SACW | 14 Nov. 2005

[sacw]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 14 Nov,  2005

[1]  Quake tests Kashmir and the world  (Salman Rushdie)
[2]  Press Release - Pakistan Peace Coalition 
wants military sales to be scraped
[3]  Amidst Kashmir's tragedy, we must prepare 
for the next big quake in the Himalaya-Hindukush 
(Kanak Mani Dixit)
[4]  Sri Lanka: Media Release - Importance of 
North East Participation in Presidential 
Elections (NPC)
[5]  Hopes for a resolution in Nepal threatened 
by the position taken by the USA (CNDN)
[6]  India - Pakistan: Blinded by The Bomb (Zia Mian)
[7]  Book Review: Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, 
Indians and the Colonial Construction of Religion 
by Brian K Pennington

______


[1]

Toronto Star
Nov. 8, 2005

QUAKE TESTS KASHMIR AND THE WORLD

by Salman Rushdie

*The calamity of Kashmir is a wound on a wounded 
body. It is death arriving in awful majesty in a 
place where death has become a grubby, ugly, 
everyday affair. There has been so much man-made 
dying in Kashmir that, if one believed in God, 
one might say that God had become competitive and 
decided to show the killers -- the killers in 
uniform and the terrorists cloaked in secrecy -- 
what a real killer can do.

There has been so much man-made agony in Kashmir 
-- so many young men have been broken, so many 
women vandalized, so many villages smashed, there 
have been so many explosions, so much loss, so 
much blood on the no-longer-virgin snow, the 
raped, defiled snow -- that the bitterness of 
this natural disaster is not only beyond bearing, 
it is obscene. The earthquake is a hammer blow 
launched against a people who had already been 
smashed.

And now, as if to finish things off, the 
Himalayan winter is setting in, and the greatest 
calamity may lie ahead of us, not behind.

The Kashmiri winter is beautiful, but it is also 
cruel. To look upon the valley in its coat of 
winter white, the frozen ice-sheets of its lakes, 
the pale air pregnant with the promise of snow, 
is to feel tears of beauty freezing in your 
eyelashes. To contemplate the mighty surrounding 
Himalayas, wrapped in whiteness like an immense 
Christo artwork, is to learn, again and again, 
the salutary lesson of human smallness.

"If there is a paradise on Earth," the Emperor 
Jehangir wrote long ago, "it is this, it is this, 
it is this."

In Kashmir's high valleys, too, was born the 
legend of Shangri-La. But the real Kashmir is not 
a place where men and women live as immortals, 
safe from the ravages of time. Paradise in winter 
was always ruled by cold-hearted gods. Today, 
more than ever before, Kashmir is Death's 
dominion.

The messages from Kashmir keep coming, and the 
note of desperation in them grows louder all the 
time. Millions of people are homeless -- the 
number may be as high as 3 million, on both sides 
of the so-called Line of Control, the scar of 
history slicing across the troubled province's 
face to divide its India-ruled and Pakistan-ruled 
sections.

On the Pakistani side, according to the regional 
Prime Minister Sikander Hayat Khan, 70,000 
injured people are in need of attention. But many 
roads were destroyed by the quake, many others 
are impassable because of landslides and 
mudslides, and the Red Cross reports that relief 
helicopters have sometimes been unable to land 
because the throngs of desperate people 
scrambling toward them have been so large.

And the United Nations says that, unless more 
funds are received at once, its fleet of 
helicopters will have to stop flying in the next 
few days.

The decisions of the Indian and Pakistani 
governments to open the Line of Control to assist 
the relief effort is belated, but welcome 
nevertheless.

Without an immediate increase in relief funding, 
however, it will soon look like a useless 
gesture. If winterproof shelters cannot be built 
in the next month or so, Kashmir will become an 
icy graveyard in which literally hundreds of 
thousands of people will freeze to death.

In spite of all the difficulties, the relief 
effort is taking place. National relief agencies, 
private charities and many other humanitarian 
bodies are getting medicine, blankets, warm 
clothing and tents into the afflicted area.

But, as one Kashmiri journalist wrote to me last 
week, "Nobody can survive the winter in the 
border villages in a tent."

