SACW | 27 Apr 2006 | Sri Lanka Fears War; Republic of Nepal - King Size; India: Assault on Poor; Hindutva Demography; Fear Paranoia in the UK

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Wire | 27 April, 2006 | Dispatch No. 2242

[1]  Sri Lanka: Escalating Acts of War Must Be Stopped (National Peace Council)
[2]  Nepal:
   (i)  The Challenge of Reconciling Republican 
Aspirations With The Proposal To Revive A Defunct 
Parliament Under The Doctrine of 'Public 
Necessity' (South Asians For Democracy - Nepal 
Campaign)
(ii) Press Release (Socialist Solidarity Centre For Nepali Democracy)
[3]  India: Neoliberal assault on rights (Praful Bidwai)
[4]  India: "apartheid city" - Slums, shops make way for 'world-class' Delhi
[5]  India: Saffron Demography (Mohan Rao)
[6]  UK: Fear and paranoia (Hanif Kureishi)
[7]  Upcoming Celebration and Protest Picket of 
the Royal Nepalese Embassy (London, April 29)

___


[1]

National Peace Council
of Sri Lanka
12/14 Purana Vihara Road
Colombo 6


24.04.06

Media Release

ESCALATING ACTS OF WAR MUST BE STOPPED

The suicide bomb attack at the army headquarters 
in Colombo is the latest in a series of major 
blows to the peace process. This attack seriously 
injured the army commander, General Sarath 
Fonseka, killed 10 and injured 28 others. It has 
also expanded the theatre of hostilities to 
Colombo. The National Peace Council condemns this 
suspected LTTE attack. It is especially 
deplorable as it comes at a time when the 
Norwegian facilitators were making a special 
effort to bring the government and LTTE back to 
the negotiating table.

The ceasefire still holds in a technical sense. 
But escalating acts of war make it akin to a dead 
letter. It is reported that Sri Lankan airforce 
and naval craft have been bombarding LTTE-held 
areas in the east in the aftermath of the 
assassination attempt on the army commander. 
Many civilians have been killed and thousands are 
fleeing those areas as a result and are becoming 
refugees. There will be powerful forces that urge 
retaliation without regard to the vicious cycle 
that turns more vicious and causes the greatest 
havoc to civilian life. But we do not agree with 
this and also condemn such activities. We need to 
remember that peace did not come through war for 
more than 20 years. It only brought suffering to 
the people. It was this reality that gave birth 
to the Ceasefire Agreement of 2002.

We welcome President Mahinda Rajapakse's promise 
of patience in his speech to the nation where he 
also urged the people to hold to the same 
position. We also urge the people to remain calm 
in this tense and fearful time. We call on the 
LTTE to heed the sentiments of the people who 
want peace, and not a slide back to war. We 
demand that the government and LTTE should 
de-escalate the violence as the first step to an 
eventual return to the negotiating table.

What is important is not the short term military 
or psychological gains or losses of these 
attacks. When the government and LTTE signed the 
Ceasefire Agreement in February 2002 they made a 
commitment to fulfil certain obligations. If 
these obligations are fulfilled in letter and 
spirit, and with due deference to the rulings of 
the international monitors of the SLMM, we feel 
confident that peace talks aimed at a just 
resolution of the ethnic conflict can commence 
sooner rather than later.


Executive Director
On behalf of the Governing Council

___

[2]  NEPAL

(i)

SOUTH ASIANS FOR DEMOCRACY: NEPAL CAMPAIGN
(April 26, 2006)

THE CHALLENGE OF RECONCILING REPUBLICAN 
ASPIRATIONS WITH THE PROPOSAL TO REVIVE A DEFUNCT 
PARLIAMENT UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF 'PUBLIC 
NECESSITY'

The developments in Nepal are momentous. They 
also exhibit the tensions of an embryonic legal 
regime yet to be born and the difficulties of 
resolving them with attention to the issues of 
legitimacy and the ideals of the rule of law. The 
midnight proclamation of the king, made on 24 
April 2002, clearly shows that the democratic 
uprising in the country has eclipsed the 
monarchical order. However, the process of 
political transition it proposes does not appear 
to square with the democratic imperatives of 
constitutional evolution. It seems to be tainted 
by elements of arbitrariness that draw from the 
authoritarian politics of the past.

