SACW | 24 Jan. 2006 | India: Secularism vs Religio-cultural Nationalism/ Communal Violence Bill 2005 / Challenging Hindutva's version of History in California

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire  | 24 January, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2208

[1] India: Cultural Nationalism or Secular Democracy? (Ram Puniyani)
[2] India: Betrayals and Missed Opportunities: A peoples critique of the
Communal Violence Bill (Anhad, HRLN)
[3] India: Open letter to Home minister with Suggestions for Amending
the Communal Violence (Prevention), Control and Rehabilitation of
Victims) Bill, 2005
[4] California Educators Hear Pleas to reject the Views of Hindu
Supremacist Groups in History Books
[5] Bookreview: Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of
Our Times by Amitav Ghosh
[6] Combat Law: The Human Rights Monthly

____________________________________


[1] (Communalism Watch - 24 January 2006
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/01/india-cultural-nationalism-or-secular.html)

INDIA: CULTURAL NATIONALISM OR SECULAR DEMOCRACY?

by Ram Puniyani

After going through the turmoil created by Advani’s
‘Secular Jinnah’ statement, its controller, RSS
decided to get rid of him and finally appointed
Rajnath Singh. a regional leader, as the President of
BJP. Rajnath Singh was not much known in the broader
circles and the views he held were practically not
much known barring the fact of his tenure as the UP
chief minister, which had nothing much to write home
about. Now with his pronouncements coming one can
understand why he has been chosen as the President
sidetracking others who are much more popular in the
political arena. Mr. Singh holds on to hard core
Hindutva, which its progenitor Lal Krishna Advani had
to tone down in the light of BJP electoral debacle and
compulsions of electoral calculations. Singh in
contrast holds to those even now. In one of the
functions recently he went on to give the outline of
his understanding about his political ideology. He
reaffirmed his belief in cultural nationalism, and
said that, culture is the main driving force of the
nation, and that India is
not a politico-territorial state but geo-cultural
state. He also compared India with Israel. While the
belief in cultural nationalism is not new, we have
been hearing about it from last two decades and more,
his comparison of India with Israel was a new
dimension to the ideology held by Sangh.

In contrast to the values of India’s freedom movement
and the principles of Indian constitution, India as a
secular democracy, the Sangh combine projected that
India is a Hindu Rashtra. It also brought forward the
notion of cultural nationalism, the earlier version of
which was Hindi, Hindu Hindustan. In contrast the
Muslim communal version of, Urdu-Muslim-Pakistan.
These are both parallel but opposite concepts,
mutually boosting each other. Cultural nationalism was
contrasted to the notion of India as a nation state,
as a geo political phenomenon, and carried the saffron
flag as a symbol and Ram Gita and Acharyas as the
central rallying cultural (religious) points. For this
politics the religion became the sole marker of
culture. The rich concept of culture as the set of
aspects of social and political life got reduced to
the values derived from the Brahminic version of
Hinduism.

Religion, its particular elitist version, as the
central repository of culture is the hallmark of
narrow sectarian politics based either on race or
religion. Hitler in his heydays did  usurp democracy
from within by bringing forward the notions of
cultural superiority of Aryans. Interestingly he and
Mussolini both brought forward the concept of integral
humanism for their political agenda. Just to recount
these twin markers of fascist poltics led their
countries to the path of suicide. In Germany the
process of unleashing the agenda of cultural
nationalism led to the massacre of 120 lakh people,
half of them being the Jews. It is not a mere
coincidence that he came for praise from the ideologue
of Hindutva, M.S. Golwalkar, “…to keep up the purity
of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the
world by her purging the country of the Semitic races,
the Jews. National pride at its highest has been
manifested here. Germany has also shown how well neigh
impossible it is for races and cultures, having
differences to be assimilated into one united whole, a
good lesson for us in India to learn and profit by.
(We or Our Nationhood Defined, p.27)”. It is no wonder
that Hitler found/finds a place of honor in the
schools text book of BJP ruled Gujarat.

Modern nation states have come in the geopolitical
zones, with the common pasts and divergent social
groups mingling with each other. Geo political regions
are the base of nation states. Culture has too many
more aspects than one stream of a particular religion.
Religion does matter but only as one of the components
of culture. Again the country has many cultures,
within the same political boundaries. In the
democratic polity these cultures supplement each other
in providing the richness to the life and ethos of the
country.

Interestingly for the proponents of cultural
nationalism the problems related to the lives of
people, related to their existence hold a secondary
place, if at all. Despite their using them for
electoral purposes here and there, the running thread
of their politics is around religious assertion,
identity based politics, at the cost of economic and
social issues. In particular, the social reform and
the concept of rights of the marginalized, exploited,
deprived sections are pushed to the backdrop and the
ones’ related to dress code for women, the respect for
clergy and god men, the promotion of religiosity and
rituals comes to the fore. It is true that at times
earthly issues are also talked about, but in political
sphere it is the emphasis that matters. For the
poltics based on cultural nationalism the issues of
bread, butter, housing, education, employment and
health are non issues. Be it Taliban, or Hitler,
Sudarshan or- Rajnath Singh, the emphasis is on the
religious identity related matters. And in a way this
is a conscious ploy to undermine the needs of poorer
sections of society, their rights and their welfare.

