SACW | 19-21 Dec. 2005

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 19-21 Dec, 2005 | Dispatch No. 2188


[1] Nepal: Recent Reports
(i) NGO's and Media under pressure + Nagarkot Carnage: news compiled by
SAFHR
(ii) Activists hail Nepal women ruling (BBC)
[2]  Bangladesh: Dhaka - Sign of progress or urban nightmare? (Sardar
Masud Karim)
[3] Bangladesh: Indian scholar sifts 1971 fact from fiction (Khalid Hasan)
[4] India: Two cheers for the [Communal Violence Prevention] Bill
(Editorial, Communalism Combat)
[5] India: The Direction of Love - chastening women in the name of
honour (Janaki Nair)
[6] India: One man’s crusade led to anti-superstition bill (Lina Mathias)
[7] Announcements:
7.1 New Additions on South Asia Citizens Web
(i) Trading Faith for Spirituality: The Mystifications of Sam Harris
(Meera Nanda)
(ii) The Winter in Delhi, 1984 : A Long Legacy of Organized Cowardice
(Aseem Shrivastava)
7.2 Just published by Three Essays Collective:
The Making of Early Victorian Bombay by Amar Farooqui

___


[1]  NEWS UPDATE ON NEPAL


(i)(NGO's and Media under pressure + Nagarkot aftermath in Nepal:
selections from reports compiled by SAFHR )

GOVT FORCES NGOs TO ADHERE TO CODE

POST REPORT

KATHMANDU, Dec 19 - Even as the hearing against the controversial NGO
code of conduct continues in the Supreme Court (SC), the government has
forced NGO workers in the remote western district of Jumla to strictly
adhere to the code.

According to a press release issued today by NGO Federation of Nepal,
the Food Management Committee (FMC), Jumla, has threatened to stop the
quota of food facility for NGO workers in the district if they do not
show commitment to comply with the code. The FMC, Jumla, on September 28
had decided to stop providing food to NGO workers.

Following the protests of human rights activists, journalists and NGO
workers, FMC had informed NGO workers in a letter dated November 27,
that it would provide them their share of food supply only if they
showed commitment to abide by the code.

The NGO Federation has denounced the government move terming it a case
of contempt of court. Stating that the act has violated people's basic
right to food for survival, the federation has also asked the government
to resume the supply.



PERIODICALS FACING HARDSHIP POST FEB 1

POST REPORT

KATHMANDU, Dec 19 - Journalists from different newspapers on Monday said
that weekly and fortnightly newspapers, published across the country,
were facing hardships due to the government's rigid media policy and
lack of open political environment after February One royal takeover.

Speaking at a seminar on 'Weekly and fortnightly newspapers: Challenges
and prospects," jointly organized by Struggle Network for
Weekly-Fortnightly Newspapers, National Secretariat, International
Advocacy Mission for Press Freedom in Nepal and Media Services
International (MSI), they said that democracy was a prerequisite for
media to flourish.

Presenting a paper, Hem Bahadur Bista, senior journalist, said that even
after the restoration of democracy in the country none of the weekly and
fortnightly newspapers were able to provide critical and analytical news
and views to interest the readers.

Bista also said that there should be investment security in order to
attract additional investment in the media sector.

Gopal Thapaliya, president of South Asia Free Media Association Nepal,
however, accused the daily newspapers of being more worried about their
investment rather than the fundamental rights of the people.

Former president of Federation of Nepalese Journalists Suresh Acharya,
outlined the need of institutional development in weekly newspapers for
the larger interest of readers and well as professional journalists.

At the seminar journalists Harihar Birahi, Ashok Shrestha, Binaya
Kasajoo and Bista presented papers for discussion. However, none of them
projected current scenario of weekly and fortnightly media and
journalists across the country.


NAGARKOT CARNAGE: THE AFTERMATH
Police refuse to register FIR Soldiers warn eyewitnesses

POST REPORT

KATHMANDU, Dec 18 - With the flow of journalists and rights workers to
Nagarkot slackening, the presence of plainclothed Royal Nepalese Army
(RNA) personnel in the area has increased. Besides, RNA men have been
threatening locals and eyewitnesses to mind what they tell "outsiders".

A source at Nagarkot told the Post that Nagarkot police today asked
eyewitnesses of the December 14 carnage and members of bereaved families
to be present at the site during army chief Pyar Jung Thapa's visit
there Sunday afternoon.

"We went there, only to be warned by an army captain in plainclothes,"
said a Nagarkot local, who said there is a sense of fear among the
locals. "Be careful what you go around telling people," the RNA captain
warned before dismissing  them, according to the local. The locals are
in fear after this first threat from RNA personnel since the December 14
incident.

Similarly, for the second consecutive day, police in Nagarkot refused to
register an FIR on the massacre.