The parliament, proposed to be revived was 
elected in May 1999 for a period of five years. 
It was dissolved in October 2002 presumably on 
advice of then Prime Minister. The existing 
Constitution of Nepal has no express provision 
for the revival of a dissolved parliament, which 
has also elapsed its mandated term. It can only 
be done under the constitutional provisions that 
the king had used to first dissolve the 
parliament and then to bring Nepal under a state 
of emergency on 1 February 2005. Convening of the 
same parliament, under such authoritarian 
provisions, cannot surely square with the 
republican spirit of the democratic uprising that 
compelled the king to make the midnight 
proclamation. The alliance of seven political 
parties has welcomed the proclamation. The 
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which has been 
conducting its 'People's War' since February 1996 
and which concluded a 12-point agreement with the 
alliance in March 2005 to end the "absolute 
monarchy" through a con-violent agitation, has 
criticized the position taken by the alliance as 
a "historic" mistake. The divergence between the 
responses of the alliance of the seven political 
parties and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) 
seems to become the space in which considerations 
of legality and legitimacy of the transitional 
situation must attempt to reconcile with the 
revolutionary sentiments of the democratic 
uprising.

Perhaps, the proposed revival of parliament can 
limit itself to forming an interim government 
whose mandate is to conduct elections to a 
Constituent Assembly. Convening of the dissolved 
parliament for such a limited objective would not 
only receive the imprimatur of the doctrine of 
necessity, it would also allow the interim 
government to transcend the undemocratic 
framework of the 1990 Constitution by requiring 
it to conduct itself in accordance with the 
scope, the provisions and the principles of 
governance under the international treaty law, 
including ICCPR, ECESCR, CRC, CEDAW, CERD and 
CAT, which the government of Nepal has already 
ratified. In the process, the interim government 
in Nepal would not only reconcile the 
constitutional theories that justify the validity 
of transitional regimes on the criterion of 
effectiveness with the doctrines of abiding 
obligations under customary international law, it 
will also provide the international human rights 
law regime an opportunity to respond and 
contribute to a peaceful realization of republic 
aspirations that have been revolutionary in their 
origin. It will be a unique experiment in 
synthesizing the doctrinal framework of 
understanding an effective revolutionary regime 
as a law-creating source with a benevolent 
international twist to the theory of "public 
necessity."


o o o

(ii)

Socialist Solidarity Centre For Nepali Democracy
Conveners : Raghu Thakur,  Subhash Lomte, Harsh Mander, Vijay Pratap
147 A, Uttarakhand, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi - 110067

25 April 2006

SALUTE TO THE PEOPLE OF NEPAL

(PRESS RELEASE FOR THE PRESS CONFERENCE BEING 
HELD AT PRESS CLUB OF INDIA, NEW DELHI AT 4.30 
P.M. ON 25 APRIL 06)

    1. We salute the people of Nepal whose heroic 
struggle and overwhelming participation by the 
masses has won the first round of the battle.
    2. We congratulate the seven party alliance 
who have maintained their unity and have agreed 
on a name for the Prime Minister with a genuine 
unanimity.  We also note with satisfaction that 
in the ultimate analysis the king and his 
apologists saw the writing on the wall and 
returned the power where it actually belonged. 
We only wished that the king should not have 
usurped the power in the first place so that the 
life of dozens of martyrs for democracy; injury 
to thousands of people and inconvenience to 
millions would have been avoided.  We are only 
sad that even in this era of democracy, Nepali 
people had to pay a heavy price to win back their 
freedom.
    3. We are also satisfied that in spite of 
occasional wavering, the overall thrust of Indian 
state including its security and its foreign 
establishments has been in favour of  democracy. 
But this is more because of millions of Nepali 
people on streets, legacy of anti-imperial, 
anti-colonial struggle led by Gandhi ji and other 
patriotic forces that even our foreign policy 
bureaucrats and security agencies had to engage 
with the crisis in a manner which eventually went 
in favour of the Nepalese democracy.
    4. However, as Indians we are very embarrassed 
at the initial reaction of the Indian government 
and Mr. Karan Singh in welcoming the first 
Address of King Gyanendra on Friday last which 
sought to draw a wedge between the seven party 
alliance and the Maoists.  We are only sad that 
our political leadership of the ruling alliance 
has lost its confidence and forgotten country's 
glorious and vigorous traditions of Indian 
democracy.  Howsoever competent or patriotic our 
foreign secretaries and defence secretaries might 
be, they are always likely to commit the kind of 
mistakes of welcoming a speech which did not 
offer anything to the struggling people of Nepal. 
Although this round has been accomplished fairly 
satisfactorily primarily by the bureaucrats, it 
will not be advisable to carry on in this manner. 
Because, the future transition is much more 
complex and requires good amount of political 
goodwill and sagacity from India.
    5. We are very clear that it is the political 
leadership in tandem with think tanks in the 
country and movement organizations working among 
the poor masses who should join forces in India 
to lend a helping hand not only to the fragile 
democracy of Nepal but also to the democratic 
forces in Myanmar and other parts of Asia.
    6. People to people dialogue on the challenges 
faced by the democratic forces is different  and 
has to be different than the EU and US model of 
exporting democracy through the structures of 
corporate led states and their regimes 
irrespective of their colour.  The way EU and US 
were trying to pressurise the Nepali political 
parties is really a source of anguish and pain. 
It raises a real alarm in the minds of 
democratically minded people in the entire planet 
that how the regimes from the states claiming to 
be robust democracies almost side with the King 
and not with millions of people.
    7. We only assure all shades of Nepali 
political opinion that all shades of Indian 
polity with the sole exception of BJP RSS stream, 
we will always be with the people of Nepal and 
their absolute sovereignty in charting out their 
course of nation building and development.
    8. We must convey to the SPA + 1 alliance that 
Indian struggling people are hopeful that Nepali 
political leadership will innovate in the multi 
party democracy in a way that the idea of last 
person first and ensuring the participation of 
marginalized majority in to the nation building 
process becomes integral part of their polity. 
The Indian polity has still not been able to stop 
chasing the mirage of corporate controlled 
consumer paradise.  The adversarial and populist 
framework of our polity allows the continuation 
of old exploitative structures and gives space to 
new neo-imperialist penetrations.
    9. We are confident that the phenomenal 
proportions of peoples' participation (without 
arms) has generated enough democratic energy in 
the country and political goodwill globally that 
a strong, sovereign, prosperous, open and 
egalitarian polity and society will be 
reconstructed sooner than many of us can ever 
imagine today.