Meanwhile the world seems to be suffering from 
compassion fatigue. After the eastern tsunami and 
the western hurricanes, this is not 
incomprehensible.

But the people of Kashmir deserve better than 
they are getting. They certainly do not deserve 
to be subjected to a kind of "political test" of 
aid-worthiness. Yet, ever since the day of the 
earthquake, people in the United States and 
Europe have been asking me and many others the 
same politically loaded question:

Will the disaster "help?" Will it enable India 
and Pakistan to sink their differences and, at 
long last, to make an end of their long Kashmiri 
quarrel?

It has been hard to avoid the conclusion that 
Western attitudes toward aiding Kashmir depend to 
some degree on the answer to this question being 
"yes." Alas, the answer is "no."

India and Pakistan are still mired in mutual 
suspicion, as the saga of the Indian helicopters 
reveals: India offered them, but Pakistan refused 
to accept them unless they were flown by 
Pakistani pilots, which India in turn refused to 
accept. Meanwhile the quake victims went right on 
dying.

Moreover, as the recent murder of a moderate 
Kashmiri politician showed, and as the bombs in 
Delhi would seem to confirm, there are Islamist 
groups who remain determined to sabotage any 
improvement in Indo-Pakistani relations.

As long as those groups find sanctuary in 
Pakistan, a peace settlement will be impossible.

All of which should be irrelevant to the matter at hand.

For more than half a century the world has turned 
a blind eye to the political problems of Kashmir. 
It must not now turn its back on the Kashmiri 
people.

If the flow of aid does not increase at once, it 
is probable that more people will die in the 
earthquake's wintry aftermath than perished in 
the quake itself. It is entirely possible that 
the final death toll will be greater than the 
tsunami's. We may be looking at the greatest 
natural calamity in human history.

But in this case we have the power to avert it. 
In this case we can send the money to fly the 
helicopters, tend to the sick and build the 
winter shelters. If we do this, people will live.

If we can accomplish this, it will be a great 
good thing. If we fail -- because we are tired of 
disasters or because Kashmir is far away, remote 
and quarrelsome, and doesn't feel like our 
business -- well, then, shame on us. Shame on us 
who have our homes and our children and cannot 
care about those who don't.

I do not want to believe, however, that this 
avoidable catastrophe will be allowed to occur. 
But time is very, very short. There is not a day 
to lose.

Salman Rushdie is the author of The Satanic Verses, Fury and many other books.

______


[2]

Pakistan Peace Coalition
P.O. Box 2342, Islamabad
Pakistan

7 November 2005

PRESS RELEASE

PAKISTAN PEACE COALITION WANTS MILITARY SALES TO BE SCRAPED

Pakistan Peace Coalition has welcomed the government announcement that,
in view of the gigantic task of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the
unfortunate quake victims of Kashmir and Hazara, it is going to revise
the F-16 fighter aircraft purchase deal. It said that at a time when the
task of reconstruction and rehabilitation was going to cost several
billion dollars, it would be mindless and obscene to continue to spend
billions of the people's hard earned money on defence purchases and yet
shamelessly extend the begging bowl before the world for more aid for
earthquake relief.

The Coalition has, however, expressed its dismay at General Musharraf's
statement that the deal would only be postponed, not cancelled. It was
also dismayed that even in the face of this calamity, the government had
chosen to finalize a deal to buy early warning SAAB aircraft from
Sweden. The Coalition urged that in the interest of alleviating the
suffering of the people of the country, the entire plan of purchasing
expensive defence equipment be scratched, and the earmarked money be
spent solely on the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the earthquake
affected people. "With our own money thus available, the government
should stop shamelessly begging for international assistance. The people
of Pakistan have already opened their hearts and pockets to aid the
quake victims. If the nation can do this, it can live without a
worthless shining armour. The government's begging is a serious affront
to the noble spirit of the people, the Coalition said. PPC has demanded
that the plan to buy F-16s be cancelled, and the deal to buy SAAB
aircraft be revoked. It has also demanded from India to revoke its
purchase of F-18 from the USA. PPC has informed that in collaboration
with its sister peace organizations in India, it will jointly start to
lobby with the leading arms manufacturing countries of the world to stop
selling arms to the poverty stricken South Asia so that the hard earned
resources of the region could be used to improve the quality of life of
the peoples of the region.

