SACW | 24 Feb 2006 | Bangladesh: Struggle for Womens Rights; India: Golwalkar, Hindu Rashtra, RSS and xenophobes ; Peace Conference in Bombay

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 24 February, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2223

Contents:

[1] Bangladesh: The struggle within (Hameeda Hossain)
[2] Imagining India as Hindu rashtra (Jyotirmaya Sharma)
[3] India: The many myths of Jhandewalan (Vidya Subrahmaniam)
[4] India: P.T. Usha, Geet, Srinath on RSS panel
[5] India: Xenophobes Xeroxed (Angana Chatterji)
[6] Conference on Peace and Justice in South Asia (Bombay, 24-26 Feb 06)

____________________________________


[1]

The Daily Star
February 05, 2006 	
   	  	
THE STRUGGLE WITHIN

by Hameeda Hossain

Women's struggles cannot be compressed into a monolithic, homogenous
movement, because our lives are caught within a complex mosaic of
religious, ethnic, caste hierarchies and class interests. While our
first experience of subordination is in the family, gender relations of
power are mirrored in communities, labour markets, political and legal
systems. As in the rest of South Asia, women in Bangladesh have engaged
with populist movements for independence and democracy with some
expectation that the promise of freedom and equality would extend to
gender relations. But the reformist agenda of the newly independent
state, despite its commitment to constitutional rights, failed to
challenge entrenched relations of power within the family and the community.

By the mid-seventies women's lives were conditioned by contradictory
pressures of an official Islamisation, compulsions of a market economy
and the international women's movement. Some glimpses down memory lane
reveal the course of women's struggle for freedom and justice and their
modes of resistance against the obstacles they faced.

Seeds of a progressive, non-communal movement
Within the larger struggle women began to script an alternative world
view. Since early days when Roqaiya Sultana made women's seclusion an
issue of public debate, progressive women have challenged the controls
imposed by communal politics and religious fundamentalism. Secular
democracy was viewed as promising more space for women's voices.

In the communal divide that convulsed India in 1947 urban, middle class
women such as Lila Nag, Ashalata Sen and other members of neighbourhood
samitis formed in Dhaka during the civil disobedience movement crossed
the religious divide and worked together with Sufia Kamal and others who
had migrated from Calcutta. Together in Dhaka they sheltered Hindu
victims of communal violence, set up a secular school and campaigned for
communal harmony.

In the sixties, as the language movement was reinforced by a growing
consciousness of economic exploitation and political disenfranchisement
in East Bengal, women activists challenged the government ban on
broadcasting Tagore songs on TV and radio and women newscasters from
wearing a traditional teep on the forehead. Government suppression of
the right to a national language, to their culture, to their land was
reason enough to engage with the growing political resistance but women
also saw the bans as a denial of their personal autonomy.

Women came into secular, progressive movements from separate streams.
Cultural activists, older members of urban, neighbourhood samitis from
politically conscious, educated bhadrolok families and women students
mainly from the left, Marxist groups came together to form the Mohila
Porishod, which was backed by the Communist Party. The kinship links of
its members contributed to its ideological moorings, which were anchored
within secular, progressive politics. Women were also active in peasant
movements. Ila Mitra and Hena Das led the Tebhagha movement in North
West Bengal and tea garden workers in Sylhet. They worked at the grass
roots and had to face prison sentences along with their male colleagues.
If the "woman question" surfaced in their internal discourse, a
conscious reference to gender oppression and gendered politics did not
enter the public debate until later. So that in public accounts or in
public statements by women leaders the subjective remained invisible.

Justice for war crimes
The issue of rape as a war crime and victimhood has recurred in feminist
debates, with early concerns for women's welfare, family honour and
state protection giving way later to concerns with sexual violence,
women's autonomy. In 1971, rape as a weapon of war was justified by
Pakistani soldiers as a victory for Islam. The survivors found little
freedom in the aftermath, as economic insecurity, social stigma and
family rejection served to emphasize their dependency and exclusion.
State prescribed abortions and state patronized marriages were offered
as compensation to women survivors, while their victim hood served the
cause of national martyrdom The Parliament needed to be nudged by two of
its members Nurjehan Murshed and Badrunnessa Ahmed to acknowledge women
who had fought in the war, or become victims because of the war. At the
time, women activists, such as Nilima Ibrahim, Bashanti Guhathakurta and
Naushaba Sharafi scoured the countryside offering comfort and hope to
rape victims and widows. While many informal groups offered welfare, the
war-torn economy gave little hope of cultural and institutional change.
It is only recently that women survivors have found the courage to
recall their experiences in the war, their personal pain and loss, their
economic dislocation and sense of isolation. The issue of justice
remained suspended until Jahanara Imam took a leading role in demanding
a trial of war criminals in the nineties. Her leadership was
particularly critical as political parties that had collaborated with
the Pakistan army in war crimes, had surreptitiously made a come back
through official patronage.

Contending with sectarian controls
Sectarian and communal politics were super scripted over secular and
democratic constitutional principles, following a military coup in the
mid seventies. Between 1977 and 1987 when fundamental constitutional
amendments were imposed by two military dictators (General Ziaur Rahman
and General Ershad) religion became a weapon of political control.
Official patronage paved the way for mosque led political propaganda,
resurrection of a communal leadership and a proliferation of madrassahs,
whose students became ready foot soldiers in political and communal
conflicts.

The threat of Islamisation prompted many women's groups, along with
religious minorities and liberal groups into street protests and to seek
justice in the court. While women joined the protests in large numbers,
Nari Pokkhyo, a small women's group, filed a class action in the High
Court against the Eight Constitutional Amendment because it denied
constitutional guarantees of equality. The question has been evaded as
hearings were never held. An attempt to introduce Arabic in educational
curriculums met with strong resistance from students who were supported
by progressive women's groups.

Market driven development
While religion became an arbiter of social and gender controls, women's
labour became critical to Bangladesh's entry into global markets in the
eighties. Strategies for micro-credit and contraceptive technologies
were eagerly taken on by governments and disseminated through a
mushrooming of internationally funded NGOs to poor women. At the same
time their role as drivers of an export led economy created a scope for
proletarianization of women workers. Bangladesh interpreted the
international discourse on women's integration into development through
a hierarchical, male dominated government bureaucracy.

The first UN Conference on Women in 1975 had identified
under-development with the invisibility of women's economic
contribution, while at the second UN Conference in Nairobi in 1985 third
world women critiqued the effects of structural adjustments and the
market economy on their lives. In Bangladesh, women's labour made a
major contribution to two major foreign exchange earners-garments ad
shrimp exports. But there entry into the market offered no improvement
in the quality of their life nor in the security of their livelihood. On
the contrary, salination of the South West due to shrimp enclosures
endangered traditional livelihoods threatened the appropriation of farm
lands. A strong resistance of village women who had carried out
subsistence agriculture on Polder 22 of Herinkhola in Paikgachha led to
a direct conflict with the shrimp lord. Korunomoyee, a woman farmer, was
brutally killed on November 7, 1989 by armed gangs, employed by the
shrimp lord as she led the procession. She became the symbol of
resistance to the ravaging of the environment by an export economy and
her death anniversary is commemorated by villagers in front of a mural
dedicated to her courage.

Politics of violence against women
Media reportage of violence against women within the household and
outside, around the mid-eighties, politicized the issue, women activists
were able to articulate a human rights perspective. Women friendly legal
aid and human rights organizations mobilized around legal reform, law
enforcement to make women conscious of their rights. They then protected
women's interests in marital disputes by intervening in traditional
mediation councils. Their efforts were directed to persuading
traditional village leadership to accept gender equality in relations of
marriage, property and inheritance rather than turn to unfair customary
or religious practices of hilla marriage or dowry. Since the early
seventies Mahila Parishad had proposed reform of personal laws and
political participation, demands that have now become near universal
amongst women's groups.

The courts became the site for redressing gender injustice. Sensational
cases of domestic violence such as Rima's murder by her husband (in a
well known middle class family) forced feminists to evaluate the deep
rooted causes of violence in the politics of gender imbalance. Growing
evidence of violence in the public sphere and in the work place, or
violence against political rivals provoked us to question the role of
the state in perpetuating gender hierarchies. Women's protests became
more focused on issues of security and rights and led to the formation
of the Oikkyo Boddho Nari Samaj. Campaigns for a uniform family code and
laws to criminalize dowry, polygamy gained ground. The government
responded with cosmetic changes in an anti-dowry law that failed to
address the economic and social basis of inequality. Inability to
understand the reality of women's lives allowed for the persistence of
archaic, discriminatory inheritance laws. A similar short sighted
approach has led governments to criminalizing the symptoms rather than
addressing it as a consequence of social, legal and economic injustice.

Negotiating the democratic space
With the end of Ershad's military rule women began to see in the
impending transition to civilian rule an opportunity to conceptualize a
gendering of citizen state relations. A small group of women after
opinion surveys and intensive discussions in 1989 and 1990 drafted a
charter for establishing women's rights within the family and the
community and for their participation as citizens in a democratic
framework. But in the rough and tumble of electoral politics, the "woman
question" was side lined, and even staunch women party activists were
pushed out of the running for electoral nominations.

The confrontational culture of polarized politics in the nineties has
encouraged the proliferation of regressive dogmas. In 1993-94 the media
reported on incidents of fatwa instigated violence, which led to torture
and deaths of women in different villages of Bangladesh, their
humiliation or social ostracisation. Fatwas ordered women not to work
outside their homes, to close down NGO run rural schools. Law agencies
did little to curb these anarchic tendencies as progressive writers and
poets were declared murtads, leading to social censorship and fear.
Investigations showed that small groups formed under different
appellations but allegedly backed by leading extremist political parties
were responsible as the government looked away.

Women's defence lay in constitutional guarantees of equality and
international commitments to human rights made by the state. In the
first case of a fatwa that led to the death of Nurjehan in Moulvi Bazar,
a Maulana and his seven accomplices were convicted. Women organizations
played mobilized wide support for their public campaign against
fundamentalist attacks throughout the country and in international
networks. Several years later two High Court judges issued a suo motu
rule against fatwas that prescribed hilla marriage. Although an appeal
was filed by an extremist political organization against the rule, women
have relied upon it to resist maulanas' decrees in some places.

Women are now on the frontline in resisting the state's complicity in
gendered oppression. Our legal battles have led to the conviction of
four policemen for the rape and killing of Yasmin, a minor domestic
worker in 1995. The Sammilito Nari Samaj inspired a country wide
movement that challenged the (a) impunity of state agencies, (b)
patriarchal tolerance of violence (c) insecurity of women workers and
oppression of child labour. University women students came together to
form a platform against sexual violence in Jahangirnagar and Dhaka
Universities to break the silence on sexual violence in academic
institutions. But we need to recognize that we need to move beyond
technical legal remedies, towards a transformative struggle for peace
and tolerance of differences. We need to transcend the limits set by
political allegiances and recognize in the kidnapping and disappearance
of Kalpana Chakmas in 1996, allegedly by military officers, a
commonality with the violence against women in 1971. We need to
recognize that when the rights of women workers are violated or when
minority women are threatened, it is equivalent to an attack on our
collective struggle for autonomy. Our resistance to gendered power and
violence would make for a meaningful change if we were to transcend the
limitations of our class, ethnicity and particularly our political
affiliation.

Hameeda Hossain is a women's rights activist.
	

____


[2]


The Hindu
February 24, 2006


IMAGINING INDIA AS HINDU RASHTRA

Jyotirmaya Sharma

Golwalkar's birth centenary celebrations are an opportunity for the RSS
and the Sangh Parivar to come clean on their stand about their continued
fidelity to the idea of a Hindu rashtra.

TODAY THE Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is launching the year-long
birth centenary celebrations of Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar. After its
founder, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar's death in 1940, Golwalkar led the RSS
for 33 years, until his death in 1973. In ways more than one, Golwalkar
was the architect of the RSS in post-Independence India, as also the
fabricator of the Sangh Parivar.

Knowledge of his ideological legacy is generally confined to two texts,
the more accessible Bunch of Thoughts, as well as the more controversial
We or Our Nationhood Defined, which has now been withdrawn. In the year
of his centenary, it would be useful to move away from these two texts
and to evaluate his thought on the basis of two entirely different
documents.

The first of these is a collection of lectures Golwalkar gave between
October 18 and 22, 1949, in Nagpur. Gandhi's assassination, the ban on
the RSS, and the lifting of the ban in July 1949 constitute the context
for these lectures. Golwalkar begins by questioning the very content of
the freedom attained by India in 1947. He expresses great cynicism about
the manner in which the ordinary people in India, janasaadhaaran, were
exuberant about the removal of foreign rule, and even in this, their
opinion was divided. Golwalkar concludes that apart from the fact of
removal of British rule in India, no real transformation had taken place.

Why was this so? Golwalkar is forthright in asserting that independence
had brought about no real change in relations between various
communities. Neither had a common enemy, the British, brought about any
semblance of national feeling in the country. The allusion is
unmistakably to the question of Hindu-Muslim relations. It is a mistake
to assume, says Golwalkar, that removal of the British from the scene
would render everything normal and rectify the sources of discord. The
unfinished agenda was the consequence of lack of a pure idea of
nationalism. Existence of true and untainted national feeling, he says,
will only help in developing the ability to think through relations
between various communities in a realistic way.

The greatest impediment in the way of "a true vision of the nation," as
Golwalkar chose to put it, was the liberal idea that various communities
— and here he means Hindus, Muslims, Christians — were to be considered
as parts of a single nation. On the contrary, Indian national life was
the ideal of Hindu rashtra. Here, the foremost Sangh ideologue speaks of
the Hindu rashtra as an inalienable, eternal, unbroken, and unified
identity. He calls it the reality of India, whether people accept it
explicitly or not.

To argue otherwise was to lose sight of a clear conception of the
nation. What about other communities living within India? Golwalkar is
forthright in his exposition: "An unclear imagination of the nation —
the impractical idea that whoever comes here and stays will be
considered a part of the nation; even today if any alien comes and
stays, he is deemed as part of the nation — it is to this level that
there is lack of clarity of thought." While he is acutely aware of this
stance being branded racial, communal, and narrow, he exhorts his
audience not to be ashamed of the claims of the Hindus.

The Sangh alone, asserts Golwalkar, had the courage to say that Hindus
were synonymous with the nation. For him, this was the only truth and
nothing else was acceptable, and would remain so whether other
communities remained in the country or not. Therefore, the
responsibility of the nation was on the Hindu community, and whether
India achieved power and glory depended solely on the Hindus. The clear
articulation of Hindu nationalism could no longer be hostage to the
arrogance of other communities, especially after the protection of
foreign rule had been removed. In a thinly veiled, but extremely
controversial, aside he says: "The Muslim community was there during
foreign rule. It is now demoralised and defeated. Therefore, we must
absorb it in ourselves. But is there the capacity to digest [the power
of assimilation] present or not?' He answers the latter by stating that
the "conduct" of all the other communities will have to be watched.

Golwalkar addressed his last ideological session of the RSS, called
chintan baithak in RSS parlance, in Thane from October 28, 1972 to
November 3, 1972. The very first words that Golwalkar uttered were:
"This is our Hindu rashtra." He declared the goal of the Sangh as the
re-establishment of the glory, excellence and universal authority of the
Hindu rashtra. There was a certain definitiveness, even stridency, in
his tone. Those who did not believe in the truth of the Hindu rashtra
were un-Hindu. Their criticisms, distortions and misinterpretations
about the ideal were to be ignored. As long as the Sangh had unshakable
faith in this principle of truth, no criticism was of any consequence.

In dismissing allegations of the RSS being anti-Muslim, anti-Christian,
anti-Sikh, anti-Jain, and anti-Dalit as part of political opportunism
and propaganda, Golwalkar resorts to a curious logic to defend himself
and the Sangh. Hindu thought and way of life, says Golwalkar, had been
in existence even before Islam and Christianity came into existence.
Further, Jainism and Sikhism also fell within the ambit of Hinduism.
Therefore, the question of Hindus being antagonistic to any of these did
not arise. In other words, the Hindus were the "original" inhabitants of
this land, and, therefore, the onus of hostility lay on those faiths or
communities that came to live subsequently. To argue that this land
belonged equally to all communities was to rob the word `Hindu' of any
life and salience.

Twenty-three years after he had addressed the Sangh in Nagpur, it was
time now for Golwalkar to re-state his faith in the ideal of a Hindu
rashtra one last time. The exposition this time was less circumspect and
much more categorical. He was convinced that where the vision of the
nation's all-round development was at stake, it was possible only
through the "preservation of Hindu faith, culture and society." He
warned his audience that if they were to abandon this assertion, the
nation itself would be lost. The unity or collectivity that constitutes
the nation was founded on the principle of upholding the Hindu ideal.
This argument, he warned, had to be put forth unapologetically, with
pride and sharply.

Twenty-three years separate these two texts. Yet, Golwalkar remained
steadfast in his advocacy of a deeply flawed ideal of the Hindu rashtra.
There is another element that constitutes an organic unity between the
two narratives. The Nagpur lectures of 1949 were suggestive of a
condescending dismissal of the masses and the ordinary people. He was
also dismissive of too much importance being given to, what he called,
present-day problems. Poverty and terrible economic disparities were
real issues, but these could not and ought not to come in the way of the
more exalted goal of establishing the Hindu rashtra.

In 1972, this tendency in Golwalkar matures into questioning the very
existence of India's democratic model. In its place, he argued for a
Platonistic framework of wise men leading society and determining its
affairs. The illiterate of India were incapable of handling democracy,
he argued. For democracy to flourish, the entire society must not only
be well-educated, but also have expertise in economics, politics, and
international relations. For him, it was a travesty that the
representative of farmers in the present system could be a doctor or a
lawyer. In what is today called technocratic and managerial government,
Golwalkar was an early proponent of that system.

Nowhere in these two texts is there any reference to discussion, debate
or conversation. It seemed axiomatic to Golwalkar that once the idea of
Hindu rashtra would be "awakened in every single heart and its truth
imprinted within," society would forget differences, fragmentation and
disunity and transform itself into a well-organised, dynamic and
effective machinery. Once this was achieved, people would begin
worshipping the nation, realise a sense of oneness and transform into a
moral collectivity.

The RSS of today, along with members of the Sangh Parivar, will do well
to spend the Golwalkar centenary year in dispassionately evaluating his
thought and legacy. More importantly, they will have to either own up
the ideological vision of Golwalkar, or tell the ordinary people of
India of their points of disagreement and departure with their
ideological mentor. In recent months and years, there has been a clamour
of disparate voices from within the Sangh as well as from its so-called
"inspired" organisations. Is this a sign of the idea of Golwalkar's
nationalism getting fragmented once again? The people have a right to know.

Above all, this is the opportunity to come clear, once and for all, on
the question of Hindu rashtra. The feeling among some sections of the
RSS is that the organisation has ideologically moved more in the
direction of Savarkar's brand of extreme political Hindu nationalism,
rather than Golwalkar's own brand of extreme cultural Hindu nationalism.

(The writer's book on Golwalkar's thought will be published in November
2006.)

____


[3]


The Hindu
Feb 21, 2006

THE MANY MYTHS OF JHANDEWALAN

Vidya Subrahmaniam

In the space of three weeks, the RSS has journeyed from decrying
shortsighted alliances through proposing precisely such an alliance
between the BJP and the Congress to advocating a broad alliance of
disparate elements, Mulayam Singh's party included.

THE RASHTRIYA Swayamsevak Sangh is credited with a razor-sharp mind; and
with a talent for unlimited work behind the veil — infiltrate enemy
ranks, gather intelligence, capture institutions, indoctrinate the
young, convert the vulnerable, polarise communities, create
disaffection, and so forth. The picture it evokes is of an undercover
sect, sharp, shadowy, and monomaniacal in the pursuit of its cause.   A
lot of this is true. The RSS can be obsessive about getting its way, Lal
Krishna Advani's forced exit being a case in point. Yet there might be
less to RSS mythology than meets the eye. In the by-gone days when Sangh
ideologue K.N. Govindacharya was the toast of beat
  correspondents, he would gamely tell them they attributed way too much
intelligence to Sangh managers: "Not everything is diabolical plotting
or by design." But there was no stopping the conspiracy theories and the
strategy stories, and with them grew the reputation of the Sangh —
covert, menacing, scheming, and, at the same time, uncompromisingly
ideological.   The Sangh's ideological rigidity was always more imagined
than real; its invincibility more folklore than fact. But because Sangh
bosses were reclusive, and access to their rarefied quarters was
restricted to the faithful, the mystique continued, aided by some true,
some exaggerated stories of Jhandewalan's superhuman powers. Today the
Sangh is seemingly at its most potent, with the Bharatiya Janata Party
preferring to be on the side
of Sarsanghachalak K.S. Sudarshan against a party president of the
stature of Mr. Advani. There is much talk of the BJP reverting to a
Sangh-dictated hard line under the new helmsman, Rajnath
  Singh. And for his part, Mr. Singh has done the needful — presented
his credentials to Jhandewalan (the RSS headquarters in New Delhi),
reconnected with the likes of Ashok Singhal and Vinay Katiyar, and said
the expected on Hindutva, Ram Mandir, the indispensability and supremacy
of the RSS, etc.   Yet the plot does not gel. The shriller the RSS' tone
and the louder its call for undying loyalty, the more attention it draws
to its own diminishing credibility. Under Mr. Sudarshan, the RSS has
been reduced to public harangues and flexing of muscle, robbing it of
the mystery essential to its omnipotent, omnipresent image. His war with
Mr. Advani was posited in ideological terms: the Sangh doctrinaire and
righteous, Mr. Advani revisionist and rebelling. Mr. Advani fought long
and hard, gave Sudarshan
& Co an earful even as he was leaving the party post, but left anyway.
The mentor's ideology had vanquished the disciple's attempt at
moderation. With Hindutva re-asserted, the BJP
  disciplined and the National Democratic Alliance told off, the RSS
seemed to be humming the old song about ideology first and ideology
last.   But just when it appeared that the ideology debate was closed,
the RSS weekly, Organiser, revived the topic. An editorial dated January
29, 2006, invited public opinion on the "Role of ideology in polity." It
called Atal Bihari Vajpayee "the most successful mastermind of coalition
politics" but said such coalitions, based on the "economic promise of
prosperity, as against political ideology ... cannot be a long-term
strategy." The regional parties were "aberrations in [the] democratic
polity" but they were also "a classic reality." The BJP's six years in
power had diluted its "basic characteristics"; indeed the BJP was aware
that the NDA had not met
the Sangh's "core concerns." But the BJP had also widened its base and
made "new allies ... on the strength of its ideology, nursing the core
constituency and calibrating its work with the wider
  sangh family."   Whoever thought this was confusing did not know what
was coming. The next issue of Organiser showered praise on the Congress
and Sonia Gandhi, she of the reviled first family and of Italian
ancestry. Under Ms. Gandhi, the Congress showed "remarkable confidence,
direction and brazenness." The magazine applauded the Congress'
aggression towards its allies in the United Progressive Alliance. More
solidarity came from RSS insider and former spokesperson M.G. Vaidya,
who, in an article in Tarun Bharat, advocated an alliance between the
BJP and the Congress: "They [the Congress and the BJP] should seriously
think whether to have a truck with divisive, narrow-minded, selfish
parties or have common programmes on administrative grounds, in the
larger interest of the country's unity.
If both parties rule the country, this could well be in the interest of
the nation."   Maybe there was a point being made here: The BJP was best
on its own without the disagreeable business of
  alliance making. But if that was unavoidable, why not get into an
alliance with the Congress rather than with a rag-tag bunch of regional
parties? After all, the Sangh's admiration for the Congress goes back
quite a long way, and, as Mr. Vaidya argued, "Both [the Congress and the
BJP] have identical policies in the areas of economics and external
affairs."   Organiser struck again. This time it prodded the BJP to add
to the NDA, even suggesting an alliance with, horror of horrors, the
Samajwadi Party. "For the BJP the Karnataka development is a grand new
opening ... It will not be a bad idea for the party to scout around for
the disenchanted in the UPA and expand the NDA as a larger formation of
national will. The AGP in Assam and the Lok Dal in Haryana are its
natural allies. The Samajwadi
Party in UP is in a frantic search for new alliances. A certain degree
of unconventional adventurism is often considered good politics in times
of national calamity. And the UPA is nothing less
  than a national disaster."   Those who thought Mr. Sudarshan's fight
with Mr. Advani was all about ideology should work this out. In the
space of three weeks, the RSS journeyed from decrying short-sighted,
economic interest based alliances through proposing precisely such an
alliance between the BJP and the Congress to advocating a broad alliance
of disparate elements, Mulayam Singh's party included. During this
period, the Congress transited from being a potential partner in the
fight against regional parties to an enemy that must be dislodged with
the help of regional parties. The UPA was a "national disaster" but
sections of it were welcome to join the NDA "in times of national
calamity."   The Advani line   If this is ideology, Sudarshan style, Mr.
Advani ought to be rejoicing. Mr. Advani's
praise of the August 1947 vision of Mohammad Ali Jinnah was an attempt
to reinvent himself. There was no chance that the charioteer of the Ram
rath would head a coalition government; but
  there was every chance that a reformed version of the charioteer
would. The RSS showed the door to Mr. Advani for his alleged disrespect
of ideology. Yet today it is virtually parroting the Advani line with
its advocacy of "good politics" and "unconventional adventurism." It can
hardly be to Mr. Rajnath Singh's liking that his exertions to
re-saffronise the BJP have come to nothing, that he must now explore
adventurist alliances — with the Congress, with Mr. Mulayam Singh, with
many others.   Is this the fearsome RSS about which tomes have been
written, whose sharpness of mind and infiltrative thinking are spoken of
in hushed tones? The RSS raked up such a fuss over Mr. Advani's Jinnah
remarks that it painted itself into a corner. So heady was its success
that it insisted on casting the new
BJP in its own image — only to realise that in isolating and
disempowering the BJP, it had disempowered itself.   Ideally, the RSS
would like a strong, muscular BJP running a government on its
  own. But unlike the Congress, which ran a single party government for
30 years, the Jana Sangh and the BJP could capture power only as part of
a coalition. This coupled with the fact the Sangh saw the Congress as
tough and nationalist explains its fascination with the Grand Old Party
and its periodic praise of one or another Congress leader. In the first
year after Independence, the Sangh tried its utmost to merge with the
Congress — a move repeatedly resisted and eventually foiled by Nehru.
For the RSS, Indira Gandhi was the ultimate leader, strong,
authoritarian, and in her later years perceived to be flirting with soft
Hindutva. RSS ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh saluted her courage in an
obituary that the George Fernandes-edited Hindi weekly, Pratipaksh,
reproduced in its November 25, 1984
edition. The Milli Gazette issue of November 16-30, 2004, was to
translate it thus: "Indira Gandhi ultimately did secure a permanent
place at the doorstep of history as a great martyr. With her
  dynamism borne out of her fearlessness and dexterity, she was able to
take the country forward like a colossus for over a decade, and was able
to build an opinion that she alone understood the realities of the
country, that she alone had the ability to run the decadent political
system of our corrupt and divided society, and probably that she alone
could keep the country united. She was a great lady and her death as a
brave leader has added to her greatness..."   Two decades later, at a
June 2005 RSS function, Mr. Sudarshan called Indira the greatest Indian
leader ever. Since then Organiser has praised Sonia Gandhi and called
for Mr. Mulayam Singh's inclusion in the NDA. Mr. Sudarshan's
predecessors were lucky in that they said and did the unthinkable away
from the television cameras. The
current Sarsanghachalak loves the limelight and does the flip-flop in
public. Never mind the consequences.

____


[4]


The Deccan Chronicle
February 22, 2006

P.T. USHA, GEET, SRINATH ON RSS PANEL

New Delhi, Feb. 22: Former queen of the Indian track P.T. Usha, former
vigilance commissioner N. Vittal, former billiards world champion Geet
Sethi, former cricketer Javagal Srinath and ace shooter Jaspal Rana are
among the prominent members of the 122-strong Guru Golwalkar Birth
Centenary Celebrations Committee formed by the RSS.
While former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee is one of the leading
members, the RSS did not include Mr L.K. Advani in the committee. The
committee will organise “Hindu rallies to promote social harmony” and
hold public hearings along the lines of “jan adalats” in various
localities to “expose corrupt people”. The campaign for “mass awareness”
will begin from February 24.
Noted dancer Sonal Mansingh and violinist Lalgudi Jayaraman, Mohan veena
creator Vishwa Mohan Bhatt also figure in the list. Sharing places with
them are RSS general secretary Mohan Bhagwat and VHP president Ashok
Singhal.
The committee will chalk out a year-long mass awareness campaign to
propagate the “ideas and vision of Guruji”. In an article in the RSS
mouthpiece Organiser, the chairman of the committee, Swami
Satyamitranand Giri of Bharatmata Mandir, Hardwar, spelt out the
programme: “Hindu rallies will be organised at the block level across
the nation. Meetings of caste and religious leaders will be held to
promote social harmony. Seminars and lectures will also be organised to
propagate the ideas and vision of Guruji.” Another task is to make drug
addicts “leave drugs”. Though Mr Advani is not included in the list, he
will be among the leaders to participate at the inaugural function in
Nagpur on February 24.

____


[5]

Combat Law, Vol 5, Issue 1, February-March 2006

XENOPHOBES XEROXED

Angana Chatterji

Members of a fact finding team of Indian People’s Tribunal (IPT) were
subjected to severe intimidation by Shiv Sainiks and their cohorts in
Orissa. The incident is a grim reminder of the deadly overtones that
Hindutva’s aggression has assumed in eastern India. However, the Naveen
Patnaik-led regime has chosen to remain a mute spectator, tacitly
backing the Hindutva fanatics.

http://combatlaw.org/information.php?article_id=693&issue_id=27

I narrate an incident with the Indian People’s Tribunal on Environment
and Human Rights (IPT) as it sought to investigate Hindu majoritarianism
in Orissa. Hindu nationalism’s campaign in the state, I have learned, is
premised on one principle mythology: the demise of Hinduism-’Hindustan’,
legitimating violence. Hindutva (Hindu extremism) operates against the
backdrop of Hindu cultural dominance. Christian conversions are rumoured
as profuse, coercive, debilitating the majority status of Hindus in
India. Adivasis (tribals) and dalits (erstwhile ‘untouchable’ castes)
are presented as ‘raw material’ for conversion to Hindu extremism.
Muslims of Orissa are fabricated as colluding with Muslims elsewhere in
dangerous pan-Islamic alliance. In the aftermath of the Gujarat
genocide, as I focused on mapping communalism’s landscape in Orissa, I
encountered impenetrable silences on part of most in the majority
community, and a plea for r.....   The targeting in that room on 14 June
(2005), were it an isolated incident, would have different meanings. The
repeated human rights violations and crimes perpetrated on marginal and
minority groups in Orissa, and the silence of the state and nation,
expanded the scope and potency of the Sangh Parivar's actions.... As the
Orissa Tribunal prepares to release its report in 2006, the incident of
14 June, what precedes and follows, continues to compromise the security
of citizens, endangering law and order, injuring freedom of speech and
movement, assembly and inquiry, evincing the breakdown of ethical
governance. Can the state be held accountable for safeguarding human
rights and ameliorating conditions that enable crimes against humanity?


Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social and Cultural
Anthropology at California Institute of Integral Studies.


_____


[6]

CONFERENCE ON PEACE AND JUSTICE IN SOUTH ASIA

   At Keshav Gore Smarak Trust, Goregaon West, Mumbai; February 24th to
                                26th 2006

                            Schedule & Content

FEBRUARY 24:
PLENARY 1: 10.30am-1 pm: "Neo-liberal Globalisation and War – the global
perspective". Speakers: Aijaz Ahmed (India), Sherry Rehman (Pakistan),
Ritu Menon (India), Chair-Prabhat Patnaik. (India)

PARALLEL WORKSHOPS: 2- 4.30 pm
Room. 1. 'Struggles of nationalities'. Speakers: Artex Shimray(India),
Shahid Fiaz (Pakistan), Gautam Navlakha(India)
                 Chair: Jatin Desai
Room  2. 'Rise of fundamentalism'. Speakers: Flavia Agnes(India), Farhad
Mazhar (Bangladesh). Chair: Nandita Shah
Room  3. 'South Asia Peace Treaties' speakers: M V Ramana (India),
Pervez Hoodbhoy (Pakistan). Chair Sukla Sen
Room. 4: 'End Occupations' speakers: Sara Vakhshouri (Iran), Abdul
Khalek Zamli (Palestine). Chair: Asad Bin Saif
Room. 5. 'Migration and displacement' speakers: Mohammad Sikdar
(Bangladesh), Sharit Bhowmik (India). Chair:
                 Nasreen Contracter

PLENARY 2: 5-7 pm. "The struggle for peace-the global perspective and
challenges for the movement". Speakers: Walden Bello (Philippines),
Jeremy Corbyn (UK), Achin Vanaik (India), Pervez Hoodbhoy, (Pakistan),
Chair - Mubashir Hasan (Pakistan)

FEBRUARY 25:
Plenary 1: 10.00 am-1 pm. Nationalism, Sovereignty and Internationalism.

Speakers: Jairus Banaji(India), Kumkum Sangari(India), Nimalka Fernando
(Sri Lanka), Farhad Mazhar (Bangladesh) Chair: Siddharth Varadarajan
(India)

PARALLEL WORKSHOPS : 2- 4.30 pm
Room. 5. 'Water sharing and national conflicts'. Speakers: Afsar Jafri
(India), Arun Kumar Singh (India). Chair: Surabhi
                 Sinha
Room 1. 'US Empire in South Asia'. Speakers: Linus Jayatilake (Sri
Lanka), Prabir Purkayastha (India). Chair: Varsha
                 Rajan
Room 4. 'Recent trends in defence expenditure in South Asia'. Speakers:
C. Ram Manohar Reddy (India), A H
                Nayyar(Pakistan). Chair: Jaya Velankar
Room 2. 'Foreign Policy in South Asia and Alternatives'. Speakers:
Anuradha Chenoy (India) and Walden Bello
                 (Philippines). Chair: Ragini Sen
Room 3. 'Alternative regionalisms'. Speakers: Anil Chaudhury (India),
Cecila Olivet (Netherlands) Sushovan Dhar

PLENARY 2. 5-7 pm. Imperialist globalisation: Impact on South Asia.
Speakers: Eric Toussaint (Belgium), Sameer
                 Dossani (USA), Farida Akhter (Bangladesh), Linus
Jayatilake (Sri Lanka), Chair: S P Shukla (India),

PUBLIC MEETING: 7.30 – 9.00 pm. Public meeting (at A B Goregaonkar
School, Goregaon west). Chair: Mrinal
                 Gore(India), Sherry Rehman(Pakistan), Ashok Dhawle
(India),  Walden Bello (Phillipines), Jeremy
                 Corbyn(UK), Christoper Fonseca (India), Nirmala
Deshpande (India)

FEBRUARY 26

Plenary 1: 10.00am-1 pm and 2pm – 4.30pm. "Pressure points in South
Asia" Speakers: Admiral Ramdas (India), Nazir Ahmad Ronga (Kashmir),
Mayori Shimray (India), Nimalka Fernando (Srilanka), Syed Saiful Haque
(Bangladesh), Anand Teltumbde (India), Karamat Ali (Pakistan),  Arjun
Karki (Nepal), Nandita Haksar (India), Hari Roka (Nepal), Chair:
Lalita Ramdas, Pushpa Bhave (India)

PLENARY 2. 5-7 pm. Future strategy and POA. Chair: Meena Menon (India)
and Karamat Ali (Pakistan), Soni
                         Thengamom (India)

Registration fee (includes papers and lunch):  Three days: Rs 200.
Single day entry: Rs 75 per day.

PEACE MUMBAI
A-201, Kailash Apartments
Juhu Church Road, Juhu
Mumbai – 400 049. India
Tel: +91-22-5582 1141 / 51
Telefax: +91-22-2625 4347



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

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