With revolutionary greetings,

Vijay Pratap 
Harsh Mander

National Convener - Socialist Front 
Democratic Socialism Globally Forum


____

[3]

Frontline
May 5, 2006

NEOLIBERAL ASSAULT ON RIGHTS

Praful Bidwai

The message of the Narmada and Bhopal struggles 
is that defenders of people's rights must 
collectively fight to halt the neoliberal 
juggernaut in India.

THIS is turning out to be a season of great 
protests and indefinite hunger-strikes - over the 
raising of the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam 
(SSD), justice for the victims of the Bhopal gas 
disaster, and against the arbitrary sacking of 
hundreds of workers of Kamani Engineering 
International in Jaipur. All three struggles are 
led by some of India's most inspiring social 
activists, all with a decades-long history of 
dedication to their cause, including Medha Patkar 
and her colleagues from the Narmada valley, 
Satinath Sarangi and Rashida-Bi from Bhopal, and 
D. Thankappan of the Kamani Employees' Union and 
New Trade Union Initiative.

It is an unprecedented coincidence that all three 
struggles should occur simultaneously, cutting 
across concerns and agendas such as environmental 
protection, resistance to displacement, workers' 
rights at a time of an employers' offensive, and 
fight against corporate criminality. The 
impressive solidarity they have generated with 
one another and with kindred movements is even 
more unprecedented.

This is for the first time that Narmada Bachao 
Andolan (NBA) activists were joined in their 
indefinite fast by a national-profile member of 
the Communist Party of India (Kamal Mitra-Chenoy) 
and activists of the CPI(ML)-Liberation. Polit 
Bureau members of the CPI(M) identified 
themselves closely with the agitation, lending 
full-throated support to the demand to halt dam 
construction until rehabilitation is completed.

Equally remarkable is the active support the NBA 
receives on a daily basis from such diverse 
groups as victims of evictions from different 
cities, slum-dwellers, agricultural labourers, 
forest workers, environmentalists, feminists, 
right-to-information activists, civil-liberties 
campaigners, global justice activists, 
progressive lawyers, peaceniks, and students even 
from elite colleges and schools. There have been 
sympathy fasts in more than 10 cities.

This massive expression of solidarity is one of 
the greatest gains of India's many progressive 
movements for social transformation. It signifies 
their advance and intensification - albeit in 
adverse circumstances. The single biggest 
achievement is the evolution of a common focus in 
the form of opposition to elitist "free-market" 
policies.

As the first two struggles enter their third and 
fourth week respectively, there are few signs of 
resolution of issues. Only the Kamani dispute has 
been referred to compulsory arbitration thanks to 
the Union Labour Minister's intervention. Medha 
Patkar's health is sinking as I write this on the 
15th day of her fast. The Cabinet has done well 
to convene a meeting of the Review Committee of 
the Narmada Control Authority. But it is not 
clear what this will yield and whether the United 
Progressive Alliance (UPA) government will muster 
the courage to halt the raising of the SSD's 
height.

The issue is not whether one is for or against 
the SSD, but whether extremely vulnerable 
flesh-and-blood people will be rehabilitated in 
keeping with the Narmada Disputes Tribunal's 
award, confirmed by Supreme Court orders. This 
mandates that rehabilitation of people liable to 
be displaced by the dam must be completed before 
its height is raised from one level to the next - 
in the present case, from 110.64 metres to 121.92 
metres.

