SACW | 18 Oct. 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 18 October,  2005

[Interruption Notice: Please note there will be 
no SACW dispatches between October 19 - October 
27 ]

[1]  Nepal: Gather to remember victims of 
violence (Himsa Birodh Abhiyan [Nepal])
[2]  How India's nuclear secrecy hampers earthquake detection (Anuj Chopra)
[3]  India: Home alone (Ravinder Kaur)
[4]  India: Orissa: Gendered violence and Hindu nationalism (Angana Chatterji)
[5]  Pakistan - India: Any Takers For A Nuclear Disaster? (Jawed Naqvi)


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[1]  [Nepal]

  EK GATEY SAANJH BATTI

. . . to remember Nepalis who died to political violence in the month of
Asoj 2062 (17 Sept to 17 Oct).

Please gather as usual at the Maiti Ghar Shanti Mandal, Kartik ek
gatey (18 October, Tuesday) at sundown 6 pm, to light a candle and
remember the dead of the past month.

There has been a dramatic *decrease* in the number of deaths
during this period of unilateral ceasefire by the Maoists (the exact
number will be available tomorrow at the Shanti Mandal). We hope
that the trend will be towards fewer deaths in the coming months,
that the Maobaadi will extend the ceasefire, and that the
government will respond in kind.

Himsa Birodh Abhiyan [Nepal]

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[2]

The Christian Science Monitor
October 18, 2005

HOW INDIA'S NUCLEAR SECRECY HAMPERS EARTHQUAKE DETECTION
Fear of revealing nuclear testing and the refusal 
to sign the test ban treaty delay the exchange of 
seismic data.
By Anuj Chopra | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BOMBAY - In the wake of the recent earthquake 
that devastated Kashmir, some Indian officials 
are reevaluating the government's refusal to 
share real-time online seismology data with the 
international community.

India has balked at putting seismic data online 
because it could provide evidence of underground 
nuclear testing. The country's refusal to sign 
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty also excludes 
it from exchanging data with the International 
Monitoring System, a global network of 
seismological sensors operated by treaty 
signatories.

Seismologists can more rapidly and accurately 
pinpoint the location and power of an earthquake 
when real-time data can be triangulated against a 
wide network of sensors. A delay of even seconds 
in reporting data induces errors in the exact 
location and could set back relief efforts in 
their crucial early stages, prompting some 
scientists here to argue against data hoarding.

"In India, the nuclear issue is a sensitive one. 
But now the question is about saving lives. The 
policy certainly needs a review," says Sushil 
Gupta from the Stress Analysis and Seismology 
Department at the Nuclear Power Corporation of 
India in Bombay.

Meanwhile, relief efforts continue in regions of 
India and Pakistan affected by the Oct. 8 quake 
that has claimed an estimated 54,000 lives. Some 
injured people still await transport to hospitals 
by helicopter, an effort hindered in recent days 
by torrential rain and snow. The chief minister 
of India's Jammu-Kashmir state called on Delhi 
Monday to restore telephone links, cut since 
1990, between his state and Pakistan so that 
people could find out what happened to relatives 
across the border.

As for the value of sharing seismic data in the 
event of a future earthquake, some 
decision-makers in Delhi have yet to get the 
message. "Share data? What for?" asked an 
official from the Ministry of Science, sounding 
nonplussed when questioned about India's policy 
to not make real-time data available via 
broadband.

"Effectively reporting seismic hazards 
considerably reduces vulnerability to it, if not 
totally eliminates it," says David Booth from the 
British Geological Survey. He notes that at 
international meetings seismologists have 
frequently deplored the absence of free seismic 
data exchange with India, but to little effect.

"Open-data sharing in seismology over the past 
century ... has been of enormous importance in 
reporting of earthquakes and studies of global 
and regional earthquakes," says Shane Ingate, 
director of operations at the Incorporated 
Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) in 
Washington, the world's repository for data from 
most seismic networks around the globe. "It is 
regrettable that India ... imposes restriction on 
the open and rapid access of these important 
data."

Though India is free to contribute to and draw 
from IRIS's data, the country does neither. "All 
Indian data contributed to the IRIS would then 
become free and openly accessible to anyone that 
requests it. India is probably wary of that," 
says Mr. Ingate.

Seismology can provide national maps of 
earthquake shaking hazards which yield 
information essential to building codes in 
regions of known earthquake activity, explains 
Ingate. Such "shake maps" can also predict the 
intensity of shaking due to an earthquake, he 
says. "Then, when an earthquake occurs, given 
accurate location and magnitude determination, 
these shake maps allow first responders to 
develop a coordinated response to move directly 
and precisely to the areas with the most societal 
impact."

