SACW #1 | 5-6 Jan. 2006

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire - Packet 1 | 5-6 Jan, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2197


[1] Pakistan:
     - Tale of a tragedy (Kamila Hyat)
     - The task before the NCSW (Editorial, Dawn)
[2] Sri Lanka: Going to Oslo is better than going to war (Jehan Perera)
[3] India:
     - Is Public Romance a Right? The Kama Sutra Doesn't Say (Somini
Sengupta)
     - The virgin monologues (Prasenjit Chowdhury)
[4] India: Citizens protest Against Police Firing in Orissa
[5] India: Swami Ramdev the TV performer of body parts and fake medicine
represents dangers for public & social health - reports

___


[1]


The News International
January 05, 2006

TALE OF A TRAGEDY
by Kamila Hyat *


Everywhere, across the northern areas of the country and in
Pakistan-administered Kashmir, people are reported to be dying.

The so-called 'second wave' of deaths, discussed for months by all
relief agencies, has begun with the heavy snows that 2006 has brought
along with it. Some estimates suggest dozens could die each day, and the
worst predictions are that these deaths could eventually exceed the toll
taken by the quake of October 8th itself.

But of course, the tragedy unfolding in the mountains comes as no
surprise. Snows, after all, fall each year in the affected areas, and
almost everyone was well aware for months of the calamity they would
bring with them under the present conditions.

What is far more tragic than the weather is the fact that the State
cared too little for its people to plan things better, to avoid needless
suffering and unnecessary death. While there has been much talk about
the immense fortitude and courage of affected people, of the astonishing
spirit of charity that brought people from across the country rushing to
the north, too little has perhaps been said about the role of the State
itself. After all, it is the government that must act as the key
planning and coordinating agency in such disasters -- and there is
little evidence that this has happened since the events of October 8th.

Whereas panic in the first, tumultuous days after the quake is
understandable, particularly given the huge losses suffered both by the
civil administration and the military, there can be no excuse for this
state of anarchy continuing for days, weeks and months. The fact of the
matter is that despite the last-ditch efforts made mainly in December by
international relief agencies, the Pakistan military and local groups,
most quake-affected people do not have winterised tents. Even more
unforgivable is the fact that the tin sheets they require to construct
shelters are still not available in most locations. The desperate
demands of people for such items went unheard for weeks and months.
While air lifts of such items continue, it is obvious that the delay and
the disruptions now caused by the weather conditions, will lead to
hundreds, possibly thousands of new deaths.

The kind of master plan, which was required within the first few weeks,
seems never to have been put in place. While the military, the relief
agencies and voluntary groups have all done their bit, it is obvious
from the dire reports and grim photographs emerging from affected areas
that this, on its own, could never be enough.

Crucially, even now, the victims themselves have been left completely
excluded from the process of decision-making. Indeed in many cases they
have been treated little better than unruly animals that need to be
herded down from the hills, and into tent villages, or have food thrown
out to them from passing trucks while baton-wielding policemen make
their clumsy efforts to impose order.

While relief workers have complained about the difficulties created when
people mob helicopters, and of chaos as items are distributed, it is
quite obvious that where efforts have been made to inform communities of
the problems and to seek their cooperation in forming queues or waiting
in orderly lines, people have almost gratefully followed the advice
given. After all, if people are treated like animals, they tend to
behave in a similar fashion. Where they have been treated as
intelligent, thinking citizens, they have done all they can to assist in
the effort to provide them with help.

Even now, as unrest brews in camps and in poorly run settlements across
the devastated area, the response has been to use brute force to subdue
people. Yet, this carries the risk that in time, the feelings of anger
will boil over to a point where jackboots and batons, or harsh
announcements from military loudspeakers, are not enough to keep
desperate people suppressed.