The Peace Coalition has welcomed General Musharraf's offer to India to
demilitarize Kashmir. However, it believed that the offer would work and
would look credible only when it is accompanied by Islamabad seriously
reigning in the groups in Pakistan engaged in militancy in Kashmir. It
urged the Government of Pakistan to persuade Hizbul Mujahideen,
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, and other groups and their
reincarnates to announce that they would respond positively to a
possible Indian offer of demilitarization by abandoning their militancy.
PPC underscored that demilitarization should naturally include non-state
actors also.

The Peace Coalition has also urged India to reciprocate by announcing
the release of all political prisoners in Kashmir, an end to impunity
for perpetrators of torture and rape, and a credible effort to account
for the people who have disappeared during the period of military
crackdown and insurgency. But even if India does not do this, PPC has
urged Pakistan to go ahead and do what is in its own interest and in the
interest of the people of Kashmir.


Dr. A.H. Nayyar, President PPC
B.M. Kutty, Secretary General PPC
Karamat Ali, Member Executive Committee PPC



______


[3]

Nepali Times
28 October - 3 Nov 2005

'8/10' AND AFTER
AMIDST KASHMIR'S TRAGEDY, WE MUST PREPARE FOR THE 
NEXT BIG QUAKE IN THE HIMALAYA-HINDUKUSH

by Kanak Mani Dixit

Why has the Kashmir Earthquake of 8 October been 
termed the 'Southasia Quake' by the international 
media, including the all-powerful, real-time 
satellite television networks? Southasia is a 
vast region and the ground trembled beneath one 
corner of it, well known to the world as Kashmir, 
on two sides of the 'line of control'. Somehow, 
it does injustice to the suffering of the living 
and memory of the dead to call the disaster by 
the name of the larger region when a local name 
is available.

Meanwhile, the UN has declared the Kashmir 
catastrophe more devastating than last year's 
tsunami. Three to four million people are 
suddenly without homes on the edge of winter. The 
result of an underground quake, the tsunami of 
12/26/04 struck the southern beaches of 
Southasia, while the earthquake of 8/10/05 hit 
the northwestern mountain fastness. Because it 
was such an unusual event and also because many 
holidaying westerners died tragically, the 
coverage of the tsunami attracted emergency 
support on a massive scale. Not so with the 
Kashmir quake of 8/10. To date the world is not 
even close to matching the $11 billion gathered 
for post-tsunami relief.

In the face of an earthquake that knows neither 
borders nor LoCs, of course we must utilise the 
opportunity of the disaster to ease Kashmir 
tensions between India and Pakistan. But 
geopolitical certitude in the two capitals will 
surely require something more than a shifting of 
geological plates to undo. What we need is for 
national establishments in both countries to 
learn to take the Kashmiris themselves into 
confidence, as well as find a way to fuzz the 
frontiers and sanction dual identities. For that, 
we need a shake-up of the mind, not the ground.

The immediate challenge in Muzaffarabad, in Uri, 
in Hazara, in Tangdhar, is to help those without 
shelter and means of livelihood to make it 
through the winter of 2005-06. But thereafter, we 
are looking at many years of rehabilitation. 
Given the sharp drop that we can expect in 
humanitarian concerns as soon as the television 
cameras stop broadcasting live, the 
intelligentsia of Pakistan, India and Southasia 
as a whole have a responsibility not to turn 
their backs on this quake and its living victims. 
They have to stay with the Kashmiris for the long 
haul and keep the governments on their toes.

This year, nature chose Kashmir to sound a 
warning to the rest of Southasia-most 
importantly, to those who live along the 
Himalayan-Hindukush rimland. The geologists are 
not sitting easy and neither should the rest of 
us. The prospect looms of a horrendous earth 
shaking in what is known as the Central Himalayan 
Gap, which covers all of Nepal and more. There 
has not necessarily been enough release of 
'cumulative elastic energy' in the rubbing of 
plates beneath Nepal and the nearby regions to 
the north, west and south. A huge swath of 
territory is therefore dramatically overdue for a 
devastating quake. The suffering of Kashmiris 
must at least inform those who are in a position 
to save lives when the earthquake hits the 
Central Himalaya.

The newly adopted building material all over the 
Himalaya-Hindukush is concrete. Heavy-set 
buildings were the death traps of Kashmir as 
testified by numerous pictures of the tragedy. 
Kathmandu, the largest urban concentration in the 
Himalaya, will become a 'valley of death' when 
the Big One comes, for its buildings are now 
nearly all of concrete using 'pillar system' 
construction. And what of rescue? In Kathmandu 
and elsewhere, there will not be the military 
helicopters and ground transport available in 
militarised Kashmir.

To die under rubble while awaiting a rescue that 
never comes is a gruesome way to go, as happened 
to many on and after 8/10. Kashmir will have to 
be helped back on its feet, while we look ahead 
to the next Big One-and prepare.

______


[4]

National Peace Council
of Sri Lanka
12/14 Purana Vihara Road
Colombo 6
www.peace-srilanka.org

09.11.05

Media Release

IMPORTANCE OF NORTH EAST PARTICIPATION IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

There are statements being made and pamphlets 
being distributed in the north east calling on 
the people to boycott the forthcoming 
Presidential elections.  This is causing anxiety 
amongst the people who are concerned about the 
LTTE's stance with regard to these elections.  In 
their public statements LTTE officials have said 
that they are going to remain neutral in the 
elections and will not obstruct the elections in 
any way.   As there is uncertainty in the minds 
of the people it will be a positive gesture on 
the part of the LTTE to continue to make it known 
that they are not opposed to the people casting 
their votes in the Presidential elections.

The Presidential election is one of the most 
important political events in the country.  Those 
who call for a boycott of the election point to 
the failure of past elections to solve the 
problems of the Tamil people.  However, there is 
a need for partnerships to deal with these 
problems and bring peace to it.  No single 
community can do this, and the south cannot solve 
the problem without the north east.  Just as much 
as the government's efforts to find a solution to 
the ethnic conflict by itself proved futile, so 
will any Tamil belief that they can stay aloof 
from the imperatives of national politics 
including those of the south.  North east and 
south are inextricably inter-connected, and what 
happens in one part impacts upon the other.  This 
is why partnerships, and not boycotts or 
isolation, are vitally important for peace 
building.

The National Peace Council believes it is in the 
national interest to encourage the Tamil people 
to take part in the forthcoming Presidential 
elections.  We regret the circumstances that have 
made people living in the LTTE-controlled areas 
disadvantaged by having to travel large distances 
from their places of residence to cast their 
votes in polling stations one kilometer inside 
the government-controlled areas.  Sri Lanka's 
democratic development and the resolution of the 
ethnic conflict through peaceful political 
processes depend on the ability of all its 
citizens to exercise their franchise in an 
unhindered manner.   The day must soon dawn when 
polling stations for elections will be set up 
close to peopleís homes in all parts of the 
country and they can cast their votes without 
fear in free and fair elections.

We call on all parties to act positively to take 
the peace process forward through the democratic 
process, and with international support, by 
facilitating the people's democratic right to 
vote now and in the future.  Any direct or 
indirect pressure on the Tamil people not to vote 
at the forthcoming Presidential elections will be 
unacceptable to Sri Lankans who respect 
democratic values as well to the international 
community which  has already sent its teams of 
election observers into the country.  Those who 
work for peace in Sri Lanka can only gain 
legitimacy nationally and internationally only 
within the democratic framework.