Meanwhile, the commission formed by the government to probe the massacre
took its oath of office today at the Supreme Court. Talking to
journalists after taking oath, former Supreme Court justice Top Bahadur
Singh, who heads the commission, said that it may ask the government for
an extension of deadline. The commission, constituted last Thursday, was
supposed to submit its report on Monday.

When asked if it was not late to start the investigation as all evidence
had already been removed from the spot, Singh said, "Evidence never
disappears. The nature of the incident and eyewitnesses are the
strongest evidence."

Singh also said the commission would visit the site and make inquiries
with all concerned individuals, including the injured to find out who
was responsible for the tragedy.


PROTESTS AGAINST NAGARKOT KILLING CONTINUE

KATHMANDU, Dec 18 - Demonstrations against the massacre of 12 innocent
villagers in Nagarkot by an RNA soldier,continued nationwide and entered
the fourth consecutive day on Sunday.

Police fired several rounds of teargas in Narayangarh as students
protesting the massacre went berserk, especially after RNA personnel
entered a college and beat up students, Friday.

The town remained closed after protestors broke windows of Nepal Bank
Limited and damaged two vehicles as they clashed with riot police.

Police arrested 27 demonstrators, including 15 students, from the scene
that followed brief brick batting between protesters and riot police.
They were released in the evening after interrogation.

Meanwhile, reports from Nawalparasi said protestors blocked the road
between Kawasoti to Narayangarh along the Mahendra highway, bringing
transport to a standstill for six hours, from 9 am onwards.

An army helicopter hovered overhead, in the hope that demonstrators
would disperse, but it soon disappeared as the protestors refused to budge.

Protests marked the day in Darchula also as over 1,000 students marched
through the streets of Khalanga, the district headquarters sloganeering
against monarchy. Khalanga remained shut down following the march.

Students in Biratnagar put up a road block in the heart of the town
demanding the release of all those arrested in connection with the
protest. They also burnt tires at Bus Park Mode as the government called
in hundreds of armed police and civil police to quell the protest.

Reports from Sarlahi said traffic came to a standstill on the East-West
Highway for an hour as student unions blocked the highway at Hariun
area. The alliance of seven student unions has called for the closure of
educational institutions in the district on Tuesday.

In Janakpur, schools, colleges, shops and businesses were shut down from
dawn to dusk as student unions protested the Nagarkot massacre. Nabal
Kishore Yadav, a central member of NSU, said the police briefly detained
half-a-dozen students and released them later.

Demonstrations continued in Baglung, Pokhara, Lamjung and Parbat.  In
Pokhara, Engineering Institute students burnt tires at Mahendrapool and
chanted slogans against the RNA and monarchy.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Protection Forum issued a statement condemning
the assault on students of Birendra Multiple College by RNA men on
Friday. It demanded action against soldiers involved in beating up the
students. Similarly, All Nepal Women's Association demanded action
against the guilty soldiers.



____

(ii)

BBC News
16 December 2005, 11:54 GMT

ACTIVISTS HAIL NEPAL WOMEN RULING
Nepalese woman
The court has issued a number of rulings on women this year
Human rights activists in Nepal have hailed the latest Supreme Court
ruling on women's rights.

The court asked the government to scrap a "discriminatory" rule that
women must ask permission of family members before selling inherited
property.

The court has issued a number of rulings on women's rights this year.

It eased the regulations for women to obtain passports and ruled that
women should not suffer discrimination during the menstruation cycle.

Underage boys

In addition to the ruling on selling or transferring property, the court
issued directions to the government to review the provision in which a
daughter is required to return her inherited property to her paternal
home after getting married.

Lawyer and human rights activist, Sapana Pradhan Malla, said these were
landmark judgments.

She said the rulings would go a long way towards ending discrimination
against women in Nepalese society.

In November, the court ruled that women under 35 years of age would not
need the permission of their parents or husbands to apply for a passport.

In September, it ordered an end to discrimination during the menstrual
cycle - there is a tradition in parts of Nepal of keeping women in
cow-sheds during their period.

Also on Thursday in a separate ruling, the court asked the government
not to recruit underage boys into the security forces.

It said the recruitment contravened the country's constitution and
international children's rights treaties that Nepal had signed.



____



[2]

DAILY STAR (Bangladesh)
December 10, 2005 	

MEGA CITY OF SHOPPING MALLS: SIGN OF PROGRESS OR URBAN NIGHTMARE?
by Sardar Masud Karim

Recently, when I visited Dhaka, some of my friends happily reported the
construction of a new "mega mall" in Dhaka's Panthapath area -- one of
the many fast-growing areas in Dhaka city. "It's the largest shopping
mall in South Asia," one of them claimed "It is so big that you could
spend a whole day in there."

Their words reminded me of the funny character Homer Simpson in the
popular American cartoon serial The Simpsons, who said: "For an evening
or a week, there's no place like the mall. Food, fun and fashion -- the
mall has it all!"