During freedom movement the peddlers of cultural
nationalism, Hindu or Muslims, were not supported by
the vast sections of Indian people. They had a narrow
base in the elite sections of society which slightly
broadened due to the communal propaganda over a period
of time. A tiny section of middle class intellectuals
joined the Landlord-Kings and produced the ideology of
Hindutva and Islamism which drew some more borderline
segments of society and could mobilize some
downtrodden. Despite that, it remained marginal
phenomenon but was potent enough to cause the violence
in the name religion. This politics with the ideology
of cultural nationalism (Muslim and Hindu both) played
in the hands of British policy of divide and rule
resulting in partition of the country. In Pakistan,
the upholders of communal politics, the practitioners
of this ‘cultural nationalism’ were in power most of
the time and their politics led to the spilt, further
partition of Pakistan into Pakistan and Bangla Desh.
In Sri Lanka similar politics played a crucial role in
oppressing the Tamils leading to the rise of LTTE. In
India it has come up in stronger fashion from the
decade of 1980s resulting in the horrific violence
against the minorities geared around the Ram Temple
issue. To reemphasize, the word used by Mr. Singh,
‘integral humanism’, which incidentally is very
popular in Sangh combine, was also used by the fascist
regimes of Germany and Italy to unleash internal
repression against minorities and to launch aggression
against the neighboring countries.

In a way Mr. Singh is right when he says that for
Sangh combine, his concept of India is the one like
that of Israel. Israel came in to play a crucial role
for the imperialist designs of controlling the oil
rich zone and has been operating on the principles of
Zionism, again a concept serving the elite Jews in
today’s times. It was presented as the Jewish homeland
but it had support of just a small section of Jews,
the affluent ones’. Israel’s aggression against
Palestinians runs parallel to the internally
repressive state. No wonder Mr. Singh sees it fit to
compare his notion of Hindu Rashtra, cultural
nationalism, as an ideal to be pursued.

Incidentally there are various contradictory phenomena
around the concept of nationalism doing rounds at the
same time. They are struggling against each other
simultaneously. On one hand we have the process of
Globalization breaking the barriers between nations at
economic level, though it is highly loaded in favor of
the rich nations. At the same time in different states
the sectarian concepts of nationalism are coming up in
a serious way.  Even in U.S. the Nation is being
identified as an Anglo Protestant English speaking
country. Samuel Huntington the one to give ideological
veneer to the US imperialist designs, has come out
with a book, ‘Who are we’? And quite like M.S.
Golwalkar he too identifies elite section of US as the
defining axis of US, an Anglo Protestant English
speaking nation. The similarities between the
sectarian ideologies cutting across different nations
is not just incidental. It articulates the ideology of
affluent who claim to own the country because of
religion, caste or creed. One does not know whether
Huntington, the ideologue of “Clash of Civilizations”,
‘backward’ Islam versus advanced West, has read
Golwlalkar or not, but surely he will be ‘delighted’
to see the similar wave length of the thought process.
No wonder Huntington happens to be favorite of the
Hindu right!

The boundaries of nations states should be breaking
and paving way for a borderless human society. The
sectarian but powerful sections, who strengthen each
other, are seeing the dangers of pluralism, boundary
less world and so the narrow sectarian concepts of
Nationalism, appealing to the orthodox-upholders of
status quo, are being projected far and wide. It seems
the progressive ideologies, the one's standing for the
interests of poor and deprived sections of World have
to give a deeper thought to enhance the rights of
every living human being, to come back to ideas and
movements which can actualize the U.N. Charter of
Human Rights, to be able to march towards a more
humane society, looking at all human beings as equal
irrespective of their religion, language, caste,
gender or creed.


____



[2]

(Communalism Watch
January 24, 2006
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/01/peoples-critique-of-communal-violence.html)


BETRAYALS AND MISSED OPPORTUNITIES:
THE COMMUNAL VIOLENCE (PREVENTION, CONTROL AND REHABILITATION OF
VICTIMS) BILL, 2005

A People's Critique


ANHAD
HRLN
Jan Vikas

Anti-communal groups, human rights organizations and women's groups
haveexpressed their strong opposition to the Communal Violence
(Prevention,Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill which the UPA
governmentrecently tabled in Parliament. Earlier drafts of this bill
were rejected bythese citizen groups, but few of their concerns have
been addressed in theBill which was hurriedly tabled in the Rajya Sabha
on December 5, 2005. Ademand for such a bill had been made in light of
an increasing atmosphere ofcommunalisation across the country and
particularly in light of the eventsof Gujarat 2002. On neither front
does the Bill deliver.

A people wearied and battered by the politics of hatred that swept
thecountry during almost two preceding decades, have been let down
gravely bythe Bill recently introduced by the UPA government in the
Rajya Sabha. Inthe deeply troubled times that the nation is passing
through, the Bill wasawaited with great hope by not just minorities, but
by other citizens aswell who are intensely concerned about imminent and
serious threats mountedto the secular character of our society and
polity. The Bill does notrespond significantly to the criticisms and
fears voiced when its firstdraft was released a few months ago outside
Parliament. The governmentinstead appears bent on diluting, even
subverting the spirit of one of itsmost important commitments on being
voted to power. As this Bill is beingconsidered by Parliament, a deep
sense of disappointment and anguishprevails.

The basic problem with the Bill is with the foundation of objectives
onwhich its entire edifice is constructed. This foundation of the Bill
is soflawed that its architecture cannot be remedied by improvements in
specificcomponents. The preamble of the Bill itself states that the Bill
aims to 'toempower the State Governments and the Central Government to
take measures toprovide for the prevention and control of communal
violence which threatensthe secular fabric, unity, integrity and
internal security of the nation andrehabilitation of victims of such
violence'. The immediate context for theBill is the Gujarat massacre of
2002 and its aftermath, but also Nellie in1983, Delhi in 1984, Bhagalpur
in 1989, Mumbai in 1992-93, and a long listof such episodes of national
shame and trauma in which democraticallyelected state administrations
were openly partisan and neglectful or evenactively participant in the
massacre of segments of the populace thatfollowed a different faith from
those of the majority of their fellowcitizens.