The question of what is to happen then looms ahead for authorities, as
they prepare for the long weeks ahead until spring comes in March or
April. While in many cases, the delay in providing sufficient aid, or in
doling out the amount set arbitrarily as the compensation money, has
been blamed on the tardiness of the international community in
delivering aid money, it must also be asked what the Government of
Pakistan has itself contributed. After all, it must be kept in mind that
many of the donations coming in are in the form of loans, which will
have to be paid back in the years ahead, adding to the country's already
crippling debt burden.

There has been little information as to what funds have been diverted by
the State itself from the giant coffers it maintains for its defence and
administrative needs. After all, as children die of cold each day in the
mountains, Pakistan's decision-makers need to ask themselves if more
perks for its men in uniform are really more important than doing
whatever can now be done to save the lives of ordinary people.

This is especially significant in view of the likely political fall-out
from the quake. While the local media has largely been quiet, the scale
of people's anger, their frustrations, can be sensed from the clips from
Muzzafarabad, from Balakot, from Battagram and from other locations
aired by international television channels. After all, in today's world,
all voices can never be silenced -- and those that are heard testify to
people's growing strength of feeling against the government, and the
military. Each new warning, blaring out over loudspeakers, cautioning
people not to light fires in tents acts as a bitter reminder to people
that the shelters they so urgently need have not come, and also of the
fact that for families whose children are freezing, following such
instructions, despite the safety hazards posed by fires, is almost
impossible.

Missing too from quake-hit areas are any signs of the road-building
projects, the other initiatives, that could help employ people and
rescue them from the plight of beggars to which many have been reduced.
After all, making people entirely dependant on hand-outs for long
periods of time can never be a wise strategy.

The true implications of the situation will become clear only in the
months ahead. The sentiments of people, their desperation, their wrath
against authorities will assume both social and political dimensions.
But in the meantime, the new toll of daily deaths have already begun to
be posted up on websites and on the lists maintained by field hospitals.
No one yet knows what the final number will be, or what impact this will
have on the post-quake scenario that will unfold over the years ahead in
all affected areas, including the sensitive territory of Azad Kashmir.

* The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor

o o o

Dawn
January 6, 2005
Editorial

THE TASK BEFORE THE NCSW

ALTHOUGH it took 10n months to fill the post of chairperson of the
National Commission on the Status of Women, the educationist Dr Arfa
Syeda Zehra, who was recently appointed, has a huge challenge ahead of
her if she is to fill the void left by her predecessor, Majida Rizvi.
Over the years various commissions have been set up to look into
different issues but their recommendations have invariably been cast
aside. The NCSW, however, is a permanent body set up in 2000 by
President Musharraf to look into gender-biased laws, among other things.
Under Ms Rizvi’s leadership, in 2003 the NCSW recommended the repeal of
the controversial Hudood Ordinances, whose very existence since 1979 has
brought nothing but disgrace to the country. Up to 80 per cent of the
thousands of women in jail are facing charges under the Hudood
Ordinances, of which the most contentious part equates rape with
adultery. Unfortunately, the NCSW’s mandate does not stretch beyond
making recommendations, so after it completed its findings, there was
little else it could do but to wait for them to be implemented. Ms Rizvi
argued for the need to give the body more powers beyond those of making
recommendations — a stance that one hopes Dr Zehra will pursue as there
is a dire need for powerful groups to pressure the government on this issue.

Doing away with discriminatory laws requires patience and fortitude
which so far have been lacking. At the heart of the matter is the
government’s fear of alienating the deeply entrenched religious lobby in
the country. Time and again, a seemingly progressive government has
rejected discriminatory bills yet President Musharraf claims that women
in Pakistan are more emancipated than their peers in developing
countries. This simply is not the case. The reality is that the Hudood
laws are flawed and were adopted under an obscurantist military regime.
They need to be debated in parliament and the discriminatory provisions
repealed. Instead of re-examining these laws for the umpteenth time, Dr
Zehra must press the government to review the pending recommendations so
that the NCSW can look into other unjust rules and laws that
discriminate against women.