That's the problem. The mall isn't just a space in which to consume --
it consumes us, wraps us in a comfortably exciting world of commerce. At
Dhaka's new found prime shopping destination, Bashundhara City, a huge
box-like structure, unsympathetic to its surroundings, thrust skyward
arrogantly, advertising through its huge glass panel "punches" in
technicolour the many thrills inside: "dining, home-wares, fashion,
entertainment," and most interestingly, "escape."

So out of curiosity, one fine evening I went there with my family to
check it out myself. What I found is nothing surprising. It is the sort
of common prototype mega mall that mushroomed in South East Asian cities
a decade or so earlier and now the style has been imported (wholesale!)
into Dhaka (thanks to our architects who now have easy access to South
East Asian cities).

Every detail of the mall reflects the stereotype mega mall design to
maximize the potential to spend. The maze of corridors is so designed
that orienteering experience is necessary to navigate from one end to
the other. Coffee/fast-food shops are placed at levels known as "food
court" to revive you on your shopping journey, while a profusion of
tastefully arranged posters and aromas of cosmetics conspire to excite
senses and keep those spending glands pumping.

So how does a mega shopping mall fit in the urban landscape of our Dhaka
city? How does it stack up in people's way of life? And what does
Dhaka's landscape, dotted with so many malls, say about the way we
operate as a community? While mall owners buy into the language of
community and the concept of "the public," the mall itself seems to
speak in a different tongue. From the architecture and interior design
to policing and legal practices, the mall speaks, not of inclusion and
diversity, but of control and consumption. It is not so much a public
space as an arena on loan to the public for the purposes of corporate
profit.

The developers of shopping malls like to think of themselves as
providing "public space." But this "public space" isn't owned by the
public anymore; it has become private property, been concreted over, and
is patrolled by security guards keeping the "riff-raff" out. Is this
what we want from our public space? Is it good for our cities? Do our
policy makers in the government as well as planners/architects
understand the consequences of submitting to the corporate ethos?

The notion of public space can be traced back to the agora (not Agora
the departmental chain in Dhaka!) or market place of ancient Greece. The
agora was a place of meeting, an open space where public affairs and
legal disputes were conducted. It was also a place of pleasurable
jostling, where citizens' bodies, words, actions, and produce were all
literally on display. Thus, the market place was essential to the
political community, because it was where the people exchanged ideas,
gossip and opinions, as well as money.

In the idle moments between building wooden horses, creating marble
columns and inventing the theatre, beard-stroking ancient Greeks were
asking uncomfortable questions about the way society fitted together,
and how to make it work better. It's on these ancient foundations that
we base our notion of the public -- along with most of our ideas about
politics, such as equality, community, and democracy.

Modern political theorists, who spend their time working out what makes
democracies tick, tend to agree with the ancients on the importance of
the marketplace. Thankfully though, they've updated Aristotle's original
contention that women were beyond the pale, foreigners were uncouth
barbarians, and slaves were an integral part of good household
management. These days, we like to think of ourselves as a little more
enlightened, and extend equal treatment and equal rights to all our
citizens irrespective of their social class.

The influential German social theorist Jurgen Habermas believes that for
the public sphere to work well in a democratic society, it must be open
and diverse. In other words, a public space should not exclude: it
should invite all manner of people, and the widest range of social
interactions and social activities possible for a healthy urban life.

That today's mega shopping malls are intended to make us part with our
cash is not much of a revelation, but it does tell us that we are far
from the diverse democratic marketplace of which Habermas speaks. The
very nature of the mall speaks volumes about social structure and
interactions in our consumer society. Its aesthetic focus is entirely
internal. Inside, we have a hermetically sealed, temperature-controlled
consumer fantasy of shiny surfaces and sparkling white goods. But
outside, we encounter "an ungainly pile of over-sized boxes plunked down
in the middle of an enormous asphalt sea," according to Harvard urban
design professor and mall sociologist Margaret Crawford.

Here, she is describing the American mall, but our Dhaka city's new mega
malls have imported the format pretty much wholesale. For example,
Bashundhara City fits the profile perfectly as a bewildering labyrinth
of concrete, aluminium, and glass panels, jagged into an oversized
ungainly concrete box with huge mouth for swallowing cars.

Susan Christopherson, another noted sociologist of malls, argues that
shopping centres are constructed to form a predictable, controlled
environment "which acts like a prison in reverse: to keep deviant
behaviour on the outside." The "deviants" are generally the common
public who do not fit into today's consumer culture. As far as mall
owners are concerned, this is business. They have a legal obligation to
maximize returns to their shareholders, and the whole science of mall
design is geared to this end. Anything that might disrupt the smooth
flow of commerce must be excluded.