This kind of information, Ingate says, becomes 
less accurate along the edges, or outside a 
seismic network, as when one country does not 
share its in-country network data with those 
in-country networks in surrounding regions.

On request, India does share a kind of data 
called "phase data," which helps in detailed 
analysis of earthquakes. But there's a time lapse 
associated with it. "Delays of even minutes to 
seconds can severely impede the ability to 
provide rapid and accurate reporting of 
earthquakes," says Ingate.

Kapil Sibal, the minister of science and 
technology, acknowledged to reporters in Delhi 
last week that "India surely needs to network 
with the rest of the global earthquake community. 
It needs to re-think on all old issues."

"That's a big policy decision made at high levels 
within the Indian government," says Rajendra 
Kumar Chadha, a scientist at the National 
Geophysical Research Institute in Hyderabad. He 
advocates that all stations in the Himalayan 
network be well connected to speedily transmit 
real-time online data to the Indian 
Meteorological Department in Delhi, and to the 
rest of the globe. "Considering how rigid we are 
about nuclear issues, acknowledging we need to 
review the policy is a big step forward."



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[3]

Hindustan Times
October 10, 2005

HOME ALONE
Ravinder Kaur

There is need to re-engage on our current 
understanding of 'communal violence'. We need to 
move beyond the clichéd explanations of violence, 
as 'spontaneous outburst of emotions' or as the 
handiwork of 'anti-social elements'. In the past 
two decades, the discourse on communal violence 
in India has made use of over-simplistic 
categorisations that only serve to give a narrow 
dimension to the issue at hand.

To comprehend mass violence, the massacre of 
members of minority communities, the partisan 
role of law enforcement agencies, and the second 
class citizenry status thrust upon minority 
communities requires more complex considerations 
than what is ordinarily offered. The clue perhaps 
lies far from the actual violence. It lies in its 
oft-neglected aftermath when the immediate 
attention from outside dies down.

How does one try to understand this face of 
violence, characterised by a lack of remorse and 
a brash display of communal power? We need to 
review our understanding of the nature and 
organisation of communal violence. It is 
imperative that the 'silent' majority also be a 
part of this process. The majority that remains 
physically uninvolved in organising or inflicting 
violence, but in its deliberate silence, offers 
quiet approval. This approval is forcefully 
visible in the cold action-reaction 
rationalisation that follows any occurrence of 
anti-minority violence.

To make sense of such remorselessness, the 
episodes of collective violence against a 
minority community need to be understood in terms 
of social control exercised by the dominant 
groups. The anti-minority violence, as that in 
Gujarat, does not just keep the traditional 
community boundaries in place, rather it helps 
push boundaries further afar. This, when 
redefined, creates demographic pockets of social 
isolation, produces subjugated minority groups, 
and therefore, actualises a social order that 
matches the sacred socio-political landscape 
imagined by the often dominant majority group.

A clear indicator of isolation and subjugation of 
victims lies in the aftermath of violence when 
survivors seek 'safety in numbers', that is, 
migrate to areas considered safe because of the 
numerical strength of their group; and/or 
economic boycott by the majority group that 
ensures further loss of economic and social 
equity of the minority group. It is such subtle 
markers of social rearrangement that often 
remained overlooked in the aftermath of communal 
violence. A significant myth to be confronted is 
that frequent incidents of violence occur like a 
disease in society and leaves everything else 
unaltered, to return to 'normal', once the 
disease has lapsed.

However, the crucial post-violence socio-spatial 
rearrangements take place only when the immediate 
attention of outsiders in the locality, like the 
media, social activists and political leadership, 
has subsided after a period. Every episode of 
violence remains symbolic of violent ruptures in 
people's personal lives, loss of faith in 
governmental agencies, and a deep sense of 
subjugation and alienation from the 'mainstream'. 
The victims of violence often express their rage 
at being treated like 'second class citizens' - 
deprived of protection, fundamental rights and 
basic human dignity.

..Perhaps, the realisation of this, the victim's 
secondary status, is what perpetrators target, 
since the sentiment of 'teach them a lesson' 
often accompanies the actual violence and at 
times gives the victim the feeling of having 
brought the violence upon themselves.