Let us consider by way of illustration Gujarat as the most recent, and
themost disgraceful of all of these acts of state abdication and
collusion withcommunal organisations. The state machinery was found by
many independentcitizen investigators to be gravely complicit in
planning and executing themost brutal massacre since Independence of
women and children of theminorities. It did little to control the
violence for weeks, refused to setup relief camps or to rehabilitate the
victims. Almost four years later,many more than half those who lost
their homes are unable to return becauseof continuing fear. The legal
process has been subverted.

To legally prevent the recurrence of situations like this is a matter
notjust of security and restored trust, but actually of life and death
formillions of citizens of minority faiths. Its urgency is enhanced by
the factthat over the last two decades, political formations with openly
communalagendas have directly or through their political proxies,
captured politicalpower in many states of the country, and indeed along
with a bunch ofopportunistic political formations have emerged as the
main alternativecontenders for power in the central government in the
future. The prospectof the infamous Gujarat experiment of a state
sponsored terrorising ofminority citizens is a realistic imminent fear
with which millions ofcitizens are living in states like Rajasthan,
Orissa, Madhya Pradesh,Chatisgarh and Jharkhand. It is for this reason
that the Bill pledged in thecommon minimum programme of the coalition
government was so eagerly awaited.But what this law sets out to do is
not to protect innocent citizens fromfuture possible acts of criminal
communal collusion of their elected rulers,and the civilian and police
arms of their administrations. Instead, in itsstatement of objectives
itself, it sets out perversely to vest those samestate administrations
with even more powers.

Do the framers of the Bill, or the members of the union cabinet who
approvedits submission to Parliament, genuinely believe that Narendra
Modi in 2002,or indeed the administrations of Delhi, Nellie, Bhagalpur
or Mumbai whenthese also burnt in the past in raging communal fires, did
not act becausethey did not have enough powers to do so? Was the failure
of disempowered,or of criminally malafide public authority in each of
these cases? Even ajunior local policeperson or civil administrator has
all the powers underthe law as it exists, that is needed to quell any
communal conflagration.Indeed, no riot can continue beyond even a few
hours without the active,wanton, and in my opinion manifestly criminal
complicity of stateauthorities. If this is the case, what purpose is
served by a law that setsout as its objective to further 'empower' these
same state and centralgovernments?

The core sections of the Bill from Chapter II to Chapter VI, relating to
theprevention of communal violence, the investigation of communal crimes
andthe establishment of special courts will only come into effect if the
Stategovernment issues a notification. All opposition governments could
ignorethis statute completely. Moreover, a state government may issue
anotification bringing the statute into force in the state and yet
render itsterile by not issuing notifications declaring certain areas to
becommunally disturbed areas. The Act can be invoked only in very
extremecircumstances where there is criminal violence resulting in death
ordestruction of property and there is danger to the unity or
internalsecurity of India. There are many serious communal crimes which
may notresult in death such as rape. Similarly, social and economic
boycotts,forced segregation and discrimination will not fall within the
ambit of thestatute because they do not result in death or the
destruction of property.Even in such extreme circumstances the Act only
prescribes that thegovernment 'may' act by issuing a notification. On
the face of it, the dutyto act is not mandatory.

Chapter III relates to the prevention of communal violence and appears
toempower the district magistrate to prevent the breach of peace. The
powersof executive magistrates and policepersons delineated here already
existunder numerous statutes, such as to requisition the armed forces to
controlcommunal violence; to control any assembly or procession;
prohibitloudspeakers; confiscate arms, ammunition, explosives and
corrosivesubstances; conduct searches; prohibit displays or 'harangues',
orgatherings that may incite communal sentiments; and externment of
those who may disturb communal peace. The listing of these powers in the
new Bill is at best cosmetic and redundant, as it adds little to what is
already legallypermissible for these authorities to suppress communal
violence. The earlierdraft had included new powers, attempting to
reintroduce through thebackdoor draconian provisions from the repealed
POTA and the abused andfeared Armed Forces Act. The government was
mercifully sensitive to proteststhat enhanced state powers in communal
situations will mainly be misusedagainst minorities, and it withdrew
these provisions from its new draft.

For citizens living under the shadow of communally driven (or
opportunistic)governments, then, what this Bill offers a listing of
powers of thegovernment that mostly already exist, that they may use to
protect them ifthey choose to do so. What they needed instead was a law
that enhanced thepowers of citizens in relation to such governments, and
not of thegovernments in relation to its citizens. They needed a law
that did notmerely enable their governments to act when communal
violence unfolded. Theyneeded a law which made it mandatory for the
government to act, in clearlycodified ways, before, during and after
communal violence, and which madefailures of these governments to act,
leading often to the avoidable loss oflife and property, or sexual
violence, criminal acts for which they can becharged, tried and
punished. There is virtually nothing in the law that doesthis; indeed,
as observed, this is not even the stated intention of the law.That is
why this is not a Bill that can be improved by tinkering with a fewof
its clauses. Its basic premises are so flawed, that it needs to
berejected in its entirety and replaced by a law of very different
objectives,which genuinely protects the human rights and security of
citizens incommunal contexts and enables them to hold their governments
accountable fortheir acts of omission and commission.