Yet, construction is proceeding furiously round 
the clock despite solid evidence that the oustees 
have not even been resettled, leave alone 
rehabilitated. Thousands of families in 
Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh have not 
received land-for-land. Many have not even been 
"declared" (identified) oustees. A group of 
Ministers visited the affected villages and was 
besieged by complaints and protests. Although the 
contents of its report are not public, the review 
decision suggests that it admits that 
rehabilitation is inadequate.

At the time of writing, the Supreme Court has not 
heard the petition filed by a displaced people's 
group. Irrespective of the court's verdict, one 
hopes that the government will not sacrifice its 
legal, moral and political obligations to the 
people and surrender to the blackmailing tactics 
of Narendra Modi, who has launched a hysterical 
counter-agitation demanding that the dam's height 
be raised - no matter what the human cost. The 
dam has acquired mystical or divine importance in 
the Gujarat elite's irrational way of thinking.

The Bhopal victims have heroically fought for 
over two decades to demand accountability and 
justice from Union Carbide (and its successor, 
Dow Chemicals). They are demanding the criminal 
prosecution of Warren Anderson and other 
executives of Union Carbide and its subsidiaries, 
in keeping with Supreme Court orders. They also 
want Dow to clean up the polluted Bhopal plant 
site and a water supply contaminated by a host of 
toxic chemicals produced, stored and released 
from the pesticides factory. This too was 
mandated by the Supreme Court in 2004. But the 
government has shown no will to ask Dow to do 
this.

It bears stating that a Dow official is on the 
Indo-U.S. Chief Executive Officers' Forum, which 
figured prominently in George W. Bush's recent 
visit. The Bush-Manmohan Singh Joint Statement 
commits itself to the economic agenda laid down 
by the Forum. Inaction on Dow is of a piece with 
the despicable treachery of successive 
governments in India in failing to serve an 
arrest warrant on Anderson on the ground that he 
is "untraceable" - although his address in a posh 
New York suburb is public knowledge.

Sardar Sarovar is at a critical stage. If its 
final height is reduced from the original design, 
there will be no loss in its Gujarat irrigation 
potential (9 million acre-feet). But the gain in 
averting displacement - over 60 per cent of the 
project's total - will be huge. The reduction can 
only happen if design changes are made now. Once 
the height is raised, it would be too late.

Suspension of construction offers a superb 
opportunity to prune the project's size and cut 
losses. The SSD is a white elephant. It has bled 
Gujarat's treasury, while sending irrigation 
costs sky-high, so high as to make agriculture 
unviable without massive subsidies. Halting 
construction would be in keeping with a 1981 
agreement between the-then Member of Parliament 
and Gujarat Chief Ministers Arjun Singh and 
Madhavsinh Solanki. If the UPA government 
squanders this chance, it will have shown itself 
to be a slave to giganticism and callous 
developmentalism that crushes people's rights - 
in keeping with neoliberalism's dictates.

One stark truth emerges from all three struggles 
and solidarity movements. Neoliberalism "with a 
human face" is an oxymoron. This avatar of 
capitalism must alienate people from their means 
of survival and life resources, uproot them from 
their habitat, grind their rights into the 
ground, and impoverish, marginalise, disempower 
and disenfranchise them. Neoliberalism is 
irredeemably, extremely, predatory and cannot 
countenance public control even over gifts of 
nature like water, land and forests. It 
eviscerates governments and undermines democracy.

Every major policy and scheme of the UPA 
government (with the honourable exception of the 
Rural Employment Guarantee Act), and most of its 
plans, whether in urban development, 
transportation, telecom, retail trade or health 
care, increasingly bear a neoliberal impress. As 
does it macroeconomic approach. Whenever the 
government meets with popular resistance to its 
policies, it takes recourse to devious means. 
Among the most devious is the proposed creation 
of special economic zones (SEZs), scores of which 
are on the anvil.

There is a strident demand that SEZs be exempted 
from labour laws, including regulations on 
working hours and minimum wages, and with total 
freedom to hire and fire workers. These will 
become nightmarish zones of labour enslavement. 
They must be resisted. The trade union movement 
and the Left parties have a high stake in doing 
so. So do all those who stand for democratic 
freedoms and rights.

Contrary to propaganda in the corporate media, 
such resistance is not part of some retrograde, 
outmoded, backward-looking agenda. On the 
contrary, it is part of a modern, contemporary, 
forward-looking sensibility. The French students' 
successful mobilisation of millions in mass 
demonstrations against the obnoxious 
hire-and-fire "first employment contract" bears 
eloquent testimony to this.

Similarly, defending the rights of the thousands 
who are being evicted from our cities to 
facilitate the construction of shopping malls and 
Commonwealth games villages is part of a 
foundational democratic agenda. The time has come 
for all progressive movements and parties to 
develop a sharply focussed collective charter of 
demands - against neoliberal policies and for 
people-centred alternatives. Such alternatives 
exist, at least in embryonic form. They need to 
be fleshed out and integrated into people's 
movements. This task can no longer wait.

