the support of
the Muslim clergy.  Similarly, Fatima Jinnah was the
candidate of the Jamiat-e-Islami in the Pakistan
Presidential polls.

Such fatwas have been given in the past and have been
treated with the contempt that they deserve.  Once in
Deoband itself, a Muslim woman contesting for the post
of Chairperson was sought to be prevented by a fatwa.
AIDWA supported her in her decision to ignore the
fatwa and she won the election.


AIDWA appeals to Muslim men and women and the
electorate to ignore such anti-women and
anti-democratic fatwas, and asserts that it is
important for the community at large to come forward
and safeguard these democratic rights.

Subhashini Ali,   President 

Sudha Sundararaman, General Secretary

______


[6]

The Indian Express,
August 18, 2005

'THE BATTLE AGAINST HUNGER'
by Harsh Mander
           
In India, large-scale famines are now part of history. However, the 
battle against hunger has not been won. One in every two children in 
India remains malnourished, and two in three women are anaemic. Many 
families in both villages and towns continue to struggle with hunger, 
which is for them a way of life.

These families are essentially from the unorganised sector, such as 
landless workers and artisans, socially oppressed groups like Dalits 
and adivasis, households headed by single women, persons with 
disabilities, old people without care-givers, migrant workers and 
urban street children.

In many homes, and on the streets, people continue to sleep hungry, 
and within most families, women are the last to eat, and if food is 
scarce, they are likely to eat the least.

Such a situation is intolerable, because children and women even in 
countries poorer than India have significantly better health and 
nutrition. India has masses of foodgrain, more than it can store, and 
even exports subsidised food, which is mostly fed to cattle overseas, 
while millions of its own citizens remain chronically hungry. The 
problem is no longer of absolute food shortage, but of bad 
distribution and poor governance.

We are today confronted with an unconscionable situation of rampant 
hunger and recurring droughts, on the one hand, and governments that 
fail to prevent hunger although they have the means to do, on the 
other. Therefore, in the year 2001, a group of activists under the 
banner of the People's Union for Civil Liberties filed a case in the 
Supreme Court, demanding that the right to food should be recognized 
as a legal right of every person in the country, whether woman or 
man, girl or boy.

If the government fails in ensuring this right, people should have 
the right to take their government to court. The highest court of the 
land has passed a number of important orders to advance the people's 
legal right to food. However, even though these legal rights have 
been created, they will be sustainably realized only by people's 
action.

The most significant legal rights to food that have been created by 
the Supreme Court are that every school-going child in the country is 
now entitled to a nutritious hot cooked meal at state expense. Every 
infant and child below the age of 6 years, every expectant and 
nursing mother and every adolescent girl is entitled to appropriate 
supplementary nutrition. The creation of these legal entitlements for 
millions of undernourished children and women, have forced the 
central and state governments to make quantum leaps in budgetary 
allocations to reverse rampant malnutrition.

The unfinished agenda of the courts includes creating similar 
entitlements for every child, including the street child. Similarly, 
the food denials of all women (not just mothers) need to be 
addressed. The courts need to ensure the coverage of aged and 
disabled people who have no care-givers.

However, dispossessed families that live with hunger have able-bodied 
adult members who are capable of sustaining themselves and their 
families through work. But landlessness, caste discrimination, 
mechanisation of agriculture, the slow death of handlooms and 
traditional crafts and the merciless logic of globalised economic 
growth have rendered increasing numbers of poor rural households in 
the informal sector desperately and chronically unemployed. To combat 
the sapping indignity and inhumanity of hunger in their homes and 
bellies, they do not seek charity or welfare transfers from the 
state. All they seek is work.

In times when the state is attempting to drastically minimize its 
role, the battle against hunger cannot be won by mere appeals and 
assurances of work. There are a number of state schemes that already 
assure employment to the rural poor.

But studies have established that all these schemes together can 
provide no more than a paltry eight days of work a year to every 
rural impoverished adult. It is evident that people living with 
hunger cannot fill their stomachs merely on such assurances made by 
uncaring governments. Their only hope is an iron-cast legally 
enforceable guarantee.

It is this that the employment guarantee programme currently on the 
anvil of Parliament seeks to achieve. In the history of state efforts 
to combat and reverse rural poverty, it is potentially the most 
significant step after land reforms. In the shrill opposition that 
has been mounted against the bill, the most influential critique is 
that as a country we simply cannot afford it. The sceptre has been 
raised of additional tax burdens, alarming the middle classes.

However, the problem is not of absolute shortage of fiscal means, but 
of our nation's priorities. It is long overdue that a national 
consensus be developed that the first claim on the state's resources 
must be to ensure that no citizen lives without food, or shelter, or 
basic education, or health care, or work.
India's tax to GDP ratio is only 9 percent, which is lower than most 
countries, so there is considerable untapped scope for further 
taxation of the wealthy.

The other major criticism that the bill has attracted is that much of 
the resources will be diverted in corruption. The evidence from the 
field is that more problems arise from poor management by government 
like late disbursement of funds, than from leakages. It is also 
ironic that the same argument is not raised against defence purchases 
or the construction of urban infrastructure, in which levels of fraud 
dwarf most rural scandals.

The answer is greater transparency and citizen power, through 
legislation like the right to information, and greater organised 
citizen vigilance, against all forms of corruption, rather than a 
selective veto only of those government expenditures that benefit the 
most impoverished citizens.

The proposed act, combined with committed state and citizen action, 
carries the potential of reversing hunger in every rural household 
where adults can work. The challenges will remain of finding work 
that is suitable for persons with
disabilities, artisans, or single women who head households. Even 
more daunting will be combating hunger and unemployment in cities. 
But if we so resolve, with the entitlements that this act will 
guarantee, we can be closer than ever before to the dream of 
banishing hunger from every home in our land.

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

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