SACW | 18 Feb 2006 | Vigil For Peace in Sri Lanka; Bangladesh: Secularism or Segregation; India: Far right shift on Iran; Pakistan India train link; Hindutva in CA; Free speech meet
Harsh Kapoor
aiindex at mnet.fr
Fri Feb 17 21:35:30 CST 2006
South Asia Citizens Wire Dispatch | 18 February, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2219
Contents:
[1] Action and Vigil for a Just Peace in Sri Lanka
[2] Bangladesh: Separating students by religion? - This is against our
Constitution
[3] India: petition protesting about the attack on labour activist Bant
Singh
[4] Far Right Rescues India's Rulers on Iran (J. Sri Raman)
[5] Thar Express leaves for Pakistan (Sandipan Sharma)
[6] Hindutva in California: letter by Professor Vinay Lal to the
President, California State Board of Education
[7] Upcoming event: Free Speech & Fearless Listening:
The encounter with censorship in South Asia (New Delhi, 22-24 Feb)
[8] Book Announcement: Confronting Saffron Demography: Religion,
Fertility, and Women's Status in India by Patricia Jeffery and Roger
Jeffery
____________________________________
[1]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Press contact:
Lavanya Mahendran
phone: 917-301-5815
email: lmahendran at gmail.com
Varuni Tiruchelvam
phone: 347-534-5848
e-mail: varuni at world.oberlin.edu
Action and Vigil for a Just Peace in Sri Lanka
Event February 17, 2006 (TODAY)
(New York, February 17, 2006): In only five days, the Government of Sri
Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) will meet in
Geneva to review the provisions of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement.
In response to these proposed talks and increasing violence in Sri
Lanka, individuals in London, Toronto, and cities around the world are
joining together in solidarity. In New York, on Friday, February 17,
2006 at 4:30 P.M. in front of the United Nations (Ralphe Bunche Plaza at
43rd Street and 1st Avenue) individuals committed to a Sri Lanka free of
bigotry, violence and exploitation will gather to voice demands for a
peace with human rights and democracy in the country. The event will
include elements of street theater, art, and song, concluding with a
candlelight vigil to honor the lives of people who have been affected by
the ongoing violence.
This is not just one act, but part of an urgent dialogue that must
persist despite fear, intimidation and the pressure of silence.
Media coverage has focused on tensions between the LTTE and the
Government of Sri Lanka. However, in the year after the tsunami, and
during the four year span of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement, human rights
violations and attacks against democracy have continued. In the past
four months political killings, torture, abduction, violence against
women, arbitrary arrests, child recruitment and extortion have risen
dramatically. Moreover, communities often made invisible—the elderly,
people with disabilities and LGBT communities—have been positioned even
more precariously. Marian Thambynayagam, an organizer of the event,
stressed the vulnerability and frustrations of people living in the
North and East of Sri Lanka: “People of all communities are tired of
war. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to leave their
homes —repeatedly— because of the war and the tsunami. Children are
forced to take up arms, and abuses against women are rising. These are
issues that should concern us all.”
While the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE have recently agreed to
discuss the formal implementation of the ceasefire agreement in Geneva
in mid-February, there are concerns that the disregard of civilian
rights and human dignity will continue unabated. Any discussions
regarding the ceasefire agreement should focus on its human rights
provisions. An end to war and violence in Sri Lanka is also not possible
without a permanent political solution that addresses minority
aspirations. Ms. Thambynayagam said, “As with the reconstruction efforts
after the tsunami, there is a danger that Muslim concerns will be
excluded from the political process.”
This group of individuals will join in solidarity to amplify the voices
of those in Sri Lanka who have been forced into silence. The violation
of human rights not only needs to be recognized but put to an end
immediately. The group calls for the following:
- An immediate end to political and extrajudicial killings, abductions,
rape, torture, arbitrary arrests, and all actions of violence against
civilians;
- An immediate end to all forms of child recruitment and a commitment to
release all child soldiers;
- An immediate end to violence against women and the use and
exploitation of women in wartime;
- An immediate commitment to respect civil society including the
safeguarding of minority rights, protection of displaced peoples,
women’s rights, economic rights and freedom of expression and association;
- An immediate end to all acts of violence directed at one another and a
commitment to a peaceful political process to resolve the conflict.
For further information about the event, please contact:
Lavanya Mahendran, phone: 917-301-5815; email: lmahendran at gmail.com
Varuni Tiruchelvam, phone: 347-534-5848; email: varuni at world.oberlin.edu
____
[2]
The Daily Star (Bangladesh)
February 18, 2006
Editorial
Separating students by religion?
This is against our Constitution
We feel concerned by a report of a Chittagong school holding classes
under separate arrangements for the Muslims students and students
belonging to other religions, ostensibly for imparting religious
education. Although the discriminatory arrangement has since been
discontinued, the logic offered by the headmistress for such an
arrangement is flimsy and unacceptable.
It is unfortunately reflective of the mindset of some narrow-focused
persons in our society. It is dangerous not only because of its
long-term ramifications, particularly in the present day context of
Bangladesh, but also because it poses a threat to the very principle
that worked as guiding force in our War of Liberation. This has also
marred our longstanding secular traditions. There is no point in denying
the fact that the entire nation is reeling under the burden of religious
fanaticism and hence this has every potential of sending wrong signals
to those who are active in perpetrating violence in the name of
religion. As much as we are happy that the authority concerned has acted
promptly, our question is, why and how could such a measure in an
educational institution came to be put into practice in the first place?
This has been possible clearly due to negligence of the local education
authorities coupled with lack of monitoring by the relevant Board of
Education. It is our belief that the entire episode could very well be
averted had the relevant authorities maintained their oversight. We
suggest that the authority take a stock to determine whether such
practice is prevalent in other schools and institutions as well.
It may be also helpful to find out whether the headmistress acted alone
or she had the blessings of some persons directly or indirectly
providing assurance of support.
Let us keep our education clean and above any religious or political
bias. Already the state of our education is in a mess; let none take
such actions that would add to the woes, and break the backbone of our
education system. Good education is central to survival and progress of
any nation.
____
[3]
Dear Friends,
We hope you will take the time to sign the petition
protesting about the horrific attack on Dalit
agricultural labour activist Bant Singh whose crime
was bringing the rapists of his minor daughter to
justice to access and sign the
petition click on:
http://new.petitiononline.com/Bant06/petition.html
Funds are urgently needed for Bant Singh’s medical
treatment. If you are based in Britain, you can
contribute by sending a cheque made out to South Asia
Solidarity Group, marked on the back “Bant Singh
treatment fund”. Please send the cheques to South Asia
Solidarity Group c/o LONDEC, 293-299 Kentish Town
Road, London NW5 2TJ. Alternatively you can send a
money order from anywhere in the world directly to the
AIALA c/o CPI (ML) Central Office, U-90, Shakarpur,
Delhi 110092, India and mark it “Bant Singh Treatment
Fund”.
South Asia Solidarity Group
____
[4]
truthout.org
16 February 2006
Far Right Rescues India's Rulers on Iran
By J. Sri Raman
The Ides of March, popularized by William Shakespeare's "Julius
Caesar," will fall on the fifteenth of that month this year. Nine days
before that, however, will come the proverbial Ides of March on the Iran
issue for India's rulers. They need no warning anymore, however, to
beware of the date.
The next meeting of the board of governors of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna on March 6 was expected, until the
other day, to pose a major test for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's
government. The government's left allies, which extend it crucial
outside support in Parliament, had issued a last warning against a
repetition of India's votes of last September, November and February 4
in the IAEA for US-inspired resolutions against Iran.
The left opposition appeared to represent a larger front against
India's crusade against Iran in the company of the Bush-headed West.
While the Singh line seemed to have no support in the opposition, even
the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) seemed divided on the
issue. The far-right opposition, however, has swung to the Prime
Minister's rescue.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of former Prime Minister Atal
Behari Vajpayee has made a U-turn, after pretending all this while a
patriotic indignation over India's Iran vote as a compromise on the
national sovereignty and pride. The somersault, however, did not take
any serious political observer by surprise.
Only on February 9, BJP president Rajnath Singh said that the vote
appeared to have been dictated by "US pressure." He demanded an
all-party meeting on the issue, a demand the other leaders of the BJP
pressed as well in the subsequent days.
The BJP did not let pass the opportunity to link the issue with
Pakistan as well. The party leaders recalled Iran's vote in the UN
against Pakistan's moves aimed at internationalizing the Kashmir
question. India's Iran vote, they argued, was no way of saying thanks to
Teheran.
On February 14, however, came the first promise of a change in the
far right stand. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, the patriarch of
the far-right family) came out with its support for the Iran vote. "It
is not in our [India's] interest to have more nuclear powers in our
vicinity," RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav said. The proposition sounded
almost identical to the Prime Minister's.
What the RSS did not like was the way the vote "in our national
interest" had been made to look like one cast under Washington's
compulsion. Said Madhav: "We would prefer it if an impression were not
created that we were voting in a certain manner as a result of pressure
from the United States."
The very next day, the BJP fell in line. The party's parliamentary
party executive declared that it was "not in India's interest to see
other countries in the neighborhood acquiring nuclear weapons." The
party now linked the Iran issue with Pakistan again, but in quite a
different manner. It said that India should have been "in the forefront
of that vast majority of the international community questioning the
many clandestine devices through which nuclear technology and material
have been transferred to Iran from Pakistan and several other countries."
The wily hand of Vajpayee was clearly apparent behind the
substance, the spirit and the wording of the statement. After the
earlier party statement, critical of the vote, the former Prime minister
was reported to have told the media in an unmistakably sarcastic tone
that he was "ignorant of foreign policy matters." The architect of
India's nuclear weapon program, who proclaimed within months of the
Pokharan tests that "the US is our natural ally," must be happy now with
the party's return to the policy of "strategic partnership" with the
Bush administration.
Vajpayee's thinking ran very much on similar lines on the Iraq
issue after Bush launched a totally lawless war on that country. On
March 22, 2003, he presented a prepared statement in a meeting with
opposition leaders called to work out a consensus on the issue. The
statement was about three considerations India should keep in mind,
according to him, in this regard.
The first was that "India's attention should remain focused upon
its immediate neighborhood." He insisted: "We should be careful that
neither our internal debate, nor our external actions deflect our
attention or that of the world away from the real source of terrorism
from our neighborhood." The argument, obviously about Pakistan, applies
to the Iran issue as well, according to the far right.
The second point was: "The nexus between international terrorism,
fundamentalism and weapons of mass destruction is now being
strengthened.... There is a real threat of rogue nuclear activity and
WMD terrorism. Action against Iraq should not dilute our focus." The
BJP's is an identical argument about Iran.
Thirdly, Vajpayee then said the Iraq crisis had been "very
divisive." He elaborated: "The Security council itself is divided. There
are divisions within Europe and within Nato. Most importantly, the Arab
world itself is divided. Indeed, many Arab countries are cooperating
with the USA and Britain." The argument is eminently repeatable about
Iran, in the BJP's viewpoint.
It is another matter that the pressure of public opinion prevented
the Vajpayee regime from openly supporting the US on Iraq and sending
troops to help the aggressors in that country.
With the 360-degree turnabout of the far right on the Iran vote,
the Singh government can now afford to breathe easy and look forward to
the Bush visit next month.
What remains to be watched, however, is whether popular opinion
proves an impediment to the government's pursuit of an Iran policy - one
that spells an abandonment of India's independence in international
affairs and its proud tradition of support for world peace.
A freelance journalist and a peace activist of India, J. Sri Raman
is the author of Flashpoint (Common Courage Press, USA). He is a regular
contributor to t r u t h o u t.
____
[5]
Indian Express
February 18, 2006
Thar Express leaves for Pakistan
SANDIPAN SHARMA
Posted online: Saturday, February 18, 2006 at 0515 hours IST
Updated: Saturday, February 18, 2006 at 0620 hours IST
Thar Express JODHPUR, FEBRUARY 17: “Jodhpur se Pakistan jaane wali gaadi
platform number ek se rawana ho rahi hai.” This was the announcement
that people of two countries had been waiting for since 1971.
At 11.30 pm on Friday, shouts of joy drowned the sound of the engine as
the Thar Express pulled out of Jodhpur station. As the giant wheels
began moving, 60-year-old Yaar Mohammad tossed his turban out of the
window at his son, shouting: “Ja Raha Hoon Apne Ghar, Hindustan Zindabad.”
In the adjoining compartment, 19-year-old Indira, a Hindu from
Ahmedabad, hugged her mother in delight and yelled to her relatives
outside: “Pakistan bhi Zindabad”.
Separated by two generations of animosity and an equal number of wars,
the two were not the only ones to be swept away by the wave of emotion
as the train made its first journey across the border.
Thousands of people, many of them from far away places in western India,
cheered, clapped and raised slogans of harmony and brotherhood between
the two countries.
Driver Badri Prasad, face sticking out from a a heap of garlands, beamed
and thumped his chest: “I am not a mere driver. India has sent me as its
messenger of love and peace.”
Such was the din that it was difficult to believe that only 260 people
were on board the first train which will enter Pakistan sometime
tomorrow afternoon after a brief stop at Munabao, the last station on
the Indian side. Many were making the journey for the first time. “I had
given up hope of meeting my brother in Hyderabad. Never had the money
for it,” said 65-year-old Mehrunissa from Jaipur, now on her way to
Rahimyar Khan.
Her relief was understandable. Unlike a plane journey that would have
cost more than Rs 15,000, Mehrunissa’s trip to Pakistan would be for
less than Rs 500. But it wasn’t about money alone.
Dozens of banners and placards, which hundreds of people brought with
them in cheerful, noisy processions, summed it up in different
languages—English, Hindi and Urdu. But their message was the same:
“Thank you God for uniting separated souls.”
____
[6]
Outlook (India) | Feb 07, 2006
Full Text
'Palpable Falsehoods'
'Some members of the Indian American community are, we should
recognize, seeking to push through changes in textbooks which no
serious group of scholars of Indian history would view as anything
other than palpable falsehoods.'
VINAY LAL
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20060207&fname=textbooks&sid=2
Full text of the letter by Professor Vinay Lal to the President,
California State Board of Education
27 January 2006
Ms. Glee Johnson
President, California State Board of Education
1430 "N" Street, Room 5111
Sacramento, CA. 95814
FAX: 916-319-0175
Dear Ms. Johnson and Members of the State Board of Education,
I write to you in as a professor of Indian history at UCLA, as an
Indian American presently resident in California who, as the father of
two school-going children, is also heavily invested in the quality of
education offered in state schools, and -- last but not least -- as a
Hindu who is keenly aware of the immensely diverse strands of belief,
religious practice, and history that have gone into the making of what
is today called "Hinduism". I am at this moment concerned with a
review, commenced by the California State Board of Education a few
months ago, of those portions of school textbooks pertaining to
ancient India, and wish to affirm, in the most unequivocal terms, my
unstinting support of the three member faculty review committee (or
content review panel) comprised of Michael Witzel (Harvard), James
Heitzman (UC Davis), and Stanley Wolpert (UCLA). I understand that the
Hindu Education Foundation and the Vedic Foundation, whose views have
largely been endorsed by Professor Shiva Bajpai of California State
University (Northridge), have agitated for certain changes with which
the Content Review Panel (hereafter CRP) is not in agreement, and I
should like to bring to your attention my views, which closely
correspond with those of the CRP, on some disputed matters.
Before proceeding, however, to a brief discussion of some of the
proposed changes, I would like to alert you to some extremely
significant features of this debate. First, though I speak as an
Indian-American, Hindu, resident of California, and a concerned
citizen, in this matter I would like to be viewed in the first
instance as an historian of India and a scholar of Indian studies more
broadly. I find it admirable that the State Board of Education should
permit citizens of the state to weigh in with their opinions about
school textbooks, and it is the procedures allowed by the State Board
and under state law that have permitted so many Indian Americans,
whether Hindu or otherwise, as well as those who are not Indian
Americans, to express their views on the content of school textbooks.
This is, after all, what it means to work under a democratic system
and to allow citizens a significant voice in matters that touch upon
such vital domains as education, schooling, family, and religion. By
the same token, I believe it incumbent upon the State Board to
recognize that not all opinions are equal, and that ultimately the
decision about the text to be incorporated in any textbook is best
left to the determination of those scholars who have devoted their
working lives to a study of the subjects in question. Not only does
the CRP consist of three senior scholars at leading American
universities, but their views were endorsed in a letter to the Board
signed by over 140 members of the profession, many of them senior
scholars at leading research universities around the world, including
the United States and India, who specialize in the study of India and
South Asia. As far as I am aware, the Hindu Education Foundation and
Vedic Foundation and their supporters do not number among their ranks
any academic specialists in Indian history or religion other than
Professor Bajpai himself. It is a remarkable fact that, in a state
which has perhaps the leading public research university system in the
United States, these two foundations could not find a single professor
of Indian history or religion within the UC system (with its ten
campuses) to support their views.Indeed, it would be no exaggeration
to say that they would be hard pressed to find a single scholar at any
research university in the United States who would support their
views.
Secondly, I would urge you to reject the attempt among some members of
the Indian American community to project themselves as Hindus who, by
virtue of being Hindus, are entitled to have their views given
precedence over the views of scholars who may not be Hindus. Their
view that as practitioners of Hinduism they know best is, I regret to
say, indicative of the fact they understand little the religion of
which they claim to be authentic specimens. The genius of Hinduism
resides precisely in the fact that it is a polycentric,
extraordinarily diverse, and decentered faith, and there are more
kinds of Hindus than one could conjure even in one's most fanciful
moments. As a Hindu, I do not recognize many of their claims as valid.
It is also a fact that, like every other religion known to us in the
world, Hinduism has practiced its own forms of discrimination, and I
can say with certainty that the views of those who have been
marginalized by upper-caste Hinduism do not correspond with the views
of many members of the Indian American community who have written to
you and other state officials. To admit all of this is not in the
least to deny the fact that there were egregious, even offensive,
errors in the India units of the textbooks, but the CRP did, of
course, agree with many of the proposed edits. My own work, and that
of most scholars presently working on Indian history and religion, is
informed by the understanding that Hinduism and ancient Indian history
were often grossly misrepresented in scholarly works in the past, but
the whole endeavor of the last three decades has been to avoid these
kinds of mistakes. In the present controversy, it would be highly
misleading to suggest, as the Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education
Foundation and their supporters have done, that their opponents have a
derogatory view of India or of Hinduism or that their views are
somehow intrinsically prejudiced. Nothing could be further from the
truth.
Thirdly, it is important to stress the fact that the changes proposed
by the Hindu Education Foundation and Vedic Foundation, and endorsed
by Professor Bajpai, were also sought to be introduced into history
textbooks in India itself when the Bharatiya Janata Party, known for
its outspoken advocacy of Hindu supremacy, came into political power
and started working closely with avowedly Hindu supremacist
organizations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). These "debates" on Indian history textbooks
have gone through many rounds in India. The Hindu nationalists in
India sought to introduce, indeed sometimes with success in certain
states as Gujarat, which has been governed by Hindu nationalists over
the last several years, changes that can only be described as
reprehensible. It is a well documented fact that, in the history
school textbooks in Gujarat, Hitler is upheld as an example of a
leader who was disciplined and valiantly lifted the country out of its
torpor, just as these history books conveniently forget to mention the
fact that Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Indian of the day, was
assassinated by a Hindu nationalist. No one, needless to say, is
suggesting that these are the changes sought by members of the Indian
American community. But it is worthwhile remembering that the same
history textbooks try to suggest to students that the caste system was
never oppressive, that women in India were endowed with equal rights
as men, that Hinduism is inherently tolerant while the Semitic faiths
are inherently intolerant, and that India is the origin of all the
great accomplishments in human civilization.These are precisely the
changes, among others, which the Hindu Education Foundation (HEF) and
Vedic Foundation (VF) are keen to implement. The textbooks created a
scandal in India, besides introducing havoc into the educational
system, and it is worthwhile pondering what the consequences might be
of introducing ill-founded claims in history textbooks in California.
I may add that I have treated this subject at considerable length in
my book, The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern
India (Oxford University Press, 2003), and I am prepared, if asked, to
furnish you with as many citations as you might require about the
nature of debates over history textbooks in India.
While it is not possible for me to dwell at any great length on the
changes recommended by Prof. Bajpai and disputed by the CRP, it would
be instructive, I believe, to look briefly at three such changes,
pertaining to the role of women in ancient India, the nature of the
caste system, and the early history of Aryans in India. On the
question of women, one of HEF's proposed edits, approved by Prof.
Bajpai, would alter the passage in the Glencoe/McGraw Hill textbook
(p. 245), which presently reads as "Men had many more rights than
women" to the following: "Men had different duties (dharma) as well as
rights than women. Many women were among the sages to whom the Vedas
were revealed." The Upanishads mention not "many" women sages, but
only a couple -- indeed, only one whose name appears constantly,
Gargi. More importantly, all scholars of ancient Indian history are
agreed that the position of men and women in ancient Indian society
was vastly unequal. The view of someone such as D. N. Jha, a
formidable authority on ancient India who has taught at the University
of Delhi for some decades, can reasonably be considered as
representative. Writing in his recent work, Early India (Delhi, 2004),
Jha states of ancient India that "the Brahmanical thinkers defined the
duty of each caste, and imposed social, economic, and political
disabilities on the shudras; they also laid down injunctions
undermining the position of women" (p. 92).
Characterizing women as having different (rather than fewer) rights
than men cannot be viewed other than as a gross attempt to whitewash
the history of patriarchy in ancient India. It is instructive that
Mahatma Gandhi, who has often been criticized by secular and Marxist
scholars in India as having a romantic conception of ancient Indian
civilization, wrote with sadness and characteristic bluntness the
following in 1926: "What can women have done that even men like
Tulsidas [a renowned saint] have used insulting epithets for them?
Whether it was the fault of Tulsidas or of the times, the blemish is
nevertheless there." He adds, referring to an earlier period, "The
ancient laws were made by seers who were men. The women's experience,
therefore, is not represented in them." (Raghavan Iyer, ed., The Moral
and Political Writings of Mahatma Gandhi, Oxford [1987], Vol. 3, pp.
393-94; emphasis added) Should we then, following the logic of the HEF
and the Vedic Foundation, view Gandhi as a self-hating Hindu hostile
to his own religion and culture? It would, of course, be absurd to do
so, but his views on this matter are precisely those which the CRP and
South Asian academics are supporting. Stressing difference rather than
inequality, as the HEF and Prof Bajpai propose, would be rather like
saying that African Americans and white Americans in Jim Crow South
had different rights. We all know that "difference" here is only a way
of disguising the brutal truth that white Americans exercised
dominance over African Americans in virtually every domain of life.
On the nature of the caste system in India, the edits proposed by the
HEF and endorsed by Professor Bajpai, if accepted into the textbooks,
would convey to students the exceedingly erroneous impression that
caste should simply be viewed as another form of social
stratification, similar to class distinctions that have existed in
every society known to human beings, when in fact the caste system -
particularly if we understand it through the categories of 'varna' and
'jati' - was, and is, distinct to the Indian subcontinent. Much worse,
the proposed edits seek to convey the idea, to which students are
alerted by the bland assertion of the fact that in modern India
'untouchability' is outlawed by the Constitution, that the caste
system did not entail systematic forms of discrimination. All the
evidence points to the contrary fact, namely that the caste system
condemned millions of people to permanent and relentless servitude,
and though legislation forbids such discrimination today, the position
of many Dalits remains substantially unaltered. The list of
authorities here is long enough that it would take several pages, but
for ancient India, one could turn to the works of D. N. Jha, Romila
Thapar, Uma Chakravarti, D. D. Kosambi, J. H. Hutton, B. R. Ambedkar,
and P. V. Kane; for modern India, one could turn to B. R. Ambedkar,
Gail Omvedt, Kancha Ilaiah, Dipankar Gupta, Andre Beteille, among many
others. It is astonishing that the word "Dalit", which derives from
the root "dal", meaning scattered, split, and broken up (thus
referring to people whose worldviews and experiences were scattered to
the wind, people so abused that they could not remain whole) which is
correctly used in one of the present textbooks to refer to the lowest
strata of Indian society, should have been deleted by Professor Bajpai
with the observation that only a small strata of the lower castes in
Maharashtra call themselves as such. Dalit is, in fact, the word with
which the people formerly known as the "Untouchables", and now
numbering something in the vicinity of 15-20% of India's population,
prefer to designate themselves. If we cannot even do them the simple
dignity of allowing them to name themselves - and there is almost no
greater power than the power to name - how can we expect that we will
do their history justice?
This brings me to the final point. At various places the HEF and Vedic
Foundation have submitted that the narrative of Aryan migrations to
India, which is about as established a fact as any that one can
encounter in the human sciences, is erroneous. The Aryans came to
India most likely from a place somewhere in the vicinity of
present-day Georgia and the Ural Mountains, more broadly from Central
Asia, and scholars, including Indians, Europeans, Americans, as well
as those who are designated as 'liberal', 'Marxist', or 'positivists',
all accept this as a fact which has been the foundation of huge
amounts of scholarship in such areas as comparative religion,
comparative and Indo-European linguistics, mythology, and history. The
scholars who are best qualified to deliver an opinion on this matter
are those who have devoted a lifetime of study to this subject, who
are conversant with at least a couple of ancient languages and skilled
in reading ancient texts and inscriptions, and I do not believe that
the alleged evidence of some unknown geneticist, or the strong
sentiments of a community some of whose members would like to believe
that Aryans left India for other parts of the world, should be viewed
as constituting evidence of the need to overturn the long established
view on this matter. If the Curriculum Commission and the State Board
of Education find themselves torn by the appeals of both sides, it
would easy enough a matter to consult specialists in Indo-European
studies who are not Indianists by profession and can therefore be
viewed as impartial.I would be pleased to furnish the names of some
such specialists.
In conclusion, it is understandable that Indian Americans, and in
particular the Hindus among them, should view themselves as concerned
about representations of their history and religion which they find to
be inaccurate and offensive. No one, least of all members of the CRP
or specialists of South Asian studies who for years have been engaged
in combating such representations in scholarly and popular books,
journals, and the media, is disputing the fact that history textbooks
should reflect the history, culture and religion of a people as
accurately as possible, and with the cultural sensitivity to which
every group is entitled. But that, we should be clear, is no longer
the issue. To understand the present objectives of the Hindu Education
Foundation and Vedic Foundation and their supporters in the community,
it is necessary to recognize the fact that they are inspired by the
similar Hindu nationalist agenda which has gained a significant
political voice in India since the early 1990s and which has created
severe disruptions in India's educational system. The history that
such nationalists would impose upon students is invariably a sanitized
one, cleansed of unpleasant facts about systematic forms of
discrimination and exploitation which are as much a part of human
history as the aspiration for freedom and liberation from oppression.
Moreover, the achievements of Indian civilization are great enough
that we should not have to manufacture evidence and pretend that the
Aryans originated in India and showered the gift of civilization on
all other peoples. Emboldened by the economic rise of India, the
growing awareness in the world of India's present and past role in
world history, and their own growing numbers in the United States as
well their extraordinary affluence, some members of the Indian
American community are, we should recognize, seeking to push through
changes in textbooks which no serious group of scholars of Indian
history would view as anything other than palpable falsehoods.
This matter has now gone well beyond California, and people in the US,
India, and wherever there are significant Indian communities will be
looking to see how a resolution is achieved. I am afraid that
California's school system will, among such people, fall into
considerable ill-repute if the changes sought to be imposed by the
Hindu Education Foundation and Vedic Foundation are accepted by the
State Board of Education. I very much hope that the State Board will
not be swayed by the consideration that the demands, even when wholly
unreasonable, made by an ethnic and religious community should be
acceded to merely because failure to do so will be viewed by some
members of that community as injurious to their sentiments. In the
last analysis, if the purpose of the textbooks is to impart as
accurate a view of the past as is possible, and if we should wish to
do our students justice and turn them into citizens capable of
reflecting about such matters as equality and inequality, justice and
injustice, then it becomes imperative that the State Board of
Education, the Curriculum Commission, and other bodies should only be
guided by considerations of what constitutes a true body of knowledge.
I am available to answer any further queries you may have, to furnish
evidence on behalf of the arguments advanced in this letter and by
members of the CRP, or to otherwise make myself available to you for
further consultation if you should so desire. Please do not hesitate
to contact me. And I thank you for indulging me for so long.
Yours sincerely,
Vinay Lal, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies
____
[7]
INVITATION TO:
Dear Friend
The Delhi Film Archive and Films for Freedom, in association with Max
Mueller Bhavan and the Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi take pleasure in
inviting you to "Free Speech & Fearless Listening: The encounter with
censorship in South Asia".
The three day event to discuss the challenges confronting cultural
producers in the South Asia region will be held at the Max Mueller
Bhavan (Goethe Institute), Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi from February
22-24, 2006. The event is being supported by Delhi University,
Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Jamia Millia Islamia (Central
University).
Independent documentary filmmakers, journalists, writers and other
professionals have struggled to create spaces for images, words and
ideas that find little support with governments or market-driven
corporations. Meanwhile the transformed nature of information flows at
the cusp of the late 20th and early 21st Century has rendered inadequate
national territories as exclusive sites of study or debate. As newer
technologies of production and dissemination generate an unprecedented
amount of information, there are simultaneously greater demands for
restrictions on speech from state, non-state and corporate players. The
proposed 'roundtable' is an attempt to acknowledge and understand the
circulation and curtailment of speech in the South Asia region and will
attempt to engage with the transformed mediascape to understand how
images and information are being created or erased.
Films for Freedom and the Delhi Film Archive initiative began a
nationwide movement of more than 200 documentary filmmakers who came
together in 2004 to protest against the Mumbai International Film
Festival's (MIFF) decision to introduce a clause demanding censorship
clearance for Indian filmmakers.. Filmmakers responded with a boycott,
and the staging of an alternative festival. 'VIKALP - Films for Freedom'
led the filmmakers to engage in a range of activities that created an
awareness of both documentary films and an understanding about the overt
and covert operations of censorship bodies. Today, Films for Freedom
remains a vibrant platform for a diverse range of speech and
anti-censorship related activities.
We look forward to your participation and contribution in what we hope
will be an on-going conversation. Please find attached the Proposed
Schedule and List of Participants. If you have any questions, please do
not hesitate to get in touch with us at
delhifilmarchive at yahoo.com
delhifilmarchive at gmail.com
Delhi Film Archive
( Amar Kanwar / Anupama Srinivasan / Atul Gupta / Gargi Sen / Gurvinder
Singh/ Kavita Joshi/ Nakul Sood / Rahul Roy / Raj Baruah/ Ranjani
Mazumdar/ Saba Dewan / Sanjay Kak / Sanjay Maharishi / Sabeena Gadihoke
/ Sameera Jain/ Sherna Dastur/ Shikha Jhingan/ Shohini Ghosh /
Shubhradeep Chakravorty / Uma Devi)
----------------------------
Tentative Schedule (as on 16 Feb)
Free Speech & Fearless Listening:
The encounter with censorship in South Asia
Feb 22-24 2006, New Delhi
l 21 Feb 2006 / Tue / Sarai CSDS
4:00 - 7:00 pm Curtain Raiser
Andres Veiel (Munich) Jitman Basnet (Kathmandu/Delhi) Malathi Maithri
(Pondicherry) Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Shuddhabrata Sengupta Chair
l 22 Feb 2006 / Wed / Max Mueller Bhawan
I 9:30 - 10:00 Opening Remarks : Rahul Roy DFA
II 10:00 - 11:30 "Reports from the Region"
Hassan Zaidi (Karachi) Jitman Basnet (Kathmandu/Delhi) Prasanna
Vithanage (Colombo) Tanvir Mokammel (Dhaka) Tenzin Tsundoe (Dharamsala)
Video Intervention: May Nyein (Burma) presented by Nem Davies Amar
Kanwar Chair
tea break
III 12:00 - 1:30 "Framed by the law"
Lawrence Liang (Bangalore) Sara Hossein (Dhaka)
Intervention: Shahid Amin (Delhi)
discussants: Jitman Basnet / Prasanna Vithanage / Hassan Zaidi
lunch
IV 2:30 - 4:00 "Court Encounters"
PA Sebastian (Mumbai) Sara Hossein (Dhaka)
discussants: Lawrence Liang / Prasanna Vithanage / Prashant Bhushan Chair
tea break
V 4:30 - 6:00 "Silences from Srinagar & Shillong"
Aijaz Hussain (Srinagar) P G Rasul (Srinagar) Robin S Ngangom (Shillong)
Tarun Bhartiya (Shillong) Written Intervention: Parvaiz Bukhari
(Srinagar) Sanjay Kak Chair
6:00 - Screening:
Black Box Germany (102 min) dir: Andres Veiel director present
discussant: Shuddhabrata Sengupta
l 23 Feb 2006 / Thu / Max Mueller Bhawan
I 10:00 - 11:00 "Private" Censorship
Andres Veiel (Munich) Shuddhabrata Sengupta Chair
tea break
II 11:30 - 1:30 "Locating Hate & Censorship"
Deepak Mehta (Delhi) Sara Hossein (Dhaka) Shohini Ghosh (Delhi)
Intervention: Arundhati Roy (Delhi) Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Delhi) Jawed
Naqvi (Delhi) Dilip Simeon Chair
lunch
III 2:30 - 4:00 "Writing the body and mind"
Malathi Maithri (Pondicherry) Sanjay Srivastava (Delhi)
In Conversation: Shuddhabrata Sengupta & Shohini Ghosh
tea break
IV 4:30 - 6:00 "Fiction in the Censors Web"
Anurag Kashyap (Mumbai) Tanvir Mokammel (Dhaka) Vimukthi Jayasundara
(Colombo/Paris) Prasanna Vithanage (Colombo) Ranjani Mazumdar Chair
6:00 - Screening:
Sulanga Enu Pinisa (The Forsaken Land)
dir: Vimukthi Jayasundara director present
discussant: Gurvinder Singh
l 24 Feb 2006 / Fri / Max Mueller Bhawan
I 10:00 - 11:30 "Voices made invisible"
Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Ravi Kumar (Chennai) Anil Chamadia
(Delhi) Gargi Sen Chair
tea break
II 12:00 - 1:30 "The Business of Censorship"
CP Chandrashekhar (Delhi) Jawed Naqvi (Delhi) Najam Sethi (Lahore) TBC
Paranjoy Guhathakurta (Delhi)
lunch
III 2:30 - 4:00 Towards a "Counter Culture"
Amar Kanwar (Delhi) Hassan Zaidi (Karachi) Gurvinder Singh (Delhi)
Sudhir Pattnaik (Bhuvaneshwar) Mukul Mangalik (Delhi) Saba Dewan Chair
tea break
IV 4:30 - 6:00 Open Space
6:00 - Screening:
Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on a Full Moon Day)
dir: Prasanna Vithanage director present
(snip) .
_____
[8]
Confronting Saffron Demography: Religion, Fertility, and Women's Status
in India by Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery
Contents:
1. Saffron Demography and the Common Wisdom
2. 'We Five, Our Twenty-Five': Myths of Population out of Control in
Contemporary India
3. A Uniform Customary Code? Marital breakdown and women's economic
entitlements
4. Engendering communalism: Everyday and Institutional aspects of gender
and community
About the Book:
Drawing on over 20 years of field-level research in rural Uttar Pradesh,
these essays challenge Hindutva myths about Muslims in India.
Communalist discourses often portray Muslims as 'backward' because of
purdah, polygamy, illiteracy, high fertility and low women's status. The
authors highlight the falsity and perniciousness of such negative
stereotypes. Pointing to the danger of reifying and rigidifying these
contrasts between Hindus and Muslims, they draw out parallels and
similarities between them, for example in domestic and gender politics,
to argue that Muslim women are not especially oppressed. Moreover, those
differences that remain are compounded and exaggerated by Muslims'
minority position in India and their marginalisation, for example in
relation to health services and to education. These revised and up-dated
essays address these general issues through the examples of fertility,
women's status, and the obstacles to movements that might redress these
problems.
About the Author:
*Patricia Jeffery and Roger Jeffery* are both Professors in Sociology at
the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Their recent books include
'Don't Marry Me to a Plowman: Women's Everyday Lives in Rural North
India' (Westview Press and Vistaar, 1996) and 'Population, Gender and
Politics: Demographic Change in Rural North India' (Cambridge University
Press, 1997).
Separately they have also published Patricia Jeffery and Amrita Basu
(eds) 'Resisting the Sacred and the Secular: Women's Activism and
Politicised Religion in South Asia' (Routledge, 1998 and Kali for Women,
1999); Roger Jeffery and Jens Lerche (eds) 'Social and Political Change
in Uttar Pradesh: European Perspectives' (Manohar, 2003); and Radhika
Chopra and Patricia Jeffery (eds) 'Educational Regimes in Contemporary
India' (Sage, 2005). x + 162 pages, includes bibliography, Demy 8vo
2006
ISBN 81-88789-40-2 Rs200 Paperback
ISBN 81-88789-38-0 Rs450 Hardcover
--
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/
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