____


[4]

SLUMS, SHOPS MAKE WAY FOR 'WORLD-CLASS' DELHI

Agence France Presse
Apr 26, 11:18 AM ET

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Billboards dotting New Delhi 
are exhorting city residents to imagine a future 
made up of tall buildings and sky trains that 
will take the Indian capital from "walled city to 
world city".
ADVERTISEMENT

The phrase "world-class city" is increasingly on 
the lips of city officials too, on a massive 
drive to tidy the capital in the run-up to the 
Commonwealth Games in 2010.

But in recent months, these visions have appeared 
out of sync with daily life in the city as 
traders have protested the closure of their shops 
in residential areas and as thousands of slum 
homes have been demolished.

"How can we stop being poor if they keep breaking 
our houses?" asked Tulsa Devi, a wiry woman with 
hair to her waist who lives in a slum 
neighborhood called Nangla Machi on the banks of 
the polluted Yamuna river.

Three weeks ago bulldozers and hundreds of police 
came and turned large parts of the neighborhood 
into masses of rubble, enforcing a court order to 
ensure the riverfront slums are gone by April 30.

The aim is to transform the waterfront strip into 
a recreational area for the city.

From her job as a cleaner nearby, Tulsa earns 
about 80 rupees a day (two dollars) and is unable 
to afford to rent at market prices.

It isn't clear where people like her fit into 
plans for Delhi, especially since the official 
development plan for 2001-2021 is six years 
overdue and there is still no date for its 
release.

During that time, the city has grown and the 
builders have built. Now half of Delhi's 14 
million inhabitants live in slums and 18,000 
structures outside of slum clusters have been 
deemed illegal.

The courts have increasingly stepped in, 
prescribing demolition drives against shops and 
slums in response to suits brought by frustrated 
residents.

"Most of these things you see happening are the 
result of public interest litigation," said K.T. 
Ravindran, dean of studies and professor of urban 
design at the city's School of Planning and 
Architecture.

"The judiciary is the body most responsive to requests."

But with many of the suits brought by 
middle-class residents, Ravindran says the system 
is "not acting on behalf of the underprivileged 
but for the privileged".

After a highly-publicized campaign against 
illegally located shops, the city is now worrying 
about the riverfront.

By the time it is completed, the campaign to 
evict slumdwellers from the banks of the Yamuna 
will have forced an estimated at least 280,000 
people from their homes.

"It's creating an apartheid city, making very 
clear separations between the rich and the poor," 
said Miloon Kothari, UN special rapporteur on 
housing rights.

"The situation in the resettlement areas is 
horrendous," far from jobs and city services, he 
said.

Kothari said a huge slum demolition drive had 
been undertaken in the last three years, evicting 
countless thousands of people.

"It's part of a pattern in Delhi to prepare for 
the Commonwealth Games," he said.

Kothari said a huge slum demolition drive had 
been undertaken in the last three years with as 
many as 300,000 people evicted across New Delhi 
on top of the 280,000 who are being chased away 
from Yamuna banks.

But Delhi Development Authority planning 
commissioner A.K. Jain disagrees with the 
criticism of the clean-up drive.

"The priorities are many ... always there is 
criticism when you are dealing with the masses," 
Jain told AFP.

Jain said around one quarter of the 280,000 being 
evicted in the riverfront clean up drive could 
end up being resettled on the outskirts of the 
city but the rest would have to fend for 
themselves.

Jain said more low-income housing would be 
authorised but no timeframe had been set for 
construction.

The municipal authority has zoned the river banks 
as green space -- one of the reasons given for 
the slum demolitions.

But a mega-temple complex that spans about 30 
acres (12 hectares) has been erected there in the 
last five years and the Commonwealth Games 
village is to be located there as well.

"There are such big, big constructions on the 
Yamuna -- no-one tears them down," complained 
Mohammed Nasim, 38, also of Nangla Machi, whose 
hair is streaked with grey.

Like him, many have stayed on in the area, even 
though there has not been any electricity and 
little water since the demolition.

The drains running between the one-room huts 
still standing have clogged and flies and 
mosquitoes multiplied. Children frequently run 
fevers due to the bad sanitation.

For those who live in areas being bulldozed, it 
feels like a drive against the poor.

"Rich people wouldn't get their houses cleaned 
and mopped, food cooked, dishes washed if not for 
us," said Anju Devi, another resident of Nangla 
Machi.

"And they're chasing us away."

o o o

see also:
http://nangla.freeflux.net/

____


[5]

The Times of India
19 April 2006


SAFFRON DEMOGRAPHY
Mohan Rao

At a public meeting attended by thousands, the 
leader of the Madhya Pradesh unit of RSS claimed 
recently that the Muslim population was 
increasing at a rapid pace, and that this 
combined with infiltration of Muslims from 
Bangladesh portended doom for India.