____



[2]

Himal South Asia (Nepal)
January 2006

GOING TO OSLO IS BETTER THAN GOING TO WAR

Sri Lanka has suddenly entered a period of escalating violence after the
general elections that saw Mahinda Rajapakse, the candidate of hardline
Sinhalese parties, being elected president on 17 November. Ironically,
it was the LTTE’s enforced boycott of the polls by Tamil voters in the
north and east that clinched victory for Rajapakse, by the slimmest of
margins. Most of the Tamil vote would have gone to opposition candidate
Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had projected himself as the peace candidate.

Following an election campaign meant to energise his Sinhalese base and
an inaugural speech reaffirming his poll promises on 29 November, in
recent days, President Rajapakse has been speaking of peace, compromise
and restraint. It is the Tamil Tigers, on the other hand, who are behind
most of the large scale attacks that have seen the death of more than 50
security personnel in the five weeks following the presidential
election. Most of the casualties have been due to landmine blasts.

The reversal of policy of the new government headed by President
Rajapakse and his nationalist allies is quite remarkable, given their
election time rhetoric. In a situation in which the government is not
reacting aggressively to the LTTE’s provocations, it is the rebels who
are looking increasingly the belligerent party. This does not bode well
either for the LTTE or for the peace process. Due to their ongoing
campaign of violence, the LTTE is slipping ever nearer a total ban at
the hands of the European Union. So far, the travel ban imposed on them
in September 2005 has been largely a symbolic one and has served as a
warning of what is to come. It prevents LTTE delegations from being
received by the EU countries. If a total ban is placed on the LTTE, the
group will not be able to operate at all out of Europe.

Despite the violent turn taken by the LTTE, however, the Rajapakse
government too is required to undo its own contributions to despoiling
the peace process. During the election run-up, Rajapakse led a
propaganda campaign to lampoon what he called opposition candidate
Wickremesinghe’s appeasement of the LTTE. Rajapakse promised instead to
roll back the clock on concessions made to the LTTE, including a
revision of the February 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, on terms that would
be more favourable to the Colombo government. He also promised to
abrogate an agreement with the LTTE to set up the ‘joint mechanism’ on
tsunami reconstruction and to put aside an agreement made by the
government and LTTE in Oslo in 2002 to explore a federal solution. What
Rajapakse promised during the election campaign was a unitary or
centralised state, tsunami reconstruction carried out by Colombo, and a
new facilitator to replace Norway, which his hardline Sinhalese allies
accused of partiality towards the LTTE.

In fact, none of these election pledges had corresponded with the
realities on the ground. The LTTE physically controls large parts of the
northeast, and the government can neither administer those areas nor
provide them with development assistance without the concurrence of the
Tigers. As for Oslo, the international community has presented a united
front regarding their role as peace facilitator, and no other country
has come forward to play the role. Rajapakse and his hardline allies
were hoping that India might take on the burden, but have not had a
positive response to their pleas. In fact, New Delhi has backed the
Norwegian facilitation. Swallowing a bitter pill, therefore, the
government has asked Oslo to recommence its facilitatation.

In the meantime, the LTTE is proceeding with their gameplan, taunting
the government with a war it cannot afford, but which the rebels
themselves are not averse to. The four-year period of the ceasefire has
enabled the Tigers to infiltrate all of the Northeast and even Colombo,
placing the government in a vulnerable situation in the event of a total
breakdown of the ceasefire. Meanwhile, by targeting the Sri Lankan
security forces in the Northeast, the LTTE is slowly but surely
restricting their ground movement and increasing its unofficial hold
over government-controlled towns of the region.

The only way for Rajapakse to avoid being forced into war is to engage
politically with the rebels, and fortunately this course of action is
still available to him. The LTTE has agreed to have talks on the
Ceasefire Agreement with the government, and the latter too has
expressed a similar desire. The problem now seems to be the venue for
such talks.  The government has changed its earlier stance that talks
should be within Sri Lanka, but now insists it would have to be within
an Asian country. However, the LTTE insists the venue be Oslo.