The Bill does contain one clause for punishment of public officials who
failto perform their duties. Section 17 (1) provides for punishment
withimprisonment which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with
both, forany public servant who '(e)xercises the lawful authority vested
in him underthis Act in a mala fide manner, which causes or likely to
cause harm orinjury to any person or property'; or '(w)illfully omits to
exercise lawfulauthority vested in him under this Act and thereby fails
to prevent thecommission of any communal violence, breach of public
order or disruption inthe maintenance of services and supplies essential
to the community.' It isexplained that offences under this section
include wilful refusal by anypolice officer to protect or provide
protection to any victim of communalviolence; to record any information
relating to or to investigate orprosecute the commission of any
scheduled offence.

There are however two fatal catches to this otherwise promising segment
ofthe Bill. It neglects to hold accountable the command authority of
electedleaders like the chief minister and home minister for these
lapses, and atbest can result in the mild punishment of some junior
policepersons. Evenmore fatal is the proviso that no court shall take
cognizance of an offenceunder this section except with the previous
sanction of the stategovernment. In the context of state governments
with communally drivenmalafide intent, the chances of even police
officials being punished underthis clause are very remote.

It is well known that hundreds of cases throughout the country
arelanguishing because the state governments have refused to grant
sanction forprosecution of public servants. In any case sections 217 to
223 of IPCcover offences by public servants such as the shielding of
criminals,preparing false records, making false report in courts,
initiating falseprosecutions and allowing criminals to escape.

Recognising the role of the police in communal riots, it is critical
thatthe immunity granted under sections 195, 196 and 197 of the
CriminalProcedure Code be omitted in any statute on communal crimes. No
juniorofficer should be allowed to take the defence that he was ordered
by hissuperior to commit the crime. Nor should any commanding officer be
allowedto take the defence that he or she was unaware of the crimes that
werecommitted on one's beat.

Similarly, public prosecutors who side with the accused persons and
enablethem to be released on bail or are instrumental in their acquittal
oughtalso to come under legislative scrutiny. A section is necessary to
allowthe trial judge who finds the performance of the prosecutor
unsatisfactoryto remove him from the case.

Chapter XII which grants immunity to the police and army is
particularlyinsensitive. Various Commissions of Enquiry including the
Justice RanganathMishra Commission (Delhi riots), the Justice Raghuvir
Dayal Commission(Ahmednagar riots), the Justice Jagmohan Reddy
Commission (Ahmedabad riots),the Justice D.P. Madan Commission (Bhiwandi
riots), the Justice JosephVithyathil Commission (Tellicheri riots), the
Justice J. Narain, S.K. Ghoshand S.Q. Rizvi Commission (Jamshedpur
riots), the Justice R.C.P. Sinha andS.S. Hasan Commission (Bhagalpore
riots), and the Justice SrikrishnaCommssion (Bombay riots) have found
the police and civil authorities passiveor partisan and conniving with
communal elements.

There are other problems with the Bill as well. The definition of
'communal violence' is limited to a listing of offences under existing
acts, such as the Indian Penal Code,1860; the Arms Act, 1959; the
Explosives Act,1884; the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act,
1984; the Places of Worship(Special Provisions) Act, 1991; and the
Religious Institutions(Prevention of Misuse) Act,1988. Given the
character of communal violence as it is unfolding in many parts of the
country, a much wider definition is needed, not just of violence, but of
discrimination and human rights violations on communal grounds.

The act should cover communal crimes such as hate speeches and
mobilisation; spreading ill-will and distrust between communities;
communal literature and textbooks as well as classroom teaching; forced
ghettoisation and expulsion and exclusion from mixed settlements;
discrimination in employment, tenancy, admission to educational
institutions etc on communal grounds; discrimination on communal grounds
by professionals like doctors and lawyers; and so on. Many of these such
as hate speeches are addressed by existing laws, but the flaw is the
same, that there are no binding duties of the state to act against
these. In fact, governments are mostly known to withhold permission to
prosecute hate speakers and writers, even when complaints are registered
against them by human rights groups. The mandatory duties of the state
under this Bill should therefore include prevention of these communal
crimes as well, such as prohibiting and punishing (in a purely
illustrative list) hate speeches and writings of the kind that Bal
Thackerey, Modi and Tagodia routinely indulge in; the pedagogic content
and methods used openly in Sangh schools; or refusals to rent a house or
employ someone on the grounds of their faith, caste or gender.

The Bill does little to address gender violence, which has become the
feature of most communal incidents, where the bodies of women are used
as battlefields to establish dubious communal male superiority.
Incidents like Gujarat in 2002 alert us to the need for a much wider
definition of sexual violence (generally, but also specifically in the
communal context) to include acts like stripping before women or
stripping them, insertion of objects, piercing, sexual taunts etc, and
should not require evidence of actual penetration of the kind required
under rape laws. The Bill needs to change rules of evidence to shift the
burden of proof to the accused, rather than place it on the women
survivors. It needs to protect the dignity and confidentiality of the
survivors of violence at all stages, from recording of complaints and
statements, to investigation and trial. There should be mandatory
services of counselling and medical attention to the survivors.