Claiming that this demographic war was being 
waged across the world, he attributed the 
break-up of the Soviet Union to such demographic 
imbalance.

This sort of claim is nothing new. In end-2004, 
VHP president Ashok Singhal had said Hindus 
should forsake family planning so that their 
population does not go down.

Speaking at VHP's joint meeting of the 
international board of trustees, he said that the 
population of minorities, especially Muslims, had 
been rising at "such a fast pace" that it would 
be 25 to 30 per cent of the total population in 
50 years.

Singhal said it would be "suicidal" for Hindus if 
they did not raise their population. Later, at 
the Margadarshak Mandal, the VHP's apex body 
meeting in February 2005, a resolution was passed 
calling upon Hindus to follow the ideal family 
size set by Lord Krishna's parents and contribute 
constructively towards increasing Hindu 
population.

The resolution also called for checking 
Bangladeshi infiltration and preventing Hindu 
girls from marrying Muslim boys.

Krishna, the resolution pointed out, was the 
eighth child of his parents as was Netaji Bose, 
and Rabindranath Tagore was the ninth.

The VHP has also opposed access to abortion, 
arguing that a disproportionate number of Hindu 
women utilise abortion facilities.

We have also had a huge and unedifying 
controversy erupt recently when the census 
commissioner announced the religion-wise data 
from the 2001 Census, without specifying that 
these could not be compared to previous figures 
since the 1991 Census had not been conducted in 
Kashmir, a Muslim majority state.

The Hindu right created an uproar about Muslims 
outnumbering Hindus. This despite clarifications 
issued by the commissioner, showing that the rate 
of decline of the Muslim growth rate was 
substantial and indeed sharper than among Hindus.

This paranoid construct of the other has a long 
history. In 1909, U N Mukherji had written a book 
entitled Hindus: A Dying Race, which went on to 
influence many tracts and publications by the 
Hindu Mahasabha, parent organisation of the RSS.

This book seemed to meet a widespread demand, 
going into many reprints and feeding into Hindu 
communalism then coming into its own.

It had a special appeal to Hindu communalists, 
anxious to create a monolithic Hindu community at 
a time when there were demands for separate 
representation by both Muslims and lower castes.

Whipping up anxiety about Muslims would be one 
way to weld together hugely diverse, and often 
antagonistic, castes into one community, erasing 
structural divisions in caste society.

Deeply riddled with inaccuracies and wild flights 
of prediction, the book nevertheless provided 
demographic common sense functioning as a trope 
for extinction.

Also, Hindu communalists believed and continue to 
believe that India is defined culturally as a 
Hindu nation, just as Muslim communalists 
believed in the purity of an Islamic Pakistan.

So communalists of both religions, by evoking 
demographic fears, subscribed to colonial 
definitions of Indian society. There was yet 
another flame stoking these fears among Hindu 
communalists, resentful of social reform.

The tragic figure of the Hindu widow was central, 
and indeed emblematic, here. Forbidden to 
remarry, she was at once responsible for the 
dying of the Hindu race as she was an allurement 
for virile Muslim men.

Communalisation of the issue of abduction of 
Hindu women fitted neatly into this gendered 
anxiety. Indeed this too was prominent in rumours 
before the Gujarat genocide in 2002.

This reflected embedding of patriarchy, 
nationhood and violence against women in 
discourses on numbers, inscribing on reproductive 
women's bodies atavistic anxieties about the 
future, and the politics of genocide.

The slogan 'Hum do, hamare do; Woh paanch, unke 
pachees' won the leader of the genocide in 
Gujarat in 2002 a shameful but resounding 
electoral victory.

Does this also fit with the trope of alleged 
vegetarianism of Hindus along with the sexual 
rapacity of non-vegetarian Muslims?

Historian Tanika Sarkar says there is a dark 
sexual obsession about the allegedly ultra-virile 
Muslim male bodies and over-fertile Muslim female 
ones.

In communal violence, rape is a sign of 
collective dishonouring of a community; the same 
patriarchy that views the female body as the 
symbol of lineage, of community, of nation.

The anxieties whipped up over generations about 
Muslim fertility rates and dying of the Hindu 
nation, led to the brutal killing of children.

M S Golwalkar, ideological fountainhead of the 
RSS, wrote that to maintain the purity of its 
race and culture, Germany purged Jews.

Although we now know that there is no such thing 
as race, nevertheless racial purity, numbers and 
culture are yoked together in all fundamentalist 
discourses.

As Patricia and Roger Jeffery have noted, what 
has come to be called saffron demography has come 
to stay, a set of pernicious myths masquerading 
often as common sense.

The writer is with the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, JNU.