The rearrangement of urban spaces in favour of 
the dominant groups, in the aftermath of 
anti-minority violence, is an aspect often 
overlooked. The symbolic or actual destruction of 
sacred spaces, residential and professional sites 
of the community under attack, serves as an 
opportunity to create abstract spaces, to be 
filled later with social and sacred symbols and 
practices of the majority community. The sites of 
everyday practice representing a distinct social 
landscape inhabited by its constituents, thus, 
stand altered and robbed of its previous 
identification.

The sites of violence often become sites of 
'purification' where undesirable elements - 
members of the 'other' community, their property 
and places of worship - are removed and boxed 
into ghetto-like locations. In concrete terms, it 
means the victims of violence seek protection in 
areas where they are in majority, and thus, get 
circumscribed in specific identifiable 
localities. The destruction of mosques, temples 
and other sacred spaces symbolises the change in 
community hierarchy. Thus, the ritualised 
purification following any violence allows for 
ethnic control in favour of the majority 
community.

In Gujarat, the aspect of spatial alterations 
came to the fore a few days after the riots, 
rapes and killings had subsided to being 
sporadic. This was through the migration, forced 
or voluntary, that Muslims undertook to inhabit 
'safer places' as a precautionary measure against 
any future attacks. While some 'chose' to move to 
a Muslim majority area, others were directly 
threatened and coerced not to return to their 
homes by the Hindu activist groups.

Physical violence became both the occasion and 
agency for purifying entire mohallas, or 
neighbourhoods, of the polluting 'Other'. The 
inter-locality migration within the same city or 
province created new neighbourhood patterns that 
could be classified according to religious 
identities of its majority constituents. This 
spatial purification by expulsion of an 
undesirable group, namely Muslims, is in harmony 
with the stated goal of Right wing Hindu 
organisations to create a sacred Hindu national 
space. This Hindu rashtra constitutes most of 
present-day India.

The place most severely hit by violence was 
Ahmedabad, a city divided by the Sabarmati river 
into two physically distinct and socially 
disconnected areas. The eastern bank of the river 
houses the old city, a relatively crowded and 
poor area with a skyline of congested houses, 
congested bazaars, mosques and temples. The newly 
established western part of the city, on the 
other hand, is home to an affluent class and 
boasts of well-planned residential areas and new 
business districts. While the old city pattern 
could clearly discern Hindu mohallas from the 
Muslim neighbourhoods, the newer areas were seen 
as more cosmopolitan and communally neutral.

The old city neighbourhoods, with a history of 
frequent Hindu-Muslim clashes, were considered 
inflammable and therefore unsafe whereas the new 
areas were seen as secure because of their mixed 
ethnic composition. The very safety of the newer 
areas attracted affluent Muslims to purchase 
residential and commercial property on the 
western bank. However, the alleged safety of 
these areas was proved otherwise  during the 2002 
violence. The possibility of establishing mixed 
Hindu-Muslim localities seems to have suffered 
tremendously, if not reversed completely, 
post-violence.

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[4]

Communalism Watch
October 14, 2005


ORISSA: GENDERED VIOLENCE AND HINDU NATIONALISM - PART I
by Angana Chatterji
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2005/10/orissa-gendered-violence-and-hindu_14.html

ORISSA: GENDERED VIOLENCE AND HINDU NATIONALISM PART II 
by Angana Chatterji

http://communalism.blogspot.com/2005/10/orissa-gendered-violence-and-hindu.html

______


[5]

Dawn
October 17, 2005


ANY TAKERS FOR A NUCLEAR DISASTER?

by Jawed Naqvi

BEFORE THE earthquake of October 8, the disputed 
region of Jammu and Kashmir was widely seen as 
the likeliest flashpoint for a nuclear disaster. 
After the quake it has become 'Ground Zero' for 
unprecedented human misery.

As luck would have it, in most disaster-stricken 
situations in India and Pakistan as well as in 
Kashmir, as is now evident, it is not the state, 
the army or the so-called ordinary people who 
become the fulcrum of rescue and relief 
operations. In India, it is the rightwing Hindu 
organizations such as the RSS and Shiv Sena that 
reach the sites of disasters before anyone else.

In Azad Kashmir and the Frontier, religious 
parties like Jamaat-i-Islami and the JUI are 
reported to be quiet active in organizing and 
delivering aid and rescue.

Also, as irony would have it, all these groups 
are votaries of the atom bomb. The RSS and Shiv 
Sena, spurred by their hatred for Pakistan, 
advocated and got their government to carry out 
the 1998 nuclear tests. In Pakistan, the 
Jamaat-i-Islami is one of the heady campaigners 
for the country's nuclear prowess. In the trauma 
of the Latur earthquake that destroyed vast 
tracts of Maharashtra in September 1993, I saw 
volunteers of the RSS and the Shiv Sena removing 
dead bodies with bare hands.