We are experiencing a steady increase in social segregation among
different classes of our community caused by "market forces." We are
witnessing the accentuated development of separate suburbs for the rich
and poor, gated communities and slums. By law, mall owners and their
security guards can exclude "undesirables" at will. Gone are the days
when we used to hear sweet voice from young hawkers trying to sell
his/her small items to potential customers in our traditional market
places (remember New Market?). But these hawkers or "tokais," whatever
you call them, are now the "undesirables" in today's mega malls. After
all, these undesirables have no right to be there, and are unable to
show a "lawful reason" for being on mall premises.

While mall owners appeal to ideas of community in selling their
developments, it is a very particular version of community: one whose
diversity is controlled in the interests of commerce and the sheltering
of middle-class fears.

The very concept of shopping mall does not encourage social inclusion
which sharply contrasts with the concept of the market place that
originated in ancient Greece. In a world where we shut ourselves off
from difference, community withers. This alien shopping mall epitomizes
this shutting off. It is designed to insulate consumers from those who
do not fit into consumer culture. As we barricade ourselves in gated
communities patrolled by private security forces, screen visitors with
video-phones, mall owners swell their coffers by building
fortress-malls, and marketing them as a "safe and secure" environment in
which to shop.

And just like our individual fortresses, the fortress of the shopping
mall repels those who come without a valid visa: the non-citizens of our
consumer culture. As we indulge ourselves in this consumer culture, we
don't feel any moral obligation towards those vast non-citizens of
consumer culture. So, for our modern Dhaka city, the shopping malls are
today's "public space" only for the new consumer citizens. That's quite
an impressive progress for a third world democratic country like Bangladesh!

Sardar Masud Karim is an architect and urban planner, currently working
for the Department of Planning (DoP), NSW government, Australia.



____


[3]

The Daily Times
December 18, 2005 	

INDIAN SCHOLAR SIFTS 1971 FACT FROM FICTION

By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: A vast proportion of information put out on Bangladesh in
1971 is “marred by unsubstantiated sensationalism,” while West Pakistan
and the Pakistan Army in particular have remained defensive and in a
state of denial about the killings, according to Sarmila Bose, a
Washington-based Indian academic.

This and other findings are contained in the revised version of a paper
she presented at a State Department conference on the 1971 South Asian
crisis in June this year.

She writes, “No rape of women by the Pakistan Army (was) found in the
specific case studies (that her research involved). In all of the
incidents involving the Pakistan Army in the case studies, the armed
forces were found not to have raped women. While this cannot be
extrapolated beyond the few incidents in this study, it is significant,
as in the popular narrative the allegation of rape is often clubbed
together with allegation of killing. Rape allegations were made in prior
verbal discussions in some cases and survivors of the incidents
testified to the violence and killings, but also testified that no rape
had taken place in these areas. While rape is known to occur in all
situations of war, charges and counter-charges on rape form a
particularly contentious issue in this conflict. The absence of this
particular form of violence in these instances underlines the care that
needs to be taken to distinguish between circumstances in which rape may
have taken place form those in which it did not.”

According to Ms Bose, while the Bangladeshis are more voluble about the
birth of their country, they have done less well at systematic
historical record-keeping. She also found a cultivation of “an unhealthy
‘victim culture’ by some of the pro-liberationists” as people are
instigated at the national level to “engage in a ghoulish competition
with six million Jews in order to gain international attention”. These
tendencies, she points out, hamper the systematic study of the conflict
of 1971 and hinder a true understanding of a “cataclysmic restructuring
in modern South Asian history”. She writes that the 1971 civil war was
fought between those who believed they were fighting for a united
Pakistan and those who believed their chance for justice and progress
lay in an independent Bangladesh. “Both are legitimate political
positions. All parties in the conflict embraced violence as a means to
the end, all committed acts of brutality outside accepted norms of
warfare, and all had their share of humanity. These attributes make the
1971 conflict suitable for efforts towards reconciliation, rather than
recrimination that has so far been its hallmark,” she adds.

Ms Bose writes that it was not a simple “West vs East” conflict. Most
political leaders in West Pakistan, barring Bhutto, were amenable to
transfer of power to the Awami League. Biharis and some Bengalis were
opposed to the breakup of Pakistan. Violence was not the means adopted
by only one side. According to her, “Due to the successful emergence of
Bangladesh it is sometimes overlooked that in 1971, the defence of the
unity and integrity of Pakistan was a legitimate political position,
indeed the ‘patriotic’ political position, as opposed to the secession
proposed by pro-liberation Bengalis.” Pro-liberation Bengalis came to
see Pakistan as a “foreign occupier” while the loyalists were considered
“traitors”.