Both sides have reasons for seeking to stick to their guns as far as the
venue is concerned. The government is politically hostage to the
Sinhalese nationalist allies, who see peace talks in Oslo as an
unacceptable reversal of yet another position taken during the election
campaign. The LTTE is keen on Oslo as this would undermine the European
Union travel ban.

Dispute over the venue must not delay the resumption of talks on
strengthening the Ceasefire Agreement. Only political engagement can
help gain the cooperation of the LTTE. The rebels’ strong desire for
international recognition is a factor that needs to be built into any
governmental strategy to bring them back into the peace process. What
the LTTE want most at this hour is international legitimacy ad material
support. LTTE sympathisers have explained their opposition to Ranil
Wickremesinghe thus: he did not obtain for them the ‘symmetry’ they
sought with the government in dealing with the international community.
Some might even say that the LTTE preferred Rajapakse because he had no
plans and was therefore more likely to get the national society mired in
a confusion which the rebels could have exploited.

Till today, the Tamil Tigers have refused to change their behaviour
under either political or military pressure. This confidence comes from
their strength on the ground and from the mistakes made by the
government, as well as the latter’s intransigence and occasional acts of
bad faith. But it is also an oft- proven fact that a policy of isolation
is likely to generate more violence on the part of the Tigers. The
experience of two decades is that only political engagement will help
address the problems of ceasefire violations, extremism and intolerance.
The prospects of ending the current spate of violence will begin to
improve the sooner the government and LTTE meet together at the
negotiating table. For this reason, it is not enough for President
Rajapakse to publicly say that he is committed to peace and not to war.
  He must act decisively on his good intentions. The resumption of talks
should not be delayed by the disagreement over the venue, and Oslo
should be perfectly adequate.

- Jehan Perera

____


[3] India: The taboo around sexuality


The New York Times
January 4, 2006

MEERUT JOURNAL
IS PUBLIC ROMANCE A RIGHT? THE KAMA SUTRA DOESN'T SAY

by Somini Sengupta

MEERUT, India - On a crisp winter's afternoon in this small,
unremarkable north Indian town, several couples - some married, some not
- sat together on the benches of a well-groomed little park named after
the country's most famous champion of nonviolence: Mohandas K. Gandhi.

A policewoman chased a woman among those sitting with men in a park.
With TV cameras in tow, officers slapped and insulted couples.
The New York Times

In Meerut, the police cracked down on intimacy in Gandhi Park.

Soon came a band of stick-wielding police officers with television news
cameras in tow. They yanked the couples by their necks, as though they
were so many pesky cats, and slapped them around with their bare hands.
The young women shielded their faces with their shawls. The men cowered
from the cameras.

Apparently intended to clamp down on what the police consider indecent
public displays of affection among unmarried couples, the nationally
televised tableau in Gandhi Park backfired terribly. It set off a
firestorm of criticism against police brutality, prompted at least one
young unmarried pair to run away from home for a couple of days, and
revealed a yawning divide on notions of social mores and individual
rights in a tradition-bound swath of India where the younger generation
is nudging for change.

"This is a basic infringement of our right to freedom," cried Vikas
Garg, 21, a master's student in mass communications at the local
Chaudhry Charan Singh University, a couple of days after the raid. "We
are free to sit where we want."

Meerut police officials conceded that some officers overreacted. But
they also defended their actions. Couples sat in "objectionable poses,"
said a defiant Mamta Gautam, a police officer accused in the beatings,
including some with their heads in their partners' laps. Yes, Ms. Gautam
went on, she had slapped those who tried to run away when the police
asked for names and addresses. "If they were not doing anything illegal,
why they wanted to run away?" the policewoman demanded in an interview.
"I do not consider that what we did was wrong."

By the end of the week, as public outrage piled on, Ms. Gautam and three
other police officers, including the city police superintendent, were
suspended pending an internal investigation.

In a society where dating is frowned upon, public parks remain among the
only places where couples can avail themselves of intimacy, from talking
to necking and petting with abandon under the arms of a shady tree. Even
if it is in broad daylight in a public park, romance before marriage
remains taboo in small-town India, which is why the spectacle in Gandhi
Park turned out to be such a big deal: to be outed in this way, on
national television, is to bring terrible shame and recrimination on
yourself and your family.

So alarming, in fact, was it for Amit Sharma and his girlfriend of two
years that the pair ran away from home hours after the incident, only to
return more than a day later after their parents went to fetch them from
a nearby town where they were hiding and agreed, in principle, to let
them marry.

A couple of days later, Mr. Sharma, 22 years old and unemployed,
described the jarring episode. The police swooped down on the couples in
the park "as though we were terrorists," grabbed them by their collars,
hurled abuses and separated the men and women. He could hear his
girlfriend, Anshu, crying and could hear the police yelling at her:
"Your parents send you to college to study! What are you doing here?"

"I pleaded with the police, 'Please let us go,' " he recalled.
Eventually, they were all let go. No one was charged with a crime.

That afternoon in Gandhi Park, even a young woman sitting alone was not
spared. The woman, who gave her name only as Priyanka, said she was
waiting on a park bench when the shouting of the police and their
targets interrupted her thoughts. Getting up from her bench, Priyanka
said she walked in the direction of the commotion when a police officer,
Ms. Gautam, as it turned out, pounced on her and accused her of being a
prostitute.

What is more, Priyanka said, the policewoman slapped her and called her
a "chamari," a slur based on her caste. (Ms. Gautam denied making the
remark.)

Priyanka filed a complaint with the police and called it "a black spot"
on her reputation. "They did not ask any questions," she recounted.
"They just started beating. Now people in my village are reading that
newspaper in front of my father."

The episode sparked a national outcry. The National Human Rights
Commission ordered a police inquiry and its chief, Justice A. S. Anand,
went on television and declared, "No civilized state can permit this
type of humiliation to be heaped on its young children."

 From the political right and left came condemnation of the police
action. Brinda Karat, the most prominent woman representing a coalition
of leftist parties in government, denounced the police for pouncing on
courting couples while violent rapes remain unsolved. Sushma Swaraj, a
legislator from the Hindu nationalist opposition Bharatiya Janata Party,
took the podium in Parliament and called it a product of "a sick mind."

Even so, the reprimands did not stop Hindu radical activists here from
storming Gandhi Park three days after the episode and, taking the law
into their own hands, beating up the small handful of couples who had
dared to return. The following day, Gandhi Park was empty, save the
birds chattering in the trees.

Among young people in Meerut, the police raid prompted a seasoned
outrage. In interviews on the local college campus a few days after the
police raid, students said they frequently bore the brunt of police
harassment if they were seen with members of the opposite sex. They are
pulled aside, threatened with a stick, ordered to give their names and
addresses and released usually only after paying a bribe.

"Crime is increasing in Meerut day by day and the police are harassing
innocent girls and boys," said Mr. Sharma's outraged father, Jagdish
Kumar Sharma. "How many Romeos they can catch? Romeos are on every lane
and every street."

Hari Kumar contributed reporting for this article.


o o o


Hard News
January 2006

THE VIRGIN MONOLOGUES

Sentinels of righteousness would do well to dip into history, culture
and of course reality before displaying a Talibanesque attitude to sexuality

Prasenjit Chowdhury Kolkata

The pillorying of the south Indian actor Khushboo for her call to
"virginal" equality of the inverse kind, that is, men not virgins at
their marriage should not expect virgin brides any longer, is the stuff
of feminism. Several lawsuits dogging her, her being fined by a lower
level judge, mobs in thousands throwing trash at her car demonstrate
masculine ambivalence towards genital sex.

One is at risk to over-sexualise the institution of marriage, if one
were to suggest that sex existed (or does exist) only within wedlock.
And see things unfolding in Tamil Nadu, a state which had earlier banned
a performance of Eve Ensler's celebrated theatre production, The Vagina
Monologues which had the other metros in India going gaga. The state had
allowed the police to nab hundreds of adult couples in Chennai's Anna
Nagar Park and published their pictures in a local newspaper in the
manner of "Most Wanted" mug shots. There are a good number of smut films
coming from that state, and the pelvic jerks and jousts evidenced in
many films from south India do women in Tamil Nadu no image uplift and
make even the raunchiest of Hindi films look like candy floss. The
abortion rate in Tamil Nadu's cities gives a lie to the vapour bath
called "Indian culture" where women, it seems, take relish in premarital
sex sans, certainly, the baggage of unwanted pregnancy.

According to an actress-turned-columnist, Chennai was the place where
the first AIDS case was detected in 1986. If one does not set a great
store by such accounts, she even recalled a survey that found maximum
number of "extramarital sexual relationships" to take place in Tamil
Nadu and Gujarat. Tamil Nadu has one of the highest rates of female
foeticide and disparity in male-female literacy rates. How so
disgraceful that one finds a glut of sexual crimes happening almost
everyday in India, remaining unaddressed, while the heat is turned on a
thing which is as trivial as a social reality! The reigning theme is
surely safe sex, and with AIDS on the rampage, talking about moral
abstinence is only a matter of good faith. How can the state prevent
people from "doing" it other than merely saying "do it at your own
risk"? Lifestyle education (a euphemism for sex education) in schools is
a tortured aftermath of this social reality.

Is premarital sex really anathema to Indian culture? The acrobatics with
which the Hindus spurred on their declining potency are the subject of
an overrated text, Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra, the product of an effete,
enervating, courtly culture in decline. It was written between the first
and the fourth centuries AD and belongs to a tradition of courtly love
which still holds traces of magic tribal lore. Thus the landmark manual
of erotology lacks the sexual mysticism represented by Khajuraho and
temples in Orissa, the Mahayana, Shaiva and Vaishnava cults.

The problem of backstreet abortions, the unmarried mother with her
deprived child, and the furtive, unhealthy background of adolescent
sexual behaviour in our midst should make us think. It was our grand old
man of wisdom — Nirad C. Chaudhuri — who called the bluff of sexual
hypocrisy in India in a scintillating chapter called "The Anodyne" in
his book The Continent of Circe. He had to say that from the Rigveda
down to the epics especially the Mahabharata one faces a consistent
attitude towards sex life. It was based on a frank acceptance of the
flesh, gusto in sensual pleasures, and "is marked by a total absence of
any kind of forced continence, and of course, sense of guilt".

The vedic and epic gods are as lecherous as the Olympians, and Indra,
the supreme warrior god, is the most reckless of
them all.

Chaudhuri was canny enough to point out that our great sages of yore did
not practise "chastity of the Gandhian type". In the hermitages there
was a good deal of dignified flirtation, and a certain amount of
discreet adultery, in addition to the violent love at first sight
between handsome princes and hermitage girls.

Is a Hindu mind automatically reticent? In his revulsion from sexual
enjoyment (possibly for lack of an opportune moment or societal
stricture) he took recourse to some very tortured psychological and
physiological acrobatics because to give up lust was for him to turn his
back on life itself: "So, even when he abandoned the world, his
abnegation did not exclude an insidious and disguised lust. A peeping,
pricking, tormenting naughty little thing had to keep up even the
sadhu's faith
in spirituality".

All societies are presented with a problem of how to channel and control
the awakening sex drive of the young. When one gets to hear cant about
the moral-immoral tangle to premarital sex, there lies an obvious irony
as India derives its original name (Bharat) from the legendary Bharata
who was born out of a premarital relationship between Shakuntala, a
beautiful maiden, daughter of the sage Kanva, and Dushyanta a king. In
the epic Mahabharata, Kunti, the mother of the Pandavas, begets a son
(Karna) from the sun before her marriage to Pandu. She suffers for the
rest of her life for this transgression. Fearing condemnation from her
family, she deserts the newborn baby who eventually grows up to become a
great hero and an arch enemy of the Pandavas and participates in the
Mahabharata (the great Indian) war against his own brothers.

Anthropologically speaking, premarital sex has survived in many tribal
societies in India as elsewhere. The aboriginal Indian peoples, such as
the Nagas, Bhotias, Santhals, Urao, Munda, Birhor, Kharia, Juang, Konds
and Bhuiya have well developed meeting points of man-woman social
intercourse before marriage. It existed in a vestigial form among the
Muthuvan, and Paluyan of Cochin and the Hill Maria of Bastar. Premarital
sexual institutions had varied from the highly organised communal
dormitory (ghotul) of the Indian Muria indigenous tribe, to the casual
visiting of girls' houses by boys among some groups in the Philippines.
Missionaries were the first people to report on what they were inclined
to term orgiastic living conditions in the Pacific Islands. One wrote,
"The Devil has founded here seminaries of debauchery."

If we are going to scoff at the gross epicurism of the tribal kind,
we're perhaps living in one of the most sexcitable times. It can add to
our notion of forced continence when we read MK Gandhi's autobiography.
Here he recalls an incident that occurred in 1885 when Gandhi was merely
sixteen and had married for three years (does anyone from the urban
gentry marry that young these days?). His wife Kasturba was in an
advanced stage of pregnancy. On a particular fateful night, tired of
massaging his father, a task taken over from him by his uncle, he went
straight into the bedroom blinded by a carnal desire. That night his
father died. He never came to forgive himself. Even fifteen years later,
after the birth of his fifth child, he was yet to grapple with his
sexual needs. He found mastering his sexual needs a daily struggle, like
"walking on the sword's edge".

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose said as much in his autobiography, An Indian
Pilgrim: "Perhaps the bitterest struggle I had with myself was in the
domain of sex instinct." In order to suppress or sublimate the
sex-instinct, he had to transform the demons of his mind — "the life of
instinct and impulse" — into a higher spiritual plane. Both were
extraordinary cases and both were fired by a loftier vision of life,
though both of them found the primacy of sexual passion most difficult
to conquer.

Sexual trends in India, according to statistics presented by Avishkaar,
a counselling clinic in Mumbai, bare some alarming facts. The all India
occurrence of STDs in the age group of 18 to 30 is as high as 48 to 52
per cent. Of this, approximately 60 per cent hail from the lower strata
of society where there is a lack of awareness about safe sex. The figure
is approximately 20 per cent among the middle and upper classes.
Premarital sex among 18- to 20-year-olds in metros is as high as 65.6
per cent amongst girls and 63.3 amongst boys.

The obscurantist parties like the Pattali Makkal Katchi and Dalit
Panther must not ignore that there hangs a contemporary tale to all
this. With the deferment of the marriageable age, premarital sex is not
a subject of promiscuity but an area of reality. At a consensual level,
it is a way of life and an outcome of the paradigmatic changes taking
place in man-woman relationships in India. Premarital sex denotes more
than being acquainted. It is not a question of generational depravity.
Asking people not to have sex is no worse than forbidding them to shoot
their mouths off. And the media must not act as an agent provocateur,
understanding the sexual politics that lays so such importance on
virginity in India. Khushboo might have inadvertently pointed to the
culture of carnality that governed our pantheon of gods, our literature
via Kalidasa, our lore and our mythical imaginings.
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[4]