It is a tragic thought that these people, with 
their immense resources and zeal for voluntary 
work, will be completely pulverized in a nuclear 
war. That is the way the nuclear cookie crumbles. 
The tragic deaths and devastation of Azad Kashmir 
would be a pin-prick before the calamity which 
the zealots on both sides have not even thought 
of but seem cavalier enough to want to bring 
about.

Earthquakes and natural disasters have exposed 
the vulnerability of the mighty United States. 
The pun unintended, disasters are a great 
leveller. Indians and Pakistanis may boast of 
their superior camaraderie and self-help groups 
that help cushion and repulse catastrophes, 
unlike hurricane Katrina that laid bare the 
hollow innards of the American society. But all 
these good feelings would vaporize in a nuclear 
mushroom if one is triggered either by accident 
or in a fit of rage, or out of palpable 
insecurity of a government.

When people mourn their dead in Azad Kashmir and 
their friends and sympathizers from far and near 
rush in with instant warmth and selfless help 
they pay tribute to the innate humanity that is 
part of our people. It hardly stands to reason 
then that people who are grieved by the loss of 
40,000 fellow humans and are distraught at the 
uprooting of the lives of another million or two 
can advocate a nuclear exchange as a means to 
settle scores from history.

It is all very well to exhort a vulnerable people 
to be prepared to eat grass for a thousand years, 
if that is what it takes to build a bomb. But in 
what is left of Muzaffarabad today, people are 
scrounging for food, shelter, medicines, not for 
a plateful of grass.

During a visit to the United States in May 2002, 
at the height of the India-Pakistan nuclear 
standoff, I picked up the just published copy of 
the Doomsday Scenario, written by the United 
States government during the Cold War to prepare 
for a multi-pronged Soviet missile attack. That 
the document became public was partly due to a 
clerical error at a restricted library and partly 
the grit of the person who put it together for 
the general public -- L. Douglas Keeney.

In the aftermath of the faltering and seriously 
deficient relief efforts in Azad Kashmir and on 
the Indian side of the Line of Control too, 
lessons from the Doomsday Scenario look all the 
more relevant. Someone should consider making it 
a mandatory reading for everyone in South Asia 
who advocates the use of nuclear weapons whether 
as a first strike option or as a second strike 
retaliatory weapon.
The first and the most important lesson from the 
book that came out of the years of painstaking 
research by all branches of military and civil 
administration, according to Keeney, was that 
most of the preparedness for a nuclear strike was 
quite useless when it came to practise. The 
jammed motorways in the aftermath of 9/11, the 
complete chaos that ruled the country for days 
after the attack, when even the whereabouts of 
the president of the United States were not 
disclosed to the people should remain etched in 
our collective memory.

"The medical care requirements are overwhelming," 
says a passage from the Doomsday Scenario. Is it 
similar to refrain we are faced with, albeit on a 
much smaller scale since last week? "In addition 
to 25,000,000 dead or dying, there are 25,000,000 
surviving casualties who require emergency 
medical care," the American scenario says. "Of 
this number, one-half (12,500,000) are suffering 
from blast and thermal injuries and have 
immediate and evident need of treatment. Of the 
25,000,000 radiation casualties, 12,500,000 have 
received lethal dosages and have died or will die 
regardless of treatment. Of the 12,500,000 
remaining one-half will require hospitalization 
during the period of 12 weeks."
The ordinary Indian and Pakistani have not been 
taken into confidence, much less briefed about 
the do's and don'ts to survive a nuclear 
catastrophe. By contrast, the United States spent 
more than $45 billion to protect both senior 
government officials and at least some members of 
the general public in the event of a nuclear 
attack.

This funding supported everything from production 
and distribution of films and pamphlets 
instructing citizens how to mitigate the effects 
of a nuclear blast and fallout to the secret 
construction of massive underground facilities to 
allow the government to continue to operate 
during and after a nuclear war.
And yet it is still appropriate to ask, says the 
publisher's note in the Doomsday Scenario: "With 
so much attention, and money, devoted to 
safeguarding government leaders and so little to 
protecting the public, would there be anyone or 
anything left to govern in the event of a truly 
catastrophic large-scale attack upon the United 
States?" That is pretty much the question people 
in India and Pakistan should be asking of their 
governments. Coping with the ravages of nature is 
quite enough. There is hardly any room left to 
take on any man-made catastrophe.



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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on 
matters of peace and democratisation in South 
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit 
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DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.