Ms Bose writes, “It is likely that, even after discounting
exaggerations, the armed forces and loyalist Bengalis may be responsible
for a greater proportion of casualties, due to greater fire power and a
longer period of holding the ‘upper hand’, following military action on
March 25. However, pro-liberation Bengalis also adopted violence as the
means to their end and their leadership did not uphold or enforce a
principled stand against violence towards unarmed people and political
opponents, presumed or real. In many areas, pro-liberation Bengalis’
violence towards perceived opponents abated only upon arrival of the
army and resurfaced as soon as the war ended. The culture of violence
fomented by the conflict of 1971 forms the context of subsequent events
in Bangladesh.”

Ms Bose says that East Pakistan in 1971 was “simultaneously a
battleground for many different kinds of violent conflict – military
rebellion, mob violence, guerrilla warfare, conventional battles, death
squads, civil war within Pakistan and between Bengalis, and full-scale
war between Pakistan and India”. The conflict lasted for a year,
involving multiple combatant parties and different levels of conflict.
To ascertain the truth, it would be necessary to undertake an
“institutional effort of national proportions,” that Bangladesh has not
made, she adds. Her research is based on case studies from various
Bangladesh districts and accounts obtained from both perpetrators and
victims. The case studies, she cautions, are “representative” of the
conflict not “comprehensive”. She collected her data during visits to
Pakistan and Bangladesh during 2003-05. It has been her effort to
reconcile fact with fiction.

Ms Bose writes that the movement led by Shaikh Mujibur Rehman was
“openly and proudly armed and militant”. The March 1 call for a general
strike by Mujib following the postponement of the National Assembly
session led to “widespread lawlessness” during that month, with the
government of Pakistan effectively losing control of much of the
province. There was a “parallel government” run on Mujib’s decrees.
There was arson, looting and attacks by Bengali mobs on non-Bengali
people and property, some with casualties, the worst cases occurring in
Khulna and Chittagong. Most of these attacks were on civilians and
commercial properties, but some were directly on the army which remained
“curiously unresponsive under orders”. The army had difficulty buying
food and fuel and was “being jeered and spat at” while the curfew was
being violated. While the Awami League was unable or unwilling to
control a population it had incited, the regime failed to respond
appropriately to attacks on life and property.

However, with the launch of ‘Operation Searchlight’ on March 25, the
“extraordinary restraint” shown by the army was reversed, Ms Bose
writes. In the attack on Jagannath Hall at Dhaka University, the officer
in charge, Brig. “Bobby” Jahanzeb Arbab, admitted “over-reaction and
over-kill by the troops”. There was resistance but it was a “very
unequal one”. Gen AAK Niazi, whom the author interviewed, condemned Gen
Tikka Khan’s handling of the situation, comparing it with the
Jullianwala Bagh massacre by the British in 1919. While some soldiers
were gun-happy, others showed care and concern for the injured students.
Several faculty members and male members residing in the same buildings
were dragged out and shot. She found that there was no specific list of
Dhaka University staff that the army wanted liquidated.

In one documented case, however, the soldiers had a name. The haphazard
nature of the military action resulted in certain university professors
being killed and political leaders either escaping to India or being
taken alive. She rejects as “entirely false” Anthony Mascarenhas’s claim
in the Sunday Times that 8,000 people were killed by the army in
Shankaripatti. Only 14 were killed.

The military action was followed by a wave of mutiny by Bengali officers
and men in the army and police forces, but the pattern of violence
varied from place to place. In Mymensingh, many West Pakistani officers
were killed, their women assaulted and those trying to escape lynched by
the assembled population. Elsewhere, Bengali mobs slaughtered Biharis
and West Pakistanis until the army arrived to secure the area. A large
number of Bihari men, women and children were killed at the Crescent
Jute Mills in Khulna on March 27-28. This vicious cycle of
Bengali-Bihari ethnic violence continued even after Bangladesh’s
establishment, she adds.

Ms Bose writes that when the army moved to re-establish the writ of the
government, the initial resistance was sporadic and disorganised and
overwhelmed by the army’s superior force. One Pakistani officer
confessed adopting a policy of “prophylactic fire” on the advice of Gen
Tikka Khan, though the general denied giving such advice. In this case,
any villages that came in the way of this particular column were burnt
down. Throughout April and into May, the army continued to bring
rebel-held territories under control. There were killings in some areas,
but not in others. In one village, where the moving troops had been
fired upon, all the men were gathered and shot. Their bodies were set on
fire. Another column secured a village without killing anyone. “The
difference underlines the need for a deeper probe into the disregard for
human life or due process that characterised mass killings,” the
academic writes.

The Hindus were vulnerable during the civil war, even at the hand of
their fellow Muslim villagers. In Chuknagar, a Khulna village, a large
number of them were killed by an army patrol from Jessore. Women and
children were not harmed. After the soldiers left, the locals indulged
in rampant looting. As monsoon passed into autumn, young Bengali men
trained in Indian camps returned on a programme of sabotage. Many were
captured or killed; others survived. “In the absence of any political
dialogue, the war dogged on at multiple levels,” Ms Bose writes. She
narrates an incident on October 13 hear Kishoreganj in Mymensingh where
an army unit rounded up adult men from neighbouring villages and, for
reasons that remain unclear, lined them up in two queues and gunned them
down with mounted light machine guns. Residents from a particular
village were spared.