An unresolved controversy relates to whether the powers of the central
government should be extended in the event of a state government failing
to perform its legal and moral duties in expeditiously and impartially
controlling large-scale outbreaks of communal violence. This would be
important if the central government is comprised of parties and
coalitions of different political persuasion from those of the state
government. The Bill remains conservative in this, and section 55
requires the Central Government, in cases where it is of the opinion
that 'there is an imminent threat to the secular fabric, unity,
integrity or internal security of India which requires that immediate
steps' to 'draw the attention of the State Government to the prevailing
situation'; and to direct it 'to take all immediate measures to
suppress' the violence. If the state government fails to act, the Bill
provides first for the central government to declare any area within a
State as 'communally disturbed area' under this Bill; but this is not
significant because, as we observed, such declaration does not require
mandatory actions by the state government to control the violence. The
Bill also provides for central 'deployment of armed forces, to prevent
and control communal violence', which would have been very significant,
but the provision is neutralised by the requirement that this central
deployment is legally permissible only in the event of 'a request having
been received from the State Government to do so'. In other words, only
the state government still retains the power to decide about the
deployment of armed forces to control communal violence. Once more the
Bill elaborately ensures that nothing changes in the prevailing legal
position, although it is made to appear superficially that it does.

The Bill takes some halting steps to fill one major gap that exists in
the law at present. There is no law that defines the rights of survivors
of communal violence to rescue, relief and rehabilitation. The Bill once
again provides no protection against a government like that of Modi, who
refused for the first time in a major communal conflict after
Independence, to even set up relief camps, announced no rehabilitation
package, and has yet to take steps to secure the return of more than
half the survivors who fled or lost their homes in the carnage of 2002.
There is no defence against the contempt displayed by Modi against a
segment of his own citizens when he was asked why he did not set up
relief camps. He is reported to have replied, 'I refuse to set up
baby-producing factories'.

Instead Chapter VII deals with relief and rehabilitation in a largely
ceremonial manner. It calls for the setting up of national, state and
district level 'Communal Disturbance Relief and Rehabilitation Councils'
but nowhere in the Statute does the right of the victim to relief,
compensation and rehabilitation emerge 'as' 'a right' according to an
acceptable international standards. When the state does not protect the
lives and properties of the minorities during communal carnages, should
the victim not have a right to compensation and alternative livelihoods
at the cost of the state? An answer to this was expected in the statute.
Is a relief camp to lie at the discretion of government and NGOs with
shabby provisions being made on a temporary basis, or is it the right of
the victim to be provided immediate relief according to well established
norms? All this is sadly missing in the Bill.

Chapter IX deals with the funds for relief and rehabilitation and once
again the shallowness of the central government stands exposed. The
financial memorandum to the Bill which is supposed to indicate the
liability of government ends on a dismal note: "As involvement of
expenditure depends mainly on the occurrence of communal violence, it is
difficult to make an estimate of the expenditure from the Consolidated
Fund of India". The entire orientation is in keeping with the approach
seen in the rehabilitation of Tsunami victims of getting the NGOs to
spend for the entire rehabilitation.

The Bill needs instead to lay down once again legally binding duties of
rescue, relief and rehabilitation; the relief camps must meet
internationally endorsed standards for refugees; the government must
give a subsistence support until it is possible for survivors to return
with a sense of security to their homes; and rehabilitation must ensure
that people who survive must be restored to a situation better than that
in which they were placed before the violence. There must also be
special measures prescribes for widows and orphans.

The Bill provides once again on the initiative of the state government,
the establishment of special investigation teams and special courts. It
lays down time limits for investigation of communal crimes of three
months, beyond which the cases will be reviewed by senior police
officials. The only qualification it lays down for public prosecutors is
seven years of service, but there is no impartial process of selection,
and no bar to those with known partisan links hostile to the interests
of the victims. (It is established before the Supreme Court that many
public prosecutors were members of Sangh organisations in Gujarat,
therefore instead of prosecuting the accused, they openly acted as their
defence.) The law needed to go much further in defending the rights of
the victims, and the role that their lawyers could play if the
prosecution is partisan. There is also the arguable provision for
enhanced punishment of those convicted of communal crimes, but the
conventional wisdom remains that the certainty of punishment is a much
greater deterrence than its severity.

The Bill contains some provisions for witness protection under section
32, which provides that for keeping the identity and address of the
witness secret. These measures include '(a) the holding of the
proceedings at a protected place; (b) the avoiding of the mention of the
names and addresses of the witnesses in its orders or judgments or in
nay records of the case accessible to public; and (c) the issuing of any
directions for securing that the identity and addresses of the witnesses
are not disclosed.'

These measures are welcome but hardly go far enough. The witness
protection under Section 32 has been drafted without application of mind
as to the Law Commission's recommendations. The main aspects of modern
day witness protection which shields the witness from the accused,
compensates her for the trauma of the crime and the trial and creates
new identities and a new life for the witness is totally missing.
Genuine witness protection includes a substantial financial obligation
of the state to take care of the witness and her family in secrecy,
often for the rest of their lives.

No law by itself can defend people against injustice. People need to be
mobilised and organised to secure their rights. But laws can be vital
democratic instruments by which people can resist and shield themselves
against injustice, particularly when the governments they elect defy
their moral and constitutional duties by failing to secure them against
communal mobilisation and crimes. The law that Parliament is considering
is critical for the defence not just of the lives and properties of
minorities, but of their equal rights and protection under the law, and
indeed the secular character of the polity. Let our law makers not miss
this critical moment in our history to allow mounting and endemic state
injustice in communal situations to persist unchallenged.



____


[3]  (Communalism Watch - 24 January 2006
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/01/to-home-minister-of-india-suggestions.html) 



AN OPEN LETTER TO THE HOME MINISTER OF INDIA


Date: 24th Jan 2006

To

Mr. Shivraj Patil,
Honourable Home Minster of India.

Subject: SUGGESTIONS FOR AMENDING THE COMMUNAL
VIOLENCE (PREVENTION), CONTROL AND REHABILITATION OF
VICTIMS) BILL, 2005 – BILL NO. CXV OF 2005


Sir,

At the outset, we thank you on behalf of the
‘Citizens’ Initiative, Mumbai’ for giving us an
opportunity to attend this meet [today in Mumbai], get
to know your points of view and convey ours.