**JOIN CITIZENS' PROTEST AT ORISSA BHAWAN, DELHI **
*against Police  Firing( in Duburi,Kalinganagar,Orissa) on Tribal
People demanding compensation for the loss of land and livelihood.
*
6 th January 2006, 11:00 am

Assemble at Vishva Yuva Kendra (Near Chanakya puri Police station) at
11: 00 am, from where we will march towards Orissa Bhawan (5 minutes march)

Please bring your banners and placards


*Campaign Against Police Firing in Orissa*


____


[5]

(TELEVISION SWAMI RAMDEV EXPOSED, NOW OTHERS EVANGELIST FRAUDSTERS
ASARAM BAPU, MURARI BAPU, AMMA, SATHYA SAI BABA, SRI SRI RAVI SHANKAR
AMONG OTHERS NEED TO BE PURSUED TOO, THEY ALL ARE HAZARDOUS TO PUBLIC
AND MENTAL HEALTH IN INDIA.)

o o o

PURSUE RAMDEV ISSUE SERIOUSLY, SCIENCE FORUM TELLS CENTRE

New Delhi | January 05, 2006 6:35:40 PM IST

The Delhi Science Forum today asked the Union Health Ministry and Drug
Control authorities to ''sincerely pursue'' the irregularities alleged
in preparation of ayurvedic medicines by Swami Ramdev's Divya Yog pharmacy.

''It is incumbent on the Drug Control and other authorities to inspect
the facilities of the company, test samples of all drugs produced and
ascertain whether quality control mechanisms are in place.

''Concerned agencies of the Centre cannot absolve themselves of
responsibility with regard to these and related issues, and cannot
simply throw the matter into the lap of the state government.

''It is hoped that the case will be pursued sincerely without being
swayed by pressures from influential quarters,'' Forum Secretary D
Raghunandan said in a statement.

Challenging Swami Ramdev's fulminations against CPI(M) leader Brinda
Karat, who brought the issue to public notice, he said under the Drugs
and Cosmetics Act, any consumer could collect and send samples to the
Health Ministry for testing.

''If everything is overboard, Swami Ramdev should welcome a thorough
investigation,'' he said, adding that it was in the interest of Ayurveda
that proper standards were adhered to in the manufacture of medicines.

The dreams of promoting Indian systems of medicine both in India and
abroad will remain unfulfilled unless scientific principles and methods
were applied to this sector as is being done with other pharmaceuticals,
he said, pointing out that the issue concerned protection of people's
health.

o o o

CPI CONDEMNS ATTACK ON OFFICES BY RAMDEV SUPPORTERS
NEW DELHI, JAN 5 (PTI)

CPI today condemned the attack on its offices in the national capital
and Lucknow by the followers of Swami Ramdev.

"What the followers of Ramdev are doing is nothing but sheer violation
of the law of the land. It needs to be condemned squarely. So-called
godmen and gurus are not above law, and not above disclosures about
their business. The obvious instigators behind the attack must be
caught," the CPI Central Secretariat said in a statement here. The party
said if the allegation levelled by CPIM leader Brinda Karat, who is also
a Rajya Sabha member, were found to be true, necessary action should be
taken against the pharmacy at Haridwar.

Karat has accused the guru, who hosts a yoga show on television, of
using his TV show popularity for selling "adulterated" drugs to his
followers. But the Swami, who denies any wrongdoing, says he is open to
any inquiry into the contents of his ayurvedic drugs.

o o o (The Hindutva connections of the this Swami Ramdev)

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=96&page=26#five
SWAMI RAMDEV TO INAUGURATE [RASHTRA] SEVIKA SAMITI'S SAMMELAN
in Nagpur

o o o

http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=108&page=9
PHOTO OF RAMDEV SHARING THE DAIS WITH SUDARSHAN ET AL,
COMPLETE WITH THE SANGH SALUTE!


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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
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.