Ms Bose writes that in the final days of the war, several professionals,
professors and doctors were picked up from their homes in Dhaka by Al
Badr loyalists of the army and were then blindfolded and killed. Several
of the bodies were found at a brick kiln. She states that “a direct link
to the army is hard to establish” as the men were picked up by Bengali
members of Al Badr. Some have held the late Maj Gen Rao Farman Ali
responsible, a charge he denied. There were revenge killings after
December 16, both of non-Bengalis and loyalist Bengalis, even a public
lynching before the cameras. Some were bayoneted. Another mass killing
of Biharis took place in Khulna in March 1972, when Mujib had already
taken power.

         	
_____


[4]

Communalism Combat
December 2005

Editorial
TWO CHEERS FOR THE BILL

At long last India’s lawmakers have shown some preparedness to enact a
new law directly addressing the malaise that in recent times has
threatened the very survival of Indian democracy. Praise is due to the
UPA government for the Communal Violence (Prevention, Control and
Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill, 2005, which it has just introduced in
Parliament. Though it remained in power for over two years after the
genocide in Gujarat and despite its hollow rhetoric of a "riot free
India", the NDA government did nothing, absolutely nothing, either to
push for the punishment of the guilty or to introduce new measures to
prevent future massacres. For those who believe there is nothing to
choose between the NDA and the UPA, herein lies the difference. The UPA
regime deserves praise also for the fact that the draft it has now
piloted is a vast improvement on the virtually toothless Communal
Violence (Suppression) Bill, 2005 it had earlier contemplated.

There is much in the revised Bill that is commendable, even
path-breaking. In its historic verdict in the Best Bakery case last
year, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial of the case outside Gujarat.
The Bill now proposes to convert that legal precedent into law,
simultaneously empowering the Centre and the state government concerned
to establish special trial courts outside the communally disturbed area
for the trial of perpetrators. The proposed power for the special courts
to take cognisance of and try offences brought to its attention by human
rights bodies, minority groups, media reports or even a concerned
citizen, is also very welcome.

In the critical area of witness protection, once the new law is in
place, on an application from a witness or public prosecutor, the
special court would have the authority, if need be, to ensure that the
trial is conducted at a secure place and the names and addresses of
witnesses are not made public at any stage. Wide-ranging powers are
proposed for the competent authority as also district magistrates to
prevent breach of peace. District magistrates who fail to ensure the
rule of law despite such powers would then be answerable for their acts
of omission and commission. Except in case of an offence that attracts
the death penalty or life imprisonment, those held guilty of relatively
less serious communal offences would stand to serve a jail term or asked
to pay a fine that is twice that stipulated for similar offences under
the Indian Penal Code or any other Act specified in the Schedule.

Also included in the Bill are welcome measures to ensure proper
investigation of offences and the establishment of permanent councils
with adequate representation of human rights activists and minorities at
the district, state and national levels to promote communal harmony and
formulate humane and appropriate rehabilitation and reparation schemes
for victims of communal violence.

Taken together, the proposed measures could go a long way in the
prevention of communal mass crimes in the future. Unfortunately,
however, the Bill also contains some serious loopholes that need to be
plugged. The most serious shortcoming of the Bill lies in its inability
or unwillingness to address the problem of the complete impunity that
those in authority currently enjoy. Central to laws against mass crimes
elsewhere in the world today is the notion of command responsibility.
Where such laws are in place, in the event of failure to prevent a mass
crime, it is not just the police constable or junior officer on the
trouble spot, but everyone in the entire chain of command – the
district/city chief of police and administration, the home and chief
secretary, the cabinet ministers and the chief minister right on top of
the pyramid – who is held accountable.

The Bill is also silent on the equally crucial and long pending issue of
police reforms which, among other things, must guarantee the
independence of the police force from the executive and at the same time
make it accountable. Instances of communal carnage such as Gujarat 2002
are not spontaneous acts. They are meticulously planned and organised
over a long period of time where hate speech and hate propaganda play a
major role. But the Bill fails to seriously address the hate-building
process.

Having been an active part of the nationwide citizens’ campaign since
2002 for a law against mass crimes, Communalism Combat is happy that the
revised Bill introduced in Parliament by the UPA government incorporates
many of the major suggestions thrown up during the campaign. Now that
the Bill is in Parliament, there is an urgent need to revitalise the
campaign and ensure that the proposed legislation which otherwise shows
promise does not end up as a half-baked law.