Executive Director
On behalf of the Governing Council


______


[5]

Canadian Network for Democratic Nepal

November 6, 2005
Press Release

HOPES FOR A RESOLUTION IN NEPAL THREATENED BY THE POSITION TAKEN BY THE USA

Recent events have brought Nepal to a crossroads 
in the effort to establish enduring peace and 
democracy in the country. The unilateral 
ceasefire announced by Communist Party of Nepal 
(Maoist) has resulted in its dialogue with the 
seven agitating parties' alliance. This is a 
certainly a positive move toward such peace.
However, last weekís press statement from the US 
Ambassador to Nepal, James F. Moriarty, aims to 
undercut this incipient alliance. The US 
government has urged the seven agitating parties 
to form an alliance with the monarch instead. The 
US fails to grasp that such an alliance is not 
feasible in the current political reality of 
Nepal, nor does it reflect the aspirations of the 
Nepali people. The US position can only 
perpetuate the current crisis and further the 
erosion of human rights, the loss of civil 
liberties and the collapse of the economy that 
have only intensified under King Gyanendraís 
regime.

The parliamentary political parties tried their 
best to forge alliance with monarchy to break 
this stalemate. Events have shown that such 
alliance is not possible due to the Kingís 
adamant position and the repressive measures 
carried out in the name of the monarchy. 
Assessing this situation, the political parties 
have rightly determined that forging an alliance 
with the Maoist is the best way to break this 
impasse and move toward a positive resolution of 
the conflict. In effect, they are trying to break 
the equilibrium, isolate the king, establish 
republican Nepal and restore peace.
In the light of numerous commitments made by 
Maoist leadership for multi-party democracy and 
development of nationalistic capitalism, there 
are no signs that Maoist victory will lead to 
imminent establishment of a communist state. 
Thus, such alliance is the only meaningful way 
out of the impasse. The result, otherwise, will 
be further loss of life due not only to the armed 
conflict, but also the exacerbation of poverty.

The statement is clear evidence that the US is 
more concerned with keeping the monarchy in power 
than in supporting a peaceful political 
resolution in Nepal. How easily the US government 
forgets that it was itself was borne of an armed 
struggle against an oppressive monarchy! In 
standing so firmly behind the autocratic monarchy 
the US continues its dishonorable history of 
propping up repressive monarchies and 
illegitimate dictatorships in other countries.

Therefore, The Canadian Network for Democratic 
Nepal (CNDN) strongly demands that international 
forces, particularly the US government, refrain 
from intervening to bolster an autocratic 
monarchy. Such restraint would clear the way for 
the implementation of a common agenda of and for 
the people of Nepal, i.e., negotiation and weapon 
management under UN supervision, the formation of 
an interim government and the election of a 
constituent assembly.


Web: www.pdfnepal.com
Email: paribartan (AT) pdfnepal.com

______


[6]

Himal - Southasian
November 2005

Analysis

BLINDED BY THE BOMB

Against all civilisational values, Islamabad and 
New Delhi proceed to prepare their bombs and 
missiles - for nuclear war to be fought on our 
soil.

by Zia Mian

For decades, leaders of India and Pakistan have 
been bewitched by the power of the bomb. 
Regardless of their various other differences, 
they seem to have believed that the threat of 
massive destruction represented by nuclear 
weapons is a force for good, and that the weapons 
themselves are vital to the well-being of their 
respective countries. President A P J Abdul 
Kalam, for instance, has claimed that nuclear 
weapons are "truly weapons of peace". For his 
part, President Pervez Musharraf has declared 
that his country's nuclear weapons are as 
critical and important as national security, the 
economy and Kashmir.

For those not blinded by the Bomb, however, the 
pursuit of nuclear weapons has brought nothing 
but a competition in destructive capabilities and 
crisis after crisis. The Cold War seemed proof 
enough, but the lessons have been lost to those 
who rule in India and Pakistan. New Delhi's 
nuclear ambitions have served only to encourage 
Islamabad to follow blindly. The 1974 nuclear 
test at Pokhran sharpened Pakistan's 
determination not to be left behind and, as many 
had feared, the bomb was not willing to be left 
in the shadows for long. First India and then 
Pakistan tested nuclear weapons in May 1998.

Things went from bad to worse. The Kargil War 
followed barely a year afterwards, proving that 
two nuclear armed countries could indeed fight 
wars - contrary to the suggestions of some. Many 
hundreds of soldiers died on each side, as the 
leadership in the two countries threatened 
apocalypse. A little over two years later, India 
and Pakistan prepared to fight again. An 
estimated half-million troops were rushed to the 
border and, as days turned into weeks and months, 
nuclear threats were made with abandon. What 
lessons were learned from the extended standoff 
at the border? None, it seems - other than 
perhaps that each country needed to be better 
prepared to fight a nuclear war.

In 2005, both countries carried out major war 
games that assumed the possible use of nuclear 
weapons. An India-Pakistan nuclear war, in which 
each used only five of their available nuclear 
weapons, would kill an estimated three million 
people and severely injure another one-and-a-half 
million. Meanwhile, even as Southasian and world 
public opinion press both countries to step back 
from the nuclear brink, New Delhi and Islamabad 
respond with efforts to portray themselves as 
'responsible' nuclear states. At the same time, 
they continue to push forward as hard as possible 
with their arms race.

The abyss between words and deeds was clear from 
the first public show of nuclear responsibility - 
the 1999 Lahore summit between prime ministers 
Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mian Nawaz Sharif. Even 
though the two men had ordered their nuclear 
establishments to undertake tests barely a year 
earlier, in Lahore they discussed "sharing a 
vision of peace and stability" and "progress and 
prosperity" for their peoples. The summit 
produced little in the way of tangible progress 
on controlling the nuclear arms race. The two 
states did agree to inform each other about 
ballistic missile tests, but it was only in 
October 2005 that they finally followed through 
on that agreement. Even so, the accord does 
nothing to limit the future development or 
testing of missiles.

War games
The Subcontinent is in the middle of a missile 
race. Both India and Pakistan have tested various 
types of missiles in recent years, even taking 
initial steps towards the deployment of 
nuclear-armed missiles. India has introduced the 
2000 km-range Agni-II missile into its arsenal. 
Pakistan has done the same with the 750 km 
Shaheen missile, as well as having tested the 
1500 km Ghauri. These missiles would need as 
little as five minutes of flight time to reach 
important cities in the 'opposing' countries.

Just as happened during the Cold War between the 
United States and the Soviet Union, in Southasia 
the development of these missiles has triggered a 
frantic search for a defence shield, as well as a 
counter to such a defence. India has sought 
ballistic missile defences from Russia, Israel 
and the US to neutralise Pakistan's missiles. 
Pakistan has responded by testing a 500 km-range 
ground-launched cruise missile, which General 
Musharraf linked to concerns about Indian plans: 
"There was a feeling that there was an imbalance, 
which is being created because of the purchase of 
very advanced-technology weapons ... Let me say 
this improves the balance."

The quest for advantage triggers the quest for 
balance and on it goes. It is no surprise that 
military budgets in both India and Pakistan have 
spiralled since the nuclear tests began. India 
spent over INR 2.2 trillion on its military 
between 2000 and 2004. Gen Musharraf has revealed 
that Pakistan has spent more since 2000 on its 
nuclear arsenal than it had in the previous 30 
years.

The future looks worse. In June 2005, the US and 
India signed a 10-year defence-cooperation 
agreement, which involves the sale of advanced 
weapons and assistance to both India's space and 
nuclear programmes. As a senior US official 
explained: "[Our] goal is to help India become a 
major world power in the 21st century," adding, 
"We understand fully the implications, including 
military implications, of that statement." The 
agreement's purpose was made clear when former US 
ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, asked, 
"Why should the US want to check India's missile 
capability in ways that could lead to China's 
permanent nuclear dominance over democratic 
India?"

The June decision was followed in July with a 
more explicit nuclear deal, in which the Bush 
administration agreed to overturn US and 
international regulations that have for decades 
restricted India's access to uranium, the raw 
material for both nuclear fuel and nuclear 
weapons. For its part, India will separate its 
military and civil nuclear facilities and 
programmes and will volunteer its civil 
facilities for inspection by the International 
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The US has not asked 
India to halt the production of nuclear weapons 
material as part of the deal; India is unlikely 
to do so. Access to the international uranium 
market would allow India to free up more of its 
domestic uranium for a significant expansion of 
its nuclear weapons capabilities. India's options 
could, for example, include building a third 
nuclear reactor to make plutonium for more 
weapons; beginning to make highly-enriched 
uranium for weapons; or making fuel for the 
nuclear submarine it has been trying to build for 
decades.

Pakistan has now asked for the same deal from the 
United States. Former army chief Jahangir 
Karamat, now ambassador to the US, has warned: 
"The balance of power in Southasia should not 
become so tilted in India's favour, as a result 
of the US relationship with India, that Pakistan 
has to start taking extraordinary measures to 
ensure a capability for deterrence and defence." 
The US has refused Islamabad's request, citing, 
among other things, Pakistan's role in spreading 
nuclear weapons technologies to North Korea, 
Libya and Iran, and its refusal to come clean on 
the A Q Khan affair. Despite all the talk of a 
'minimum deterrent', Pakistan may now seek to 
prepare for an expansion of its own programme. A 
former Pakistani foreign secretary has even 
argued that Islamabad "should refine its 
deterrent capability by stepping up research and 
development and by integrating strategic assets 
on land, air and sea - though even that project 
would be costly and take years."

Time of madmen
The increasingly powerful nuclear weapons complex 
in both India and Pakistan is overwhelming good 
sense and derailing the possibility of peace. On 
both sides, with similarly narrow goals, nuclear 
weapons proponents are driving the Subcontinent 
ever faster down the path toward bigger and more 
dangerous nuclear arsenals and war. The time has 
come for us to echo the words of the American 
sociologist Lewis Mumford, writing soon after the 
dawn of the nuclear age: "Madmen govern our 
affairs in the name of order and security. The 
chief madmen claim the titles of general, 
admiral, senator, scientist, administrator, 
Secretary of State, even President."

If Southasia is to survive its own nuclear age, 
we will need strong peace movements in both 
Pakistan and India, as well as throughout the 
rest of Southasia. The first steps have already 
been taken. The Pakistan Peace Coalition, founded 
in 1999, is a national network of groups working 
for peace and justice. On the other side of the 
border, Indian activists in 2000 established the 
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace. These 
movements will need all the help and support that 
they can get to keep the generals, presidents and 
prime ministers in check. Leaders in India and 
Pakistan must be firmly told that the people will 
not allow a nuclear war to be fought.


______


[7]

Asia Times Online
12 November 2005

BOOK REVIEW
The evolution of Hinduism
Was Hinduism Invented? by Brian K Pennington

Reviewed by Aruni Mukherjee

William Wilberforce, a British parliamentarian 
who died in 1833, once spoke of the "dark and 
bloody superstitions" that embody the creed that 
came to be termed Hinduism.

Prior to that, the mind-boggling diversity in 
sub-continental religious practices existed 
without a common definition to bind them 
together, and this "crystallization of the 
concept" is what Brian K Pennington traces in his 
book Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians and 
the Colonial Construction of Religion.

Between 1789 and 1832, the Orientalist 
fascination for the "cloud of fables" - according 
to William Jones, the 18th century Indian 
historian - embodied in Vedic literature was 
replaced by the East India Company-backed 
intelligentsia who were preoccupied with 
utilitarian criticisms of the "sinister 
principles" of the same, depicted nowhere more 
vividly than in the works of James Mill and 
Thomas Macaulay.

Pennington argues that the modern avatar of the 
somewhat homogenized ancient religion that can be 
loosely termed Hinduism is a direct reaction to 
such seething and degrading criticism from the 
colonial academics, some of it indeed valid (such 
as vilifying the sati tradition - the traditional 
Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on 
her husband's funeral pyre).
He argues that the elites within Hindu society 
entered a "dialectical space" with colonialism, 
thereby producing a defensive self-determined 
version of their faith. While celebrating 
colonial promotion of certain scriptures, they 
vehemently opposed stereotyping, as can be seen 
in the outcry among the Bengali educated middle 
classes over the label of the effeminate babu. 
This similar dialectic process was behind the 
rise of Hindu nationalism in the late 19th and 
early 20th centuries, as well as behind the 
progress made by the Hindutva movement of the 
late 1990s.

Nevertheless, Pennington refuses to present the 
colonial state with the credit of transforming 
"fragmented, disparate, localized, 
particularistic and ever-changing mini 
traditions" into a world religion. Whereas 
"Indophoebia" and the "racist science" of the 
19th century did indeed contribute substantially 
toward the development of a defensive definition 
of Hinduism, crediting the state with the 
invention of Hinduism as we know it is ignoring 
the "mess of encounters" that can better explain 
this development.

Whereas literary critic Edward Said accused the 
West of essentializing the East, the opposite 
argument is also true. Pennington makes a 
distinction between various classes of Hinduism's 
"other", and argues that class, nationality, 
outlook and background of the actors on the 
ground made the encounters between, say, a 
missionary and a peasant much different from that 
between a colonial academic and a local historian.

What follows from the importance of the nature of 
the "other" is the fundamental significance of 
religious values in this discourse, discarded by 
many schools of historians preferring to focus 
solely on socio-economic trends. Pennington 
associates himself with Partha Chatterjee who 
wrote in the first volume of the Subaltern 
Studies about the various ways in which the 
downtrodden communities often express themselves 
in the form of their religion. This is also seen 
in the works of David Hardiman on Adivasis or 
indigenous people in western India, as well as 
that of Saurabh Dube on the Satnamis of central 
India.

Pennington uses a relatively small number of 
first-hand sources, but adheres closely to them. 
The archives of the Church Missionary Society 
reveal the attitudes of missionaries toward 
evangelizing the natives, an attitude advocated 
by many including Charles Grant, the Scottish 
politician, and Wilberforce. On the other hand, 
the transformation in colonial attitudes can be 
seen in the archives of the Asiatick Researches, 
which gradually gets taken over by colonial 
influences, sidelining the Orientalists. He also 
dwells on the religious newspaper Samacar 
Chandrika published by Bhabanicaran 
Bandyopadhyaya, which took on the task to refute 
much of the essentialism dished out by colonial 
literature. However, all of this does strengthen 
the author's point about the importance of 
religion, explicit or implicit, in colonial 
policy-making.

Two questions beg to be answered by Pennington. 
First, he says nothing about the crude 
distinction made by the colonial state between 
"martial" and "non-martial" races in the 
subcontinent, and the various categories of 
castes it defined. Such essentialization went a 
long way toward complicating the already 
juxtaposed threads of Hinduism, and much of that 
legacy exists to this day.
Moreover, whereas the colonial state may not have 
explicitly defined Hinduism, its criticisms of 
the same nevertheless led to Hindu nationalism 
adopting a very homogenous and essentially narrow 
view of Hinduism. As Amartya Sen has argued in 
his recent work The Argumentative Indian, 
Hinduism is simply too diverse to speak of in one 
single breath. Therefore, the prevalent 
definition of Hinduism (as in the stereotype used 
in the public domain today) may well have been 
invented during the high noon of colonialism.

Second, Pennington argues that there is 
increasingly a "need of structuring the 
relationship of religion and the nation state". 
This contemporary universal "need" can be readily 
questioned if one looks at secular Europe and 
India. Debates about race relations in Britain 
and France, and that of minority reservations in 
India are more to do with social exclusion and 
opportunities rather than any concerns about 
delineating the contours of state and religion. A 
more relevant discussion is the Middle East, 
where Islam and the nation state remain 
problematically juxtaposed.

However, Pennington is in need of recognizing the 
"essence" of Hindu philosophical writings during 
times much before his book covers, but which can 
indeed be a useful apparatus to determine the 
role of the state vis-a-vis religion. The image 
of the Brahmin holding the sveta-chattra (white 
umbrella) over the king was never involved in the 
analytical modus operandi of the colonial state 
while defining Hinduism.

On the larger question of whether contemporary 
Hinduism was invented, Pennington seems to adopt 
a persuasive argument. Whether there exists an 
alternative and distinct definition is a question 
that he leaves unexplored.

Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians and the 
Colonial Construction of Religion by Brian K 
Pennington. Oxford University Press, April, 2005. 
ISBN 0195166558, hardback. Price:$45, 260 pages.

Aruni Mukherjee is based at the University of Warwick, England.


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