We must also thank you for taking the initiative to
legislate the subject Act for which there arose strong
and widespread demands in the wake of the Gujarat
bloodbath sponsored by the state government. It is
indeed some matter of gratification, in the current
era of cynicism and duplicity that the UPA government
is now going to honour the commitment given in the
Common Minimum Programme drawn up as the roadmap for
governance. That some of the suggestions proffered by
various human rights and minority rights organisations
have been incorporated in the Bill before placing it
before the Rajya Sabha further raises our hopes
regarding the noble intentions of the government.

So we will take this opportunity to place our
well-deliberated views before you for acceptance and
incorporation.

Before going into the specifics, we will like to make
a couple of broad points.

‘Communal violence’ has three clearly identifiable
stages: before during and after. The Act, in order to
be effective must have provisions to adequately
intervene in all the three stages. It must aim to nip
the build up, in the form of rumour mongering, hate
campaigns etc, in the bud. It must control the
violence, while it’s on, and protect/rescue the
(actual and potential) victims. And finally, after the
violence is over the victims must be compensated and
rehabilitated and the culprits quickly identified and
brought to book.
It’s our experience that the state administration and
the political leadership, more often than not, are
complicit. Even the central government connives. The
Gujarat bloodbath is the grossest, but not the only,
example. Hence, there must be autonomous institutions
with adequate representations from the likely victim
communities to ensure proper implementation of the
Act. Other measures must also be taken to ensure
unbiased approach on the part of the State.
Unaccounted powers in the hands of the administration
are only going to further compound the woes of the
victims, so a fine balance is to be maintained.


Suggestions:

The name be changed to ‘Sectarian and Communal
Violence (Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of
Victims) Bill, 2005.The change of nomenclature is
called for to widen the ambit of the Act to include
violence directed against any ‘minority/marginalized
group’ defined/constituted in terms of religion,
caste, language, ethnicity etc. This definition must
be suitably incorporated in the body of the Bill.

The Bill must come into operation all over the
country, except for J&K, once it’s passed by the
parliament and the gazette notification is issued in a
time bound manner.

The Bill must provide for the constitution of a body
at the state level to be appointed by the governor
consisting of the representatives of the SHRC, State
Minorities Commission, State Women’s Commission and
State SC and ST Commission to be chaired by a sitting
High Court judge nominated by the Chief Justice of the
High Court. (The states where any of such bodies
is/are not in existence, the corresponding national
body would nominate a member who would be otherwise
eligible to be a member of such a state level body.)
This body would advise the state government in the
subject context, either suo moto or on receipt of
complaints. Its advice as regards declaration of
‘disturbed areas’ would be mandatory. The NHRC should
also be empowered to issue formal advices to this
Committee in this behalf, which has to be taken due
note of.

The Section 153(a) of the IPC must be incorporated,
with the deletion of the provision pertaining to the
requirement of prior state sanction.

No prior state sanction must be required for
proceeding against any delinquent state functionary.

The provision for vicarious criminal liability must be
incorporated to cover up to the highest level of
command chain.

Loss of life must be compensated by the states on a
uniform basis throughout the country. Loss of property
must be compensated to the extent of full replacement
value. Norms must be fixed for compensation for sexual
violence, properly defined. The case for compensation
must be reviewed by the state level committee
mentioned above. The compensation must be paid fully
and quickly. This must not be linked with the criminal
cases filed against the perpetrators.

The bar for declaring an area ‘disturbed’ must be
clearly defined and not kept too high.

The prosecutors for criminal trials must be appointed
only after due consultation with the victims and with
the approval of the state-level committee.

Special forces must be raised with adequate
representations from the various minorities and women.

All the provisions of the Bill must be brought in
alignment.

We hope you will kindly consider our suggestions with
due seriousness and suitably incorporate these to make
the Act really effective as we all intend to.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely

Mohammed Anees

Convenor, Organising Committee

Citizens Initiative on the Communal Violence Bill

Organising Committee
Adv Yusuf Muchhala(Chairperson, Organising Committee),
Dr Ram Puniyani (Ekta), Adv Mihir Desai(ICHRL), Dolphy
Dsouza(BCS), Adv  Saeed Akhtar, Kamayani(CEHAT), Jatin
Desai(PIPFPD), Sukla Sen(PMI), Adv Sameena
Dalwai(ICHRL), Fr.Allwyn D'silva(DRTC), Nanji Khemji
Thakkar(NKT, College), Farid  Batatawala,
A.D.Golandaz(AITUC), Meena Menon(Focus), Flavia
Agnes(Majlis), Asad bin Saif(BUILD), Syed
Iftekhar(Editor,  Shodhan), Jyoti Punwani, Ravi
Duggal(CEHAT), Louis  Dsouza, Dr.
Rehmatullah(AICMEUS), Lionel Fernandes, Adv Sagheer
Khan, Smita  Shah(RYS), Haroon Mozawala(Khaire Ummat
Trust), Saumya Uma(WRAG), Dr Azeemuddin(MPJ), Sarfaraz
  Arzoo(Editor, Hindustan)



____



[4] (Communalism Watch 24 January 2006
http://communalism.blogspot.com/2006/01/california-educators-hear-pleas-to.html)


http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/

CALIFORNIA EDUCATORS HEAR IMPASSIONED PLEAS FROM CONCERNED
INDIANS/SOUTH ASIANS TO REJECT THE VIEWS OF HINDU SUPREMACIST GROUPS
IN HISTORY BOOKS

State Board Announces Formation of a Sub-Committee to Investigate the
Curriculum Commission’s Recommendations

A broad coalition of Indians and other South Asians representing Friends
of South Asia, Coalition Against Communalism, Tamil Sangams of North
America, and various groups representing Dalits were present in force at
the California State Board of Education meeting in Sacramento on January
12, 2006. They were there to express their strong objections to some of
the politically motivated edits to Grade 6 History books adopted by the
Curriculum Commission on December 2, 2005, under intense lobbying from
organizations such as the Vedic Foundation (VF) and the Hindu Education
Foundation (HEF). Speaker after speaker went to the podium to express
their views on the controversy, as members of the Board listened intently.

Earlier, prior to public comments, the chair acknowledged that they were
just beginning to appreciate the complexity of the issue -- the Board
passed a motion to appoint a five-member sub-committee to look into
whether the Curriculum Commission had violated the directives given to
it at the November 9th Board meeting. This decision was welcomed by the
many scholars of South Asia, as well as community groups such as FOSA
and CAC, who had written to the Board pointing out that the Curriculum
Commission had not followed the State Board’s directions, and had
accepted many of the recommendations from the HEF and VF,
recommendations that are historically inaccurate and promote sectarian
ideologies.

Some of the public comments heard at the meeting:

      * Egregious errors and stereotypes in the textbooks must be
        corrected.  By the same token, sectarian doctrines posing as
        history must also be rejected. These are History books, not books
        on religion. Factual and scientific basis should be followed.
      * Parallels were drawn with recent attempts in some states to
        introduce creationism in the guise of "Intelligent Design" into
        Science classes.
      * Many practicing and moderate Hindus emphasized that VF/HEF do not
        represent them or, for that matter, most Hindus and Indians.
      * Attempts to replace "gods and goddesses" with references to a
        God were offensive and patriarchal; and sanitizing the status of
        women by suggesting that they had "different rights" not lesser
        ones, was deplorable.
      * 70 to 80 % of Tamils do not consider themselves to be Vedic
        people, and for a shudra, the mere act of listening to the Vedas
        was considered a sacrilege punishable by death
      * Crude attempts to reinvent Hinduism as monotheistic or to
        "semiticize" it should be rejected since the worship of local
        village gods is common practice even today, and one of the things
        that gives Hinduism much of its richness.
      * Dalit groups expressed shock at having their status obscured in
        the edits and being denied their self-identity. They also decried
        attempts to whitewash the caste system, the worst hierarchical
        system ever invented by humans. History should speak the truth,
        they said.
      * The argument that Dalits and the evils of the caste system should
        not be talked about because the Indian Constitution guarantees
        equality is the same as denying the existence of African Americans
        and continuing racism in the U.S. because the U.S. Constitution
        guarantees equality.
      * Contrary to VF/HEF's assertions, the Aryan migration theory is
        still the prevalent view of historians. The VF/HEF’s anxiety to
        reinvent Aryans as indigenous people is not a scholarly debate;
        and the effort to conflate Indus Valley civilization with
        Vedic/Hindu civilization is aimed at labeling everyone but Hindus
        as foreigners in India.
      * The links between VF/HEF and the Hindu supremacist ideologies of
        the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu
        Parishad (VHP) – who were responsible for the genocidal
        anti-minority violence in Gujarat in 2002 – have been well
        documented, including the involvement of RSS affiliates as
        advisors and activists for VF/HEF. An RSS activist from
        California, attending a RSS meeting in Gujarat, bragged about
        RSS's success in California through HEF.
      * Rewriting Indian history in California is an effort to revive the
        ill-fated effort to rewrite NCERT books in India and must be
        rejected. What the VF/HEF are trying to do here in California is
        being projected by them as an experiment to be repeated elsewhere
        in the world by the Hindu-supremacists RSS and its affiliates.
        Therefore, the Board's decision in California is very significant
        and could head off a dangerous precedence. The Curriculum
        Commission may have violated the California Education Code Section
        60044 against the inclusion of sectarian doctrines in educational
        materials.
      * Speaker after speaker called for rejecting the sectarian edits
        adopted by the Curriculum Commission and the adoption of the edits
        suggested by the Content Review Panel of scholars.
      * VF/HEF wearing the mantle of an aggrieved minority is ironic,
        given that their ideological parent in India scoffs at the very
        notion of minority rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution.
      * The Board was advised of the deplorable tactics of VF/HEF
        supporters, such as the vicious slander campaign against Harvard
        Professor Witzel, and their previous attempts to smear well
        known historian Romila Thapar when she was nominated to the Kluge
        Chair at the Library of Congress.

This was the first time the Board had heard from a broad group of
Indian-Americans and others of South Asian heritage. We are confident
that it was a wake-up call to them about the deeper significance of the
RSS project in California and gave them a better appreciation for the
enormous diversity of Indian and South Asian communities. We are very
hopeful that truth and scholarly approach will prevail; that obvious
errors and egregious stereotypes will be removed; and that supremacist
doctrines adopted by the Curriculum Commission will be rejected. In the
end, children in California will be the ultimate victors in this
controversy.

The Board will announce its final recommendations for edits to the
history textbook once the Sub-committee has completed its inquiry.
While the timeline for the final changes is not clear at this point, it
is obvious that the Board understands the urgency of the issue and is
moving as rapidly on this as possible.

If you feel as strongly about this issue as we do, it is of utmost
importance to make your views known to the Board as they deliberate over
the final resolution of this matter.