_____


[5]

The Telegraph
December 20, 2005

THE DIRECTION OF LOVE
Linguistic nationalisms thrive on chastening women in the name of
honour, argues Janaki Nair The author is professor of history, Centre
for the Study of Social Sciences, Calcutta

Away from censure

Now we know: pre-marital love between Indians can blossom, but only on
the distant shores of Australia. Salaam Namaste’s celebration of a
live-in love, which could even have produced a love-child, is set
entirely in worlds beyond the reach of parents, neighbours and, as we
now have it, litigants and agitators on behalf of female chastity and
“honour”. The stain on national honour by the arrival of a love-child in
Salaam Namaste is prevented by the timely production by the hero of a
ring in the birthing room. Birthing squalls thus come safely after the
legal bond, and conjugality is saved, even among Antipodean Indians.

No such luck, it appears, attends the lives of real life heroines. They
are often loved to death by men who, once spurned, wield the knife or
acid bottle with great skill. South Indian cinema has, over the last
twenty years or so, carefully nurtured this version of loving, a
unidirectional flow of feeling from man to woman, whose outcomes are
always predictable. In one film, Mohanlal plays a police officer who
ties the woman he “loves” to a tree and compels her to say the three
little words. Vishnuvardhan, the Kannada actor, playfully whipped his
heroines into submission, as did Rajnikanth in many a Tamil film.
Recently when the filmic narrative called for Rajnikanth to be slapped
by a woman, the hero’s honour was recouped on the streets by his angry fans.

The avalanche of protests against Kushboo’s candid acknowledgement of
pre-marital sex in India is no sudden departure from the deep misogyny
that marks the world of South Indian films and several progressive South
Indian social movements. Tamil nationalism, like other linguistic
nationalisms, founded on the love of the language and the soil, had long
ago achieved the division of labour between the feminized language,
Tamilttay, and its masculine devotees. The Dalit movement in its most
recent incarnation, led by the Dalit Panthers of India, has done nothing
to disturb this masculinist discourse. When a college girl was harassed
to death on Chennai streets in 1998, debates between Dravidian parties
focussed on the urgency of getting young women back into pavadai-davanis
(long skirts and upper cloths) to recoup Tamil modesty that had
disappeared with the universal adoption of the salwar-kameez. The
imagined Tamil woman remains a chaste, home-loving creature, content to
leave the world of politics, Dalit or otherwise, to their men.

Real women, on the other hand, are a different matter. In some cases,
they are tolerated as Magnificent Exceptions, or else how would we
explain Jayalalithaa’s political success, not to say her sexuality?
Others who are politically or economically successful are less
fortunate. When the Tamil actor, Thankar Bacchan, equated Tamil
actresses with prostitutes recently, it was Kushboo among others who
initiated the protests and demanded an apology, though not in the name
of a parochial womanhood.

No amount of evidence of the history of Indian sexuality and its
contemporary forms will shake the zealots who demand the chaste female
as the standard of linguistic honour. An equal and opposite component of
this honour is the long institutionalized tolerance of the bigamous men
in the “two households”, the periaveedu and the chinnaveedu (the big and
the small house), exemplified by the twin homes of M. Karunanidhi
himself. Bigamous men and chaste women together make up the
hypermasculinist realm of Tamil honour.

The attacks on Kushboo are a case of locking the stable door after the
horse has bolted, a violent reassertion of women into worlds that at
least some of them have left behind. Tamil nationalists may remain
weak-kneed in the face of challenges to their cherished imagined women.
It is hardly a feminist revolution that has altered the playing field.
The AIDS epidemic shook the moralism that marked public discussions of
Indian sexuality, and programmes now target women directly. Here too,
there was only reluctant admission of male promiscuity. The
unprecedented sexualization of the visual space, and the recognition of
women as consumers with deep pockets has had unintended, and not
necessarily positive, consequences which cannot be easily reconciled
with notions of Tamil, or indeed any other, honour.

The slew of cases filed against Kushboo are fresh signs of how dependent
Tamil (or any other) honour is on the apparatuses of the state to
strengthen its claims. The law here has been invoked in ways that are
truly bizarre: only by making the eponymous Tamil woman a justiciable
figure can Kushboo or the periodical publisher be charged under IPC
sections 499, 500 and 501 which relate to defamation. Can such an
“imagined” woman seek justice? Of which Tamil woman are the PMK and the
DPI the representatives when they disallow other full-blooded Tamil
women such as Suhasini from speaking on behalf of Kushboo? The other
grounds on which the protestors have sought to harass Kushboo are
equally contradictory: Section 505 1(b) that pertains “to making
statements conducing to public mischief” has been invoked by those
engaging in the public mischief themselves!

When the controversy blows over, it will still be the woman who stands
chastened, warned, in the name of an imagined womanhood, against
violating an “honour” for which they have no further use. One can, and
must fervently hope that there are local political reasons for this
intemperate attack! The weakly heard, and largely ignored voices of
protest from the women’s and civil rights movement, will no doubt be
dismissed as signs of an upper-caste resistance to lower-caste forms of
self-definition. But as long as such self-definitions ignore, or worse,
depend on, the subordination of the woman, they cannot represent a truly
democratic move away from the forms of oppression that had long held
them in thrall.