____


[6]

The Guardian
April 22, 2006

FEAR AND PARANOIA

Hanif Kureishi based his 1981 play Borderline on the concerns of
London's Asian community - riots, fascists, feminists. Twenty-five
years later, it shows why we need political theatre more than ever

It was with some trepidation that I looked again at Borderline, a
play I wrote in 1981. The Royal Court Theatre - where it was
originally presented - wanted to mount a reading of it, as part of
the celebrations to mark the company's 50th anniversary this month.
My father was alive in 1981, and sat enthusiastically through many
performances, laughing at everything, particularly at the character
of the father, who rather resembled him. Now, 20 years later, two of
my sons, aged 12, were present. I couldn't help wondering what it
would mean to them - or indeed anyone, now.

The original director, Max Stafford-Clark, whose idea the play was,
had worked often with Joint Stock, a touring company started by David
Hare and Bill Gaskill with the intention of getting political theatre
out of London. Max told me the play would be cast, the research done
in Southall - an immigrant area of west London - and then I would
write it. As always, the company played in schools, community centres
and gyms around the country, finally opening at a London theatre -
often the Royal Court - a couple of months later. This was political
theatre, emerging from the turbulent, radical intensities of the
1970s. In the case of Borderline, the idea was to show the community
through its differences: different ages, political outlooks, and
different hopes for the future, interweaving numerous characters and
points of view.
At that time, getting a writing gig with Joint Stock was, as Max
would say, "very high status". I was in my mid-20s, living with my
social worker girlfriend in a low-rent council flat next to a railway
line in Barons Court, west London. I can't have been making a living
as a writer; I must have been on the dole. So far I had written only
two full-length plays, and many unpublished novels. There were very
few Asian or African-Caribbean writers, actors or directors who made
a living from their work. Why did I think I'd be any different?
I was extremely nervous about the whole thing, and with good reason.
It was, as far as I knew, the first play by an Asian to be produced
on the main stage at the Royal Court, a theatre known for its
innovation and daring. The only other black playwright I knew was
Mustapha Matura, whose work I'd admired. But his work was poetic; he
was no social documentarian.
For me the Joint Stock process had been frantic, if not hair-raising.
The actors and theatres had been hired; everything was in place, but
the play had not been written, not a word of it, and we were to start
rehearsing in six weeks. I was just beginning to find out whether I
could be a writer or not, trying to find a subject, characters, and
words for them to say. I was already learning a lot from the
directors I worked with, and from the actors: as they began to speak,
the clumsiness of the lines was obvious. Fortunately, I was
hard-working then, with a fierce ambition.
The play did get written. It also got rewritten. This, I saw, was
when the real work began. If I'd had too "pure" a view of the artist,
I was soon to learn that aesthetic fastidiousness wasn't a helpful
attitude. Max was severe and precise, sending me into a dressing room
with instructions to write a scene about so-and-so, with certain
characters in it. I rewrote as we rehearsed; I rewrote as we played
it around the country; I rewrote it when we opened at the Royal
Court, and even after that. This was the first time I'd worked in
such a way and it was an important proficiency to develop; it came in
handy two years later when I worked with Stephen Frears on My
Beautiful Laundrette, and was required to rewrite on set.
I was also ambivalent about the journalistic process. I was full of
material already; I had hardly touched on my own experience as a
British Asian kid. Why were we interviewing strangers in order to
generate material? Yet as we began to talk to people I found these
conversations were not chatter; they were serious - some taking place
over a number of days - and always moving. I was fascinated to hear
strangers talk. It was something like a crude psychoanalysis, as one
only had to ask a simple question to be drawn into a whirlpool of
memories, impressions, fears, terrors. I was shocked at how much
people revealed of themselves, and how much they wanted to be known,
to be understood. The community was close and supportive, but the
cost of this was inhibition and constraint.
Most of the actors who took part in this year's rehearsed reading of
Borderline were younger than 10 when the Southall riots took place.
They required a quick history lesson. We played the Specials' Ghost
Town and The Jam's That's Entertainment. We mentioned monetarism,
Norman Tebbit, the Falklands, the miners' strike, and rioting in
Brixton, Bristol, Liverpool - and Southall, where many Asians worked.
When I was approached by Max with the subject for Borderline,
Southall had recently become the focus of discontent and violence.
Racism was a daily occurrence for most Asians in Britain. But the
characters in the play refer often to the possibility of an
"invasion", something they were afraid of and disturbed by, as it had
already happened. In April 1979, the police allowed the fascist
National Front to hold a meeting in Asian Southall. Two weeks earlier
the residents met the Labour home secretary, Merlyn Rees, to ask him
to ban the Front's meeting. On the day before the march, 5,000 people
went to Ealing Town Hall in support of banning the National Front's
meeting, handing in a petition signed by 10,000 residents. Local
factories also agreed to strike in protest. Rees refused to give way.
It was a question of free speech, even for fascists.
During the protest that followed the fascist meeting, organised by
the Asians themselves along with the Anti-Nazi League - a front for
the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party - the police on horses
attacked the crowds; vans were driven at them. Blair Peach, a young
leftwing teacher, was struck and killed by the notorious Special
Patrol Group, a shadowy police/army group whose job, it was commonly
said, was to beat people up. Many older Asians, who still respected
the police and the British legal system, were shocked and
disillusioned by the number of injuries and the unrestrained violence
of the police. Meanwhile, the media represented the riots as an
"attack on the police". In June 1979, when the lockers of the SPG
were searched, one officer was found to be in possession of Nazi
regalia, bayonets and leather-covered sticks. But no officer was
prosecuted.
This, then, partly explains the atmosphere of paranoia and fear in
which the play's events take place. This is why the arguments the
characters have, about how to proceed socially and politically, are
so important to them. They are thinking all the time about the kind
of Britain in which they are living, and the kind of country the
young will inherit and seek to remake.
To my surprise, looking at the play again after more than 20 years, I
was not startled either by the naivety of the piece, or by the nature
of my personal preoccupations then. Obviously it had dated, but in
noteworthy ways. What did strike me was how little talk of religion
there was among the characters. The unifying ideology of that time
and place was socialism, with feminist groups such as the Southall
Black Sisters, as well as some anarchist and separatist groups, also
contributing to the debate. The play itself was written out of the
1970s and at each stage the question would have to be asked: how does
this scene, or these lines, further the cause, not only of the play,
but of the social movement we are pursuing? What are we saying, about
Asians, women, the working class; how do we push the argument along?
By the 1990s, political theatre was dead. It had come to seem crude
as a device for explaining the world, or for bringing news from
unexplored parts of the country. But in this age of mendacity,
deception and violence, there is the need, once again, for public
debate about contemporary issues. Political theatre can be quick,
immediate and adapted to changing circumstances, unlike most films.
Ten years after the Southall riots, in 1989 - the year communism died
in Europe - there was another significant demonstration by Asians,
this time in Hyde Park, central London. It was not about racial
attacks, unemployment or indeed any of the concerns shown in
Borderline. It was a demonstration against the publication of Salman
Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, and Muslims had travelled from all over
the country to protest. A group of Asian female demonstrators
(perhaps from a group not unlike the Southall Black Sisters), who
were carrying placards saying "Women Against Fundamentalism", were
attacked by Muslim men. As these dissident voices were suppressed, as
secular and socialist Asian voices were discouraged across the
community, a range of new issues emerged, many to do with the idea of
speaking, books, writing, words, and the place of the artist and
intellectual as critic.
By January 2006, my two eldest sons and I would be going to Trafalgar
Square to watch the community demonstrating against other blasphemies
- cartoons, this time. The three of us, with Muslim names and a
Muslim history, had no place in what was going on and criticism
didn't appear welcome. During the same period one of the young actors
who took part in the recent reading - he had appeared in Michael
Winterbottom's Guantánamo Bay film - had been arrested, harassed and
held under the Anti-Terrorism Act at Heathrow, on his way back from
the Berlin film festival, where the movie won the Silver Bear.
During the 10 years between the Southall riots and the demonstration
against The Satanic Verses, the community had become politicised by
radical Islam, something that had been developing throughout the
Muslim world since decolonisation. This version of Islam imposed an
identity and solidarity on a besieged community. It came to mean
rebellion, purity, integrity. But it was also a trap. Once this
ideology had been adopted - and political conversations could only
take place within its terms - it entailed numerous constraints,
locking the community in, as well as divorcing it from possible
sources of creativity: dissidence, criticism, sexuality. Its
authoritarianism, stifling to those within, and appearing fascistic
to those without, rejected the very liberalism the community required
in order to flourish in the modern world. It was tragic: what had
protected the community from racism and disintegration came to
tyrannise it.
· As part of its 50th birthday celebrations, the Royal Court has
joined forces with the BBC writers' room to launch THE 50, a
mentoring scheme for 50 writers nominated by 50 theatres from across
the UK.

____

[7]

In solidarity with the Nepalese movement for 
democracy we are organising a protest in 
condemnation of the violence used against the 
democracy movement and a celebration of the 
resistance of the Nepali people.

Picket of  the Royal Nepalese Embassy, 12a Kensington Palace Gardens,
London W8 on Saturday 29 April, 2006 at 1pm

Please bring banners and placards with you.

In solidarity,

David Seddon, Professor of Development Studies, University of East
Anglia and co author of The People's War in 
Nepal, Nepal in Crisis, Peasants and Workers in 
Nepal
Jonathan Neale, author of Tigers of the Snow
Yuri Prasad, editor Socialist Review
South Asia Solidarity Group
And others


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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
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SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/

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