Please write or fax to the Board at:

      * President Glee Johnson-- (916) 319-0827. Fax: (916) 319-0176.
        Email: Jack O'Connell joconnell at cde.ca.gov, Tom
        Adams tadams at cde.ca.gov
      * Deputy Superintendent Sue Stickel, Curriculum & Instruction Branch
        -- Phone: (916) 319-0806.  Fax: (916) 319- 0103 Email:
        sstickel at cde.ca.gov
      * Assembly Member Jackie Goldberg; Chair of the Education Committee
        -- Fax: (916) 319-2145 Goldberg at asm.ca.gov
      * Secretary Alan Bersin -- Fax: (916) 323-3753; kheinrich at ose.ca.gov
      * Chief Counsel Karen Steentofte -- Fax: (916) 319-0176
        ksteento at cde.ca.gov

And please write to the Indian-American media that it is their job to
present the diverse views of the community and to not act as a
mouthpiece for the RSS and its affiliates here.

      * India Abroad: editorial at indiaabroad.com, Fax: 212-727-9730
      * India West: news at indiawest.com, Fax: (510) 383-1155
      * Indian Express, North America: info at iexpressusa.com Fax. (212)
        594-8848

Thank you for caring,
Volunteers at Friends of South Asia (FOSA) and Coalition Against
Communalism (CAC)
mail[at]friendsofsouthasia.org
communal_harmony[at]yahoo.com


____


[5]


TIME Asia Magazine
Jan. 16, 2006
    	
Books
Within the Chaos
In his dispatches from troubled countries, Amitav Ghosh is a
participant, not just an observer
BY PICO IYER


Sunday, Jan. 08, 2006

When Amitav Ghosh clambers into a tiny relief plane in the Andaman and
Nicobar Islands, just six days after the 2004 tsunami devastated the
area, he finds himself next to a loud, officious-seeming, irascible man
in a safari suit, his hair carefully oiled. The visiting writer tries to
sidle away, but soon his obstreperous neighbor is sharing his complaints
with him. Only as they continue talking does Ghosh begin to realize that
the man is, in fact, an epidemiologist, and has lost his wife, his
daughter, the whole careful life he has built up, in the tragedy. The
loudness, Ghosh comes to recognize, is only a lament for what words
cannot convey.

Such moments of collapse, when the writer realizes what he cannot do—and
what he has to do, as a citizen—are the center of the roaming
anthropologist's new collection of essays, Incendiary Circumstances. The
title comes from a piece in which Ghosh, sitting at his desk in Delhi,
working on his first novel, in 1984, suddenly sees the tranquil world
around him go up in flames in the wake of Indira Gandhi's assassination.
Hours before, he was just another student and aspiring author, hovering
over his notebook in a part of Delhi called Defence Colony; overnight,
he becomes an activist of sorts, going out into the streets to shout
Gandhian slogans with the other everyday citizens trying to quell the riots.

It is part of Ghosh's curious luck that he often seems to be in the
thick of things: he was a schoolboy in Sri Lanka just before civil war
broke up the island, and he was living in rural Egypt when villagers
around him started going to Saddam Hussein's Iraq in search of jobs. He
was in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001. The disappearance of seeming
paradises has been his lifelong companion. More than that, though, he is
an amphibian of sorts who knows what it is to be both witness and
victim. Though he has a doctorate from Oxford, lives in New York and
teaches at Harvard, Ghosh was born in India, and grew up in Bangladesh,
before moving to Egypt for two years in later life. Where another writer
with his formal standing might simply lament the chaos that broke out
across Asia after the tsunami, or the aftermath of genocide in Cambodia,
Ghosh writes from within the chaos, involved.
	
The balancing of these perspectives has been his gift ever since his
second novel, tellingly called The Shadow Lines. His epic novel of 2000,
The Glass Palace, excavated the imperial history of 19th century Burma
in part to highlight the torn affections of an Indian in 1943, not sure
whether to side with India, or against Britain, in the war. The theme of
his most recent novel, The Hungry Tide, is, to some degree, its very
setting: the swampy area of the Sunderbans, in west Bengal, now sea, now
land, its shifting contours reflecting back to the uncertain allegiances
of the characters who travel through it. How to be true to one's divided
inheritance has always been his driving concern.

In the collection of reports from troubled places assembled in
Incendiary Circumstances, Ghosh begins to find an answer in everyday
humanity and its resilience. Faced by those rioters in Delhi in 1984,
some women stood up to them and, miraculously, reversed the tide of
violence. Following the destruction of their country by the Khmer Rouge,
a handful of survivors in Cambodia in 1981 put on a dance performance,
piecing their lives together like "rag pickers." Writers have to be
solitaries, Ghosh recalls V.S. Naipaul saying, and yet, he seems to
feel, to be useful they have to be participants, too.

Incendiary Circumstances traces, over and over, the perfidy of empires
and the corruption of most governments, but it never loses sight of
individual action and power. And navigating both sides of the shadow
lines within him, Ghosh travels to some of the most difficult places on
earth to bring their voices back to those in places of seeming comfort.
Musing on Sri Lanka, he draws upon the words of Michael Ondaatje, not a
colonizer surveying foreign ground, but a homesick exile looking back on
the world he misses. Reading to a New York audience soon after Sept. 11,
he shares the work of Agha Shahid Ali, a Kashmiri poet who has lived
with civil war and terror all his life. Bringing a young republic a
larger sense of history, and so of suffering, is not the least of the
achievements of this sober and highly dignified book.

o o o

Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times
by Amitav Ghosh

ISBN: 0618378065

_____


[6]


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Buzz on the perils of fundamentalist politics, on
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