____


[6]


Hindustan Times
December 19, 2005

ONE MAN’S CRUSADE LED TO ANTI-SUPERSTITION BILL
   	
MANS has been highlighting that many mentally ill are
thought to be possessed by evil spirits and taken to
sorcerers. Psychiatric treatment may cure them
   	
Lina Mathias
Mumbai, December 18

ON FRIDAY, Maharashtra became the first state in the
country to pass legislation to fight superstition and
take action against quacks. The opposition not only
termed the bill anti-Hindu but some members even ac
cused the president of the Maharashtra Andhshraddha
Nirmoolan Samiti (MANS), Dr Narendra Dabholkar of
having dictated terms to the government.

Dr Dabholkar’s organisation set up 16 years ago, has
been demanding such legislation for nearly a
decade-and-a-half now.“The charge that this is an
anti-Hindu bill is totally unacceptable,” Dr Dabholkar
told HT on Sunday, “It makes no reference to any
religion and besides, since the Constitution
guarantees the right to practice religion, how would a
bill that is against any religion stand up in court?”
For the past three years he said, the provisions of
the legislation had been discussed threadbare and no
one had been able to prove bias against any religion.

“If any person insists that he or she can cure you of
a poisonous snake bite by merely saying a mantra or
some words over you, how does it matter which religion
he or she practices? It is cheating, plain and
simple,” he adds.

The MANS has also been highlighting the fact that a
large number of the mentally ill are thought to be
possessed by evil spirits and ghosts and taken to
sorcerers and others who claim to banish these
spirits. Taking them for psychiatric treatment would
most probably cure them but it is superstition that
leads their families to these quacks, Dr Dabholkar
points out.

And has his organisation been able to make a dent in
all these years? “I cannot say that superstition has
decreased but the positive aspect is that we are
getting more and more volunteers who are willing to
speak out against superstitions and people are
actually willing to listen. Our organisation is not a
political one and yet, our work led to an
anti-superstition bill being passed. That itself shows
how much more acceptable our activities are,” he says.
MANS has 200 shakhas all over the state and by Dr
Dabholkar’s own admission a “limited” presence in
Karnataka and Goa.

Dr Dabholkar, who practiced medicine for 12 years,
became a full time worker of the MANS after his wife,
a gynaecologist, agreed to fend for the family and let
him campaign for the cause dear to him. He says the
campaign of rationalist B. Premanand inspired him
towards rationalism.


____



[7] ANNOUNCEMENTS:

[7.1] New Additions on South Asia Citizens Web :


(i)

www.sacw.net
December 16, 2005

TRADING FAITH FOR SPIRITUALITY: THE MYSTIFICATIONS OF SAM HARRIS

by Meera Nanda
www.sacw.net/free/Trading%20Faith%20for%20Spirituality_%20The%20Mystifications%20of%20Sam%20Harris.html


o o o

(ii)

www.sacw.net > Communalism Repository
December 10 / 11, 2005

THE WINTER IN DELHI, 1984 : A LONG LEGACY OF ORGANIZED COWARDICE
by Aseem Shrivastava
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollection/ArticlesArchive/The%20Winter%20in%20Delhi,%201984%20-%20Anti%20Sikh%20Riots.html

____


[7.2]  New title from *Three Essays Collective*:

(available from December 8)

*Opium City*:
The Making of Early Victorian Bombay
by *Amar Farooqui*

Contents:
1. Bombay: A Colonial Port in Search of Business
2. Bombay and the Trade in Malwa Opium
3. Urban Development in Early Victorian Bombay

About the Book:
It was primarily opium that linked Bombay to the international
capitalist economy and the western Indian hinterland in the nineteenth
century. The essays in this book explore the linkages between the opium
enterprise of western India and the creation of early Victorian Bombay.
They dwell on some of the prominent features of urban development which
reflect the relationship of collaboration and conflict between the
capitalist class of the city and British colonial rule. They show opium
as the crucial factor in the emergence of Bombay as a metropolis.

About the Author:
*Amar Farooqui* is Reader in History, University of Delhi. He is the
author of 'Smuggling as Subversion: Colonialism, Indian Merchants and
the Politics of Opium'.

xiv + 114 pages, Demy 8vo

2006
ISBN 81-88789-32-1 Hardcover Rs350 (India)

-- 
Three Essays Collective
P.O. Box 6 B-957 Palam Vihar
GURGAON (Haryana)
122 017
India

www.threeessays.com


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

Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
matters of peace and democratisation in South
Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit
citizens wire service run since 1998 by South
Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/
SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not
necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers.